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The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated canc
by darqis 7mo ago
The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest.
And cancel culture.
Highly politically motivated cancel culture.
What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read?
That should be solely in the user's hand.
The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is
Also, fragmentation and visibility.
It's neigh impossible to find interesting content if you're not on the main big instances.
- onion2k 7mo agoWhat right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. Are they choosing what people can read, or are they choosing what they're willing to federate? No one is stopping people writing and publishing things on federated services. People are only choosing what they're willing to broadcast over the part of the service they run.
- Angostura 7mo agoExactly. Each instance is deciding who to federate with and each user is deciding which instance to join
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- xigoi 7mo agoDespite that, Fediverse promoters love to say “It doesn’t matter which instance you join”.
- neogodless 7mo agoI think it should be ever so slightly more nuanced than that. It doesn't matter which instance you join if you're just getting started, and don't know enough to make a meaningful decision about which instance to join. After a week or a month, you might understand how it works a bit better, and also which communities exist, and might have an informed opinion about which community you resonate with.
- dvlsg 7mo agoYeah, I also don't understand their take. HN also dictates what their users can and can't read. There's tons of stuff that can't be posted here without being removed. That's a good thing.
- jonkoops 7mo ago> And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. Most of the people who started on Mastodon are people of the LGBT+ community that were getting constantly harassed on other platforms. This 'cancel culture' is just a healthy attitude to having a zero tolerance policy on abuse, it is how it avoids being the enormous bigoted alt-right techbro mess that is now X. Since Mastodon is federated, you can choose the instance you want to use, and what you see. Just don't expect other instances to actively want to engage there.
- snackerblues 7mo ago> you can choose ... what you see Not true. You cannot federate with tech news and bigoted alt-right techbro (based) instances. That decision is made for you by the janitors of the instances you federate with. Just like reddit, where the janitors of the subreddits decide what you're allowed to see. Your agency is gone. Compare this to X, where if it's not illegal, you can choose to see or say it with no repercussions beyond an individual blocking you, which solves their problem of not wanting to see what you say. It's the perfect system!
- dawnerd 7mo agoI run a very small instance and have zero problems finding content. I have a constant stream of posts to the point where its hard to keep up with. It's pretty much a myth that there's no content unless you're on a large instance.
- jfengel 7mo agoIt's not practical for every user to choose each individual message to read. We allow others to help us filter. If you want the unfiltered version you go get it (and then try to find something under the torrent of spam). The right to speak is not the same as the right to an audience. If users want to hear you they will seek you out. If not, you've said your peace, and that's all you're entitled to.
- idiotsecant 7mo ago'cancel culture' is when you decline to federate content users don't want, I guess?
- krapp 7mo agoThe only true fascists are the ones who insist that actions should have consequences....
- xigoi 7mo agoNo, it’s when you decline to federate content that some users don’t want (and many do).
- archagon 7mo ago“and many do” Yeah, that’s definitely citation needed.
- xigoi 7mo agoIf many people did not want to read other people’s controversial opinions, we wouldn"t be having this whole debate.
- archagon 7mo agoIt seems like most of the people complaining about this aren't actually on Mastodon.
- xigoi 7mo agoWell, obviously you’re not going to be on a platform you dislike. I have signed up for Mastodon several times, but always ended up finding the instance dependency off-putting. I wish for a protocol where the instance mostly doesn’t matter and you can trivially switch to a different one, like with e-mail.
- 7mo ago
- Finnucane 7mo agoInstances often block users or other instances because their users have asked them to do that. They often have posted guidelines about what they will or won't allow. Users will hold them to it. Users can and do block other users on an individual basis. If a lot of people are blocking you, the problem might not be them.
- darqis 7mo agothat's incorrect. They report content they don't agree with. And if the instance owner shared that, the federated user or even instance gets banned. Most prominent example is the Ukraine. Even if you post truthfully and in context, that the Ukraine did support the 3rd Reich with link to the Wikipedia article, you get banned, no warning. So there is political censorship. And the fediverse is super political. The 3 big content areas in the Fediverse are politics, LGBT and nudes/nudes drawings including sadly CSAM. Blocking (and reporting) an instance because of CSAM I can understand. But that too should happen at an individual level.
