There are various reasons Lemmy succeeded as a Reddit alternative where others failed. One of the underappreciated ones is probably that the devs were communists. I know that sounds a little strange
I think this makes way more sense than the OP. The OP seems like a leftist, so that’s probably why they reached that conclusion.
But I agree, the real solution wasn’t that a certain kind of witch was banned, it was that the various forms of witches could be quarantined. The Lemmy devs had no control over other instances using the platform to host stuff they disagree with (e.g. exploding heads was/is a thing), they did have control over what content was allowed on their hosted instance, which was by default the most popular.
The thing that saved Lemmy, imo, wasn’t being leftist, but providing a separate space for the most extreme leftists (lemmygrad) and keeping the main instance pretty tame. The leftists could talk about leftist stuff in their instance, the right wing could talk about right wing stuff on their instance, and the main instance had the more moderate people. Sure, some crazy stuff appeared on the main page from time to time, but it was easy to write off as “that weird instance” instead of something that represents the platform as a whole.
Other projects didn’t have that separation, so the early content was dominated by extreme views from whichever group felt motivated to join, and frequently that was far-right nonsense. With Lemmy, actual communists were quarantined by the nature of federation, and many instances blocked their instance, so there were a lot of places that didn’t have that content that attracted moderates.
I’m actually working on my own Reddit alternative, and I’m trying to be extra careful in how I approach moderation so I don’t repeat the same mistakes as other alternatives (happy to discuss if interested). Lemmy has done a great job, whether intentional or unintentional, and there are some great lessons to be learned.
For the sake of honesty, I need to mention that I’m myself leftist. Communist, in fact. (I even had a Lemmygrad account, and I deleted it for reasons unrelated to political disagreements.) I’m just not willing to play along witch hunting, nor the sort of false dichotomy that has been so common nowadays, regardless of political views.
And funnily enough, I said the above partially because of Marxism - the ideology (superstructure) is in large part a result of the base, and in this case the base is the platform structure. A unified platform structure will eventually lead to an unified ideology; while the ActivityPub leads to a loosely connected network, not just of instances but of ideologies too.
The other reason why I said the above was Ruqqus. I was there, and I saw exactly what happened: the platform started rather friendly and wide, then the alt right started seizing control, and everyone else got exiled to Discord - including the developers+admins. It’s basically what I described above: they said “we don’t burn witches here”, and suddenly all VOATfugees shitted the place.
I’m actually working on my own Reddit alternative […]
I hope that your platform succeeds. Seriously. Another nail on Reddit’s coffin doesn’t hurt.
Just for curiosity, do you plan using the ActivityPub protocol, or something similar?
Maybe later, but federation isn’t an initial goal.
I want a completely distributed system like BitTorrent or IPFS, so all data is stored on user devices instead of centralized servers (might have some servers to help with availability). I want moderation to be distributed as well, but I’m trying to figure out a way that can promote diversity instead of just falling into the hands of whatever group comes first (i.e. if with a voting model), or fracturing into lots of smaller groups (i.e. web of trust).
I feel moderation needs to be good from the start, so I’m holding off on integrating with other services until I figure that out.
A unified platform structure will eventually lead to an unified ideology
Perhaps. Communities help, but the real issue is quality (or at least diversity) of moderation (I.e. the admins of instances until FT mods are chosen). Reddit worked well because it had pretty good moderation where it counted.
Distributed system? Madman! You’re going a step further! Mad respect for that, seriously. Now I want to see your project to get successful.
Regarding moderation, did you see this text? I feel like it’s perhaps worth a try; I don’t expect it to devolve into web of trust-like “feuds” as there’ll be always people working as links between multiple groups, but it also prevents the “first come, first served” issue that you mentioned.
Great article! I was thinking along these lines, so I’m glad to see a formalized version of it.
What if participants could automatically block the malicious peer, if they discover that the peer has been blocked by someone the participant trusts?
