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Hey remember how for years anyone interested in or working on decentralization was told "yeah but it's not moderatable, you need centralization for that"?
Isn't it funny how the two big centralized social media websites are now both "neo-nazis-are-cool-here" websites
Isn't it just a whole barrel of laughs
*Narrator voice:* But it was not, in fact, a barrel of laughs.
@cwebber one rotten laugh spoils the barrel
@randomgeek @cwebber This feels related to the parable of the Nazi bar: If you let one stay, it's a Nazi bar.
@cwebber well at least we've had to put up with 30 years of anonymous harassment and defamation in order to give those companies a "safe harbor" for content moderation, that was certainly a Section 230 well spent
@cwebber Thinking about that Youtube algorithmic moderation apologism talk Tom Scott made. 
@swift @cwebber I might have to rewatch it, the takeaway I remember is that algorithms are a necessary part of moderation at the scale of Youtube, with a passing mention of alternatives like Mastodon at the end, and not much consideration given to whether something of Youtube's scale should even exist. He didn't really talk about how alternatives could work or what the incentives are.
@csepp @cwebber ah, yeah. I should've said the conclusion is that you can't moderate with *just* algorithms. But then, in the fuzzier between space, I think I'm in favour of algorithmic support for human moderation: I think algorithms going "hey, this might be something maybe take a look" is fine, I think algorithms going "we're automatically shutting this down unless a human goes out of their way to intervene" is less so.
And yeah, the question of what should exist is a fair one, but one I'm unsurprised maybe didn't occur to him to question too much 
@cwebber Yeah, I think the real issue here is "too big to moderate" and they aren't saying that out loud so as not to become just another moderator of some small Podunk BBS; but really it's what we all need instead.
@cwebber I also heard a lot of "How could I trust a small instance with my data its just some guy it doesn't even have a GDPR policy"
Anyway Instagram is putting your face in ads with AI now and TikTok is tracking phones to catch whisteblowers
yeah but it's not moderatableWe know the benefits of decentralization. Are there any disadvantages?
@cwebber We are in the midst of a giant User Experience Research project.
Terms: testing to destruction of user willingness to endure Nazi abuse
Cohort: entire planet Earth
Budget: total revenue streams for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Threads
@cwebber
Today I looked up what power distance is and coincidentally high power distance overlaps with everything I dislike of those platforms
@anarcho_capableism thanks for posting! it applies to the OP but what I’m taking from it is a useful framework for understanding communication differences at work
For meet this is dependent upon if the leader has a screw loose or not.
Interesting to see it's a categorical thing too.
@cwebber we need to discount most "wisdom" that has come out of the past decades of so called "big tech". They are the result of specific political conditions, in a country that is almost tearing itself apart in dysfunction.
This doesn't help with figuring out a path for a sane digital universe for the rest of us. It means most of the phase space is still unexplored, the real difficulties of herding humans being obscured by the dominance of business models that should never have existed.
The people making those claims don't know what Internet Relay Chat is, or an even better example E-mail. They absolutely have no idea what they're talking about.
Also Moderable. 
@cwebber bad actors love fewer points of failure, especially when it's paired with undeserved positive reputations.
@cwebber It doesn't even make sense. Moderation is always hard, as I know from my days moderating on forums. Even when it's a small community. You always end up upsetting somebody. But it gets way harder at the bigger scale. Leading to attempts to automate it, which don't work well. Or to needing a huge team of people, which will still not be big enough, and which will always play it safe in one way or another, whether being too heavy handed, or too lenient, depending on the prevailing attitude.
@cwebber @beecycling kill all the instances with more than 100 monthly active users
@cwebber Something I highlight a lot on my newsletter is that the moderator-to-user ratio is orders of magnitude better on the fediverse.
There are not only significantly more eyeballs on accounts, but also those eyeballs belong to volunteers who are motivated by community building, not just for a paycheck.
There's also lot of nuance with good moderation, and when the person doing it is also member of said community they can be much more effective.
@cwebber I wasn’t active in that time frame but if I had been I would’ve pointed them at Usenet and then laughed at them.
@cwebber yet, they keep calling them "town squares." Yeah. Ok. So, go to the center of your town square, set yourself up in the middle with a nice mobile amp, and start spewing. You'll get yourself moderated alright!
@cwebber Do you mean Facebook and Instagram?
@cwebber I mean to be fair I'm sure there are many awful instances but you can defederate from them so no one sees them except themselves
@cwebber I never considered having to hashtag Who Watches The Watchmen before.
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@cwebber Two things can be true at the same time. Moderation is a big problem for all plaforms, and what we need is a community standard that protects the rights of users, with clearly defined rules, appellate process, and public oversight, not the whims of inidividual administrators or moderators. I can't even count the number of times I've been banned for the most innocuous things, or heaven forfend, questioning a moderation decision.
@cwebber yep! #Moderation on #Mastodon and #TheFediverse is much more effective than what #Meta or #twitter ever did
@cwebber@social.coop The thing is though that they could moderate their services, they choose not to.
@cwebber
2005 I joined a nice engineering forum
Occasionally users would get a request to critique a thread... seemed to work, if a couple members had similar complaint action was taken
As the site[CR4] grew the developers didn't want to act as referee/moderators
@cwebber It's the fate of all centralized, algorithm-based social media. China's TikTok isn't any better either.
As European citizen I sincerely hope the @EUCommission will ban all those foreign private or state-owned social media outlets, regardless from which country they originate.
@cwebber
Moderator was hired. This person had written their thesis on website moderation
Anything deemed political or in any way offensive to the moderator was removed, when asked for clarification, the response was
"You know what you did, see the rules"
Typical big moderation talk
The final straw was when moderator got kicked by their horse after coming up from behind a cross tied horse
Really got hyper sensitive when it was pointed out what a dumb thing they had done to themselves
It's also just not true. Full decentralization (distribution) is not top-down/imposed moderatable, it's quite possible from the other end though.
@cwebber if only the #DWeb movement was any different at all https://hachyderm.io/@pospi/113604986046444937
The Fediverse seems about the only open-access network that breaks that mold, really. #EternalOctober
@cwebber Even bluesky is kind of...eh...well it's not Neo-Nazi I guess.
I'm still concerned about the risks of moderator burn out.
But that applies to everyone doing moderation, centralized or decentralized.
@cwebber This post needs more boosts. You hit the nail right on the neo-nazi-loving, evilcorp billionaire head.
@cwebber now they ll ask , okay your product is good , but what if fb launches a feature which does exactly this
@cwebber As with every attempt at "moderating" it must be taken into account "what" are you trying to moderate. Moderating is not neutral, it has an inherent political aim, that by definition cannot be supported by everyone, even basic and seermingly obvious matters , like racism ... What is lacking is widespread culture and cognitive abilities to make necessaty distinctions...
@cwebber for decades and centuries, the primary request to new communication technologies was to render impossible or help circumvent censorship rather than impose it. We may have went somewhere terribly wrong this time.
@cwebber Hello there i am new on here and i hope its a nice and good app ?
