7 ms·

Assembly Four announces closure of sex-work-friendly social platform Switter

94 points by sp332 5y ago

Kye 5y ago
I remember when it launched and I got to find out who on Mastodon had a consistent praxis and who had puritanical views on sex workers.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It is depressingly unsurprising how many people who ostensibly espouse "Free speech as an ideal right" are discovered to mean "Wait not like that" when the speech violates their other core beliefs.
  - throwaway47292 5y ago
    Beware the preachers. (Bukowski) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0doGM_6izYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0doGM_6izYg
  - prionassembly 5y ago
    What aggravates me the most is seeing people argue that "first amendment applies only to government, corporations are free to do as they wish". Yes, but didn't we used to be in favor of free speech as an abstract dignity of humans?
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Depends on who "we" is. I used to think of it that way, but nowadays I think of it more as a good principle to underpin effective government. For starters, lots of governments have a different comprehension of it than mine does and they do well.
    - krapp 5y ago
      The right of free speech has always implied a right to choose what speech not to support, tolerate or publish. Compelled speech is not free speech. That's why the First Amendment doesn't allow the government to abridge speech, because the right to abridge speech is held by the people as an aspect of free speech, as well as the freedom of association and private property. It's the same principle as "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins," and it used to be commonly understood as a necessary, fundamental building block of civil society. Unfortunately we seem to have somehow spontaneously forgotten this and now, if anyone doesn't simply accept a punch to the the face they're infringing on your rights.
    - pkilgore 5y ago
      > didn't we used to be in favor of free speech as an abstract dignity of humans? You're redefining free speech. Free speech is freedom to speak without fear of consequences from your government. What you're asking for is freedom to speak without consequences from your fellow citizens and your standing in the social community. That's never been how humans have worked, ever. And I doubt even you would want to live in a world where you could not ignore, walk away from, remove from your property, mock, or shout down speech you disagreed with.
  - harpersealtako 5y ago
    Hasn't Mastodon always been transparently anti-free-speech? I thought the whole point of it was people who thought there was too much free speech on Twitter and wanted to be able to create a more censorious platform.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Mastodon's lead dev has always been pro-following the laws of his country, which precludes supporting certain kinds of speech. That's a long way from being anti-free-speech.
      - harpersealtako 5y ago
        No, I'm talking more about the entire federalization model. The whole point of Mastodon is to be twitter without nazis, unless I'm completely misunderstanding.
        Kye 5y ago
        That has not at any point been the pitch. You can see the creator's posts in the original Show HN where it's clear this was always just an alternative to Twitter in a neutral way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083 No talk of politics. I've been on it from near the start. I really can't understand how you got the idea that it was anything more than a roll-your-own-Twitter from the outset. His own feed is 99% cats. If he's especially focused on politics, it doesn't show.
- zaarn 5y ago
  Tbh way too many instances banned them when simply blocking the media from the instance was sufficient (I run a family-friendly instance, so NSFW on the timeline isn't great).
- sp332 5y ago
  Refusing to align with people who are 90% in agreement with you is why you aren't getting a formidable political bloc.
  - Kye 5y ago
    Those awkward moments where someone ostensibly on my "side" jokes about scouring the Earth of anyone where I live because they only know it as a red shape on election result maps.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    well being unable to acknowledge your labor as a legitimate form of work does probably fall into that 10% overlap you need to form a labor movement though.
stevenicr 5y ago
excellent write up for the whys.. If you all would like to move it offshore and keep it alive, I've been looking into ways to decentralize similar projects. Would like to know what kind of servers are needed for the 400k mastodon accounts. Are we talking a couple of quad core processors and a few TB or hard drive space? Curious what size the DB is too.
- Kye 5y ago
  It's not just the servers. You also need a CDN that won't shut you down, a host that won't shut you down, and so on. That was a problem for them early on since they started with Cloudflare. Even if you're within their policies, this is a prime target for DDoSes.
