6 ms·

I had written a toy social network a few years back the past which had these features - It worked very much like an encrypted version of usenet. This is probab

by e1ven 6y ago

I had written a toy social network a few years back the past which had these features - It worked very much like an encrypted version of usenet. This is probably my bias as an engineer showing, but the technology doesn't seem like the hard part- I always understood that having an resilient network means people will use it to post some bad things, but I don't know if I really internalized the scope of that until later. I had originally envisioned it might be useful in oppressive countries, where people needed a way to communicate - Recent events have shown how dangerous that can feel when you're in the midst of people who feel like that describes them. As another HN post pointed out, there are two natural audiences for such networks - Idealists, and those who can't get away with stuff on other networks.. And the second is going to be far more common. That will influence the culture, and help to drive other "good" people away from the service, amplifying the effect. Even if you have user-selectable moderators (Which I had, similar to the request the author makes), without a huge war-chest to hire a large team of default moderators, you'll never be able to keep up. The default experience for the average user will be terrible. Over and over, I ran into issues like that - It's relatively easy to built the technological network, but managing the social network aspect is an unsolved problem.

grahamburger 6y ago
IMO this is why federation is an important aspect of decentralized networks, and is commonly listed as a reason for use Mastodon / the fediverse. Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Notably mastodon.social and the instances related to it haven't become cess pools of hate speech, because they do have strong moderation policies, but for users who want to post that stuff there are other instances they can find.
- sneak 6y ago
  > Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Yeah, this is why the fediverse is terrible, too. Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. Imagine if email worked that way.
  - jonfw 6y ago
    The good part is that you can be your own site admin, or you can choose one who reflects your ideals. Moderation is great, the trouble is when a single moderation standard is used across a monopolized market.
    - sneak 6y ago
      I am my own site admin. The third largest instance's admin blocked my site (because I disagree with him about censorship), preventing 17,000 people from being able to follow me, or send or receive DMs from me. I also can't follow or read any of those users from my own server, despite their messages/profiles being public and available to the whole web.
  - grahamburger 6y ago
    This seems strictly better than what we have, though, where Twitter or Facebook decide the same. At least you can move instances, or start your own. EDIT: also to note, email does kind of work this way with administrator applied spam lists. I would not want to use an email service that couldn't or wouldn't filter spam.
  - notJim 6y ago
    It doesn't quite have to work like that, necessarily. Your instance could provide higher-quality tools for users to moderate their own feeds. Or there could be different degrees of opt-in to the site-wide moderation. Or the moderation could be community driven. I think there is actually a lot of room for experimentation around how we interact online, and moderation is one of the most important areas. We need to think harder, rather than retreating to one of the two default positions.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    That's a feature many users want. Plenty of users never want to see things they disagree with or take objection to, and want to have someone else enforce that pattern. As long as it's optional - and in the fediverse design it is - then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Whether or not those instances actually survive and have any users or just immediately collapse into internal bickering is beyond the strict scope.
- convolvatron 6y ago
  more importantly, moderation is an overlay. instead of worrying about what and what isn't acceptable speech, let subcommunities form with their own policies and they can curate their own worldview that doesn't at all address bubbleism, but trying to decide which set of statements is 'ok' for everyone seems like a lost cause
  - breuleux 6y ago
    It could still address bubbles in a small way, by making them more accessible: if you can switch the overlay easily, you can get a peek at what other people see and understand their point of view a little better. You can also see what your favorite overlay is censoring and decide whether you're okay with that. Also, one avenue to radicalization is a feeling that your views are being censored. If you get to choose your bubble, that argument is undermined, so extreme bubbles might have a harder time growing.
    - prox 6y ago
      Bubbles by themselves aren’t necessarily the problem. I could live in art related bubble with fellow artists, and there is no problem there. Insulated bubbles are the problem I think, these echo chambers are a problem, especially unmoderated or those thriving by hate, aggrevation and/or exclusion.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
