![](https://media.kbin.social/media/38/b6/38b660dd2759eed678b1ece5b6c1a0ee1643c3a8c28de7601cafd5be013353c4.jpg)
![](https://fry.gs/pictrs/image/c6832070-8625-4688-b9e5-5d519541e092.png)
Wow, I’ve never heard music with such a stunning lack of soul before! 10/10 I bought every album.
I write StayGrounded.online a newsletter about establishing healthy boundaries with the digital world.
Mastodon twit.social@JustinH
PixelFed Pixelfed.social@JustinH
Wow, I’ve never heard music with such a stunning lack of soul before! 10/10 I bought every album.
Exactly, well said.
When I switched to Substack it was just a Mailchimp alternative (I don’t think Mailchimp moderates what they send out either). They were a service, not a platform. But since then Substack has added a lot of social elements. And now that I’ve been made aware of their stance, I’m planning my exit ASAP.
Exactly. FTA:
"Trust and safety” departments are kinda like “Human Resources” departments. They exist to help the company avoid expensive lawsuits and expensive PR blunders. These departments, I assume, are comprised of good-hearted people who care deeply about their work and the well being of others. But they are fighting a battle that the companies do not actually want to end.
It’s literally in the article lol
Very well said all around, (and in many fewer words than it took me) I may actually quote you in the future! Hadn’t seen that 2018(!) Esquire article before today either. Kind of sad “Twitter without Nazis” wasn’t a more compelling selling point. Just speaks to the power of network effects, I suppose.
I look at that as as proof it wasn’t written by GPT.
Yeah. People should have a right to speak their mind, but on the Fediverse nobody is forced to listen and therein lies the difference, IMO.
The success metric is a vibrant, happy community, not MAUs or engagement numbers, so they make decisions accordingly.
YES well said. An instance is measured by it’s quality, not it’s profitability.
Any civility rule that is enforced with greater priority than (or in the absence of) a “no bigotry” rule serves only to protect bigots from decent people.
There’s a saying I think about a lot that goes “The problem with rules is that good people don’t need 'em, and bad people will find a way around 'em”.
The best thing about human volunteer mods vs automated tools or paid “trust and safety” teams, IMO, is that volunteer humans can better identify when someone is participating in the spirit of a community, because the mods themselves are usually members of the community too.
Yeah, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Fediverse doesn’t solve any of the problems that come up when a bunch of people talk about stuff they’re passionate about. The problems Federation solves is the incentivizing and spotlighting of the sorts of toxic behavior we see on corporate social media.
If a Fediverse instance grew so big that it couldn’t moderate itself and had a lot of spam/Nazis, presumably other instances would just defederate, yeah? Unless an instance is ad-supported, what’s the incentive to grow beyond one’s ability to stay under control?
I fear if these federated systems do grow popular enough
If an instance did grow “too big to moderate”, it would surely be defederated from, yeah? I’m struggling to think of a situation where responsible admins from well-moderated instances would willingly subject their users to spammers from an instance (no matter how big) that can’t control itself.
The key word here is “large”. From the article:
“[Fediverse] instances don’t generally have any unwanted guests because there’s zero incentive to grow beyond an ability to self-moderate. If an instance were to become known for hosting Nazis —either via malice or an incompetent owner— other more responsible instances would simply de-federate (cut themselves off) from the Nazi instance until they got their shit together. Problem solved, no ‘trust and safety’ required”
You’re not incorrect, but I think the thing that differentiates this era of social media from the “before times” (I was there too) is that it’s significantly easier for non-techies to join. The internet nowadays has significantly more diversity of perspectives than back then. Those differences are exploited and exaggerated by social media companies to generate engagement. It seems to m that the fediverse model allows for diversity and sanity (or at least not algorithmically-encouraged _in_sanity).
Thanks for reading and the comment!
I personally wouldn’t judge any Yankees fan living in Boston who chooses to remain closeted about their allegiances and only discusses sports online.
Absolutely. The essay does actually address that towards the end:
There’s no shame in turning to the internet for supplementing socialization when doing it “better” isn’t feasible. It’s easy to imagine situations where someone might not have access to a community that keeps them sane. A gay teenager stuck in rural Alabama. A woman born into a controlled religious society. A New York sports fan in Boston. Some days in life, the best we can hope for is making it until tomorrow in one piece.
It’s unfortunatley really, really hard to get noticed whatsoever as an artist without social media these days if you don’t have any industry connections.