Isn’t that basically the same result though…

Problem with tech oligarchy is it just takes one person to get corrupted and then he blocks out all opinion that attacks his goals.

So the solution is federation, free speech instances that everyone can say whatever they want no matter how unpopular.

How do we counteract the bots…

Well we need the instances to verify who gets in, and make sure the members aren’t bots or saying unpopular things. These instances will need to be big, and well funded.

How do we counter these instance owners getting bought out, corrupted (repeat loop).

Too high of a barrier to entry is doomed to fail.

If you could vet members in any meaningful way, they’d be doing it already.

Can you have an instance that allows viewing other instances, but others can’t see in?

Vetted members could still bot though or have ther accounts compromised. Not a realistic solution.

How is it going to be as big as reddit if EVERYONE is vetted?

There might be clever ways of doing this: Having volunteers help with the vetting process, allowing a certain number of members per day + a queue and then vetting them along the way…

You have that tool, it’s called finding or hosting your own instance.

Just create your own comm.

Yeah you can go fuck yourself for pinning your flavor of bullshit on ADHD. Take some accountability for your actions.

Don’t go blaming your inability to have empathy on adhd. That is in absolutely no way connected. You’re just a rude person.

Communities should be self moderated. Once we have that we can really push things forward.

lemm.ee and lemmy.dbzer0.com both seem like very level-headed instances. You can say stuff even if the admins disagree with it, and it’s not a crisis.

Some of the big other ones seem some other way, yes.

Data scraping is a logical consequence of being an open protocol, and as such I don't think it's worth investing much time in resisting it so long as it's not impacting instance health. At least while the user experience and basic federation issues are still extant.

Captchas don’t do shit and have actually been training for computer vision for probably over a decade at this point.

Also: Any “simple test” is fixed in the next version. It is similar to how people still insist “AI can’t do feet” (much like rob liefeld). That was fixed pretty quick it is just that much of the freeware out there is using very outdated models.

I wish this was the case but the average user is uninformed and can’t be bothered leaving.

Otherwise the bigger service would be lemmy, not reddit.

the market of the fediverse will balance itself out to what the users want.

Just like classical macroeconomics, you make the deadly (false) assumption that users are rational and will make the choice that’s best for them.

Do you have a proof of concept that works?

You don’t need blockchain for reputations systems, lol. Stuff like Gnutella and PGP web-of-trust have been around forever. Admittedly, the blockchain can add barriers for some attacks; mainly sybil attacks, but a friend-of-a-friend/WoT network structure can mitigate that somewhat too,

I subscribed to the arch gitlab last week and there was a 12 step identification process that was completely ridiculous. It’s clear 99.99% of users will just give up.

Your last sentence highlights the problem. I can have a bot that posts for me. Also, if an authority is in charge of issuing the certificates then they have an incentive to create some fake ones.

Bots are vastly more useful as the ratio of bots to humans drops.

A bot can do that and do it at scale.

I think we are going to need to reconceptualize the Internet and why we are on here at all.

It already is practically impossible to stop bots and I’m a very short time it’ll be completely impossible.

It sounds like you’re describing doublespeak from 1984.

Simplifying language removes nuance. If you make moderation decisions based on the simple English vs. what the person is actually saying, then you’re policing the simple English more than the nuanced take.

I’ve got a knee-jerk reaction against simplifying language past the point of clarity, and especially automated tools trying to understand it.

I feel like it’s only a matter of time before most people just have AI’s write their posts.

That’s going right into /dev/null as soon as I detect it-- both user and content.

Yeah I’m not seeing any way around that sadly. At least for places where you want/need to know the content is from an actual person.

We could make a wiki filled with all the options.

But let’s prioritize the non-violent ones first.

Oh. Guns are even better for that.

On the right? They are a lightning rod for criticism and complaints. “All the jobs in our state were taken away and my daughter is dying of an easily curable disease. BUT THOSE FUCKING LIBERALS ARE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS!!!”