- philistine 7mo agoYou are entitled speech, but not to force a theatre company to give you their stage from which their captive audience has to hear it.
- xigoi 7mo agoMastodon does not have content promotion. It’s more analogous to the air that transmits your voice than a theater stage.
- philistine 7mo agoNope. Air is static and no one has to pay to keep it there. A mastodon server is private property, and needs maintenance and money to stay on. You cannot force a private entity to host your speech. They always have a choice.
- xigoi 7mo agoMastodon is a federated service, like e-mail. Would you use an e-mail server where the admin reads messages delivered to your inbox and deletes the ones they don’t like?
- archagon 7mo agoUh, you mean like a spam filter? I would not use an e-mail service without one.
- xigoi 7mo agoNo. A spam filter still allows you to view the e-mails and reply to them if you want to. Also, I would certainly not want an e-mail service where the spam filter is based on the admin’s political opinions.
- philistine 7mo agoMastodon is exactly like email. Try running a nazi newsletter off of Gmail and see what happens.
- brookst 7mo agoI’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist (side-eye to the guy who ruined the term), but IMO one of the worst things to happen to free speech is this conflation of “right to speak” with “right to be heard”. People have a right to ignore speech, and to establish standards for speech on their private property. If there is market demand for a service that filters out content based on ideology, whether mastodon.social or Fox News, so be it. It can be toxic and a social negative, but any fix is worse than the problem.
- tacitusarc 7mo agoImagine, if you would, that the strict libertarians had much more influence in shaping the country. So much so that the roads are toll roads, the parks require a fee, and almost no libraries exist because the ROI just isn’t there. Furthermore, there is no anti-trust legislation, and as a result, there are only a few companies that control all meeting places: the parks, the coffee shops, the roads, the pubs. And they have set up constant monitoring technology. If you want to set up a protest on a street corner, it better align with the corporation’s views, or they will ban your access to the roads. If you want to talk with friends at the pub, don’t say anything out of line or you’re not coming back. Events can take place in parks, but make sure you only discuss the weather. Of course, this is fine: you can always just meet at your own home and say what you think, because that is your own property. … I realize the analogy is overwrought, but there just doesn’t exist an online equivalent of a public space, and ideological enforcement is trivial. Comparing it to the rules we have for physical spaces mean we need to imagine what those physical spaces would be like if they operated like online spaces, and frankly the result is dystopian (in my opinion). Surely the solution isn’t just to dismiss it as a non-problem? Or, I suppose, to stop looking for a solution because… solutions so far considered have negative side effects, which feels (practically speaking) the same to me.
- krapp 7mo agoPhysical public spaces are regulated. Laws still apply there. There are countless online spaces which operated like physical public spaces, where anything legal goes. Move off of the mainstream web and even the illegal stuff is allowed. You can literally run your own instance of whatever application on the Fediverse and follow whomever you want. No matter how radical or extremist your ideology is, someone will happily host it. It's only a problem if one insists that all online spaces must be run under the same anarchic principles and must be forced to give anyone a platform, but that's far more dystopian than what we have now.
- ashton314 7mo agoIt’s not actually that concentrated. https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/
- wat10000 7mo agoIf you don’t like how your server is run, go to a different one! That’s the whole point of the thing. You can even set up your own without too much trouble. If you believe servers shouldn’t be doing this stuff then you can make it happen. Nobody owes it to you.
- sdsd 7mo agoI'm on infosec.exchange and there's plenty of content, especially since it federates so I get content from all over the fediverse. I don't mind that there are only several very large instances, since federating to them from a tiny or even personal instance is no problem.
- t0bia_s 7mo agoFediverse on mastodon increase social bubbles. Especially when admin of instance has apathy to any kind of different opinions and censor anything like that.