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> Individual servers would let different groups set their own community standards, though likely with a “floor” of rules set by Meta, in a fashion similar to ho
by salmonellaeater 4y ago
> Individual servers would let different groups set their own community standards, though likely with a “floor” of rules set by Meta, in a fashion similar to how Reddit’s individual communities work.
This is not praise. Reddit bans people for expressing widely held beliefs. Subreddit mods are required to enforce the site-wide rules regardless of the subreddit's own preferences.
As another commenter put it [1], the property that makes a decentralized social network desirable is actually that it's non-excludeable. There's no outside entity that can exclude people from the network. This is very similar to the core of what censorship is: there is a speaker and a listener who both want to communicate, but some third party prevents them.
What I would like from a social network is opt-in filtering, where you can choose some list of moderators whose decisions you trust, and subscribe to their block lists. But users should always have the final say on whose posts they view. If this new social network Meta is building puts users in control, it could be great.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35091164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35091164
- Fatnino 4y agoSo everyone needs to explicitly block cheese pizza for themselves just so a few perverts can share that stuff in the name of "free speech"?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 4y agoNo, everyone needs to explicitly "choose some list of moderators whose decisions you trust, and subscribe to their block lists"
- lmpdev 4y agoThat still implies either: A) Cheese pizza is permitted B) There are a "floor" of rules
- frodetb 4y ago"Permitted" is a strong word for activity enabled by a protocol. It implies some moral acceptance from the ones who designed the tool. I think a better word would be "possible". Similar to how e-mail makes it possible to send all kinds of content.
- traviswt 4y agoThis is why free speech is so hard to maintain. There are so many cases where you want to ban or censor something obviously repugnant, but once the power is created to do so, it will be abused, probably as soon as someone you don't like is now in charge.
- 8note 4y agoIt really isn't - the cheese pizza lover can make their own instance
- xigoi 4y ago“Cheese pizza” is banned by law in most countries, so it won't be “permitted” either way.
- dmonitor 4y agoThat content is prohibited by law anyway so it's not really relevant to internet moderation standards anyway.
- ptman 4y agoisn't that what matrix is doing with their decentralized moderation?
- swayvil 4y agoI would nuance that system a bit. Replace "moderator" with "any peer". Replace "block" with "vote". (And that vote could be as simple as "up down" or maybe something more sophisticated) Now everybody you meet (every "peer") has a "rating". Based on the cumulative voting of yourself and your peers. A peer that you upvote, his votes are weighted-up in that cumulative rating calculation. A peer that you downvote, his votes are weighted down. So we have peers, votes and a cumulative rating calculation. And then we filter out view by rating. Voila! Personalized decentralized moderation.
- nathan_compton 4y agoThis doesn't really work because it doesn't allow a moderator to set the tenor of a community. People can filter out individual messages, but a dedicated set of bad actors can turn a community into swiss cheese or undermine discussion just by spamming, baiting and trolling and taking advantage of the variance in the level of tolerance for the bad behavior. Communities function when there is a standard to which the community members adhere and when bad behavior is uniformly moderated away. Making each individual have their own moderation bubble is a recipe for incoherence, even with the improvements you suggest. Its also a lot of work.
- 8note 4y agoThat is to say, every community is for meme pictures
- giantrobot 4y agoYou're describing the exact thing people do when logging onto a Mastodon instance. They're choosing to accept the moderation/federation policies of that instance.
- bardan 4y agoHow about you initially "trust" all of your friends. If one friend blacklists a bad actor, all their friends automatically blacklist them as well. If it turns out the friend blacklisted an innocent person out of spite or something, word should eventually get around and people can manually revoke trust from that friend.
- johannes1234321 4y agoI myself block a ton of stuff, which isn't illegal not offensive, not ... but just boring for me. That list shouldn't spread to others. Also I don't want to have to think about personal vs. global block.
- SuoDuanDao 4y agowould be an easy option, to autoblock with your friends or not. or even with individual friends - I value the opinions of lots of people who filter out people I'd want to hear from.
- bardan 4y agoI'm talking about a big red button "spam/harmful" rather than a personal preference list. To be a little clearer: you have your own private filters and a separate, distributed block list shared amongst your friends, which is for bad content. You use the big red button when you encounter spam or harmful content, and this bad content/user/node/etc is added to the shared block list. You initially trust all of your friends to use this block list properly, but if you find one of your friends is misusing it you can revoke trust from them and ignore their contributions.
- hnbad 4y agoI suppose "cheese pizza" refers to CSAM? FWIW I think it's a sign of intellectual dishonesty to complain vaguely about censorship of "widely held beliefs" without stating what those beliefs are. All social networks have "ground rules", they're just not always the same. For any social network that somehow can be pinned to someone's physical identity, those rules will at least include the laws of that person's jurisdiction. "Free speech" is widely mocked as a supposed principle because it's a rallying call, not a specific thing. Even people who'll proudly tell you "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend your right to say it" will have limits if you keep pushing them on it. "Free speech" just means "I want to be able to say things I'm not allowed to say" and the first response should always be "what and for what purpose".
