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Why does anyone think they own or are owed anything on a private platform? Decentralize or one day you'll also get screwed over. That's been the lesson of the

Why does anyone think they own or are owed anything on a private platform? Decentralize or one day you'll also get screwed over. That's been the lesson of the past year or two.

saurik 3y ago
How has not been the lesson of the past quarter century (of general people having access to the Internet), over and over again except then new people show up or everyone just forgets and they start using whatever the new shiny thing is?
- kalleboo 3y ago
  It certainly has, but the level of centralization, the amount of control by the platforms, and the lack of alternatives has always been slowly ratcheting up year by year, day by day, as we boil in the pot. It reached other people's breaking point far earlier, many of us only noticed last November, and for the majority of the people, that breaking point is still in the future. edit: noticed you were being downvoted and I don't like that, you make a good point
agubelu 3y ago
Doesn't the admin of a decentralized Mastodon instance have similar powers?
- kalleboo 3y ago
  If you don't trust any other admins, you can run your own. Or pay a managed host like mastohost where you'll have a contract that is more in your favor than the typical social network "we reserve every right".
barrysteve 3y ago
People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship, even an unbalanced one. Grabbing the X account just feels petty. These are made up user accounts, you can just make two X accounts with different IDs in the database. It's not like real estate where the locations are bound by the laws of physics. And it's Elon's modus operandi. He screwed over his relations with the tesla founder in similar fashion. He really would benefit from hanging out with Gaben and spend less time courting controversy.
- acomjean 3y ago
  >People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship I think this is it. With your account, you get an easy platform to post on. The platform gets to use your content to presumably get more visitors to show ads to and publicize itself.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  > People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship, even an unbalanced one Yeah, and you can go 10 years on a platform thinking you're in a good relationship with them, but one day the ownership changes and you have absolutely no say in what happens
dasil003 3y ago
This is a weird take. It’s not practical for everyone to self host and if you don’t do that you’re not really decentralized (eg. Gmail account lockouts). Social media handle ownership is normally pretty stable and reliable because otherwise they wouldn’t be able retain users. The odd account repossession is a very low probability event compared to ATO or other type of lockout. What makes this case unique is that the rebranding of Twitter was random and shockingly brand destructive. I happen to know Gene X (he’s a well known and beloved photographer in SF) and as soon the announcement was made we all immediately guessed this would be the outcome. Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  > It’s not practical for everyone to self host It's not practical given the current state of the software stack. > Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against. The failure mode in question is being a digital sharecropper and not owning anything, even your persona. And that is a failure mode very much worth optimising against.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  It's an inconvenient take, but [Stallman(strikeout)]/[Corey Doctorow] was right, the shittification is real. It's been really nice letting VC funding pay for people with no money or technical knowledge participate, and I don't want to be an "Eternal September" gatekeeper, but every platform like this has it's glory day when it's happiness and rainbows, and then one day, we need to maximize profits, and it all goes to shit when we need to MONETIZE MONETIZE MONETIZE. We need to figure out some model where people have ownership of their identity instead of selling it to some "free as in beer" corporation. This also goes for all the "Google deleted my gmail which I use for 2FA because I uploaded a video of my kids birthday party with copyright music in the background" type worries Back in the late 90's in my European country, the post office had a vision of giving everyone their e-mail identity (verified by sending a post card to their address). Then the post office got privatized. We need more non-VC, non-Unicorn thinking like these (not necessarily giving power to governments...)
Jiro 3y ago
It hasn't been long ago where there was news about right-wingers being kicked off of platforms and then the response by the HN public was "they're a private platform, they can kick people off for any reason they want. Nobody owes you a platform". Why wouldn't that same argument apply here?
- kalleboo 3y ago
  The first time I learned about Mastodon was years ago when some libertarian-leaning podcasters I listened to moved there along with their audience due to being unhappy about centralized Twitter moderation (and no, not at all related to Gab or Truth or any of those). They're silenced or defederated from most other instances because a lot of their kin are douchebags I also wouldn't want to associate with, but they still have their own place to be and I respect that they actually walked with their eyeballs away from the centralized service while all their outrage-starved brethren stayed while complaining about the platform they kept on boosting.
- Timon3 3y ago
  Those right-wingers broke the ToS. Which ToS did the previous account owner of @X break exactly?

