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Terkala t1_j0vzin6 wrote

Reply to comment by carlthome in [D] Will there be a replacement for Machine Learning Twitter? by MrAcurite

I honestly find this "moving to Mastodon" movement confusing.

They're upset that Twitter won't censor the people they want to censor, so they move to a platform where they can each, personally choose who gets censored? How is that not just Twitter with an autoblock feature?

What is the value proposition there? I sincerely do not see the point.

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22goodnumber t1_j0wlgzn wrote

I'm not on Twitter or Mastodon, but I think the point is that it's federated. Twitter has a single owner who determines how the platform behaves. That includes content moderation, but also other things like which messages become visible, how many ads there are, etc. If the current owner, whomever that might be, changes the policies in a way you don't like you're out of luck: that's what the platform looks like for you now. If you'd invested a lot of time and energy into that platform you're either stuck with it or you lose that investment.

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On the other hand, a federated protocol is more like email. If I don't like how Google's spam filter works, or I don't like their UI changes I can move to another email provider who does things differently and I can still exchange emails with my friends and family. Similarly, if my current Mastodon server changes owners and they start moderating in a way I don't like I don't have to give up on Mastodon, I just change servers.

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To me it seems like these federated protocols are a smarter way to build a community as you're not beholden to the whims of one person who might decide to buy the platform - you simply can't buy all of Mastodon just as you can't buy all of email.

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It could be that some people just don't like Elon. Maybe even most of them. But I think maybe some of them realized that building a community on a platform like twitter is fragile and Mastodon seems less fragile.

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Terkala t1_j0x00co wrote

I agree with all of your points, decentralization is a better method.

Edit: But why now, when a year ago all of the same things were happening, just with a different group of people in charge, and a different group of users being censored?

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BossOfTheGame t1_j0wlmad wrote

The thing that pushed me over the edge was banning of accounts that promoted other social media platforms.

This is a clear violation of what Musk has expressed his view of free speech absolutism is: maximum free speech within constraints of the law and safety.

There's no safety concern here, there's no law concern here. That policy was pure censorship. Of course he has the right to do that, it's his platform, but I found it wildly hypocritical.

The value proposition of Mastodon is that it's distributed and censorship can only exist at a federated level. If you don't like it, you can move servers.

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hattulanHuumeparoni t1_j0yaja2 wrote

If you really think moderation is cencorship, you can go to 4chan. Let me know how the experience is there.

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Terkala t1_j0zv9yj wrote

>If you really think (one who presides over a discussion) is (a person who supervises conduct and morals), you can go to 4chan. Let me know how the experience is there.

Replaced the terms with the December 2022 Miriam Webster dictionary definition of the terms, to help elaborate on your argument. I think everyone can see the quality of your argument better if the terms are directly referenced from a dictionary definition.

But regardless, I'm not here to be your strawman, where you put other people's arguments in my mouth. If you require someone like that, I think your bathtub rubber ducky would be most appropriate.

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hattulanHuumeparoni t1_j0zwtn4 wrote

>They're upset that Twitter won't censor the people they want to censor

Yeah pretty rich of you to complain about bad faith arguments. But since you don't mind appeals to authority, here's the wiktionary definition of cencorship

>The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated.

How exactly does that apply to a federated protocol, where people are completely free to move to other instances, or even host them?

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Terkala t1_j12yqa6 wrote

If you're using Wiktionary, instead of a reputable dictionary like Miriam Webster, Cambridge, or Oxford, that tells me all I need to know about the quality of your argument.

Also the constant strawman arguments, shifting topics each reply, and resorting to personal attacks in a professional subreddit. But those are things you're doing to yourself, I'm merely pointing out why I don't want to engage in discussion with you.

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hattulanHuumeparoni t1_j131qnz wrote

>the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons

>a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books, films, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas:

These are from Cambridge. They don't really apply to a federated social media either: nothing is prevented to be seen, people can just choose not to see it if they want.

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WokeAssBaller t1_j0w4hy8 wrote

It’s not realistic, it’s just “Elon bad” so I must virtue signal and leave

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