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Your explanation of federation that it "works like email" will be misunderstood (transfem.social)

submitted 3 weeks ago by CyberTailor@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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The linked post shows how most non-tech people's understanding of email is very very different from most of the people here.

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[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 30 points 3 weeks ago

This isn't really Lemmy's idea of federation, it's just ActivityPub, the underlying protocol. Having a mechanism for jumping servers is unfortunately quite complicated and it isn't clear how it should be done or if it is even possible.

Lemmy does allow you to export and import your settings though, so you can kinda do it but you lose your history.

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

AFAIK the Nostr protocsal sorta let's you hop around, but it's full to the brimwith cryptobros, and I'm still not sure how moderation works there.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 10 points 3 weeks ago

Yea moderation becomes a big problem once you can't actually block people. I don't like that Nostr describes itself as censorship resistent or even censorship free, that's not a good quality.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

...

I'm not very familiar with Nostr, but knowing other distributed protocols, you can just hide messages from selected users in client.

censorship resistent or even censorship free, that's not a good quality.

Also, wtf did I read?

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Censorship-free implies that moderation is impossible. If you don't have moderation, your social media will turn into a Nazi bar.

you can just hide messages from selected users in client

That's not good enough. First of all, users don't want to have to block people before having a good experience. Users don't want to deal with moderation themselves, but they also don't want mean people, harassment and nazis. It's not easy to recruit moderators for online forums, not a lot of people want to deal with that stuff.

But secondly, client-level blocking is not effective. It does not stop those bad users from continuing their bad behavior. In the case of Lemmy, it also doesn't stop their votes from still affecting your feed.

So yes, censorship-free platforms are not good because censorship-free means moderation-free, and users don't want that.

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 weeks ago

If you don’t have moderation, your social media will turn into a Nazi bar.

Worse, it will immediately devolve into a CP haven. The dark web is dark for a reason.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 0 points 3 weeks ago

The dark web is dark for a reason.

Yeah. The reason is Google doesn't care about them.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

I think you (and the Nostr people as well) are just muddling terms here. Censorship is about an external 3rd party (usually the Government) preventing you from seeing things you are potentially interested in, not (as in the case of Lemmy) your service provider and their trusted moderators helping you curate your social media experience. If you are unhappy with the moderation you can easily switch to another instance and use other communities.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 3 points 3 weeks ago

I mean I don't disagree, but that's clearly not what Nostr means when they say censorship resistent, cause by that logic, Gmail and Facebook are as censorship resistent as Nostr is.

I don't think there really is a great difference either. Censorship and moderation are just two perspectives on the same thing. One has bad connotations, the other generally good connotations.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I disagree, and Gmail and Facebook do engage in censorship by hiding stuff the advertisers that pay for it don't want you to see or be themselves associated with. That's not even close to what moderation is and confusing the two things as "just two perspectives" is not helpful at all, as you end up justifying censorship through that.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

First of all, users don't want to have to block people before having a good experience.

In general conversation in distributed protocols is opt-in, not opt-out. If you see something you don't like in Briar/Tox/Jami, then it is only because you actively seek it.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 5 points 3 weeks ago

Okay, but that is not how the fediverse/Lemmy works at all and I don't think Nostr works that way either. You can easily see content that you did not explicity ask for (i.e. comments/posts from any user) and I don't think Nostr is different in this aspect (though I could be wrong).

[-] MITM0@lemmy.world -4 points 3 weeks ago

Why do CryptoBros live rent-free in your head ? One of Lemmy's donation methods links to a Cryptocurrency wallet So are you gonna leave Lemmy ?

They're annoying yes, but can be ignored

[-] CyberTailor@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

ActivityPub spec allows content-addressed IDs, just nobody implemented them and now it's too late.

https://gitlab.com/spritely/golem/blob/master/README.org

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 4 points 3 weeks ago

The problem as I understand it is basically that user IDs in ActivityPub are intrinsically tied to the domain on which the user registered, so you can't really move a user from one domain to another.

[-] CyberTailor@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's not true, all ActivityPub IDs are URIs

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yes exactly - those URLs contain the domain name, so you can't change servers for a user as their ID is tied to the domain.

[-] CyberTailor@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

They can be URNs (like magnet:), as shown above.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 1 points 3 weeks ago

Well no they can't, because that's not part of ActivityPub. In fact ActivityPub mandates HTTP URLs. Of course, any extension can choose to change that, but since nobody is actually supporting magnet links, it's not relevant.