Why does anyone think they own or are owed anything on a private platform? Decentralize or one day you'll also get screwed over. That's been the lesson of the past year or two.

saurik 3y ago

How has not been the lesson of the past quarter century (of general people having access to the Internet), over and over again except then new people show up or everyone just forgets and they start using whatever the new shiny thing is?

kalleboo 3y ago
It certainly has, but the level of centralization, the amount of control by the platforms, and the lack of alternatives has always been slowly ratcheting up year by year, day by day, as we boil in the pot. It reached other people's breaking point far earlier, many of us only noticed last November, and for the majority of the people, that breaking point is still in the future. edit: noticed you were being downvoted and I don't like that, you make a good point

agubelu 3y ago

Doesn't the admin of a decentralized Mastodon instance have similar powers?

kalleboo 3y ago
If you don't trust any other admins, you can run your own. Or pay a managed host like mastohost where you'll have a contract that is more in your favor than the typical social network "we reserve every right".

barrysteve 3y ago

People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship, even an unbalanced one. Grabbing the X account just feels petty. These are made up user accounts, you can just make two X accounts with different IDs in the database. It's not like real estate where the locations are bound by the laws of physics. And it's Elon's modus operandi. He screwed over his relations with the tesla founder in similar fashion. He really would benefit from hanging out with Gaben and spend less time courting controversy.

acomjean 3y ago
>People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship I think this is it. With your account, you get an easy platform to post on. The platform gets to use your content to presumably get more visitors to show ads to and publicize itself.
kalleboo 3y ago
> People give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship, even an unbalanced one Yeah, and you can go 10 years on a platform thinking you're in a good relationship with them, but one day the ownership changes and you have absolutely no say in what happens

dasil003 3y ago

This is a weird take. It’s not practical for everyone to self host and if you don’t do that you’re not really decentralized (eg. Gmail account lockouts). Social media handle ownership is normally pretty stable and reliable because otherwise they wouldn’t be able retain users. The odd account repossession is a very low probability event compared to ATO or other type of lockout. What makes this case unique is that the rebranding of Twitter was random and shockingly brand destructive. I happen to know Gene X (he’s a well known and beloved photographer in SF) and as soon the announcement was made we all immediately guessed this would be the outcome. Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against.

_aavaa_ 3y ago
> It’s not practical for everyone to self host It's not practical given the current state of the software stack. > Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against. The failure mode in question is being a digital sharecropper and not owning anything, even your persona. And that is a failure mode very much worth optimising against.
kalleboo 3y ago
It's an inconvenient take, but [Stallman(strikeout)]/[Corey Doctorow] was right, the shittification is real. It's been really nice letting VC funding pay for people with no money or technical knowledge participate, and I don't want to be an "Eternal September" gatekeeper, but every platform like this has it's glory day when it's happiness and rainbows, and then one day, we need to maximize profits, and it all goes to shit when we need to MONETIZE MONETIZE MONETIZE. We need to figure out some model where people have ownership of their identity instead of selling it to some "free as in beer" corporation. This also goes for all the "Google deleted my gmail which I use for 2FA because I uploaded a video of my kids birthday party with copyright music in the background" type worries Back in the late 90's in my European country, the post office had a vision of giving everyone their e-mail identity (verified by sending a post card to their address). Then the post office got privatized. We need more non-VC, non-Unicorn thinking like these (not necessarily giving power to governments...)

Jiro 3y ago

It hasn't been long ago where there was news about right-wingers being kicked off of platforms and then the response by the HN public was "they're a private platform, they can kick people off for any reason they want. Nobody owes you a platform". Why wouldn't that same argument apply here?

kalleboo 3y ago
The first time I learned about Mastodon was years ago when some libertarian-leaning podcasters I listened to moved there along with their audience due to being unhappy about centralized Twitter moderation (and no, not at all related to Gab or Truth or any of those). They're silenced or defederated from most other instances because a lot of their kin are douchebags I also wouldn't want to associate with, but they still have their own place to be and I respect that they actually walked with their eyeballs away from the centralized service while all their outrage-starved brethren stayed while complaining about the platform they kept on boosting.
Timon3 3y ago
Those right-wingers broke the ToS. Which ToS did the previous account owner of @X break exactly?