8 ms·

It is 2021, we should have decentralised authenticated version of text board by now. All the bs about crypto disruption, but nothing for such simple case.

pezo1919 5y ago
www.manyver.se
db48x 5y ago
You can run your own software on your own server easily enough. Even easier to run the software of your choice on a rented server. Why do you think that you’re stuck with twitter?
- cigaser 5y ago
  I could also do that in 1975. But people use twitter.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    People use many thousands of different websites.
nsood 5y ago
Unmoderated social media (which I'm guessing is your goal with decentralization) tends to accumulate people who have been kicked off all moderated social media - see stuff like Parler, Ruqqus, etc. I don't think removing all ability for moderation is a good idea, more of a balance is necessary.
- cigaser 5y ago
  Twitter is moderated, but is also full of political extremism. People leave Twitter all the time. Moderation is solved problem. There are email spam filters, network of trusted people, proof of work...
- ttt0 5y ago
  Yes, uncensored social media will tend to accumulate people who have been censored, that's the point.
- oooooooooooow 5y ago
  I think this kind of rebuttal is a bit narrowly-scoped. It's not like we made social media centralized and controlled by a few people BECAUSE other systems were unmanageable/impossible to moderate. We never even got to see a world were users own their social media. In such a world I imagine moderation to be in the hands of the users, evolving into a crowdsourced effort in which anyone can implement off-the-shelf blacklists/whitelists. This way no single node can get mass silenced by decree of a CEO or government entity (thus requiring to "run off" somewhere else). You could see it as free market for information exchange.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  And the first uses of bitcoin where shady, or outright illegal, given those users had the greatest incentives to use alt currencies - this was the main attack by detractors.
  - psandersen 5y ago
    Outside of speculation and hype; is there currently much demand for bitcoin as a currency outside of industries that operate in a legal grey area?
- drak0n1c 5y ago
  If you have an upvote/downvote system that requires authentication, thresholds of useful upvoted activity to unlock (like HN), and perhaps some kind of spending or at least account balance, you could have a reasonable front page and subforums, and the discouraging noise you describe would only come up if you manually paginated or manually searched/filtered for it. Assuming wide enough usage by the public.
- instagraham 5y ago
  I think the free speech of posting coronavirus facts is far more important than the danger of dealing with the parler crowd. For people in authoritarian countries like India or Myanmar or anywhere else, it's the government that is the main obstacle to having free speech—not groups of hat-wearing nitwits. Anyone posting something outright illegal on a social platform is making themselves a target for law enforcement anyway — why subject the entire platform to censorship on their behalf?
  - nsood 5y ago
    As an Indian, I can assure you we have plenty of hat-wearing nitwits as well, and there's more in common in the ways Trump and Modi got elected than you think. In case of unmoderated social media, just because law enforcement goes after them doesn't mean the content doesn't need to be taken down sometimes. Think non-consensual nudes, calls to extremism, etc. These things are filtered out because at some point even Parler and Ruqqus and all will delete them. But completely unmoderated social media will not allow for that. I also never said that free speech was less important than dealing with the Parler crowd. I'm just saying it's a harder problem than it's made out to be.
- thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago
  What's the problem with that? You don't have to read these people's posts if you don't like them, just like I don't have to watch conspiracy bullshit on youtube. Maybe I want to read these folks' posts! The platform shouldn't make that decision for me. With well designed communication tools, you don't need moderators to decide what kind of content you see. You and your immediate network will be your own moderators by implicit action and inaction (and if everything is designed right, you can also take explicit action to e.g. drop that flat earth shit from your feed that shows up because your best friend keeps reading and upvoting it). This is exactly how the real world works too. I choose who to chat and hang out with, I don't need to call cops to remove marketers and idiots from the world for me.
Kaze404 5y ago
I just read a thread on Twitter where the user complains about the English translation of an anime, and 6 tweets later is saying they don't care about the opinion of "blacks / LGBT" and literally defending Nazis. Can't say the argument for less moderation is appealing to me.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  I don’t need someone else to tell me what is right for me to see. I would never do that to anyone else either. We’re talking text here btw, so CP/gore/revenge porn don’t count because those can’t be transmitted over text (links aside).
- cigaser 5y ago
  This network would actually bring MORE moderation. People could subscribe to moderation filters similar way as in adblock. Antinazi, antiantifa, antilgbtq, anti-jehowa-witness... No extremism, just nice business and technical discussion. If some filter curator fails, you just replace its filter with another one.
  - holler 5y ago
    what stops a "centralized" network from implementing the same thing?
    - ttt0 5y ago
      The centralized network stops itself from implementing it. That's what it used to be like on for example Twitter, where people used blacklists. But Twitter didn't want that and they wanted to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. And if you want to do that as a centralized network, you'll be cancelled by one of services you have to rely on anyways.
      - holler 5y ago
        > ...to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. I can understand the tendency if there's a business behind it, maybe they don't want the homepage to be filled with polarizing, divisive, or nsfw content etc. But I do like the idea of letting users decide what they'd like to see other than on the homepage, where I would be Ok with some default filters. Maybe they can be disabled for the inclined.
root_axis 5y ago
Decentralized subnetworks change nothing. The web is already decentralized, twitter is just a popular node. Anything that's popular will face the exact same problem.
theanirudh 5y ago
https://bitclout.com https://bitclout.com

pezo1919 5y ago

www.manyver.se

db48x 5y ago

You can run your own software on your own server easily enough. Even easier to run the software of your choice on a rented server. Why do you think that you’re stuck with twitter?