    You just invented Reddit. The same thing will always happen: you say "communities should moderate themselves" and then you get "communities" that scream that 'libtards' need to be murdered, etc etc etc.. So then what? Wash, rinse, repeat.
    - grahamburger 6y ago
      The difference is that each instance is a completely separate entity. They live or die on their own. They have to secure their own hosting, figure out their own revenue stream, and deal with law enforcement on their own. It's reddit minus reddit.
- notJim 6y ago
  Any idea why Parler took off rather than a right-wing instance of Mastodon? Is it about framing?
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Isn't Gab exactly that? They seem to have "taken off" quite successfully among their own audience. Parler simply made a different choice wrt. whether to support interop and federation.
    - deft 6y ago
      They were for a bit but they've defederated and the software is a huge mess. There are right wing free speech instances but they don't have any of the media attention.
  - at-fates-hands 6y ago
    Timing. It was right around the time congressional hearings were taking place about Twitter and FB suppressing conservative voices. A lot of conservative talk show hosts were talking about how they had moved to the platform and urging their listeners to do the same if they thought what Twitter and FB were doing was wrong. When you have heavy weight talk show hosts pimping your product without paying them and they're touting your platform as one that doesn't censor speech, you're going to have a huge increase in followers.
  - multjoy 6y ago
    Because Parler was basically a Twitter clone. These are not ‘first adopters’ by any stretch.
- folkrav 6y ago
  Doesn't this basically boil down to the model we currently have, but decentralized, or am I misunderstanding?
hinkley 6y ago
Before I decided that 'game developer' was not in my future prospects, I discovered the concept of reckless entitlement, where people will do anything the system allows, and a persistent subset of those people will rationalize that if you didn't want me to do that, then you should have written the code differently. This is tantamount to "Stop hitting yourself." Like the old line about academia, "the fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low," the stakes for gaming and socializing with internet strangers are both pretty low. Additionally, computers make you an efficient asshole. You can make a pretty big mess before you have time to think about whether you really should be doing what you just did. To err is human. To really foul things up requires the aid of a computer.
at_a_remove 6y ago
If you have an old-ish head unit in your car, it may receive an RDS (Radio Data System) feed that could tell you what station it is or what song is playing. However, many stations around here are using it to advertise Club Fitness and Golden Oak lending. If you cast further back into the mists of time, anyone could send you a webcam or chatroom invite ... this was naturally exploited by spammers approximately ten milliseconds after its invention. I have since formulated the concept that any communications channel, any at all, where it does not cost to transmit per message will eventually be colonized by the advertising fungal organism. Even low-cost messaging can be colonized, but the lower the cost, the faster it comes. Similarly, like FreeNet, any communications channel that can be used to post Things You Do Not Like will be used to do so. And that once you implement some kind of wide-scale filter against that, absolutely nothing can be done to stop someone from attempting to take over, to add and subtract to that filter, for their own purposes and their own ideology. I have no solutions for this.
- nelsondev 6y ago
  The author (OP) proposes community generated and shared block lists. I’m imagining an opt in block list, where with enough downvotes, if you are a member of the block list, the content is hidden. If the block list starts blocking content you want, you can fork it, keep the parts you want, remove the parts you don’t.
  - new_guy 6y ago
    This is a genius idea, I'm adding it to my sites today! Everyone knows one another, so if one person blocks a bad actor, it makes sense that everyone else will block them sooner or later.
- intrasight 6y ago
  Made me laugh and weep ;)
mawise 6y ago
There's another dimension that nobody seems to talk about, and that's what happens with access to content is restricted. There is basically no censorship and no abuse from "those who can't get away with stuff on other networks" in the realm of SMS (or WhatsApp/WeChat/whatever your country uses). You can have a very healthy network if the authors are responsible for access control to their content. That's the idea behind my side-project of an easy-to-use, easy-to-selfhost private blog.[1] When people want to use the platform to "become a thought leader" or "expand their network" then you're in the realm of public publishing which is where all the problems you cite become issues. The web makes privacy possible, and I don't understand why so few people are interested in that angle. For me I want to be able to share photos of my daughter with family and friends. I don't care if someone else wants to privately rant about the government to their friends--privacy enables both of these. [1] https://github.com/mawise/simpleblog https://github.com/mawise/simpleblog
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by e1ven 6y ago

