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imo the problem is in instance ownership. users has to own and the system should still work. current mastodon model of bunch of aristocrats owning instances doi

imo the problem is in instance ownership. users has to own and the system should still work. current mastodon model of bunch of aristocrats owning instances doing rounds of 2-minute hatred obviously didn't work. any obligations forced upon above-citizen classes will be abused, and they are for mastodon, leading to some of problems elaborated. I'm imagining a model of network in which, old Android phone as server for power users collect RSS for initial content density problem, then clients do Discord-y stuff on client devices. client also sync public content with other servers it also belongs to for viral element. Content authenticity shall be handled by blockchain-y chain signing and that can also be proxy for content value. NAT and therefore central server requirement can be a problem in fully decentralizing such platform. mean income/education/skill level of mastodon instance owner is like global top 0.01% no? that's a flaw in itself.

vidarh 2y ago
ActivityPub is reasonably lightweight, though it could be trimmed down. Mastodon is not particularly. But we likely will see it become easier to run Mastodon-compatible-enough single-user instances with improved discoverability sooner or later. Content is already signed. The problem is that with Mastodon, the user does not control the private key unless you run your own instance. You can demonstrate that the content originates from a given instance, but not from a given user. That's an issue, but it's fixable.
- numpad0 2y ago
  No, I'm thinking that we need something fundamentally different, "locked-open" decentralized... The system should be so built that information relaying happen at discretion of individual users, not of benevolent mega-instance operators, so that the acts will be interpreted in context of local moral, ethical, and legal standards(that I believe to be roughly universal anyway, but sometimes do show conflicts). In my opinion, as long as there would be hubs of information in the network, like Mastodon instance and its "core" networks, there will be constant asteroid impacts. Therefore the system needs to be able to ingest, sign, share, metricize data without relying on broadcasts from fault- and manipulation-prone tight mesh core structures. I think abuse and/or legal problems should be able to be handled at edge just fine, with such means as phone-sized ML models, user discretion to share or not, voluntary flagging, reporting, and source blocks, as well as tipping to classical police law enforcement, etc. Ordinary people should be good at spotting and reporting illegal activities anyway.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    The system is built so that individual users can choose how information relaying happens. Most users however, have no interest in doing so.

vidarh 2y ago

ActivityPub is reasonably lightweight, though it could be trimmed down. Mastodon is not particularly. But we likely will see it become easier to run Mastodon-compatible-enough single-user instances with improved discoverability sooner or later. Content is already signed. The problem is that with Mastodon, the user does not control the private key unless you run your own instance. You can demonstrate that the content originates from a given instance, but not from a given user. That's an issue, but it's fixable.

numpad0 2y ago
No, I'm thinking that we need something fundamentally different, "locked-open" decentralized... The system should be so built that information relaying happen at discretion of individual users, not of benevolent mega-instance operators, so that the acts will be interpreted in context of local moral, ethical, and legal standards(that I believe to be roughly universal anyway, but sometimes do show conflicts). In my opinion, as long as there would be hubs of information in the network, like Mastodon instance and its "core" networks, there will be constant asteroid impacts. Therefore the system needs to be able to ingest, sign, share, metricize data without relying on broadcasts from fault- and manipulation-prone tight mesh core structures. I think abuse and/or legal problems should be able to be handled at edge just fine, with such means as phone-sized ML models, user discretion to share or not, voluntary flagging, reporting, and source blocks, as well as tipping to classical police law enforcement, etc. Ordinary people should be good at spotting and reporting illegal activities anyway.
- vidarh 2y ago
  The system is built so that individual users can choose how information relaying happens. Most users however, have no interest in doing so.