On the left? they are a way to “meet in the middle” on a lot of legislature while also being a great way to villify and target groups. For example, anyone with even a passing understanding of history knows that the Civl Rights Movement was not MLK Jr giving one speech and fist bumping Rosa Parks on the bus. The threat of violence was definitely a factor (beyond that it gets murkier). And people LOVE to argue that Blacks picking up guns is how that was “won”.

You know what else came of that? “That kid is a gangbanger and has a gun. SHOOT HIM. Oh shit, uhm. Fuck it, we’ll just say the toy train looked like a gun”.

And we’ll see that continue. LGBTQ folk will decide they need a gun and you can bet the cops and the chuds will be glad to open fire at protestors because “THEY HAVE A GUN!!!”

And the absolute best part? “Both sides” are fucking delusional if they think their guns are going to accomplish anything against an oppressive government. Cops won’t go near a pistol if a kid’s life is on the line. But they’ll open fire like mel gibson if they think a business is in trouble. Let alone the military with tanks and drones and there will be a lot more “combat footage” to watch online.

If there was ANY chance that The 2nd Amendment could pose ANY threat to a tyrannical government, it would have been destroyed decades ago.

As to an answers beyond simply getting-armed-and-fostering-healthy-gun-culture-and-education-among-us:

“Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectually and morally.”

That’s Kropotkin

And then Modern Libs even observe, more verbosely:

“The structures of our state economies are going to matter in terms of protecting democracies, and by that I mean if you look at economies that were based in the kind of small producer economies like New England was vs states like the South and the American West that were always built on the idea of very high capital using extractive methods to get resources out of the land either cotton or mining or oil or water or agri business, those economies always depend on a few people with a lot of money, and then a whole bunch of people who are poor and doing the work for those Rich guys – and that I’m not sure is compatible in terms of governance without addressing the reality that you know if people have more of a foothold in their own communities, they are then more likely to support the kinds of legislation that Community [Education, Healthcare, …] and that may be the future of democracy, if not a national democracy”

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American history On The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on Trump’s Win and What’s Next youtu.be/D7cKOaBdFWo?t=2139 (time-stamped)

If a Conservative wants me dead, they’re going to have to work and sweat for it. I’m not doing the heavy lifting for them (A Quote I agree with)

Our resulting interactions may seem chaotic and illegible to authority, but it is through that seeming chaos that vastly complex, horizontal, and resilient practices of learning, cooperation, and reciprocity have historically arisen.

By Andrewism youtu.be/qkN_nQPpeSU

MASKING REALLY HELPS; Covid, RSV, Flu is a greater threat to marginalized communities. Can’t do organizing without prioritizing precautions.

Show up for your neighbors. The rest will come.

No, we buy guns AND we organize our coalitions, just like the Black Panthers did.

We can’t intellectualize our way out of Proud Boys lynchings anymore, guys.

(Also all the stuff VerticaGG said)

completely agreeing, 10 times

I guess, but I don’t want the job of trying to talk people into using a platform. No one I know has even heard of it. The platform is good for what I want, but no one I know locally is there and getting them on it seems unlikely.

Well, as a Jew, I haven’t seen anything else from Elon that’s emblematic of being a Nazi. Sure, he has some right wing beliefs, but those were pretty centrist ideals prior to the past decade. And I have encountered real neo-Nazis who have wished death upon my [k expletive] ass and attempted doxing. I think Elon is just an awkward person in general, but I’m not buying into the stats quo hype that he’s some neo-fascist, Hitler sympathizer. That’s just my opinion. You’re welcome to believe what you want too 👍

Good thing I’m not defending any neo-Nazis

Could you clarify? A sneaker net? Peer to peer?

I think the good news is, regardless of what gets done, people are hungry for real connections and the old internet.

.

Lol I don’t know if you saw but I tried and they deleted the top comment.

I agree but let’s be honest. That may be how it worked in revolutionary France but that wasn’t how it worked in the US in the 20th century. The “3rd Places” that most people were involved in were union halls, civic organizations, and social societies. We’ve largely forgotten that history, but it’s not something we can get back without organizing online first.

Welcome! !newcommunities@lemmy.world can help to find communities

Welcome! Some people have gripes with dot world for being the biggest, etc. but generally you’ll be fine.

