12 ms·

This is really exciting, feels like open standards, independent internet is going to continue getting extreme motivation to expand and establish, with private "

This is really exciting, feels like open standards, independent internet is going to continue getting extreme motivation to expand and establish, with private "freedom of speech" censorship by for-profit platforms. We're going to see more fragmentation, and growth of closed platforms perceived by users as "slightly less evil" such as telegram vs watsapp. This may also motivate the return to truly open internet ideals of the past.

zpeti 6y ago
I'm slightly sceptical, because with open standards you still need to do moderation somehow. The WSB are complaining that Reddit didn't give them the mod tools they need. I believe we're going to see fragmentation in platforms rather than open standards. And I say that because we've just launched our own reddit alternative, Retalk.com. It's also moderated, but by different standards.
- NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
  There is nothing preventing an open standard moderation tag that each user selects how to treat. With such moderation tagging in place, for example, if I wanted to use Reddit but mistrust moderators, with an open treatment of data, I would be able to select to ignore their rating/per entry and use ratings by a group of users I select. (impossible to imagine Reddit doing something like this) However, it requires I have access to core data. Today, the superusers or platform admins can prevent "controversial" entries from even being visible on the platform/subplatform/subreddit.
  - ggggtez 6y ago
    This seems to misunderstand the purpose of moderation entirely. Moderation serves many purposes, but only one of them is to save your delicate eyes from seeing things you don't want to see. Perhaps the more important one are things like: ensuring that your social media service doesn't have a bad reputation so that people other than disaffected white guys will actually want to use it. If your site is overrun with porn, then sure, each user could just block those millions of posters with your open standard... but every new user still sees it, and decides "this service isn't built for me" and never comes back. At the core of community moderation is community. If the community looks like it's full of people doing gray-illegal things, then normal people (and advertisers) will generally shy away... and lawsuits will not be far behind.
    - dvdkon 6y ago
      This seems to be easily solvable by just making moderation an opt-out default. HN itself has the "showdead" setting, which defaults to false. Anyone who forms their opinion on a community after deliberately turning off moderation is either a moron or trying to intentionally discredit that community.
      - iSnow 6y ago
        It doesn't work. Moderation has it's name precisely because suppressing content that is crated to incite emotional reactions keeps the mood in a community. All free-speech platforms I know of devolve into a hotbed of Neonazis and trolls. As a consequence, I am no longer interested in trying out "censorship resistant" platforms because I precisely know what will happen a couple months down the road. Social media without meaningful moderation (ie. FB and Twitter before the latest crackdown) was an error.
        dvdkon 6y ago
        I wasn't talking about a "free speech platform", I just think that moderation should be transparent, and that users should be able to view content deleted/hidden by moderators if they wish. Many times I've read a discussion about someone being fired for a social media post. Some people will defend them, some people will say the reaction was justified. And I can't make up my own mind, because that post was swiftly deleted by moderators and now everyone's just acting on their own memory of the post.
    - concordDance 6y ago
      Which is why defaults are important. You have your default filters filter out the stuff the mods dislike.
Traster 6y ago
People need to stop being so lazy and throwing around the word censorship. If a bunch or teenagers come into my coffee shop and start loudly calling each autists and retards I'm going to kick them out. I'm not censoring them by kicking them out.
- NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
  And you need to review the code of conduct for this platform, as you are in violation and, according to your own logic, should be kicked. (Which I oppose)
- staticelf 6y ago
  It would only be a fair parable if your coffee shop was the only coffeshop in the entire city or that it exists like 1-3 others but you all talk with eachother on the phone and collectively agree to deny those people service.
  - onethought 6y ago
    And that still wouldn’t be censorship.
    - staticelf 6y ago
      No ofc not, but that is a coffeshop and not a place where the business is sharing stuff. If the business is a town square where everyone is and your excluding a specific group that is censorship.
      - onethought 6y ago
        But it’s more like a country club than a town square. And 100% country clubs kick you out when you say things they don’t like.
  - jsilence 6y ago
    They are free to run their own Matrix, Mattermost, Rocketchat, IRC, whatever node...
ggggtez 6y ago
I don't know where you even come up with these outdated ideas. Very few people care about what you are talking about. The subset of people who care are: tech savvy, young, mostly male, and vaguely misanthropic. This demographic is already served in numerous places, and everyone else is rather glad to see these people chased off of platforms they use for sharing videos of dancing and food.
- rusk 6y ago
  He’s saying this will give people a reason to think more about these things.
- simplecto 6y ago
  25 years ago there were know-it-alls expressing sentiments like yours. “The internet is a fad” It is just nerdy men in their basements.
  - krageon 6y ago
    That's not what they said at all.
    - simplecto 6y ago
      Ahem... https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-buy-books-newspapers-straight-intenet-uh/ https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-b... https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/02/the_internet_futurist_who_thou/ https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/02/the_internet_futur...
      - coding_lobster 6y ago
        Pretty sure when krageon said "that's not what they said" they were referring to poster of the original comment that was being replied to - not the know it alls from 90s.
        6y ago
jaimex2 6y ago
Nah, they'll just go on 4chan like everything else being censored.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Dream on. If this was to happen, it would have happened in China. There are many other ways to block these channels. App stores can block them. Hosting providers can block them. ICANN can block them. Even if you get around that, they can use intelligence to find out who makes and operates these platforms and punish them. Think Silk Road. There is no way around this. The best way is the traditional way... wait it out until they become weak enough... which is when they won't have as much control and power to censor... and put their heads on a stick and start your own thing.
Shivetya 6y ago
Independent internet, exactly what is that? Governments will simply crack down on any site which does not do what the politicians demand and better yet they have a ready made army of SJWs who will name and shame anyone they can identify; or if your reddit totally botch it and name the wrong people. sadly far too many people are in the camp of protecting freedoms and rights they personally deem acceptable and anything falling outside of their honest narrow view they will follow the crowd and jump on it with glee. the same levels of censorship and oppression people bemoan existing in some other countries is nearly here in the West and sadly all I hear is cheering.
jariel 6y ago
This is about as exciting as a mob of 10000 people rushing a restaurant at the same time to 'save it' and then forgetting it the next day. Unfortunately, there is no more new math here. Even worse, it looks like stocks may become unduly hyper volatile due to such things and none of the people in the underlying economy actually want that, it's a huge headache and risk for them.
mqrs 6y ago
> We're going to see more fragmentation Whenever people say this, I wonder whether they are considering the possibility that once the internet goes in the direction of fragmentation, more states would swoop in with regulation to barricade their own internet in the same way that China has a great firewall. There are plenty of incentives into banning US-based tech companies--states would then have access to data about their citizens instead of being at the mercy of Facebook or the US, and local software companies would begin to thrive.
rapnie 6y ago
"Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, Raddle, or Hacker News: you subscribe to forums you're interested in, post links and discussions, then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse. For a link aggregator, this means a user registered on one server can subscribe to forums on any other server, and can have discussions with users registered elsewhere." Time for them to spin up a Lemmy server? https://lemmy.ml/docs/en/index.html https://lemmy.ml/docs/en/index.html wallstreetlemmi.ng maybe?

