If we do need to actually use this... Buckle up:
Decentralized systems really aren't ready for a wave of trust, spam, safety, etc issues that scale by user count... Few people will want to spend the time and effort to be an active admin, even if you have solutions and you probably won't.
Better write up by Mike Masnick: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/07/16/gab-mastodon-challenges-content-moderation-more-distributed-social-network/
@dyn In many ways the fediverse is better suited than a centralized instance. Load gets distributed. Reported posts go to the local and remote instance mod. Mods on either side can block individuals or entire servers. Different instances have different mod preferences, folks flock to instances that match their mod prefs.
This happened a few years ago with Gab and the general response throughout a lot of the rest of the fediverse was to block the instance server-wide.
@dyn Differences in design also make it harder to get amplified on here (which is a good thing). You don't have algorithms to game to get yourself in front of more eyeballs. Less of a focus on gaming engagement to spread a message. This leads to folks complaining at first about discoverability, but it's in service of the longer-term health of discourse. It means things happen more organically.
@kyle Yeah I can buy that but sometimes having The Algorithm is nice/useful. It can be gamed though (look at what happened with YouTube). If there was some kinda balance that would be perfect.
@dyn One idea with my hashtag proposal was that it would allow people to write their own bots that would add tags to posts themselves, and people who trusted the intelligence of those bots could follow their hashtags. Again this is just a proposal, no one has implemented my idea of allowing users to post private hashtags on other posts that others could follow.
@kyle Yep, but I already worry about InfoSec.exchange dying randomly or the admin giving up. And if I haven't backed up my profile, I have to make a new one, etc.
@dyn This week might be a bad time to make an argument in favor of the long-term stability of large centralized, private social networks :)
Migrating to a new instance in the face of the issues you describe would be a LOT more seamless than the migration many people just did this week.
@kyle Yeah, I think the crowd source idea is cool, I just worry about getting it off the ground or if you do trust that person, then their bot has a bug at 3am and takes down a bunch of the wrong stuff, etc.
@dyn The idea there is that the bot is simply slapping a private hashtag on things and folks who follow that hashtag can treat it like others that they either follow or filter. So a bot with a bug at 3am would simply mean there are tagged posts you either see or don't, until the bug is fixed.
@dyn This is the full text of my proposal. I'm not saying it's perfect, but its an idea that I do think has promise if it gets implemented. https://source.puri.sm/liberty/host/smilodon/-/issues/6
@dyn This is also why I'm glad people are already naturally kind of spreading out as they migrate here. Infosec folks found infosec.exchange, others other instances, instead of everyone all going to mastodon.social.
Taking advantage of federation helps address scaling concerns both in terms of actual load and with moderation. Distributing governance and capacity across different towns and cities. Better and more scalable than everyone in the world living in NYC.