cigaser 5y ago
I could also do that in 1975. But people use twitter.
- root_axis 5y ago
  People use many thousands of different websites.

nsood 5y ago

Unmoderated social media (which I'm guessing is your goal with decentralization) tends to accumulate people who have been kicked off all moderated social media - see stuff like Parler, Ruqqus, etc. I don't think removing all ability for moderation is a good idea, more of a balance is necessary.

cigaser 5y ago
Twitter is moderated, but is also full of political extremism. People leave Twitter all the time. Moderation is solved problem. There are email spam filters, network of trusted people, proof of work...
ttt0 5y ago
Yes, uncensored social media will tend to accumulate people who have been censored, that's the point.
oooooooooooow 5y ago
I think this kind of rebuttal is a bit narrowly-scoped. It's not like we made social media centralized and controlled by a few people BECAUSE other systems were unmanageable/impossible to moderate. We never even got to see a world were users own their social media. In such a world I imagine moderation to be in the hands of the users, evolving into a crowdsourced effort in which anyone can implement off-the-shelf blacklists/whitelists. This way no single node can get mass silenced by decree of a CEO or government entity (thus requiring to "run off" somewhere else). You could see it as free market for information exchange.
Chris2048 5y ago
And the first uses of bitcoin where shady, or outright illegal, given those users had the greatest incentives to use alt currencies - this was the main attack by detractors.
- psandersen 5y ago
  Outside of speculation and hype; is there currently much demand for bitcoin as a currency outside of industries that operate in a legal grey area?
drak0n1c 5y ago
If you have an upvote/downvote system that requires authentication, thresholds of useful upvoted activity to unlock (like HN), and perhaps some kind of spending or at least account balance, you could have a reasonable front page and subforums, and the discouraging noise you describe would only come up if you manually paginated or manually searched/filtered for it. Assuming wide enough usage by the public.
instagraham 5y ago
I think the free speech of posting coronavirus facts is far more important than the danger of dealing with the parler crowd. For people in authoritarian countries like India or Myanmar or anywhere else, it's the government that is the main obstacle to having free speech—not groups of hat-wearing nitwits. Anyone posting something outright illegal on a social platform is making themselves a target for law enforcement anyway — why subject the entire platform to censorship on their behalf?
- nsood 5y ago
  As an Indian, I can assure you we have plenty of hat-wearing nitwits as well, and there's more in common in the ways Trump and Modi got elected than you think. In case of unmoderated social media, just because law enforcement goes after them doesn't mean the content doesn't need to be taken down sometimes. Think non-consensual nudes, calls to extremism, etc. These things are filtered out because at some point even Parler and Ruqqus and all will delete them. But completely unmoderated social media will not allow for that. I also never said that free speech was less important than dealing with the Parler crowd. I'm just saying it's a harder problem than it's made out to be.
thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago
What's the problem with that? You don't have to read these people's posts if you don't like them, just like I don't have to watch conspiracy bullshit on youtube. Maybe I want to read these folks' posts! The platform shouldn't make that decision for me. With well designed communication tools, you don't need moderators to decide what kind of content you see. You and your immediate network will be your own moderators by implicit action and inaction (and if everything is designed right, you can also take explicit action to e.g. drop that flat earth shit from your feed that shows up because your best friend keeps reading and upvoting it). This is exactly how the real world works too. I choose who to chat and hang out with, I don't need to call cops to remove marketers and idiots from the world for me.

Kaze404 5y ago

I just read a thread on Twitter where the user complains about the English translation of an anime, and 6 tweets later is saying they don't care about the opinion of "blacks / LGBT" and literally defending Nazis. Can't say the argument for less moderation is appealing to me.

jimbob45 5y ago
I don’t need someone else to tell me what is right for me to see. I would never do that to anyone else either. We’re talking text here btw, so CP/gore/revenge porn don’t count because those can’t be transmitted over text (links aside).
cigaser 5y ago
This network would actually bring MORE moderation. People could subscribe to moderation filters similar way as in adblock. Antinazi, antiantifa, antilgbtq, anti-jehowa-witness... No extremism, just nice business and technical discussion. If some filter curator fails, you just replace its filter with another one.
- holler 5y ago
  what stops a "centralized" network from implementing the same thing?
  - ttt0 5y ago
    The centralized network stops itself from implementing it. That's what it used to be like on for example Twitter, where people used blacklists. But Twitter didn't want that and they wanted to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. And if you want to do that as a centralized network, you'll be cancelled by one of services you have to rely on anyways.
    - holler 5y ago
      > ...to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. I can understand the tendency if there's a business behind it, maybe they don't want the homepage to be filled with polarizing, divisive, or nsfw content etc. But I do like the idea of letting users decide what they'd like to see other than on the homepage, where I would be Ok with some default filters. Maybe they can be disabled for the inclined.

root_axis 5y ago

Decentralized subnetworks change nothing. The web is already decentralized, twitter is just a popular node. Anything that's popular will face the exact same problem.

theanirudh 5y ago

https://bitclout.com https://bitclout.com