You can always search for communities here as well. .

There’s many apps and frontends and too. Some are preincluded into lemmy.world. If you like old reddit try old lemmy for example.

You can certainly be censored on Lemmy, depending on your instance. But you can also easily go to another instance and still talk to everybody you used to talk to on the old instance.

Same thing with propaganda. Your instance can remove it from their hosted communities, or allow it. And you can go to an instance that feels good.

Does this lead to echo chambers? Probably.

More heads require more guillotines.

actually, if we could remove the sociopaths from power, it would allow academics to over. it’s not that hard to engineer a society where people aren’t like they are now. we’re learned behavior creatures. it’s possible to unlearn what we know now and teach our children to never be this way again.

This is the better path forward… That everyone just gets so sick of it that they drop it - I’ve actually seen a lot of that among my own friends over the last week (and we aren’t from America even). But the right wingers will never drop it because it’s their community and echo chamber, and that’s where the further dangers to democracy come into play when they’re all in the sandbox together without parents…

Gonna disagree here.

Humans have always had “social media”, but it’s not been directed by a cadre of oligarchs until recently.

I mean shit, humans have been sitting around the campfire telling stories to each other going all the fucking way back to forever. Sure, a campfire story isn’t a tweet, but for our monkey brains it’s essentially the same thing: how we interact with our social groups and learn what’s going on around us.

The problem is that the campfire stories couldn’t be manipulated into making your cavemen neighbors hate the other half, because half of them were totally pro rabbit fur while you’re pro squirrel fur.

You absolutely can do that and worse now, so while we’ve always had social media, we just simply never had anyone with enough control to make an entire society eat each other because of it’s influence.

There was not a 8 billion people supply chain back then.

I can imagine better and safer infrastructure, along with better funding alternatives than “please donate to your instance”. If people can make a living from maintaining an instance, service can be hugely improved. Think most people are running instances on their own spare time and resources.

If it’s free, why does it say “This post is for paid members only”?

There’s an add-on for Bitcoin called the “Lightning Network” that adds onion routing like Tor.

You should have backups with a passphrase, in different locations. So if the underground stash is stolen/corroded, or if the bank opens up your safe deposit box, then your money is still safe.

Is this easier? No. Is this what we’ve come to? Yes. Now that we’ve got a choice, it’s our own fault no matter which system fails us.

Gore is probably gross medical pictures. Matrix is a chat room program.

Better you dont

I would also be interested in a defence of capitalism that doesn’t come down to “but the USSR” or similar.

LOL. I’m not pro-capitalism, but thank you for proving my point.

I actually think, as one example, the US’s healthcare system should 100% be socialized.

I don’t have much time and energy for long discussions, but I just wanna share my feelings.

I feel like people here see capitalism as a very black and white thing. Either it’s there and corrupting everything or it’s gone and everything is awesome. Personally I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion there are some cases where the market can solve things more efficiently than a government institution, granted that this market is regulated and controlled by the government. I’m against unbounded capitalism like we see way too often nowadays.

But here in western Europe, while certainly not perfect, the situation is way better than in the US. The government controls companies, gives them a slap on the wrist if they get too greedy. And while it still poisons a lot that it touches, the competitive aspect of it also makes sure that many inefficiencies are cut. In my opinion even we are not regulating it enough, and I do consider myself left-wing. But completely abolishing capitalism doesn’t make sense to me either.

I think some things are better left to the government, stuff like healthcare, public transport, utilities like water or maybe even energy. Other things are better left private (but regulated): restaurants, barbers, supermarkets, most product development like phones, cameras, cars, computers, etc. There’s a huge grey area there that I don’t really have an opinion on.

But I don’t see how a society without capitalism can provide stuff like decent smartphones, game consoles, restaurants, festivals, etc. These more “luxury” goods rely on competition to innovate and provide decent experiences, and here capitalism works better in my view.

Human greed is not because of capitalism. Humans have been greedy from the very beginning.

The issue is greed, it’s the core problem in all these human systems, even democracy main issue is how greedy the politicians get.

You don’t solve greed by getting rid of capitalism, there seems not to be a solution for greed.