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago>"Free speech" is widely mocked as a supposed principle because it's a rallying call, not a specific thing. To many of us the mockery of people who think that way is a badge of honor.
- ditonal 4y agoI can provide two specific examples of "widely held beliefs" that have been mass-banned on Reddit. I also want to note I don't endorse or subscribe to either of these beliefs but I felt neither were deserving of a ban and I was open-minded to hear arguments in their direction. 1) Reddit banned /r/NoNewNormal and "Covid misinformation" after activist moderators started shutting off subreddits. I personally got a Covid vaccine and complied with mask regulations, but I was interested in hearing coherent arguments related to lockdown / mask / vaccine skepticism. Obviously these skeptic views were very widely held beliefs, and some of them like the "lab leak theory" went from "misinformation" to "possibly true" 2) Reddit banned /r/GenderCritical which was a subreddit representing feminists who expressed skepticism over modern transgender ideology in the spirit of JK Rowling. Again, JK Rowling has millions of followers so this qualifies as a widely held belief. While I want to be inclusive and supportive of transgender people, I'm interested in hearing skeptical arguments related to things like whether it's really a good idea to give puberty blocker to teenagers . I believe both of these bans happened not for good reasons but because of ideological crusades from Reddit power-moderators who skew heavily on certain political and ideological topics. I'm not trying to start a flamewar or debate on either of these topics, I'm not endorsing either of those subreddits, I'm addressing your critique that specific examples were not provided of "widely held beliefs" that have been unfairly censored.
- RobotToaster 4y agoOr the police can do their job and catch pedos?
- papito 4y agoJust because over 10 million Americans believe that Tom Hanks violates, kills, and eats children - a widely held belief - does not mean that a private company can't tell those people to go suck a bug. A private company does moderation and it's the end of the world. Ron DeSantis bans books and he is just "anti-woke". The actual government.
- zmgsabst 4y ago[flagged]
- papito 4y agoSo, you have no problem, I assume, with the "woke" governors banning or revising classic children's books to remove anything offensive? Right? You know, to prevent "government employees and licensed child educators from providing certain books to children, in the context of government mandated education." I'll wait.
- edgyquant 4y agoNo that’s the point. He’s just doing what those people have been doing since I was a kid and only once it goes the other way is it some horrible censorship. This is why he’s liked by so many, he’s effective at beating them at their own game.
- chimineycricket 4y agoIn parent's defense, banning kids from reading certain books is not the same as "woke" governors banning or revising classic books for _everyone_, not just kids. If people are banning books at school because the content can be bad for kids (debatable on what "bad" means obviously) then the parents can go get the book from elsewhere and have their kids read it at home. Whatever. But changing books for everyone is stupid.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gonzo41 4y agoYou see mods on reddit go on ego trip ban spree's all the time. It's classic 90's mod meltdown stuff. I don't think subscribing to a benevolent master is a good model. What happens if their gaze turns to you? Moderation is really hard. And it's especially hard because a lot of people have very para-social relationships between themselves and rando's they talk to online. Whilst I know that sometimes those rando's turn into real friends in the real world. For the most part people are strangers, and the better form of moderation is getting off social media for a while. If meta wanted to do something amazing. It'd enforce one reality tunnel on the networks. Rather than have a base set of rules. Have a base set of news and facts that everyone shares in. Bubbles are generally bad. And everything goes to shit, even on HN, when we start getting into politics.
- nonethewiser 4y ago> You see mods on reddit go on ego trip ban spree's all the time. It's classic 90's mod meltdown stuff. I don't think subscribing to a benevolent master is a good model. What happens if their gaze turns to you? Unsubscribe
- ROTMetro 4y agoThere is an open music making forum. It is completely toxic. Even if I set to ignore garbage users they influence the discussions and most threads. A relevant music making subreddit deleted my music on an open to all feedback request thread without giving me any reason, yet I still prefer that subreddit because it's not just pure toxic negativity. We need a mix of both with people free to choose their model.
- JohnFen 4y ago> If meta wanted to do something amazing. It'd enforce one reality tunnel on the networks. Rather than have a base set of rules. Have a base set of news and facts that everyone shares in. Just no. I don't want any large corporation to determine what the "news and facts" are -- and particularly not Facebook.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
- rusticpenn 4y agoHow is it different from whatsapp?
- exitb 4y agoThat's roughly how Mastodon works. Each instance is responsible for moderation of their own users. If an instance does not meet arbitrary standards of moderation, other instances may choose not to federate with them, but nothing can stop willing instances from federating.
- Zardoz84 4y agoAnd allow us to kick out any fascist guy and/or instance from the federated network.
