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Why Decentralized Social Media Matters

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  • Decentralization solves some problems, sure, but it creates new and arguably worse problems. Let's take Lemmy for example. Power hungry mods can and do still ban you from communities that you've never interacted with and there's nothing you can do about it. They can and do still remove your posts when they didn't actually break any rules and there's nothing you can do about it. There's still only really 1 big community per topic, because having a dozen tiny communities that all repost the same things but only have a dozen different people commenting on each one just doesn't work, which leads straight back to having centralized social media with centralized mods who control the narrative and bans.

    The point of social media is to interact with people, and splitting up a topic over a dozen tiny barely used instances isn't a better way of doing that than having one big centralized one. The only real benefit of decentralized social media is that it can't just disappear because one company turned it off.

    Reddit turned into a complete shitshow of power abusing mods, agendas being pushed, and circle jerk safe spaces for a particular political sides followers.......but almost every Lemmy instance is the same, many significantly worse in terms of how authoritarian they are.

    Then there's the federation/defederation issue, where the instance you signed up to won't allow you to access some other instances and their communities because the owners/admins don't want you to, yet if you make another account on a different instance and don't hide that you're the same person as the other account, some mods will then ban you for "alt accounts" lol. Much like how reddit had no problem with alt accounts, but some mods and later admins did.

    Most people don't care about decentralization, they just want a place where everyone they disagree with is banned. That's why the left LOVED twitter pre-musk buyout, and then hated it since. That's why the right love truth social, cause there are no left people there. Now that reddit doesn't allow just outright death threats and calls for violence against people they hate, the left who love it are now claiming it's a "right leaning" platform and looking for other places.

    Some of us just want a place with zero bans and where unless you break the law with your speech, zero censorship and moderation. Some of us believe that self moderation is all that's needed - if you don't like what someone is saying, just block them and move on. Don't call for their opinion to be silenced and their access to be taken away.

    Power hungry mods can

    Power-hungry people will do stupid shit, power corrupts. The more diluted the power the better.
    The issue is that before mass social media was a thing, people would just block someone they deemed annoying. Nowadays people whine for the mods to block undesirables because they got offended.

  • I think it'd be great as well for giving better control towards what the user can block. Like servers or regions.

    Respectfully I don't care for German or Indian meme culture. It's just noise I have to scroll by.

    You can already block instances in your profile. Just block feddit.org , never hear from me again, but also you won't see much german content. And you can deselect languages in your profile, too.

  • Is there any Mastodon server that actually has an experience closer to Twitter? For example, having search enabled

    Doesn’t mastodon leak a ton of metadata

  • As you mentioned, Reddit had a huge problem with moderators who banned without just cause so this is in no way related to decentralization. If you want zero moderation then you're free to join one of the instances that have that as a guiding principle, but that is almost inevitably where all the nazis end up, which is why the rest of us avoid them.

    I feel like you didn’t even read my post, as every sentence you wrote was already addressed.

  • Oh, that's so much worse than Reddit, since there are no power hungry mods there /s

    Completely missed the point I see.

  • Yeah that paragraph really got me. Very far from what is actually going down on reddit these days.

    What’s “actually going down” on Reddit these days?

  • Most people don’t care about decentralization, they just want a place where everyone they disagree with is banned. That’s why the left LOVED twitter pre-musk buyout, and then hated it since. That’s why the right love truth social, cause there are no left people there. Now that reddit doesn’t allow just outright death threats and calls for violence against people they hate, the left who love it are now claiming it’s a “right leaning” platform and looking for other places.

    You had me at first, but you lost me here. "reddit doesn’t allow just outright death threats and calls for violence" is not a correct description of what's going on over there and consequently the rest of that sentence is nonsense, just like the one-dimensional politicizing.

    Some of us just want a place with zero bans and where unless you break the law with your speech, zero censorship and moderation.

    Sure, "some" certainly want that, but that's not the point of the fedi/lemmiverse and you know it. You took a very loooong breath to get to this in the end, even making it political along the way. Some people will upvote you only because they didn't take the time to finish reading.

    Also - the law is different in different countries, and the fediverse is global. "Unless you break the law with your speech" really isn't the point you think it is.

    What in your opinion is going on at Reddit right now?

    I mentioned politics explicitly. I didn’t hide that. I mentioned it because politics has taken over almost all social media, especially Reddit and Lemmy.

  • They really are, wished they had more diverse communities like reddit.

    Reddit pretty much only had tech, humour, atheism, racism and cp its first 5 or 6 years as a platform.

