4 ms·

I may have been unclear. I meant that my first instinct when you mentioned libel and slander was that neither are worth risking compromising, even slightly, th

by ElFitz 2y ago

I may have been unclear. I meant that my first instinct when you mentioned libel and slander was that neither are worth risking compromising, even slightly, the privacy and censorship resilience these tools offer. But your comment also reminded me of what I had encountered on Freenet. And I wasn’t so sure anymore.

kristopolous 2y ago
Sure but there's harmful slander that can ruin people's lives and cause real harm. For instance, manifestos by hate crime mass murderers are littered with conspiracy theories and wild lies. It's faster, quicker, more scalable and less effort for propagandists to lie than for researchers to carefully document and disseminate good faith efforts at reality. It's also easier to understand manufactured bullshit than messy complex reality. It's the fundamental problem. Reality will not sort itself out because fakery is faster and can be made more compelling, so it spreads quicker and is, unfortunately, more believable by more people. I know fixing it is hand waving a magic wand but that doesn't make the current state any more acceptable
- ArneBab 2y ago
  That’s why moderation must scale better than lies. In the original Freenet (now Hyphanet) it does, because when several people you communicate with block something, it disappears for you, too. When that was added (years ago, because having no centralized power means it was needed much earlier), communication got much more friendly in a pretty short amount of time. You can create a new ID to see it anyway — or explicitly make a spammer visible — but there’s usually no need, because you’ll actually not want to see stuff your friends identified as lies. And you can see who blocks what, so if you should doubt your friends (i.e. because something you like disappeared), you can stop their blocking from affecting you.

by ElFitz 2y ago

kristopolous 2y ago

Sure but there's harmful slander that can ruin people's lives and cause real harm. For instance, manifestos by hate crime mass murderers are littered with conspiracy theories and wild lies. It's faster, quicker, more scalable and less effort for propagandists to lie than for researchers to carefully document and disseminate good faith efforts at reality. It's also easier to understand manufactured bullshit than messy complex reality. It's the fundamental problem. Reality will not sort itself out because fakery is faster and can be made more compelling, so it spreads quicker and is, unfortunately, more believable by more people. I know fixing it is hand waving a magic wand but that doesn't make the current state any more acceptable

ArneBab 2y ago
That’s why moderation must scale better than lies. In the original Freenet (now Hyphanet) it does, because when several people you communicate with block something, it disappears for you, too. When that was added (years ago, because having no centralized power means it was needed much earlier), communication got much more friendly in a pretty short amount of time. You can create a new ID to see it anyway — or explicitly make a spammer visible — but there’s usually no need, because you’ll actually not want to see stuff your friends identified as lies. And you can see who blocks what, so if you should doubt your friends (i.e. because something you like disappeared), you can stop their blocking from affecting you.