Comment on Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO

• Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I think the real trick should be having big communities in many different instances.

  It’s okay to have a big community on one instance, it’s like having a forum hosted at one server. The problem arises when most big communities are on the same big server.

  source

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Big communities are the problem. The power of thought control is even more present in moderators as it is in server admins. The idea that server admin are Reddit’s problem is a distraction due to that one especially abusive reddit admin but the same problems exists with moderators.

    Anything other than a vast array of tiny instances agglomerated into a single view will do. The alternative is the elite captured internet overton bubbles that have been rotting our minds for over a decade now. There should be so many that as a whole they are ungovernable.

    Moderation is the user’s duty, the position of internet janitor must be abolished as it is always abused.

    Once the repugnant moderators are finally finally gone, user based moderation tools will naturally follow, I imagine they will take the shape of a cross between Hollywood blacklists and uBlock origin.

    Collectively managed, user selected, personnalised block and boost lists.

    There will be many such lists to cater to different proclivities, they will be built on crowdsourcing in user collectives, AI powered reputation and ideology analysis per user history and simple rules like, minimum account creation date, server origin reputation, what cloud-words of communities they are posting to.

    Block lists, boost lists and content discovery should all happen on the user’s device and under their full control (and complete privacy).

    Anyway, none of that happens with community agglomeration by default. And if things remain the way they are then Lemmy is stillborn.

    source

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You’re basically suggesting bluesky style label services

      And no that can not be the only solution avaliable. You have probably never seen a well moderated community, or at least not participated in one for long

      source

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And few will review the filters they subscribe to.

        By making the default view a chaotic mess of free expression would spur the need for efficient and easy to use self-help user-centric moderation tools.

        The worse it really is, the more people will be motivated to figure out, basically clicking “subscribe” to a blacklist filter. It could make sense to even have a default suggestion blacklist that are strongly consensus base as one of the first thing the users is told.

        The alternative is the currently happening reddit-equivalent centralization which makes lemmy a pointless, far less popular reddit clone.

        There is no other alternative.

        If posting in lemmy.ca/c/books gets you zero views then nobody will post there instead of lemmy.ml/c/books which will get 10k views. So lemmy.ml/c/books will gets posts and grow and lemmy.ca/c/books will stagnate forever. Once in a a while the hegemonic community moderator will push their corruption so such egregious level that a tiny amount of users will revolt and create a 2nd community and it will get maybe 5% of the viewership of the big community.

        This is just the cost of freedom, the user HAS to participate in moderation and moderation has to be a collective effort. The alternative is handing over your thought patterns to an unaccountable anti-misinformation ideological cabal and they will shape your reality into whatever shape they see fit without you even knowing they exist.

        source
• Natanael@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  That already happens in the global popular feed though, I already see multiple variations of the same subs across different servers without subscribing.

  Any shared agglomorated view based just on name needs to allow subs to opt out (I run /r/crypto on reddit, and it’s for CRYPTOGRAPHY and I wished all the spammers would go and set themselves on fire) and you absolutely can not force it onto everybody.

  You’re also stuck with the same problem of less popular subs not getting many views because their content ends up last, because they don’t have as big dedicated userbases.

  You also get an even worse problem of malicious servers faking high popularity to dominate (like when /r/T_D manipulated reddit) if you do it the naive way. And new users won’t know the best place to post to (usually the place with the most reliable mods).

  You also can’t do thread deduplication without cooperating mods, so you get intense clutter. You also break apart sub specific culture if they get flooded by strangers.

  The only way you can even get close to a sane implementation with your take is by putting a banner at the top of every thread in that view with the host sub description and the rules and forcing everybody to agree before interacting. Otherwise off topic content gets upvoted when it shouldn’t, sub specific events gets ruined immediately, and people will get pissed when they get moderated under rules they should’ve read but didn’t.

  source

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    These problem should all be resolved client side by mutually curated block lists, boost lists, aliases list and many other methods and it should happen with the users final say. They must always be the one to choose which ideological blinders they want to put on. And when posting to any /c/books the default visibility should be the same assuming a neutral reputation server and a neutral reputation user.

    Anything else will lead to the one big community controlled by a small caste of moderator-kings forever as has happened on reddit.

    To me escaping the filter bubble through decentralisation is the winning promise for Lemmy and it currently falls far short of that. And every day that this remains the case, the lemmy elites are becoming more entrenched and better able to steer the narrative in their favor.

    source

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      See also slrpnk.net/comment/10312933

      What you’re suggesting can’t work

      I sympathize with some of it, but you’re going too far

      Content addressable posts like what Bluesky’s atproto does and cryptographic identity allows for portable posts and identities, and it even allows forkable communities as you can import and move entire conversations, and even mirror conversations that one team of mods may not like into another community

      And when posting to any /c/books the default visibility should be the same assuming a neutral reputation server and a neutral reputation user.

      Literally impossible according to the CAP theorem (database terminology) in a decentralized network where not all servers federate with all (often because they just never have interacted and thus don’t know of each other)

      You have to push the communities to participate in multiple parallel communities, that’s much more reliable. Together with a credible threat that the community can depose bad mod teams by forking, you have a much better chance of preventing bad mod behavior

      source

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I don’t believe there are any real technical hurdle to overcome, except overcoming the current system inertia (which might already be too late and easier to start over)

        The thing is that, if posting in say

        lemmy.ca/c/books

        instead of

        lemmy.ml/c/books

        Is the difference between 10k people seeing it and 1 person seeing it.

        Then people are going to choose the bigger reach community. And it will in turn grow bigger, attain critical mass and become the only /c/book that most people ever go to.

        This is catastrophic for decentralization. The more concentrated the attention becomes in that place the less it will make sense to post anywhere else.

        Then the small clique of mods at lemmy.ml/c/books become entrenched and all they need to do is manage public opinion to keep their place as the shaper of all book discussion on all of lemmy basically for as long as they want.

        source