  • Decentralization solves some problems, sure, but it creates new and arguably worse problems. Let's take Lemmy for example. Power hungry mods can and do still ban you from communities that you've never interacted with and there's nothing you can do about it. They can and do still remove your posts when they didn't actually break any rules and there's nothing you can do about it. There's still only really 1 big community per topic, because having a dozen tiny communities that all repost the same things but only have a dozen different people commenting on each one just doesn't work, which leads straight back to having centralized social media with centralized mods who control the narrative and bans.

    The point of social media is to interact with people, and splitting up a topic over a dozen tiny barely used instances isn't a better way of doing that than having one big centralized one. The only real benefit of decentralized social media is that it can't just disappear because one company turned it off.

    Reddit turned into a complete shitshow of power abusing mods, agendas being pushed, and circle jerk safe spaces for a particular political sides followers.......but almost every Lemmy instance is the same, many significantly worse in terms of how authoritarian they are.

    Then there's the federation/defederation issue, where the instance you signed up to won't allow you to access some other instances and their communities because the owners/admins don't want you to, yet if you make another account on a different instance and don't hide that you're the same person as the other account, some mods will then ban you for "alt accounts" lol. Much like how reddit had no problem with alt accounts, but some mods and later admins did.

    Most people don't care about decentralization, they just want a place where everyone they disagree with is banned. That's why the left LOVED twitter pre-musk buyout, and then hated it since. That's why the right love truth social, cause there are no left people there. Now that reddit doesn't allow just outright death threats and calls for violence against people they hate, the left who love it are now claiming it's a "right leaning" platform and looking for other places.

    Some of us just want a place with zero bans and where unless you break the law with your speech, zero censorship and moderation. Some of us believe that self moderation is all that's needed - if you don't like what someone is saying, just block them and move on. Don't call for their opinion to be silenced and their access to be taken away.

    If you want a place with no bans, then start up your own instance. Nobody can ban you. Sure they could defederate from you, but they couldn’t ban you.

    If you want a platform that can’t ban anyone AND can’t block anyone, well you could make your own platform but I wouldn’t expect many to join you because nobody wants that.

    We have the freedom to say what we want. We don’t have the freedom to force people to hear it though.

  • If you want a place with no bans, then start up your own instance. Nobody can ban you. Sure they could defederate from you, but they couldn’t ban you.

    If you want a platform that can’t ban anyone AND can’t block anyone, well you could make your own platform but I wouldn’t expect many to join you because nobody wants that.

    We have the freedom to say what we want. We don’t have the freedom to force people to hear it though.

    The point is that everyone else can still ban you. I’m not sure you even understood my original post if that’s your response.

    Here we don’t have the freedom to say why we want, because you’ll be banned instantly for saying many things that aren’t even controversial unless you’re deep inside one political side.

  • You can already block instances in your profile. Just block feddit.org , never hear from me again, but also you won't see much german content. And you can deselect languages in your profile, too.

    Just FYI: blocking instances only blocks the communities on the instances, not the users if they post outside of their instance.

    Example: If you blocked Pawb.Social, you'd still see this comment from me on Lemmy.World.

  • I feel like you didn’t even read my post, as every sentence you wrote was already addressed.

    Where did you address them? You just claim that

    almost every Lemmy instance is the same, many significantly worse in terms of how authoritarian they are

    Without any explanation for why that would be the case whereas I have not have at all had the same experience. Therefore, I don't see how it relates to federated social media at all.

    Furthermore, you just state that

    some of us just want a place with zero bans and which unless you break the law with your speech, zero bans and moderation

    And to just "block them and move on". Honestly, I don't want my time using social media to be spent having to personally block multiple accounts (by people who will probably make more accounts) because they're racists, misogynists, foreign bot farms, etc. Furthermore, I don't want my content and my comments to be used, knowingly or otherwise, to prop up comment sections and threads that are spreading disinformation and bigotry.

    If you want that, that's fine. Go to one of those places. But from what I've seen, they are usually where nazis end up congregating, which is one reason why I (and at least some other people) prefer to avoid them.

  • Where did you address them? You just claim that

    almost every Lemmy instance is the same, many significantly worse in terms of how authoritarian they are

    Without any explanation for why that would be the case whereas I have not have at all had the same experience. Therefore, I don't see how it relates to federated social media at all.

    Furthermore, you just state that

    some of us just want a place with zero bans and which unless you break the law with your speech, zero bans and moderation

    And to just "block them and move on". Honestly, I don't want my time using social media to be spent having to personally block multiple accounts (by people who will probably make more accounts) because they're racists, misogynists, foreign bot farms, etc. Furthermore, I don't want my content and my comments to be used, knowingly or otherwise, to prop up comment sections and threads that are spreading disinformation and bigotry.

    If you want that, that's fine. Go to one of those places. But from what I've seen, they are usually where nazis end up congregating, which is one reason why I (and at least some other people) prefer to avoid them.