Just picturing that, as you type this, you have a swastika tattoo on your forehead.

“Why is everyone so judgemental? I’m not one thing! A person contains multitudes!!!”

Uhh… What?

If you’re a Trump supporter, I respect that you may be confused… But Elon Seig Heiled yesterday, so…

Yes, it is. But it’s not the only problem… In fact, there are a thousand other problems I wish we could all discuss with at least half the fervor as this topic.

But no. This is the topic.

Lol. Yes, I’m obtuse. You aren’t, but I am. Great argument.

Human nature? Greed? Racism? Biggotry?

There’s an upsetting number of topics… And now I’m depressed. Because life is depressing when you think about it too much, isn’t it?

(segregation was a legacy of capital interests pushing race theory to justify slavery)

Okay, buddy. It’s all capitalism. Good luck with your pamphlets! I actually like the idea of making Western nations question capitalism… This said, no. It’s not “nearly everything” wrong with the world.

Wake up, my friend. It’s 2025. Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.

I’m not Dee Renolds, but you may think of me as such, if it makes the world feel safer for you.

Even ostriches aren’t actually stupid enough to do that.

I did my research at the heritage foundation.

Yes of course.

But by what method or algorithm does this DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA system protect us from propagandists and censors?

What is a method in THAT?

Distributed tagging and voting? The grace of our benevolent moderators? Something else?

I mean, combatting propaganda and censorship is the #1 issue here.

And this is why I’m still on .ml there’s not a way to move on Lemmy. Yet

Oh cool, wasn’t aware of that.

Although I realize something like this might not be possible, i’d love (in a theoretical perfect world) a delegative/liquid federation. where you can “delegate” your blocklist be an aggregate of other people’s blocklist, which would allow a community of users independent of any admin to create a decentralized blocklist based upon mutual trust. To word it with an example, if I trust user A, who in turn trusts user B and C’s idea of who(/what communities) to block, i’ll then be blocking the same people as user B and C.

It could work in reverse too, if I trust user A who allows anime communities and user B who allows game communities, then I can see anime and game communities. If people trust me, they can see the same thing i’m seeing. Imo that would spur user interaction and make a decentralized way to not put any one person in power. If user B suddenly decides to only trust fascists, I don’t have to trust them anymore and those changes would be propagated.

I don’t know if that made sense, so sorry if that explanation is wack! It is loosely based on this concept that I read from awhile ago, for which I haven’t thought of the possible downsides.

It lacks some content

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if this isn’t the understatement of the century.

Peertube sucks ass, so much content simply not even there, most videos don’t work or they’re in either mostly french or russian, and this is on the biggest instances.

Now I might be stupid, but I really don’t see how peertube is an alternative. Odysee or rumble are my personal best bets, but in case of youtube it’s hard to find a real alternative in my opinion. Especially as a creator.

when you stick your hand on a hot stove and feel pain, it’s so you know to do something about it. you don’t want to shut that off.

Same here. Forums (about science fiction, aeromodelism, electric vehicles) have been important to me, and continue to be important in some fields.

Assuming you’re talking about this? cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

You were apparently correct haha

A decent amount of the larger servers are hosted outside the US, which might complicates matters. However, many also use Cloudflare (US based) as a proxy, which might make targeting the Fediverse easier.

Realistically if it is hit it’ll be through some sweeping “social media safety” bill that makes the cost of administrating a social media site as a hobby prohibitively expensive and/or time consuming, maybe even as on the nose as requiring the software to receive a specific certification before it’s allowed to open registration.

We’ve already seen the UK’s online safety bill cause many admins of small forums and communities to shutter their communities as a result, and who knows how Australia’s recent social media bill will affect Australian Fediverse servers & users

Yeah I finally decided to actually commit to getting off reddit would be unfortunate.

