5 ms·

> blackhole independent actors Freedom doesn't mean the requirement to spend the community's resources propagating material that the community agrees is harmfu

> blackhole independent actors Freedom doesn't mean the requirement to spend the community's resources propagating material that the community agrees is harmful or objectionable. That would be the opposite of freedom. The ability to refuse actors that the community doesn't want to spend resources on is essential to freedom. Every actor has the freedom to choose whether to conform to community norms, or to form their own communities with different norms.

bioemerl 4y ago
Freedom for titanic companies like Google to control what can or can't be said through enforcement on their monopolistic platforms is also not freedom for the individual. Your idea here works when the system is fragmented enough that these choices are personal choices, but the existence of so many large platforms makes their choices systemic, not personal.
dotnet00 4y ago
This argument comes with the rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked is that which the community agrees is harmful. When more often than not it's simply the material that is from individually small enough third-parties where the content doesn't really matter. On top of that, there isn't community agreement as much as there is community ignorance. For every case we hear about of someone being banned or blocked by an automated system despite doing nothing wrong, there are hundreds more similar cases which simply don't gain enough traction for the 'community' to hold the service provider responsible.
- panarky 4y ago
  > rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked ... It's fallacious reasoning to assert that any system that is less than 100% perfect should be changed. If the current system meets the community's expectations 98% of the time, and alternative systems meet the community's expectations 90% of the time or less, it would be silly to throw out the current system. That's like saying stop signs at intersections should be removed because sometimes I have to stop when there are no other cars there, and sometimes other drivers fail to stop when they should, and some stop signs have been defaced or knocked down.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    This point is pointless. The question is whether federation works, or whether it instead degrades into a short list of large providers. It's amusing that the first response to that point being made is to miss it, and to somehow paint the isolation of smaller servers as a strength of federation (because it gives users control over what they see.) Then the next one is literally an argument that decentralization will inevitably centralize, because that centralization will satisfy the communities expectations 98% of the time. The last paragraph wanders very close to claiming that it is childish and entitled to expect your decentralization not to be centralized. Doesn't that just enthusiastically reinforce idlewords's claim?
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    So, if certain minorities have more representation in crime statistics in an area, it is acceptable to have a bias in random searches towards them because doing so meets the expectations of the majority to have to deal with neither crime nor random searches compared to the alternative of unbiased searches which lower arrest rates and expose the majority to more searches? Even putting aside the slightly absurd difference in stakes with my example, there's also the issue that you're just arguing for centralization, which defeats the point of a system designed for federation in the first place.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > This argument comes with the rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked is that which the community agrees is harmful. The new orthodoxy requires us to assume that all censorship is in good faith. "What were you doing to make them censor you?" is the question of the day.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > "What were you doing to make them censor you?" is the question of the day. And the answer increasingly often is, "I did not censor the other people quickly enough and visibly enough when I was told to."
    - esarbe 4y ago
      It's almost like humans have a tendency to come to an agreement about what is acceptable speech and what is not and to want these rules enforced. Like when you go into a pub and start yelling insults at the guests, the patron will "censor" you by throwing your out of their private locality.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
Yes, that's the universal argument that can be used to argue for or against anything, depending on what you find fashionable at the moment. The concrete truth is: majority of users will do whatever to make their e-mail (or other form of communication) work, so the easy solution to spam is to blackhole anyone that isn't coming from or vouched by a major provider, and have the minority with specialized needs jump through hoops to get unblocked (or preferably, to change their needs/preferences so that mainstream provider is sufficient). There isn't any actual user community here. GMail address owners aren't a community. Twitter users aren't a community. Mastodon users aren't a community. The only community is that of the federation instance owners, and it operates as oligarchy. The major players decide who they'll peer with, the minor players have to accept it if they want to be peered with. The actual, non-crazy-activist users, have no power, and are forced to either use the "blessed" providers and accept their rules, or not use the service. This is already the case for Mastodon for quite a while, BTW.

bioemerl 4y ago

Freedom for titanic companies like Google to control what can or can't be said through enforcement on their monopolistic platforms is also not freedom for the individual. Your idea here works when the system is fragmented enough that these choices are personal choices, but the existence of so many large platforms makes their choices systemic, not personal.

dotnet00 4y ago

This argument comes with the rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked is that which the community agrees is harmful. When more often than not it's simply the material that is from individually small enough third-parties where the content doesn't really matter. On top of that, there isn't community agreement as much as there is community ignorance. For every case we hear about of someone being banned or blocked by an automated system despite doing nothing wrong, there are hundreds more similar cases which simply don't gain enough traction for the 'community' to hold the service provider responsible.

panarky 4y ago
> rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked ... It's fallacious reasoning to assert that any system that is less than 100% perfect should be changed. If the current system meets the community's expectations 98% of the time, and alternative systems meet the community's expectations 90% of the time or less, it would be silly to throw out the current system. That's like saying stop signs at intersections should be removed because sometimes I have to stop when there are no other cars there, and sometimes other drivers fail to stop when they should, and some stop signs have been defaced or knocked down.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  This point is pointless. The question is whether federation works, or whether it instead degrades into a short list of large providers. It's amusing that the first response to that point being made is to miss it, and to somehow paint the isolation of smaller servers as a strength of federation (because it gives users control over what they see.) Then the next one is literally an argument that decentralization will inevitably centralize, because that centralization will satisfy the communities expectations 98% of the time. The last paragraph wanders very close to claiming that it is childish and entitled to expect your decentralization not to be centralized. Doesn't that just enthusiastically reinforce idlewords's claim?
- dotnet00 4y ago
  So, if certain minorities have more representation in crime statistics in an area, it is acceptable to have a bias in random searches towards them because doing so meets the expectations of the majority to have to deal with neither crime nor random searches compared to the alternative of unbiased searches which lower arrest rates and expose the majority to more searches? Even putting aside the slightly absurd difference in stakes with my example, there's also the issue that you're just arguing for centralization, which defeats the point of a system designed for federation in the first place.
pessimizer 4y ago
> This argument comes with the rather absurd assumption that the only material that's being blocked is that which the community agrees is harmful. The new orthodoxy requires us to assume that all censorship is in good faith. "What were you doing to make them censor you?" is the question of the day.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > "What were you doing to make them censor you?" is the question of the day. And the answer increasingly often is, "I did not censor the other people quickly enough and visibly enough when I was told to."
  - esarbe 4y ago
    It's almost like humans have a tendency to come to an agreement about what is acceptable speech and what is not and to want these rules enforced. Like when you go into a pub and start yelling insults at the guests, the patron will "censor" you by throwing your out of their private locality.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

Yes, that's the universal argument that can be used to argue for or against anything, depending on what you find fashionable at the moment. The concrete truth is: majority of users will do whatever to make their e-mail (or other form of communication) work, so the easy solution to spam is to blackhole anyone that isn't coming from or vouched by a major provider, and have the minority with specialized needs jump through hoops to get unblocked (or preferably, to change their needs/preferences so that mainstream provider is sufficient). There isn't any actual user community here. GMail address owners aren't a community. Twitter users aren't a community. Mastodon users aren't a community. The only community is that of the federation instance owners, and it operates as oligarchy. The major players decide who they'll peer with, the minor players have to accept it if they want to be peered with. The actual, non-crazy-activist users, have no power, and are forced to either use the "blessed" providers and accept their rules, or not use the service. This is already the case for Mastodon for quite a while, BTW.