zpeti 6y ago

I'm slightly sceptical, because with open standards you still need to do moderation somehow. The WSB are complaining that Reddit didn't give them the mod tools they need. I believe we're going to see fragmentation in platforms rather than open standards. And I say that because we've just launched our own reddit alternative, Retalk.com. It's also moderated, but by different standards.

NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
There is nothing preventing an open standard moderation tag that each user selects how to treat. With such moderation tagging in place, for example, if I wanted to use Reddit but mistrust moderators, with an open treatment of data, I would be able to select to ignore their rating/per entry and use ratings by a group of users I select. (impossible to imagine Reddit doing something like this) However, it requires I have access to core data. Today, the superusers or platform admins can prevent "controversial" entries from even being visible on the platform/subplatform/subreddit.
- ggggtez 6y ago
  This seems to misunderstand the purpose of moderation entirely. Moderation serves many purposes, but only one of them is to save your delicate eyes from seeing things you don't want to see. Perhaps the more important one are things like: ensuring that your social media service doesn't have a bad reputation so that people other than disaffected white guys will actually want to use it. If your site is overrun with porn, then sure, each user could just block those millions of posters with your open standard... but every new user still sees it, and decides "this service isn't built for me" and never comes back. At the core of community moderation is community. If the community looks like it's full of people doing gray-illegal things, then normal people (and advertisers) will generally shy away... and lawsuits will not be far behind.
  - dvdkon 6y ago
    This seems to be easily solvable by just making moderation an opt-out default. HN itself has the "showdead" setting, which defaults to false. Anyone who forms their opinion on a community after deliberately turning off moderation is either a moron or trying to intentionally discredit that community.
    - iSnow 6y ago
      It doesn't work. Moderation has it's name precisely because suppressing content that is crated to incite emotional reactions keeps the mood in a community. All free-speech platforms I know of devolve into a hotbed of Neonazis and trolls. As a consequence, I am no longer interested in trying out "censorship resistant" platforms because I precisely know what will happen a couple months down the road. Social media without meaningful moderation (ie. FB and Twitter before the latest crackdown) was an error.
      - dvdkon 6y ago
        I wasn't talking about a "free speech platform", I just think that moderation should be transparent, and that users should be able to view content deleted/hidden by moderators if they wish. Many times I've read a discussion about someone being fired for a social media post. Some people will defend them, some people will say the reaction was justified. And I can't make up my own mind, because that post was swiftly deleted by moderators and now everyone's just acting on their own memory of the post.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Which is why defaults are important. You have your default filters filter out the stuff the mods dislike.

