On #Meta, #Facebook, #Censorship, and #FreeSpeech, a thread.
I have long been an advocate of free speech and encryption, and have personally been censored by Facebook for writing about Mastodon. Yet I am very much not in favor of the changes they are making. Why is this?
As I reflected on this question, I reflected back to the early days of #SocialMedia. And by that I mean the 1980s and 1990s.
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John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •As digital communication opened up, people could build their own communities. Free from the type of monetary pressures that existed before, free from a lot of outside oversight. Many people, for instance, didn't know how to access a #BBS or even have the equipment to do so. So self-expression could be unleashed, and was.
But if there are absolutely no rules, then whenever a group gets big enough, troublemakers will show up and ruin it for everyone. 2/
Lars Wirzenius reshared this.
John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •The #Debian project had to grapple with this. It took it awhile to learn that allowing poisonous people to run rampant caused more harm than good and drove away would-be talented developers.
But there were never absolutely no rules. Perhaps the owner ("sysop") of a #BBS would ban you for insulting their cat. Perhaps they let just about anything go, including the poisonous bits.
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Debacle
in reply to John Goerzen • • •John Goerzen
in reply to Debacle • • •John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •In most areas, you had a choice among multiple BBSs. If you didn't like the vibe at one place, you'd call another. Sysops liked callers, so they learned pretty quickly that they'd lose out if they were bad at moderating.
#Usenet didn't offer the same choice of providers for most, but there were usually real life consequences for behaving too outlandishly there.
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John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Some BBSs let people from minority communities such as LGBTQ+ thrive in a place of peace from tormentors. A lot of them let people be themselves in a way they couldn’t be “in real life”. And yes, some harbored trolls and flamers. each BBS, or Usenet site, set their own policies.
These had to be harmonized to a certain extent with the global community, but with BBSs especially, you could use a different one if you didn’t like what the vibe was at a certain place. 5/
John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •As social media became conceived of as very large sites, it became impossible for a person with enough skill, funds, and time to just start a site themselves. Instead of neading a few thousand dollars of equipment, you’d need tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and employees.
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John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Beyond that, the fact that we care so much about one company is a problem on two levels. First, it indicates how succeptible people are to misinformation and such. I don’t have much to offer on that point. Secondly, it indicates that we are too centralized.
And on that point, #Mastodon is a solution. You can join any instance, easily migrate your account from one server to another, and so forth. You pick an instance that suits you. There are thousands of others you can choose from. 11/
John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Some #Mastodon instances aggressively defederate with instances known to harbor poisonous people; some don’t.
And, to harken back to the BBS era, if you have some time, some skill, and a few bucks, you can run your own Mastodon instance.
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John Goerzen
in reply to John Goerzen • • •This thread is an experimental abridged version of my blog post at changelog.complete.org/archive…. I abridged it manually; no AI was involved. I am curious if people find this format useful or if they'd rather have a simple link to a blog post. (I note that Cory Doctorow does both, incidentally).
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Censorship Is Complicated: What Internet History Says about Meta/Facebook | The Changelog
changelog.complete.orgMichael Martinez :verified:
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Debacle
in reply to Michael Martinez :verified: • • •👍
Vagrant Cascadian
in reply to John Goerzen • • •Loved the thread, thanks!
As to splitting up a long-form post, it kind of felt like a flood on my timeline... although it is also possibly nice to be able to reply to specific portions. So... mixed feelings!
John Goerzen
in reply to Vagrant Cascadian • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to John Goerzen • •@John Goerzen I think I'd prefer to have the link to the blog post in the first post of the thread, to be able to choose which format to read
(but then I'm using friendica, so I get threaded view and my experience may be different from that of mastodon)
Fabio
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •apthread.kirgroup.net/t/6a/ce/…
😜
Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Fabio • •John Goerzen
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Lars Wirzenius
in reply to John Goerzen • • •njsg
in reply to Lars Wirzenius • • •@liw @valhalla I need to design a client that has a tree UI element to show the threading, that'll improve my Fediverse reading experience.
But even without threading, I'd like more Mastodon UIs to show posts in chronological order (and to have a concept of read/unread).
For me (currently with Brutaldon), usually the last part appears first when scrolling, but I think I've seen some posts showing up out of order too (possibly a consequence of how information reaches the instance?)
Marcos Dione
in reply to Lars Wirzenius • • •@liw #phanpy?
@jgoerzen @valhalla
Lars Wirzenius
in reply to Marcos Dione • • •