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Another reason it doesn't work is that networks used by humans need policing to be usable by anyone but the most advanced and psychologically resilient users, a

by ridaj 5y ago

Another reason it doesn't work is that networks used by humans need policing to be usable by anyone but the most advanced and psychologically resilient users, and there isn't an economic model that funds this at scale with completely open networks. Mail is only usable because of spam filters, the best of which are completely opaque, and paid by ads. The web is open, but the search index isn't, and it spends a significant amount of time fighting search indexing spam / farms of autogenerated, low-value crap. Social networks need moderation to not become porn or terrorism supporting platforms, and the incentives or scale aren't there in a fully decentralized model. Phone networks are super open and right now in the US there's a nontrivial number of people whose inbound calls are almost all spam. Etc

boomlinde 5y ago
> Another reason it doesn't work is that networks used by humans need policing to be usable by anyone but the most advanced and psychologically resilient users Does policing need to be centralized? I seem to remember having a better time visiting small special interest forums spread around the web than I've had with the kind of everyone-everything-social networks that are ubiquitous today. They were typically moderated by some 1-5 volunteers from the community. If you didn't like their policies or the moderators you could use a different forum. The option to "vote with your feet" was more prevalent. Even in large scale networks I think self-trusted blocklists could work to limit noise without any central authority on what is acceptable. It wouldn't prevent users from watching porn or discussing terrorism on their own accord, I guess, but that seems to be a problem with the current mainstream social networks as well.
- ridaj 5y ago
  You're right, it does not structurally need to be centralized and there are small trusted networks that are volunteer-moderated. They are a minority of what people actually spend time on when they use social networks these days though. The strong economies of scale involved in content policing (eg, investment in ML porn classifiers, moderation guidelines enforcement, dealing with the legal questions associated with kicking-out of a political person calling for this or that violent act) make it economically advantageous for centralized networks to pursue a scale-up strategy.

by ridaj 5y ago

boomlinde 5y ago

> Another reason it doesn't work is that networks used by humans need policing to be usable by anyone but the most advanced and psychologically resilient users Does policing need to be centralized? I seem to remember having a better time visiting small special interest forums spread around the web than I've had with the kind of everyone-everything-social networks that are ubiquitous today. They were typically moderated by some 1-5 volunteers from the community. If you didn't like their policies or the moderators you could use a different forum. The option to "vote with your feet" was more prevalent. Even in large scale networks I think self-trusted blocklists could work to limit noise without any central authority on what is acceptable. It wouldn't prevent users from watching porn or discussing terrorism on their own accord, I guess, but that seems to be a problem with the current mainstream social networks as well.

ridaj 5y ago
You're right, it does not structurally need to be centralized and there are small trusted networks that are volunteer-moderated. They are a minority of what people actually spend time on when they use social networks these days though. The strong economies of scale involved in content policing (eg, investment in ML porn classifiers, moderation guidelines enforcement, dealing with the legal questions associated with kicking-out of a political person calling for this or that violent act) make it economically advantageous for centralized networks to pursue a scale-up strategy.