| ▲ | darqis 3 hours 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. |
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| ▲ | brookst 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I’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. |
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| ▲ | croes an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I have no problem getting blocked but my only block on the Fediverse was accompanied by a block for all users on the same instance as me. | |
| ▲ | bediger4000 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | one of the worst things to happen to free speech is this conflation of “right to speak” with “right to be heard” Thank you for this tight summary. As a greybeard, I'll note this conflation was present from very early on, and it was partly responsible for the heat death of Usenet. No amount of logical, prepared rebuttal budges people from the idea that the two things are the same. The conflation might be a human tendency, a cognitive bias that almost everyone has. | |
| ▲ | raffael_de an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | why not let people say whatever they want? you already hinted the appropriate solution which is that you don't have to listen. | | |
| ▲ | Arainach 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Community members are a finite resource. Moderators are a downright scare resource. When you let people spew hateful things you drive away the people you want in the community and are left with a toxic cesspool that no one wants to visit. Your moderators will burn out and leave as well. That's a very reliable way for your space to die. Then there's the fact that it takes far more energy to refute bullshit than to spew it, and this asymmetry means that "just let them speak" means the toxic liars win. | |
| ▲ | toss1 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | If a social network has an ACTUAL straight chronological feed of only accts you follow, or lists you curate, that works great. Somebody posts abhorrent Nazi racist crap, or lies about what is happening, you shut them off, and they'll never be heard by you again. Yes, you need to see/hear the crap or propaganda once for each Nazi or liar, but that's it. The problem is nearly every social platform needs to increase your engagement get you to click or scroll just another time so they get to show you more adverts and make more money and claim more 'engagement' to juice their stock price. So along with having to listen to the advertisements, you ALSO are REQUIRED to see/listen to the crap and lies. The good solution — "you don't have to listen" — is not an actual option in the real world. (NB: This is why Section 230 should only protect web providers if they have no algorithm. Once they have an algo, they exercise more editorial control than any newspaper or broadcast editor — they ARE responsible for the content, not because they posted it, their users did, but because they routed it to you.) |
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| ▲ | trentnix an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Another example of "everything before the word but is horse ****". | |
| ▲ | tacitusarc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Imagine, 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 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Physical 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. |
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| ▲ | lolurnt an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Lol. You're not anywhere close to a free speech absolutist. Large online social spaces are public spaces and are given legal protections and exceptions because of it. And free speech has nothing to do with the law, it's an ethical principle, and using some swarmy psudo intellectual gotcha technical point tells me you actualky have nothing in your heart for true free speech, just another yahoo who wants to say everything they like is free speech and anything not is some sort of other speech -- hate speech, misinformation, fake news, whatever the moniker of the day is, you either let people speak without censoring them, or you are just another bigot. | | |
| ▲ | ses1984 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Free speech does exist in the law, not just as an ethical ideal. The law states that the government can’t infringe on your speech. Anyone who is not the government is free to block your ass if they don’t like you or what you’re saying. Not all speech is worth defending. The only people who benefit from free speech absolutism are the ones with only horrible things to say. |
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| ▲ | onion2k 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. 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. |
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| ▲ | dvlsg 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, 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. | |
| ▲ | Angostura 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Exactly. Each instance is deciding who to federate with and each user is deciding which instance to join | | |
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| ▲ | philistine 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You are entitled speech, but not to force a theatre company to give you their stage from which their captive audience has to hear it. |
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| ▲ | dawnerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I 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. |
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| ▲ | ashton314 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s not actually that concentrated. https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ |
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| ▲ | jfengel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It'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. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If 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. |
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| ▲ | Finnucane 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Instances 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. |
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| ▲ | jonkoops 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 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. |
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| ▲ | idiotsecant 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 'cancel culture' is when you decline to federate content users don't want, I guess? |
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| ▲ | krapp 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The only true fascists are the ones who insist that actions should have consequences.... |
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