Dont worry, lemmings worry about some shutdown every other week. Been here since the API closures, and its quite nice (if you block the news communities)

Welcome! Any questions so far?

they can’t ban everything, the Internet is too big. people will find a way

they don’t really have to ban everything. for example, the persistent chinese internet-goer has the ability to view things he’s not supposed to see even though China bans large swathes of the internet.

but by making it as difficult as possible for most people and creating strict punishments for breaking the rules, you can effectively ban most things you want for majority of people

if posting on lemmy makes you an enemy of the state and the state is becoming increasingly harsh with its punishments… would you still be going on and posting regularly? i would certainly think twice.

You’re mixing multiple subjects here, one being the logistics of blocking a federated system like Lemmy, the other being whether the wrong person finds the content of such a system objectionable and labels it a “national security issue.”

I’m being a tad pedantic here, but my reason for pointing this out is that I think #2 is not far fetched at all, but I’m unsure of how feasible #1 might be and would love if somebody who knows more than I do would chime in.

EDIT: Looks like some have already discussed #2 in the other comment thread started by Teknikal.

Tildes as in tilde.club or something else?

NodeBB has added ActivityPub federation today. So that should work

you must be accepted after filling out an application, then you’ll get your ssh key validated and only then can you tunnel in and join properly

Tildes is invite only similar to lobste.rs

Fair

This is why some of us are so focused on spreading the load.

Yeah but it’s tough to get some communities going, like the equivalent of r/NFL on reddit here is basically dead. More people also doesn’t necessarily bring more interesting content, but it’s tough finding similar communities that I had subbed to on other social media

They’re called communities, but they’re still your subscriptions, so in this context it works.

Yeah suggestions have never been implemented well but I relied on just viewing what I subscribed to for content. That plus suggestions from others that turned out pretty well. Post monetization and the removal of 3rd party apps made reddit unbearable so I’m glad to move on

That’s exactly what I did on Reddit, I’d only look at subreddits that I subscribed to. The only reason I’m here is because Reddit 180d on their API support and killed third party apps.

I agree.

Of course, today Friendica is the most suitable software for managing local communities, thanks to the support of Activitypub groups and event calendars, in addition to the possibility of managing accounts shared between multiple users.

However, it must be recognized that it is a cumbersome and counterintuitive interface. If you want to create a project of this kind based on Friends, you must plan for continuous support from the administrators.

At the moment I would not exclude Friendica, but I would also evaluate other solutions:

Lemmy

It is not a social network and users cannot follow other users but can only follow communities. However, it is probably the easiest software in the Fediverse and is made specifically for creating communities.

Mbin

The interface is still dramatically confusing, but users can also follow other users. If it were possible to modify the interface and make it more pleasant, it could be a great option.

Instance A goes down, you can’t post as your user registered on instance A.

With cryptographic identities it’s possible that instance A should be up only when you are registering your user. It’s even possible with some delegated rights to another A user that only that user should be up when you are registering your user, the instance itself - not required.

I’m against the whole idea of federation like in XMPP or like in ActivityPub. It’s stone age. It requires people to set up servers. It ties users to those servers. And communities are unnecessarily ties to servers. And their moderators.

Ideologically Retroshare looks nicer, for example.

You need to have messages, containing all the data I’ve described (who messages whom or who messages which communities and time of a message should be used to reduce the amount of data, ahem, stored and transferred by nodes, and also messages should list their dependencies, like - if you are giving some user some mod rights and taking them away a few times in a row, you need to know what the previous message was and the one before it), and shared storage. Shared storage here kinda breaks the beauty, because storage is finite and in fact probably those machines contributing it would function a lot like instances, replicating only communities they want.

Above that messages layer there’d be the imagined social network itself. I suppose it comes down to CRUD signed by user, user signed by an instance root or better a user delegated that right by an instance root. So everyone can send CRUD messages on anything, but what of all this the client considers depends on what they trust and the logic of processing rights. DoS protection and space conservation here are a case of dependency management, kinda similar to garbage collection.

Then entity types - I guess it’s instance (people like that crap), community (I think this can be many-to-many with instances, instances are used for moderating users, communities for moderating posts), user (probably a derived user, from what I’ve heard but not understood about blind keys), public post (rich text with hyperlinks to entities by hash, everything is addressable by hash), blob (obvious), personal message (like public post, but probably encrypted and all that).

OK, dreams again