Traster 6y ago

People need to stop being so lazy and throwing around the word censorship. If a bunch or teenagers come into my coffee shop and start loudly calling each autists and retards I'm going to kick them out. I'm not censoring them by kicking them out.

NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
And you need to review the code of conduct for this platform, as you are in violation and, according to your own logic, should be kicked. (Which I oppose)
staticelf 6y ago
It would only be a fair parable if your coffee shop was the only coffeshop in the entire city or that it exists like 1-3 others but you all talk with eachother on the phone and collectively agree to deny those people service.
- onethought 6y ago
  And that still wouldn’t be censorship.
  - staticelf 6y ago
    No ofc not, but that is a coffeshop and not a place where the business is sharing stuff. If the business is a town square where everyone is and your excluding a specific group that is censorship.
    - onethought 6y ago
      But it’s more like a country club than a town square. And 100% country clubs kick you out when you say things they don’t like.
- jsilence 6y ago
  They are free to run their own Matrix, Mattermost, Rocketchat, IRC, whatever node...

ggggtez 6y ago

I don't know where you even come up with these outdated ideas. Very few people care about what you are talking about. The subset of people who care are: tech savvy, young, mostly male, and vaguely misanthropic. This demographic is already served in numerous places, and everyone else is rather glad to see these people chased off of platforms they use for sharing videos of dancing and food.

rusk 6y ago
He’s saying this will give people a reason to think more about these things.
simplecto 6y ago
25 years ago there were know-it-alls expressing sentiments like yours. “The internet is a fad” It is just nerdy men in their basements.
- krageon 6y ago
  That's not what they said at all.
  - simplecto 6y ago
    Ahem... https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-buy-books-newspapers-straight-intenet-uh/ https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-b... https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/02/the_internet_futurist_who_thou/ https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/02/the_internet_futur...
    - coding_lobster 6y ago
      Pretty sure when krageon said "that's not what they said" they were referring to poster of the original comment that was being replied to - not the know it alls from 90s.
      - 6y ago

jaimex2 6y ago

Nah, they'll just go on 4chan like everything else being censored.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Dream on. If this was to happen, it would have happened in China. There are many other ways to block these channels. App stores can block them. Hosting providers can block them. ICANN can block them. Even if you get around that, they can use intelligence to find out who makes and operates these platforms and punish them. Think Silk Road. There is no way around this. The best way is the traditional way... wait it out until they become weak enough... which is when they won't have as much control and power to censor... and put their heads on a stick and start your own thing.

Shivetya 6y ago

Independent internet, exactly what is that? Governments will simply crack down on any site which does not do what the politicians demand and better yet they have a ready made army of SJWs who will name and shame anyone they can identify; or if your reddit totally botch it and name the wrong people. sadly far too many people are in the camp of protecting freedoms and rights they personally deem acceptable and anything falling outside of their honest narrow view they will follow the crowd and jump on it with glee. the same levels of censorship and oppression people bemoan existing in some other countries is nearly here in the West and sadly all I hear is cheering.

jariel 6y ago

This is about as exciting as a mob of 10000 people rushing a restaurant at the same time to 'save it' and then forgetting it the next day. Unfortunately, there is no more new math here. Even worse, it looks like stocks may become unduly hyper volatile due to such things and none of the people in the underlying economy actually want that, it's a huge headache and risk for them.

mqrs 6y ago

> We're going to see more fragmentation Whenever people say this, I wonder whether they are considering the possibility that once the internet goes in the direction of fragmentation, more states would swoop in with regulation to barricade their own internet in the same way that China has a great firewall. There are plenty of incentives into banning US-based tech companies--states would then have access to data about their citizens instead of being at the mercy of Facebook or the US, and local software companies would begin to thrive.

rapnie 6y ago

"Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, Raddle, or Hacker News: you subscribe to forums you're interested in, post links and discussions, then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse. For a link aggregator, this means a user registered on one server can subscribe to forums on any other server, and can have discussions with users registered elsewhere." Time for them to spin up a Lemmy server? https://lemmy.ml/docs/en/index.html https://lemmy.ml/docs/en/index.html wallstreetlemmi.ng maybe?