    I addressed them first by saying that with decentralised there are just *more * mods who can and will ban you unfairly and with no recourse, and other mods/admin who literally get to decide what instances you can even see in the first place. Most of them just defederate from any instance that doesn’t highly censor views they don’t like. Many already decided to defederate from any meta instances that ever join the fediverse ffs.

    Lemmy moderation is even more authoritarian because of how Lemmy started in the first place, and then because of the mods who moved from Reddit to here. They hated that their power was taken away on Reddit so they jumped ship and now get to make their own rules without having to answer to Reddit admins.

    If you don’t ban people they don’t need to create multiple accounts. You just block and move on and they’ll continue doing their thing while you don’t see it. Win-win.

    You’re a typical “everyone I disagree with is a Nazi bigot” who craves censorship and authoritarian leadership because you can’t handle people having differing opinions by the looks of it. You talk as if “Nazis” are everywhere lol. If you can’t even be in the same virtual space as a “nazi” without losing your mind the issue is with you.

  • The point is that everyone else can still ban you. I’m not sure you even understood my original post if that’s your response.

    Here we don’t have the freedom to say why we want, because you’ll be banned instantly for saying many things that aren’t even controversial unless you’re deep inside one political side.

    I haven’t had that experience here. I’ve had some unpleasant dustups with some leftists here but beyond having comments removed for being pro capitalist by .ml admins, I haven’t had any issues with moderation. Sure I’ve been heavily downvoted but I’ve never gotten banned.

  • I addressed them first by saying that with decentralised there are just *more * mods who can and will ban you unfairly and with no recourse, and other mods/admin who literally get to decide what instances you can even see in the first place. Most of them just defederate from any instance that doesn’t highly censor views they don’t like. Many already decided to defederate from any meta instances that ever join the fediverse ffs.

    Lemmy moderation is even more authoritarian because of how Lemmy started in the first place, and then because of the mods who moved from Reddit to here. They hated that their power was taken away on Reddit so they jumped ship and now get to make their own rules without having to answer to Reddit admins.

    If you don’t ban people they don’t need to create multiple accounts. You just block and move on and they’ll continue doing their thing while you don’t see it. Win-win.

    You’re a typical “everyone I disagree with is a Nazi bigot” who craves censorship and authoritarian leadership because you can’t handle people having differing opinions by the looks of it. You talk as if “Nazis” are everywhere lol. If you can’t even be in the same virtual space as a “nazi” without losing your mind the issue is with you.

    then because of the mods who moved from Reddit to here. They hated that their power was taken away on Reddit so they jumped ship and now get to make their own rules without having to answer to Reddit admins

    Combined with your earlier comments, this seems like saying that moderators only moved to Lemmy because they wanted more power which seems almost revisionist. Moderating is a shitty job, a lot of people do it just because they care about their online communities, and many moderators moved from Reddit to Lemmy specifically because they cared about their communities and how what Reddit was doing was ruining them.

    Most of them just defederate from any instance that doesn’t highly censor views they don’t like

    So, what is your alternative? We should force people to be on platforms that they don't want and have to spend all day blocking people who thrives on antagonizing them? You can just go on those other instances, you don't have to interact with the ones that are, in your words, so authoritarian.

    If you don’t ban people they don’t need to create multiple accounts. You just block and move on and they’ll continue doing their thing while you don’t see it. Win-win.

    Why wouldn't they create more accounts to get around the blocks? Not to mention other reasons for making more accounts, for example making it seem like your opinion has more widespread support than it actually does.

    You’re a typical “everyone I disagree with is a Nazi bigot” who craves censorship and authoritarian leadership because you can’t handle people having differing opinions by the looks of it

    And now it sounds like you ran out of things to say, so the only thing left is to try and discredit my character. I am fine with people having different opinions than I do, that's how the world works, but it sounds to me like you're suggesting that discussing income tax rates is the same as disagreeing with someone about whether genocide is acceptable or not. They're not the same thing. Having good-faith discourse and pushing disinformation are not the same thing.

    It should be on the onus of the person being a dick to stop being a dick to get to interact with others in their communities, not for the people who aren't being dicks to spend a bunch of their time and energy having to filter out all the dicks. If you disagree with that, you can whenever you want, go to a different community where people have the same opinion as you, but saying that people only want moderation because they can't handle someone else's opinion without "losing their minds" sounds disingenuous at best.

  • Reddit pretty much only had tech, humour, atheism, racism and cp its first 5 or 6 years as a platform.

    So, we're right on track?

  • So, we're right on track?

    Yeah we're kinda doing well. Retaining 50k mau from the initial user burst is really good and Lemmy was technologically really bad at the time. Its a lot more developed today. I think next time reddit fucks uo we spike to over 100k users and steadily grow from there.

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