grahamburger 6y ago

IMO this is why federation is an important aspect of decentralized networks, and is commonly listed as a reason for use Mastodon / the fediverse. Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Notably mastodon.social and the instances related to it haven't become cess pools of hate speech, because they do have strong moderation policies, but for users who want to post that stuff there are other instances they can find.

sneak 6y ago
> Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Yeah, this is why the fediverse is terrible, too. Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. Imagine if email worked that way.
- jonfw 6y ago
  The good part is that you can be your own site admin, or you can choose one who reflects your ideals. Moderation is great, the trouble is when a single moderation standard is used across a monopolized market.
  - sneak 6y ago
    I am my own site admin. The third largest instance's admin blocked my site (because I disagree with him about censorship), preventing 17,000 people from being able to follow me, or send or receive DMs from me. I also can't follow or read any of those users from my own server, despite their messages/profiles being public and available to the whole web.
- grahamburger 6y ago
  This seems strictly better than what we have, though, where Twitter or Facebook decide the same. At least you can move instances, or start your own. EDIT: also to note, email does kind of work this way with administrator applied spam lists. I would not want to use an email service that couldn't or wouldn't filter spam.
- notJim 6y ago
  It doesn't quite have to work like that, necessarily. Your instance could provide higher-quality tools for users to moderate their own feeds. Or there could be different degrees of opt-in to the site-wide moderation. Or the moderation could be community driven. I think there is actually a lot of room for experimentation around how we interact online, and moderation is one of the most important areas. We need to think harder, rather than retreating to one of the two default positions.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  That's a feature many users want. Plenty of users never want to see things they disagree with or take objection to, and want to have someone else enforce that pattern. As long as it's optional - and in the fediverse design it is - then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Whether or not those instances actually survive and have any users or just immediately collapse into internal bickering is beyond the strict scope.
convolvatron 6y ago
more importantly, moderation is an overlay. instead of worrying about what and what isn't acceptable speech, let subcommunities form with their own policies and they can curate their own worldview that doesn't at all address bubbleism, but trying to decide which set of statements is 'ok' for everyone seems like a lost cause
- breuleux 6y ago
  It could still address bubbles in a small way, by making them more accessible: if you can switch the overlay easily, you can get a peek at what other people see and understand their point of view a little better. You can also see what your favorite overlay is censoring and decide whether you're okay with that. Also, one avenue to radicalization is a feeling that your views are being censored. If you get to choose your bubble, that argument is undermined, so extreme bubbles might have a harder time growing.
  - prox 6y ago
    Bubbles by themselves aren’t necessarily the problem. I could live in art related bubble with fellow artists, and there is no problem there. Insulated bubbles are the problem I think, these echo chambers are a problem, especially unmoderated or those thriving by hate, aggrevation and/or exclusion.
- virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
  You just invented Reddit. The same thing will always happen: you say "communities should moderate themselves" and then you get "communities" that scream that 'libtards' need to be murdered, etc etc etc.. So then what? Wash, rinse, repeat.
  - grahamburger 6y ago
    The difference is that each instance is a completely separate entity. They live or die on their own. They have to secure their own hosting, figure out their own revenue stream, and deal with law enforcement on their own. It's reddit minus reddit.
notJim 6y ago
Any idea why Parler took off rather than a right-wing instance of Mastodon? Is it about framing?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Isn't Gab exactly that? They seem to have "taken off" quite successfully among their own audience. Parler simply made a different choice wrt. whether to support interop and federation.
  - deft 6y ago
    They were for a bit but they've defederated and the software is a huge mess. There are right wing free speech instances but they don't have any of the media attention.
- at-fates-hands 6y ago
  Timing. It was right around the time congressional hearings were taking place about Twitter and FB suppressing conservative voices. A lot of conservative talk show hosts were talking about how they had moved to the platform and urging their listeners to do the same if they thought what Twitter and FB were doing was wrong. When you have heavy weight talk show hosts pimping your product without paying them and they're touting your platform as one that doesn't censor speech, you're going to have a huge increase in followers.
- multjoy 6y ago
  Because Parler was basically a Twitter clone. These are not ‘first adopters’ by any stretch.
folkrav 6y ago
Doesn't this basically boil down to the model we currently have, but decentralized, or am I misunderstanding?

hinkley 6y ago

Before I decided that 'game developer' was not in my future prospects, I discovered the concept of reckless entitlement, where people will do anything the system allows, and a persistent subset of those people will rationalize that if you didn't want me to do that, then you should have written the code differently. This is tantamount to "Stop hitting yourself." Like the old line about academia, "the fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low," the stakes for gaming and socializing with internet strangers are both pretty low. Additionally, computers make you an efficient asshole. You can make a pretty big mess before you have time to think about whether you really should be doing what you just did. To err is human. To really foul things up requires the aid of a computer.

at_a_remove 6y ago

If you have an old-ish head unit in your car, it may receive an RDS (Radio Data System) feed that could tell you what station it is or what song is playing. However, many stations around here are using it to advertise Club Fitness and Golden Oak lending. If you cast further back into the mists of time, anyone could send you a webcam or chatroom invite ... this was naturally exploited by spammers approximately ten milliseconds after its invention. I have since formulated the concept that any communications channel, any at all, where it does not cost to transmit per message will eventually be colonized by the advertising fungal organism. Even low-cost messaging can be colonized, but the lower the cost, the faster it comes. Similarly, like FreeNet, any communications channel that can be used to post Things You Do Not Like will be used to do so. And that once you implement some kind of wide-scale filter against that, absolutely nothing can be done to stop someone from attempting to take over, to add and subtract to that filter, for their own purposes and their own ideology. I have no solutions for this.

nelsondev 6y ago
The author (OP) proposes community generated and shared block lists. I’m imagining an opt in block list, where with enough downvotes, if you are a member of the block list, the content is hidden. If the block list starts blocking content you want, you can fork it, keep the parts you want, remove the parts you don’t.
- new_guy 6y ago
  This is a genius idea, I'm adding it to my sites today! Everyone knows one another, so if one person blocks a bad actor, it makes sense that everyone else will block them sooner or later.
intrasight 6y ago
Made me laugh and weep ;)

mawise 6y ago

There's another dimension that nobody seems to talk about, and that's what happens with access to content is restricted. There is basically no censorship and no abuse from "those who can't get away with stuff on other networks" in the realm of SMS (or WhatsApp/WeChat/whatever your country uses). You can have a very healthy network if the authors are responsible for access control to their content. That's the idea behind my side-project of an easy-to-use, easy-to-selfhost private blog.[1] When people want to use the platform to "become a thought leader" or "expand their network" then you're in the realm of public publishing which is where all the problems you cite become issues. The web makes privacy possible, and I don't understand why so few people are interested in that angle. For me I want to be able to share photos of my daughter with family and friends. I don't care if someone else wants to privately rant about the government to their friends--privacy enables both of these. [1] https://github.com/mawise/simpleblog https://github.com/mawise/simpleblog

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]