Remix.run Logo
binary132 3 days ago

Maybe I’m imagining it, but I feel like there’s a shift in gears somewhere between “we need to fix networks” and “the solution is decentralized networks”. Decentralized networks are unfixable and unmoderatable — that’s why people want them. People don’t want to be corralled or have their information consumption managed (not speaking to what’s good here). The author spends so much effort condemning Facebook for not managing the network in Myanmar enough, and then turns around and suggests — unmoderatable decentralized networks without authorities in a position to manage or moderate them?

I think I must be confused.

Dylan16807 3 days ago | parent [-]

The article says "The assumption that "Twitter but decentralized" or "Facebook but open-source and federated" will necessarily be good—rather than differently bad—is a weak one."

So yes I think you're confused.

binary132 2 days ago | parent [-]

It also says:

> I don't think any centrally governed platform at global scale is capable of doing the work, even if they hired the best and sharpest people I know. Even if they put real effort into humanist upstream product design, rather than tossing loose change to trust and safety teams sent in to clean up after the fact.

>

> Local norms matter too much for global governance of the social internet to make sense; the flattening of global diversity to fit the norms and interests of any given American techno-culture—corporate or otherwise—is both a baldly colonial aspiration and one we should scorn for the same reason that we leave the idea of effective, monolithic, planetary-scale government—benevolent or otherwise—to underbaked science fiction. Home rule and genuine resilience both require the existence of many places, many of them at least partially interconnected.

That’s what confused me, given your cited context. It doesn’t sound centralized. Things that are not centralized are decentralized, no?

Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent [-]

Decentralization is not itself the solution. Breaking up the control of servers, but still keeping everything as a global network but now with less moderation, is not the suggestion.

The article is arguing for spaces that are more loosely connected but still moderated, probably more moderated.