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    I've been researching these things a bit here and there. Certainly having hosting and domain names and the infrastructure that does not have a history of shutting people down would be a good start. So yeah godaddy and cloudflare would be out from the start. ddos sucks - been there deal with that a time or two. but yeah, if servers could be replicated in many places, and plans for multiple ways to move to a new domain name, or dns, or ip or whatever and such are already laid, and this info is already given to the users so they can move to new X when Y happens.. I really want to deploy a keybase-like blockchain kind of thing that is auto replicated - and if someone has an individual account blocked in country A then friends of that person would know that another account is already active via service/infrastructure B. I dunno, it seems there are many pieces already out there that could make these things happen - and it's not going to be easy to get it setup at first, and some of the pieces would be blocked in various regions - but give the end users the tools to jump to E F or G... it can be done. The internet is already going in this bifurcated (trifurcated / qua..) direction anyhow and I see no way to stop it, might as well replicate for it.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? From what i recall there were two incidents which were extremely egregious (Daily Stormer and a chan) and CloudFlare only acted after months of outside pressure.
octoberfranklin 5y ago
invalidname 5y ago
Sad to read that. I didn't even know Switter existed but reading some of the stats and information it seems this will be a net loss for everyone.
tomp 5y ago
- WalterGR 5y ago
  The idea of laws is a good one, and one of the most important social technologies invented and promoted by the Western civilisation. History of law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history And just in case it’s necessary, No True Scotsman: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - tomp 5y ago
    Yeah I wasn't sure about the "invented" part, you're right. I do know that "Roman Law" is a big part of contemporary legal studies, but that's as far back as my knowledge goes.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      This is actually a really great depiction of the original article’s point that you disagree with. How Western legal study is very West-centric, and doesn’t seem to even talk much about non-Western history. And as a result, would uphold a Western sense of laws.
      - tomp 5y ago
        Not really, you're just projecting. I would be very interested to hear about any empirical evidence, or philosophical argument(s), about any non-Western legal systems that work (or could work) as well as (or better) than the "Western sense of laws". But then again, that's the real advantage of "Western civilisation" - we don't care where great ideas come from, we adopt and assimilate what works best from all different cultures.
        WalterGR 5y ago
        I would be very interested to hear about any empirical evidence… Phew! I’m glad I included that No True Scotsman link. But then again, that's the real advantage of… Interesting that you’d say that, since the other Wikipedia link I provided talks about other cultures adopting parts of the “western” legal tradition. Blue eyes and blond hair are 0 for 2 so far. ;)
cameronh90 5y ago
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Australia specifically, and I'm speaking from a UK perspective. > anti-sex work and anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative changes Don't get me wrong. The laws are incredibly stupid and entirely pointless. Some silly age check won't stop a teen from accessing porn. Decloaking won't stop people being assholes online. However, I find it hard to characterise the laws as anti-LGBTQIA+ without making questionable links and using suspicious statistics. You could potentially link any legislative change to harming gay people if you look hard enough, but I really don't think that's the motivation of these dumb laws, nor does it seem like it particularly harms gay people over any other group in society. The narrative running through the article is that this is something white men are pushing through. At least in the UK, most of the push for deanonymisation and against encryption has come about because of men, probably mostly white, saying incredibly disgusting and illegal things to women, gay and black people anonymously online. Consequently women's groups in particular (see https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/11/labour-mp-jess-phillips-calls-for-end-to-online-anonymity-after-600-threats https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/201...) have been pushing for ways to decloak users and punish them. I still think it's misguided, but this isn't some imperialist project to oppress minorities. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I feel like there is a trend to invoke gay people, women and minorities any time someone wants to get their way. On both sides of the spectrum: the people trying to bring these laws in are doing the exact same thing.
- mojzu 5y ago
  Even if the laws aren't intended that way, that is often the results they have. For example parental control apps are more likely to classify and block LGBTQIA+ websites as adult content [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2022/01/19/92-of-top-parental-control-apps-wrongly-block-lgbtq-and-sex-ed-sites/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2022/01/19/92-of-t...
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    I did see that in the article but I'm not sure what the link is. A private company managed block list is very different in nature to requiring that adult content providers implement age verification, with a human regulatory process that kicks in if they refuse. Indeed one could argue that by making this a requirement of the website, and making the web safe by default, it negates the need for these overly puritanical 3rd party blocklists and actually increases access to non-pornographic LGBT material. It's a weak argument, but two can play at that game...
rafadc 5y ago
They lost the opportunity of calling it Tinderin.
stevespang 5y ago

