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> It is almost laughable that Mastodon could do any better in a case like Myanmar. > First there would be the delay of the rest of the community understanding

> It is almost laughable that Mastodon could do any better in a case like Myanmar. > First there would be the delay of the rest of the community understanding what was going on in an unusual language. Second there is the difficulty of deciding what to do and implementing an effective filtering policy. Third since there are multiple instances this can't be done in a consistent way across the network. This (except the last bit) is missing the point about what Mastodon is for. Why would "the rest of the community" would even be entitled to decide what to do about it ? Not that there would be a lot of overlap with the Burmese community anyway, so that wouldn't have much of an effect. We already had an example BTW, with Gab splitting out with Mastodon, but then in a heavily English-speaking context. What would have made at least a symbolic difference, is that some of these Mastodons would have been operated by the anti-hatred groups described in part I, and they would not have needed to unsuccessfully beg Facebook about doing moderation (with 0-4 moderators from other continents). But in the end this is mostly spurious discussion : hate speech only effectively gets stomped out when a judge hands out sentences to the haters, but when the law enforcement that should handle them are the ones preparing genocide... (Not that Facebook is not condamnable for heating it up.)

PaulHoule 3y ago
Certainly a lot of people seem to believe that many Mastodon instances are better moderated than commercial social media. Certainly some kinds of right-wing hate are suppressed but there is very little pushback about widespread misuse of the word "fascist" to describe your local police department, or people in women's sports who use period trackers to prevent ACL tears, mainstream milquetoast politicians, or just about anyone. On the other hand a lot of it seems like BS, there are two Mastodon instances that seem to be at war with Hacker News, I think I understand why one of them is mad at HN, I don't know if the second is mad out of sympathy with the first or they have some other grievance. Many mastodonsters were concerned that Threads would be poorly moderated (might allow posts about how period tracking prevents ACL tears in female athletes I guess) but Threads pretty much dropped everybody's radar. --- One angle is that a system like this should have "defense in depth", like you try to create a culture where hateful speech is not welcome, where people don't try it because they know they'll get disapproval, where people know they'll get confronted if they call Keir Starmer a fascist, where people know you just don't boost hateful things, etc. In that sense you might just want to cultivate a lot of positive and neutral stuff and encourage people seeking negativity to go elsewhere. I think this is what Instagram was going for with Threads and it might be one reason why people should be asking "whatever happened to Threads?" but they don't because they've forgotten all about it.
- cultureswitch 3y ago
  The problem with Facebook, Twitter, even Reddit to a large extent, is that it is hard or impossible for users to self-segregate. Mastodon offerts a possibility of having truly disconnected communities who do their own thing though sharing a protocol. What's acceptable in one community is not in another and that's fine because users can pick and choose what they participate in and what they see. However, this model is not perfect in Mastodon either as people who believe crusading is a virtue actively seek to undermine communities they don't participate in. With Facebook however, the profit structure of the company and the way the website works pushes it to categorize users to receive content not based on user preference but based on algorithmic optimization. I may intentionally not join any motorist group, I still get shown content that gets a lot of engagement from idiotic suburbanites.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Certainly a lot of people seem to believe that many Mastodon instances are better moderated than commercial social media. Certainly some kinds of right-wing hate are suppressed but there is very little pushback about widespread misuse of the word "fascist" to describe your local police department, or people in women's sports who use period trackers to prevent ACL tears, mainstream milquetoast politicians, or just about anyone. On the other hand a lot of it seems like BS, there are two Mastodon instances that seem to be at war with Hacker News, I think I understand why one of them is mad at HN, I don't know if the second is mad out of sympathy with the first or they have some other grievance. Many mastodonsters were concerned that Threads would be poorly moderated (might allow posts about how period tracking prevents ACL tears in female athletes I guess) but Threads pretty much dropped everybody's radar. --- One angle is that a system like this should have "defense in depth", like you try to create a culture where hateful speech is not welcome, where people don't try it because they know they'll get disapproval, where people know they'll get confronted if they call Keir Starmer a fascist, where people know you just don't boost hateful things, etc. In that sense you might just want to cultivate a lot of positive and neutral stuff and encourage people seeking negativity to go elsewhere. I think this is what Instagram was going for with Threads and it might be one reason why people should be asking "whatever happened to Threads?" but they don't because they've forgotten all about it.

cultureswitch 3y ago
The problem with Facebook, Twitter, even Reddit to a large extent, is that it is hard or impossible for users to self-segregate. Mastodon offerts a possibility of having truly disconnected communities who do their own thing though sharing a protocol. What's acceptable in one community is not in another and that's fine because users can pick and choose what they participate in and what they see. However, this model is not perfect in Mastodon either as people who believe crusading is a virtue actively seek to undermine communities they don't participate in. With Facebook however, the profit structure of the company and the way the website works pushes it to categorize users to receive content not based on user preference but based on algorithmic optimization. I may intentionally not join any motorist group, I still get shown content that gets a lot of engagement from idiotic suburbanites.