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The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Cohost and the Fate of Centralized Platforms
(audiovalentine.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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The content itself is harder to be deleted, because federation means that every post comment gets duplicated on all instances.
You do have a point regarding identity, and this is something that bluesky has solved already in a more elegant way. But this is also fixable with activitypub: as Takahe already showed it is possible to efficiently serve different domains with the same server. And on the extreme case, you can run your instance.
Like I said, the content did not become unavailable. My instance still has the data from every community being followed.
The only unrecoverable problem with feddit.de is that the domain was lost. If the owner had given the domain to someone else, one could (theoretically) get all the identities back. They would need new keys, but the accounts would still be salvageable.
As for "separate frontend": this is already possible and like I said it is a matter of improving the existing clients. We don't need a fundamental change in the protocols to get what you want, we just need to get more resources available to developers so that they can continue working and improving on what we have.
You are always free to run your own instance, and this is absolutely no different than "decentralizing" everything. The federation model where all users distrust each other degenerates into a fully p2p network.
Yeah, that's exactly the point! How do you think that a decentralized system is any different?!
If everything is "decentralized", you still must have a way to get rid of bad actors. Even nostr is set up in a way that you can not force your node into anyone else's relay.
Forgive my bluntness, but the more you try to argue you point the more it seems you have no clue what you are talking about. There are plenty of things to criticize about Lemmy and ActivityPub in general, but you are missing the mark on all of them.
Admins still need to have control over what goes into the servers. If you are running a server and someone pushes content that is illegal in your jurisdiction, you can not go around asking users to please stop it for you.
As a matter of governance, I agree with you: my instance is only blocking one instance and that's because they got reported for hosting CSAM. As an admin, I believe that my users are mature enough and smart enough to know how to filter out what they want to see.
But if you acknowledge that server admins can censor content on their servers, your complaint is only about the way that this is done, not the principle, and you agree that there needs to be an established hierarchy.
If you just want to see the content, you don't need an account. You can just pull the data, like opening up a different website.
What you want is the ability for some other server to push content to a server that the admin might have chosen to say "no, I do not want to have data from them, and I do not want to have my resources used by these users".
If you follow that logic, people should never be able to block or ban you? That makes no sense. Of course anyone should be allowed to block anyone else for whatever reason they choose. That's what defederation is as well. If you don't have the option of blocking or banning, stuff degenerates really badly and really quickly.
As I stated elsewhere, I don't really see how you can even have mods without admins.
But how is admins banning you from an instance any different than a mod banning you from a community? Why are you okay being banned from a community by a mod but not okay being banned by an admin from an instance? Isn't it the same conceptually speaking, just on a different moderation/administration level?
Indeed - that is why you should consider at least a little bit which admin you want to sign up with (i.e. which instance you choose). Choose an admin that wouldn't just do that willy-nilly (except maybe in cases where abuse/bad actors is obvious), but would only do it after careful consideration and maybe even with involvement from their users.
This is not an argument against the fediverse model of admins owning instances. It's just an argument for choosing good admins.
Again, then choose an admin or an instance that doesn't get defederated a lot. And as said elsewhere, you (or at least most people) don't want a scenario where you can't block other people or whole instances. Defederation is an important moderation tool.
Reddit does have an instance, in that sense. There's just only one. Reddit has admins too. They can even ban entire communities and you can't go to another instance to make the community again.
Also again if there are no instances I'm really at a loss for where these communities are hosted and who is legally responsible, for instance, to remove illegal content.
It sounds like nostr. Why don't you just use that?
That said, it's not realistic to have everything be public. But whatever, I'm not going to argue this any more.
"real" decentralization was never the goal of Lemmy or any project in the Fediverse.
Again, it seems like you are either stating the obvious or complaining that the people designing the applications have made different trade-offs that you would like.
There you go, a fully p2p reddit alternative. Now go away and be useful instead of complaining for the sake of complaining.
Well, that's a choice Beehaw made. Shouldn't they be allowed to defederate?
Quite a few people left Beehaw because of that, which is a sign that the decentralized model is working.
In your model, how do you deal with spammers, CSAM, trolls etc. ? Should every user do their own moderation for the 47k Lemmy monthly active users? Or should people create shared moderation lists? But then you still come back to the trust issues: do you trust someone else to add a user to a block list?
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.
Then it's not the same. You have communities like [email protected] or [email protected] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well put
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
All the feddit.de content is still available on https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] and all the other instances which where federated.