94 points by sp332 5y ago

Kye 5y ago

I remember when it launched and I got to find out who on Mastodon had a consistent praxis and who had puritanical views on sex workers.

shadowgovt 5y ago
It is depressingly unsurprising how many people who ostensibly espouse "Free speech as an ideal right" are discovered to mean "Wait not like that" when the speech violates their other core beliefs.
- throwaway47292 5y ago
  Beware the preachers. (Bukowski) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0doGM_6izYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0doGM_6izYg
- prionassembly 5y ago
  What aggravates me the most is seeing people argue that "first amendment applies only to government, corporations are free to do as they wish". Yes, but didn't we used to be in favor of free speech as an abstract dignity of humans?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Depends on who "we" is. I used to think of it that way, but nowadays I think of it more as a good principle to underpin effective government. For starters, lots of governments have a different comprehension of it than mine does and they do well.
  - krapp 5y ago
    The right of free speech has always implied a right to choose what speech not to support, tolerate or publish. Compelled speech is not free speech. That's why the First Amendment doesn't allow the government to abridge speech, because the right to abridge speech is held by the people as an aspect of free speech, as well as the freedom of association and private property. It's the same principle as "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins," and it used to be commonly understood as a necessary, fundamental building block of civil society. Unfortunately we seem to have somehow spontaneously forgotten this and now, if anyone doesn't simply accept a punch to the the face they're infringing on your rights.
  - pkilgore 5y ago
    > didn't we used to be in favor of free speech as an abstract dignity of humans? You're redefining free speech. Free speech is freedom to speak without fear of consequences from your government. What you're asking for is freedom to speak without consequences from your fellow citizens and your standing in the social community. That's never been how humans have worked, ever. And I doubt even you would want to live in a world where you could not ignore, walk away from, remove from your property, mock, or shout down speech you disagreed with.
- harpersealtako 5y ago
  Hasn't Mastodon always been transparently anti-free-speech? I thought the whole point of it was people who thought there was too much free speech on Twitter and wanted to be able to create a more censorious platform.
  - Kye 5y ago
    Mastodon's lead dev has always been pro-following the laws of his country, which precludes supporting certain kinds of speech. That's a long way from being anti-free-speech.
    - harpersealtako 5y ago
      No, I'm talking more about the entire federalization model. The whole point of Mastodon is to be twitter without nazis, unless I'm completely misunderstanding.
      - Kye 5y ago
        That has not at any point been the pitch. You can see the creator's posts in the original Show HN where it's clear this was always just an alternative to Twitter in a neutral way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083 No talk of politics. I've been on it from near the start. I really can't understand how you got the idea that it was anything more than a roll-your-own-Twitter from the outset. His own feed is 99% cats. If he's especially focused on politics, it doesn't show.
zaarn 5y ago
Tbh way too many instances banned them when simply blocking the media from the instance was sufficient (I run a family-friendly instance, so NSFW on the timeline isn't great).
sp332 5y ago
Refusing to align with people who are 90% in agreement with you is why you aren't getting a formidable political bloc.
- Kye 5y ago
  Those awkward moments where someone ostensibly on my "side" jokes about scouring the Earth of anyone where I live because they only know it as a red shape on election result maps.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  well being unable to acknowledge your labor as a legitimate form of work does probably fall into that 10% overlap you need to form a labor movement though.

stevenicr 5y ago

excellent write up for the whys.. If you all would like to move it offshore and keep it alive, I've been looking into ways to decentralize similar projects. Would like to know what kind of servers are needed for the 400k mastodon accounts. Are we talking a couple of quad core processors and a few TB or hard drive space? Curious what size the DB is too.

