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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

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.
  - ars 6y ago
    > Plenty of users never want to see things they disagree with or take objection to, and want to have someone else enforce that pattern. Am I unusual? When there is hate speech directed at me, I don't really care if I see it or not. But I do want to prevent other people from seeing that hate speech (I don't want the hate to grow).
    - sneak 6y ago
      It's supremely rude to decide that you can be permitted to read something, but other people can't.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. That's a necessary affordance, given the technology. A mail server could indeed refuse to forward some of your emails, and this could even make some sense e.g. as part of spam prevention policy.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    There is certainly an argument for preventing unsolicited messages being received from unknown users, but rarely do people value a spam filter which prevents them from sending messages to people. (I suppose there are some corporate filters which try to prevent accidental sending of sensitive information to unauthorised recipients, but that's not the "feature" we are talking about here). It is perfectly reasonable for a user to want to DM someone on an instance that has different moderation policies from their own, and it is equally reasonable to want to receive replies to those DMs. If the specifications or implementations don't allow that, then I suppose it has to be justified by saying that the DMs could be used for sharing copyright infringing material (or worse), and admins don't want to run the legal risk of hosting that on their servers. Legally, though, that doesn't seem any different to operating a mail server, which don't typically have Content ID matching systems on them. Perhaps the implementation of end-to-end encrypted DMs would assuage some of these concerns a little.
- berkes 6y ago
  But email does work that way. On my mailserver, I make the rules. I decide how my spamfilters, greylisting and blacklisting is tuned. I decide who is allowed to have an account. And therefore, I decide what is allowed to be sent and received.
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?

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.
- ars 6y ago
  > Plenty of users never want to see things they disagree with or take objection to, and want to have someone else enforce that pattern. Am I unusual? When there is hate speech directed at me, I don't really care if I see it or not. But I do want to prevent other people from seeing that hate speech (I don't want the hate to grow).
  - sneak 6y ago
    It's supremely rude to decide that you can be permitted to read something, but other people can't.
zozbot234 6y ago
> Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. That's a necessary affordance, given the technology. A mail server could indeed refuse to forward some of your emails, and this could even make some sense e.g. as part of spam prevention policy.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  There is certainly an argument for preventing unsolicited messages being received from unknown users, but rarely do people value a spam filter which prevents them from sending messages to people. (I suppose there are some corporate filters which try to prevent accidental sending of sensitive information to unauthorised recipients, but that's not the "feature" we are talking about here). It is perfectly reasonable for a user to want to DM someone on an instance that has different moderation policies from their own, and it is equally reasonable to want to receive replies to those DMs. If the specifications or implementations don't allow that, then I suppose it has to be justified by saying that the DMs could be used for sharing copyright infringing material (or worse), and admins don't want to run the legal risk of hosting that on their servers. Legally, though, that doesn't seem any different to operating a mail server, which don't typically have Content ID matching systems on them. Perhaps the implementation of end-to-end encrypted DMs would assuage some of these concerns a little.
berkes 6y ago
But email does work that way. On my mailserver, I make the rules. I decide how my spamfilters, greylisting and blacklisting is tuned. I decide who is allowed to have an account. And therefore, I decide what is allowed to be sent and received.

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?