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That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only with a whitelist. It's just your own direct curation of sources. And how did you disc

by kimixa 1y ago

That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only with a whitelist. It's just your own direct curation of sources. And how did you discover those feeds in the first place? Or find new ones? I know people have tried to have a relatively closed mesh-of-trust, but you still need people to moderate new applicants, otherwise you'll never get any new idea of fresh discussion. And if it keeps growing, scale means that group will slowly gather bad actors. Maybe directly by putting up whatever front they need to get into the mesh or existing in-mesh accounts. Maybe existing accounts get hacked. Maybe previously-'good' account-owning people have changed, be it in opinion or situation, to take advantage of their in-mesh position. It feels like a speedrun of the internet itself growing.

_heimdall 1y ago
> That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only with a whitelist Agreed, though when you are your own moderator that really is more about informed consent or free will than moderation. Moderation, at least in my opinion, implies a third party. > And how did you discover those feeds in the first place? Or find new ones? The same way I make new friends. Recommendations from those I already trust, or "friend of a friend" type situations. I don't need an outside matchmaker to introduce me to people they think I would be friends with.
- jryle70 1y ago
  Well, then the risk is that you build your own bubbles of likeminded people. Maybe that's all you need, may be not.
  - 1shooner 1y ago
    There is much more diversity of perspective among friends and colleagues than there is in my algorithmic social media feed. This is the whole problem: we no longer see perspectives we respect but don't share.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    Anecdotal, but I feel like I've done a better job curating diverse opinions in my feed than any algorithm has. Surely an algorithm focused on that would best me, but the only ones out there today are only motivated by selling ad space and data. Its a bit of an unfair fight today since that isn't my goal, but I don't expect anyone to fund a social media platform with similar goals to mine in their algorithm.
virtuous_sloth 1y ago
ActivityPub allows one to follow hashtags in addition to accounts. Pick some hashtags of interest, find some people in those posts to follow. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- immibis 1y ago
  ActivityPub has no provision to follow a hashtag - that's a local server feature. This comment was rate limited.
matheusmoreira 1y ago
> you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself Honestly, that's how things should work. People should simply avoid, block and hide the things they don't like.
- immibis 1y ago
  If 99% of what I see on the platform is stuff I have to block, if I have to spend half an hour every day blocking stuff, I'm quitting the platform.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    That isn't a problem if your feed is filled only with content from those you chose to follow. If you hit follow and 99% of your feed should be blocked, unfollow them and move on.
yason 1y ago
> That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only > with a whitelist. It's just your own direct curation of sources. That's exactly how a useful social information system works. I choose what I want to follow and see, and there's no gap between what moderation thinks and what I think. Spam gets dealt with the moment I see something spammy (or just about any kind of thing I don't want to see). This is how Usenet worked: you subscribed to the groups you found interesting and where participants were of sufficient quality. And you further could block individuals whose posts you didn't want to see. This is how IRC worked: you joined channels that you deemed worth joining. And you could further ignore individuals that you didn't like. That is how the whole original internet actually worked: you were reading pages and using services that you felt were worth your time. Ultimately, that's how human relationships work. You hang out with friends you like and who are worth your time, and you ignore people who you don't want to spend your time with, especially assholes.
- jasode 1y ago
  >This is how Usenet worked: you subscribed to the groups you found interesting and where participants were of sufficient quality. And you further could block individuals whose posts you didn't want to see. Your explanation actually proves why USENET doesn't work anymore because that client-side moderation is unusable these days. I was on Usenet in the 1980s before the WorldWideWeb in 1993 and continued up until 2008. Why did I quit Usenet?!? Because it worked better when the internet was much smaller and consisted of universities federating NNTP servers. But Usenet's design can't handle the massive growth of the internet such as commercial entities being allowed to connect in 1992 and "The Eternal September" of massive users from AOL. Spam gets out of control. Signal-to-noise ratio goes way down. Usenet worked better in a "collegial" atmosphere of a smaller internet where it's mostly good actors. It's fundamental design doesn't work for a big internet full of bad actors. This is why a lot of us ex-Usenet users are here on a web forum that's moderated instead of a hypothetical "nntp://comp.lang.news.ycombinator" with newsgroup readers. With "https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com", I don't need to do extra housekeeping of "killfiles" or wade through a bunch of spam. Whatever next gen social web gets invented, it cannot work like Usenet for it to be usable. >Spam gets dealt with the moment I see something spammy Maybe consider you're unusual with that preference because most of us don't want our eyeballs to even see the spam at all. The system's algorithms should filter it out automatically. We don't want to impose extra digital housekeeping work of "dealing with spam" ourselves.

