Comment on Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government

• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yeah, I’m working on something that I think should improve on things, but I keep bringing it up in the hopes that someone beats me to it. Here are some notes:

  • P2P network based on something like IPFS or Iroh (I picked Iroh)
  • a “community” is a distributed hash table, with posts, comments, etc as structured keys
  • everything is cryptographically signed by the author, so you can check for tampering (built-in feature of Iroh)
  • moderation is also distributed, based on “trust”; everyone is a moderator, and you “trust” others’ moderation either explicitly or by happening to moderate similarly; options are “like,” “dislike,” “relevant,” “report” (spam, CSAM, etc)
  • everyone contributes a little storage to the network, and you can adjust your storage quota

  Some interesting side effects of this design:

  • single namespace - no “instances” since hosting is distributed (so just “Technology” instead of “Technology@lemmy.world”)
  • everyone will see a different feed due to differences in moderation choices
  • no concept of “all” since you wouldn’t sync communities you don’t care about - I would add a discovery mechanism to help here
  • could be “sneakernetted” if countries block this service, provided you have a way to discover other users in each closed region
  • nobody can censor you since moderation is opt-in, so I literally cannot respond to takedown requests by governments
  • there’s a very real risk of echo chambers, but that’s on the user not centralized mods

  When launching, I’d have a default set of mods that automatically “block” things like CSAM, but users can choose to remove those and/or adjust weights. The idea is for moderation to be transparent, but also something users aren’t expected to change.

  The only hosting needs would be:

  • relay servers to connect people - relay servers would be federated and incredibly lightweight
  • storage instances - only needed in the early days until enough people join the network
  • website for documentation and whatnot

  It’s very early days (still working on the P2P part, but have a POC for the moderation algorithm). I’ll probably post once I feel like it’s actually useful, which won’t be for a while.

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  • Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Sounds like you’re mistaking filters for moderation.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      They’re essentially the same thing no? The main difference is in how they’re applied:

      • filter - selected by the user, may change multiple times in a given session (hashtags, title text, etc)
      • moderation - set by others or through moderation interaction, won’t likely change in a given session

      With Reddit/Lemmy, moderators are chosen by other moderators/admins, or are the people who create the community. It’s arbitrary and frequently leads to people mass-leaving the community if the moderation is poor. Other social media sites are moderated by algorithms or employees, which can also lead to people mass-leaving if the moderation is poor.

      This approach preserves the distinction, but leaves the control in the hands of the user. If moderation is poor, it’s something you can fix using features like:

      • moderation review - look at stuff that’s hidden, which impacts future moderation (with filters to show/hide based on confidence)
      • view/tweak moderation numbers - select from moderation “styles” (i.e. disregard votes, prefer votes, strict/loose, etc), or set coefficients yourself (advanced, would have a warning)

      Hopefully that’s an improvement. Maybe it’s not, idk, but I like the idea of removing centralized moderation.

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      • Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I don’t think your distinction between moderation and filters is correct.

        I would say it’s closer to filters are something to curate what you say, and moderation is to curate the community.

        Trust based systems are absolutely an amazing idea, but it is a very good idea to make it so once you have a level of ‘trust’ you don’t just apply filters, but actual moderation instead. Having a hybrid system, where you can apply filters from a certain set of users, but also allow purely trolling or immoral(ie cp and gore) to be fully removed so that new users or visitors to the community do not have issues.

        It also serves as a stronger prevention measure against racists and nazis.

        It also serves to preserve the correction function of communities, without allowing popular will to reject reasonable expectations just because they dislike them. That has happened a lot in redditor communities.

        I strongly agree that purely centralized moderation is bad, but some level of centralization of moderation is beneficial.

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