I was reminded today of a post by @kyle where he said he was pessimistic about pressure from #netizens asking for some groups to be blocked from their internet experience.
And he was probably sitting at a browser using uBlock to do exactly that.
There is nothing wrong with wanting an automated method to filter portions of the internet. Could it be misused? of course. But publicly curated ad/malware/resource abuse/privacy/cookie blocking lists seem to do a reasonable job.
@wsaewyc I prefer solutions that empower the user to control their own content instead of solutions that put ever greater power into central authorities.
@wsaewyc https://source.puri.sm/liberty/smilodon/issues/6 this is the approach I'd like to take, for instance, for Librem Social.
@kyle Can you provide a successful example of such a scheme which cannot easily be gamed by a small bot net?
@wsaewyc Yes, the example I just gave in the smilidon issue--a user must choose to *opt in* to the user-provided hashtags by following people. They then choose how they apply them (filters vs searches).
@kyle When it is successfully implemented I will eat crow pie. In the mean time, I mention there are other wheels which roll, and that you use.
@kyle In other words, allowing users to select the block lists to which they subscribe, if any? To be able to create their own? To be able to whitelist vs. blacklist?
I am not saying an app needs to always cater to the tyranny of the masses. But saying it must not be done for one class of speech but shipping a product blocking another class of speech seems … inconsistent.