by kimixa 1y ago

_heimdall 1y ago

> That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only with a whitelist Agreed, though when you are your own moderator that really is more about informed consent or free will than moderation. Moderation, at least in my opinion, implies a third party. > And how did you discover those feeds in the first place? Or find new ones? The same way I make new friends. Recommendations from those I already trust, or "friend of a friend" type situations. I don't need an outside matchmaker to introduce me to people they think I would be friends with.

jryle70 1y ago
Well, then the risk is that you build your own bubbles of likeminded people. Maybe that's all you need, may be not.
- 1shooner 1y ago
  There is much more diversity of perspective among friends and colleagues than there is in my algorithmic social media feed. This is the whole problem: we no longer see perspectives we respect but don't share.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  Anecdotal, but I feel like I've done a better job curating diverse opinions in my feed than any algorithm has. Surely an algorithm focused on that would best me, but the only ones out there today are only motivated by selling ad space and data. Its a bit of an unfair fight today since that isn't my goal, but I don't expect anyone to fund a social media platform with similar goals to mine in their algorithm.

virtuous_sloth 1y ago

ActivityPub allows one to follow hashtags in addition to accounts. Pick some hashtags of interest, find some people in those posts to follow. Lather, rinse, repeat.

immibis 1y ago
ActivityPub has no provision to follow a hashtag - that's a local server feature. This comment was rate limited.

matheusmoreira 1y ago

> you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself Honestly, that's how things should work. People should simply avoid, block and hide the things they don't like.

immibis 1y ago
If 99% of what I see on the platform is stuff I have to block, if I have to spend half an hour every day blocking stuff, I'm quitting the platform.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  That isn't a problem if your feed is filled only with content from those you chose to follow. If you hit follow and 99% of your feed should be blocked, unfollow them and move on.

yason 1y ago

> That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only > with a whitelist. It's just your own direct curation of sources. That's exactly how a useful social information system works. I choose what I want to follow and see, and there's no gap between what moderation thinks and what I think. Spam gets dealt with the moment I see something spammy (or just about any kind of thing I don't want to see). This is how Usenet worked: you subscribed to the groups you found interesting and where participants were of sufficient quality. And you further could block individuals whose posts you didn't want to see. This is how IRC worked: you joined channels that you deemed worth joining. And you could further ignore individuals that you didn't like. That is how the whole original internet actually worked: you were reading pages and using services that you felt were worth your time. Ultimately, that's how human relationships work. You hang out with friends you like and who are worth your time, and you ignore people who you don't want to spend your time with, especially assholes.

jasode 1y ago
>This is how Usenet worked: you subscribed to the groups you found interesting and where participants were of sufficient quality. And you further could block individuals whose posts you didn't want to see. Your explanation actually proves why USENET doesn't work anymore because that client-side moderation is unusable these days. I was on Usenet in the 1980s before the WorldWideWeb in 1993 and continued up until 2008. Why did I quit Usenet?!? Because it worked better when the internet was much smaller and consisted of universities federating NNTP servers. But Usenet's design can't handle the massive growth of the internet such as commercial entities being allowed to connect in 1992 and "The Eternal September" of massive users from AOL. Spam gets out of control. Signal-to-noise ratio goes way down. Usenet worked better in a "collegial" atmosphere of a smaller internet where it's mostly good actors. It's fundamental design doesn't work for a big internet full of bad actors. This is why a lot of us ex-Usenet users are here on a web forum that's moderated instead of a hypothetical "nntp://comp.lang.news.ycombinator" with newsgroup readers. With "https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com", I don't need to do extra housekeeping of "killfiles" or wade through a bunch of spam. Whatever next gen social web gets invented, it cannot work like Usenet for it to be usable. >Spam gets dealt with the moment I see something spammy Maybe consider you're unusual with that preference because most of us don't want our eyeballs to even see the spam at all. The system's algorithms should filter it out automatically. We don't want to impose extra digital housekeeping work of "dealing with spam" ourselves.