Kye 5y ago
It's not just the servers. You also need a CDN that won't shut you down, a host that won't shut you down, and so on. That was a problem for them early on since they started with Cloudflare. Even if you're within their policies, this is a prime target for DDoSes.
- stevenicr 5y ago
  I've been researching these things a bit here and there. Certainly having hosting and domain names and the infrastructure that does not have a history of shutting people down would be a good start. So yeah godaddy and cloudflare would be out from the start. ddos sucks - been there deal with that a time or two. but yeah, if servers could be replicated in many places, and plans for multiple ways to move to a new domain name, or dns, or ip or whatever and such are already laid, and this info is already given to the users so they can move to new X when Y happens.. I really want to deploy a keybase-like blockchain kind of thing that is auto replicated - and if someone has an individual account blocked in country A then friends of that person would know that another account is already active via service/infrastructure B. I dunno, it seems there are many pieces already out there that could make these things happen - and it's not going to be easy to get it setup at first, and some of the pieces would be blocked in various regions - but give the end users the tools to jump to E F or G... it can be done. The internet is already going in this bifurcated (trifurcated / qua..) direction anyhow and I see no way to stop it, might as well replicate for it.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Do CloudFlare have a history of shutting things down? From what i recall there were two incidents which were extremely egregious (Daily Stormer and a chan) and CloudFlare only acted after months of outside pressure.

octoberfranklin 5y ago

invalidname 5y ago

Sad to read that. I didn't even know Switter existed but reading some of the stats and information it seems this will be a net loss for everyone.

tomp 5y ago

WalterGR 5y ago
The idea of laws is a good one, and one of the most important social technologies invented and promoted by the Western civilisation. History of law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history And just in case it’s necessary, No True Scotsman: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- tomp 5y ago
  Yeah I wasn't sure about the "invented" part, you're right. I do know that "Roman Law" is a big part of contemporary legal studies, but that's as far back as my knowledge goes.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    This is actually a really great depiction of the original article’s point that you disagree with. How Western legal study is very West-centric, and doesn’t seem to even talk much about non-Western history. And as a result, would uphold a Western sense of laws.
    - tomp 5y ago
      Not really, you're just projecting. I would be very interested to hear about any empirical evidence, or philosophical argument(s), about any non-Western legal systems that work (or could work) as well as (or better) than the "Western sense of laws". But then again, that's the real advantage of "Western civilisation" - we don't care where great ideas come from, we adopt and assimilate what works best from all different cultures.
      - WalterGR 5y ago
        I would be very interested to hear about any empirical evidence… Phew! I’m glad I included that No True Scotsman link. But then again, that's the real advantage of… Interesting that you’d say that, since the other Wikipedia link I provided talks about other cultures adopting parts of the “western” legal tradition. Blue eyes and blond hair are 0 for 2 so far. ;)

cameronh90 5y ago

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Australia specifically, and I'm speaking from a UK perspective. > anti-sex work and anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative changes Don't get me wrong. The laws are incredibly stupid and entirely pointless. Some silly age check won't stop a teen from accessing porn. Decloaking won't stop people being assholes online. However, I find it hard to characterise the laws as anti-LGBTQIA+ without making questionable links and using suspicious statistics. You could potentially link any legislative change to harming gay people if you look hard enough, but I really don't think that's the motivation of these dumb laws, nor does it seem like it particularly harms gay people over any other group in society. The narrative running through the article is that this is something white men are pushing through. At least in the UK, most of the push for deanonymisation and against encryption has come about because of men, probably mostly white, saying incredibly disgusting and illegal things to women, gay and black people anonymously online. Consequently women's groups in particular (see https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/11/labour-mp-jess-phillips-calls-for-end-to-online-anonymity-after-600-threats https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/201...) have been pushing for ways to decloak users and punish them. I still think it's misguided, but this isn't some imperialist project to oppress minorities. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I feel like there is a trend to invoke gay people, women and minorities any time someone wants to get their way. On both sides of the spectrum: the people trying to bring these laws in are doing the exact same thing.

mojzu 5y ago
Even if the laws aren't intended that way, that is often the results they have. For example parental control apps are more likely to classify and block LGBTQIA+ websites as adult content [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2022/01/19/92-of-top-parental-control-apps-wrongly-block-lgbtq-and-sex-ed-sites/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2022/01/19/92-of-t...
- cameronh90 5y ago
  I did see that in the article but I'm not sure what the link is. A private company managed block list is very different in nature to requiring that adult content providers implement age verification, with a human regulatory process that kicks in if they refuse. Indeed one could argue that by making this a requirement of the website, and making the web safe by default, it negates the need for these overly puritanical 3rd party blocklists and actually increases access to non-pornographic LGBT material. It's a weak argument, but two can play at that game...

rafadc 5y ago

They lost the opportunity of calling it Tinderin.

stevespang 5y ago