- thr717272 4y agoProblem is people have no idea what Facism and Nazism is. You find people here in the west who hate Jews claiming to be anti-facists and people starting a massive invasion of a very peaceful central European country - all while repeating much of Hitlers playbook - while claiming they do it to crush the "Nazis" there.
- thr717272 4y agoOne problem: as far as I understand a number of high profile instances enforced a rule where they would block any instance that didn't block certain other instances. I'm all for blocking a good number of instances myself, but putting limits on others, that is a whole different thing.
- 8note 4y agoThat sounds like US secondary sanctions. A working system when your community is popular to deal with
- thr717272 4y agoIt is understandable when it deals with Iran, a terrorist organization sitting on top of an oil field, terrorizing large parts of the Middle East (note that nowhere do I criticize the overthrowing of the old regime, I just criticize what they themselves is/became).
- jonathanstrange 4y agoI think you're wrong and not the typical user. Personally, I would never use any social network without strong moderation and banning of toxic users, and I'm that many if not most people share this sentiment. Places without strong moderation turn into hellholes and are generally less interesting. Whether a network is decentralized or not is a completely different, purely technical question. I don't understand why two issues get mixed up so often. The design of a community should never be based on technical considerations.
- adrr 4y agoYou don’t like hanging out on 4chan? It’s not what users want anyway, it is what advertisers want. They don’t want toxic content next to their ads.
- anoy8888 4y agoWow , you are very different from most people as most (99.9999?)can’t stand toxic trolls.
- adrr 4y agoIt was a sarcastic remark to emphasis that majority of people don't like toxic content.
- drowsspa 4y agoMost people don't like hanging out on 4chan.
- astura 4y agoThe vast majority of 4chan users are children or very young adults. Most people grow out of that.
- _HMCB_ 4y agoAgreed 100%.
- bhupy 4y ago
- rakoo 4y agoYou're probably interested in Aether then: https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/
- mattigames 4y agoThe huge problem is scaling, the bigger the social network gets the more moderators you would need to subscribe because the ones you already subscribed to are not cutting enough noise anymore, so it's almost inevitable that there would be a scarcity of moderators, at some point the only useful moderators would be paid ones or more likely bots, the bots with the most success at banning "toxic people" using AI or whatever would quickly win that race... and then you just would have created Facebook again.
- footlose_3815 4y agoWidely held beliefs Can you elaborate on these "Widely held beliefs"? You appear to have done some research into the topic so I think it would be beneficial to your point if you gave examples of the beliefs. Because of Bandwagon fallacy, because we know just because something is widely-held doesn't necessarily make it valid, so these popular beliefs, I'd like to see what they are.
- nonethewiser 4y agoYou will get banned on Reddit if you say trans women aren’t real women. They call it promoting hate towards a marginalized group. You may be sympathetic towards that so think twice before moving the goalpost.
- turnsout 4y agoThe goalpost is always moving—it's called the Overton window. And whether you like it or not, the window is not moving in your direction on this issue.
- figlett4 4y ago[flagged]
- nonethewiser 4y agoBut the point is it’s a valid example of a widely held belief that gets banned, even if you agree with Reddits policy. The goalpost move I’m referring to is from “Reddit doesn’t ban widely held beliefs “ to “Well Reddit should ban this widely held belief “
- ROTMetro 4y ago[flagged]
- wilsonnb3 4y agoBelieving that there are differences between trans women and AFAB women is not denying anyone’s right to exist.
- altairprime 4y agoThat same property of inviolable non-excludable makes a social network inaccessible to those who are frequently harassed. The right to shun some participants is a necessary function of social spaces, to mitigate known and documented human tendencies over the past couple thousand years to drown out, abuse, and in general commit conversational warfare upon others. “Just block them” doesn’t scale when each harasser is harassing thousands of people. “Just block scripts” is no more effective than blocking adblockers. “Opt-in moderators” is no more legally viable than “No moderators”. If you want to moderate a space, then set up and run a space of your own. If you want to federate with others, you’ll comply with the moderation requirements of your federations. If you want your space to stay online, you’ll comply with the moderation requirements of your hosting and transit providers. If you want your federation to stay online, you’ll comply with the moderation requirements of your organization’s laws. This is true today for all social sites, whether solo or distributed. Facebook thinks they can opt out of expensive and difficult moderation duties by transferring the legal requirements for moderation to their users. They may succeed briefly, but the EU will not look kindly upon their attempt to circumvent the law.
- nmz 4y agoSuppose I create a bot and create millions of accounts. post in each article, now you're spending a huge, myriad of time just filtering/ignoring users.
- giantrobot 4y ago> But users should always have the final say on whose posts they view. The difficulty there is the end users are not hosting or distributing content. Some server(s) need to host content. No one can be forced to host content. A host is always going to be the final arbiter of what content is ultimately available. Even if someone wants to run a Mastodon (or whatever) instance filled with Nazi content no one else is obligated to federate with them.