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So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with wh

So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks.

ehnto 5y ago
Slack/Discord are just hosted community platforms, I wouldn't put them in the same vein as Facebook/Twitter. Slack/Discord/IRC communities have intentionally curated walls for specific purposes, just as we do in the real world, I think that is fine. Would love to hear thoughts to the contrary however. It's worth discussing as this is a big problem for an internet hitting critical mass in participation.
Mandatum 5y ago
And they never will for the same reason email, IRC, forums and every other form of commnication gets gobbled up and surpassed by private companies. Open source software isn't driven by a dictator with a better vision - software projects run by good dictators will always win out against "built and design by committee" open source projects.
shafyy 5y ago
I agree that this is a big problem. > If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts The problem is not primarily about usability, but about network effects and economic incentives. First, it's really hard to break the dominance of existing social media platforms, and they will never voluntarily adopt open standards. Second, I fear that if a platform becomes big enough, they have an incentive to close down their standards because, you guessed it, cash money. Therefore this needs to be regulated. The EU is taking a good first step with the Digital Markets Act, and just a couple of days ago decided that big messaging services need to open up their APIs. Now, this is not the perfect solution, but a step in the right direction.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
On the contrary, Matrix and Mastodon give more freedom to their users. Which will mean, unfortunately, more fake news, more echo chambers and in general more decoupling of online reality from the real reality.
Bedon292 5y ago
Do you not expect people to self select into the same divisive social networks no matter the communication platform that they are using? How does offering yet another platform for them to do so undo any of the harm already caused?
- elviejo 5y ago
  Social networks most important metric is "engagement" number of minutes spent on the site. And turns out that it is human nature to engage with content that it's "dangerous" so the social networks have optimized to show divisive content. A free social network, will work to improve the happiness of their users... Which will include measures like limit the amount of hours you want to spend on the site itself. (Like HN does by the way) Or like I'm in NYC today, who wants to meet? Let's have a real interaction
  - twiceaday 5y ago
    This sounds like "people eat too much fast food so we will invent vegetables." Surely better but most people wont care. The hard part is gamifying what is good.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- yobbo 5y ago
  One problem with the walled gardens is they allowed themselves to be influenced/controlled by politics and public opinion "campaigners". The harm thus far caused can of course not be undone.
- loudmax 5y ago
  I don't think there's much hope for people that go out of their way to insulate themselves into echo chambers. The key is removing the economic incentive for corporations to deliberately build these echo chambers and set them against one another. It's not that open federated systems will solve all problems, it's that a number of these problems will cease to be exacerbated. This may sound like a small thing, but at scale, the impact is enormous.
yodsanklai 5y ago
> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.
- dash2 5y ago
  How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?
  - TruthIsHeresy 5y ago
    One important aspect of this system needs to be the ability for communities, not other mods or admins, to have the ability to vote to add/remove moderators of their respective communities. Otherwise, power will concentrate amongst the moderators of popular communities which will undoubtedly lead to abuse, as we have seen on Reddit.
  - itake 5y ago
    My complaints with reddit model is: 1/ Moderators aren't always aligned with the community (see recent /r/antiwork scandal). 2/ Reddit does not pay moderators for the labor they provide. Moderation is basically a job that takes hours of time and they profit off the backs of that free labor.
    - vikingerik 5y ago
      Moderators are paid in power. They get to apply their opinions to determine what others can see. That is a very tempting wage for many.
      - itake 5y ago
        Power doesn't put food on the table. At best, moderators will be influenced by corporate paychecks and at worst be exclusively composed of privileged people that don't need to work. This is the reason we pay politicians.
jareklupinski 5y ago
obligatory "I miss Pidgin"

ehnto 5y ago

Slack/Discord are just hosted community platforms, I wouldn't put them in the same vein as Facebook/Twitter. Slack/Discord/IRC communities have intentionally curated walls for specific purposes, just as we do in the real world, I think that is fine. Would love to hear thoughts to the contrary however. It's worth discussing as this is a big problem for an internet hitting critical mass in participation.

Mandatum 5y ago

And they never will for the same reason email, IRC, forums and every other form of commnication gets gobbled up and surpassed by private companies. Open source software isn't driven by a dictator with a better vision - software projects run by good dictators will always win out against "built and design by committee" open source projects.

shafyy 5y ago

I agree that this is a big problem. > If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts The problem is not primarily about usability, but about network effects and economic incentives. First, it's really hard to break the dominance of existing social media platforms, and they will never voluntarily adopt open standards. Second, I fear that if a platform becomes big enough, they have an incentive to close down their standards because, you guessed it, cash money. Therefore this needs to be regulated. The EU is taking a good first step with the Digital Markets Act, and just a couple of days ago decided that big messaging services need to open up their APIs. Now, this is not the perfect solution, but a step in the right direction.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

On the contrary, Matrix and Mastodon give more freedom to their users. Which will mean, unfortunately, more fake news, more echo chambers and in general more decoupling of online reality from the real reality.

Bedon292 5y ago

Do you not expect people to self select into the same divisive social networks no matter the communication platform that they are using? How does offering yet another platform for them to do so undo any of the harm already caused?

elviejo 5y ago
Social networks most important metric is "engagement" number of minutes spent on the site. And turns out that it is human nature to engage with content that it's "dangerous" so the social networks have optimized to show divisive content. A free social network, will work to improve the happiness of their users... Which will include measures like limit the amount of hours you want to spend on the site itself. (Like HN does by the way) Or like I'm in NYC today, who wants to meet? Let's have a real interaction
- twiceaday 5y ago
  This sounds like "people eat too much fast food so we will invent vegetables." Surely better but most people wont care. The hard part is gamifying what is good.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
yobbo 5y ago
One problem with the walled gardens is they allowed themselves to be influenced/controlled by politics and public opinion "campaigners". The harm thus far caused can of course not be undone.
loudmax 5y ago
I don't think there's much hope for people that go out of their way to insulate themselves into echo chambers. The key is removing the economic incentive for corporations to deliberately build these echo chambers and set them against one another. It's not that open federated systems will solve all problems, it's that a number of these problems will cease to be exacerbated. This may sound like a small thing, but at scale, the impact is enormous.

yodsanklai 5y ago

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

dash2 5y ago
How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?
- TruthIsHeresy 5y ago
  One important aspect of this system needs to be the ability for communities, not other mods or admins, to have the ability to vote to add/remove moderators of their respective communities. Otherwise, power will concentrate amongst the moderators of popular communities which will undoubtedly lead to abuse, as we have seen on Reddit.
- itake 5y ago
  My complaints with reddit model is: 1/ Moderators aren't always aligned with the community (see recent /r/antiwork scandal). 2/ Reddit does not pay moderators for the labor they provide. Moderation is basically a job that takes hours of time and they profit off the backs of that free labor.
  - vikingerik 5y ago
    Moderators are paid in power. They get to apply their opinions to determine what others can see. That is a very tempting wage for many.
    - itake 5y ago
      Power doesn't put food on the table. At best, moderators will be influenced by corporate paychecks and at worst be exclusively composed of privileged people that don't need to work. This is the reason we pay politicians.

jareklupinski 5y ago

obligatory "I miss Pidgin"