The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Cohost and the Fate of Centralized Platforms

Riley@lemmy.ml to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 102 points –
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Allow NSFW content at your own risk, same for users and hosts.

Block users and communities as you see fit, why should a centralized authority decide for the users? It's the same thing as Reddit except that there's a bunch of centralized authorities instead of one.

I can create my own instance but other instances can decide to not federate with it.

If admins were the problem on Reddit we should work on making a platform where admins don't exist at all, not one where there's just more of them.

Allow NSFW content at your own risk, same for users and hosts.

I am not talking about NSFW, I'm talking about CSAM. There were a few CSAM attacks last year, some mods had to see some disturbing pictures of pedo pornography, that's probably not something you want your average user to have to deal with.

It’s the same thing as Reddit except that there’s a bunch of centralized authorities instead of one.

Then it's not the same. You have communities like !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com or !fediverselore@lemmy.ca used to document abuse from admins and mods, and modlogs are public, it's a drastic change from Reddit.

Have you ever had a look at Nostr? It only has moderation at the user level, so that might be what you are looking for.

And those CSAM attacks weren't prevented by the way it works at the moment so that point is moot...

That people will upload illegal content is basically inevitable, the important thing is that there is someone (other than the original poster) with the authority to remove it.

That's the server owner's job, it doesn't mean they should also have the authority to decide who the users are federated with.

Holy crap, the point is going completely over your head.

If having absolute power over the communication channel is so important to you, you can only do that by owning everything. This is not an issue you are going to solve with changes on Lemmy, or Mastodon, or ActivityPub, or XMPP, or anything.

You are arguing where the line is drawn, but the line is not going to go away. Unless you go full blockchain, there is always some aspect of internet communication that it's mediated: the server, the internet provider, the domain registrar.

If you decentralize the hosting and make it a "public database" where everything is backed up on multiple servers then yes, you can in fact have people hosting the content they want to host without having actual control over the website itself. If they don't want to host NSFW content then they can filter it, someone else will host it and people can pull it from the database when they browse the website from their favorite front end.

You are describing nostr. Why not just use it then?

Yes, I'm surprised too, I mentioned it in a previous comment, and they even mentioned crypto in another comment, seems definitely like something they should try.

I'll go take a look and if it's what I'm talking about then I don't know why it wasn't the solution people jumped on when Reddit admins started fucking up instead of leaving to go on Lemmy where admins are still a thing...

I don’t know why it wasn’t the solution people jumped on when Reddit admins started fucking up instead of leaving to go on Lemmy where admins are still a thing…

One reason is that Nostr is filled with crypto-bros who think cryptocurrencies is the future. The whole Nostr space is filled with bitcoin news and deranged people yelling "HODL". Not surprising coming from a social media that makes it harder to ban you and encourages more absolute free speech.

I think the UX on Nostr is also just worse. You need to keep a private key for yourself I believe and that's just a technical hurdle and annoyance that most people don't want to deal with.

Another reason is that people like having admins. People want moderated places. People don't want to bother moderating stuff themselves. People don't want douchebags calling them stuff all the time and having to block stuff. Admins and moderators provide that service and users like that.

I get that you're frustrated that the admins at Reddit were mistreating you. The answer to that is not "abolish all admins" but rather "choose better admins", if you ask me at least. The good thing on the fediverse is that you can go to another place if you feel the current place isn't run by reasonable people.

Please do take an honest try and let me know what you think of the UX.

Word of warning: the "no admin to censor you" also means "no one to help you in case you lose your account".

Have a look, based on the discussion, you'll probably like it: https://nostr.how/en/why-nostr

I don’t know why it wasn’t the solution people jumped on

Some people still want to be able to cut themselves from other people. If you ask Beehaw what they would think about Nostr, they would probably tell you that for them being able to defederate is a must.

Sure and I have a huge block list on here and I would never advocate for a solution where you can't choose to block someone or where mods can't block people from the communities they moderate, it's the person above that I have a problem with.

On Reddit I got blocked from a community (bread tube), I contacted the mod for an explanation and told them I didn't see why I would get blocked for an honest question (What is the alternative to cops when people get robbed if we get rid of cops?) from someone who is a progressive but who just isn't informed on that subject, they contacted the admins and I got banned from Reddit altogether. That's my problem with having admins at the top, one mod didn't like me questioning them, I had no issue in any other communities I took part in, bam, locked out of the whole place.

there’s a bunch of centralized authorities instead of one

I mean sorry but that's just what decentralization is, unless you want a fully peer-to-peer protocol which is not realistic at all.

Or, as I keep suggesting, you make the authority figures have as little power as possible, i.e. the only people with authority are mods so they only have control over communities and don't have the power to prevent tens of thousands of people from communicating with each other.

They really have as little power as they can given the constraints. If you don't want an admin to have power over a lot of people, join a small instance and advocate others do the same.

It really sounds like you just want to be your own admin though. Maybe a personal instance would be a way for you.

But other admins still have the power to cut you off, so no, that's not a solution.

Well other admins should be entirely in their right to cut you off. Same as anyone should be able to block you. If another admin decides to cut you off, that's up to them, you can't stop that and shouldn't be able to. That is anyone's freedom.

But usually it is not a problem, as long as you are reasonable. Why would another admin block you if you are reasonable?

And what I've been saying from the get go is that no one should have that kind of power. That you can get banned from a community is one thing, that you can get banned from all content available on one instance and that one person can decide you're unable to communicate with tens of thousands of other users just because they don't like your face? Well that means that Lemmy is no better than Reddit.

Post on a community moderated by Lemmy's main dev to share a political opinion he doesn't agree with? Say goodbye to all Lemmy.ml users, you're banned from the whole instance mother fucker! No one should be able to do that in a decentralized system and if that's what people want from Lemmy then they should stop pretending it's decentralized because it's not.

I think you're totally misunderstanding how decentralization works. It sounds like you think it should be a free for all and everyone should be free to access everything. But again, the fediverse is about choice. It's totally okay for an admin to be able to cut off another instance. It's their instance, that's up to them. Nobody wants absolute free speech.

If you don't like that, go to another instance that doesn't do that and if you get cut off from another instance by another admin, maybe consider joining that instance or another instance that isn't defederated.

And consider also that this power is great motivation for everyone to stay nice and well moderated. If you are mean or spammy or whatever, you get defederated. So you better be nice! That's a great feature if you ask me.