That’s essentially what I’m after. Here’s the basic mechanism I’ve been considering:
Users report posts, which builds trust with other users that reported that post
Users vote on posts, which builds trust with other users that voted the same way
Posts are removed for a given user if enough trusted people from #1 reported it
Ranking of posts is based largely on #2, as well as suggestions for new communities
Users can review a moderation log periodically (like Steam’s recommendation queue) to refine their moderation experience (e.g. agree or disagree with reports), and they can disable moderation entirely
And since content needs to be stored on peoples’ machines, users would be less likely to host posts they disagree with, so hopefully very unpopular posts disappear (e.g. CSAM).
So I’m glad this is formalized, I can probably learn quite a bit from it.
I think this makes way more sense than the OP. The OP seems like a leftist, so that’s probably why they reached that conclusion.
But I agree, the real solution wasn’t that a certain kind of witch was banned, it was that the various forms of witches could be quarantined. The Lemmy devs had no control over other instances using the platform to host stuff they disagree with (e.g. exploding heads was/is a thing), they did have control over what content was allowed on their hosted instance, which was by default the most popular.
The thing that saved Lemmy, imo, wasn’t being leftist, but providing a separate space for the most extreme leftists (lemmygrad) and keeping the main instance pretty tame. The leftists could talk about leftist stuff in their instance, the right wing could talk about right wing stuff on their instance, and the main instance had the more moderate people. Sure, some crazy stuff appeared on the main page from time to time, but it was easy to write off as “that weird instance” instead of something that represents the platform as a whole.
Other projects didn’t have that separation, so the early content was dominated by extreme views from whichever group felt motivated to join, and frequently that was far-right nonsense. With Lemmy, actual communists were quarantined by the nature of federation, and many instances blocked their instance, so there were a lot of places that didn’t have that content that attracted moderates.
I’m actually working on my own Reddit alternative, and I’m trying to be extra careful in how I approach moderation so I don’t repeat the same mistakes as other alternatives (happy to discuss if interested). Lemmy has done a great job, whether intentional or unintentional, and there are some great lessons to be learned.
For the sake of honesty, I need to mention that I’m myself leftist. Communist, in fact. (I even had a Lemmygrad account, and I deleted it for reasons unrelated to political disagreements.) I’m just not willing to play along witch hunting, nor the sort of false dichotomy that has been so common nowadays, regardless of political views.
And funnily enough, I said the above partially because of Marxism - the ideology (superstructure) is in large part a result of the base, and in this case the base is the platform structure. A unified platform structure will eventually lead to an unified ideology; while the ActivityPub leads to a loosely connected network, not just of instances but of ideologies too.
The other reason why I said the above was Ruqqus. I was there, and I saw exactly what happened: the platform started rather friendly and wide, then the alt right started seizing control, and everyone else got exiled to Discord - including the developers+admins. It’s basically what I described above: they said “we don’t burn witches here”, and suddenly all VOATfugees shitted the place.
I hope that your platform succeeds. Seriously. Another nail on Reddit’s coffin doesn’t hurt.
Just for curiosity, do you plan using the ActivityPub protocol, or something similar?
Maybe later, but federation isn’t an initial goal.
I want a completely distributed system like BitTorrent or IPFS, so all data is stored on user devices instead of centralized servers (might have some servers to help with availability). I want moderation to be distributed as well, but I’m trying to figure out a way that can promote diversity instead of just falling into the hands of whatever group comes first (i.e. if with a voting model), or fracturing into lots of smaller groups (i.e. web of trust).
I feel moderation needs to be good from the start, so I’m holding off on integrating with other services until I figure that out.
Perhaps. Communities help, but the real issue is quality (or at least diversity) of moderation (I.e. the admins of instances until FT mods are chosen). Reddit worked well because it had pretty good moderation where it counted.
Distributed system? Madman! You’re going a step further! Mad respect for that, seriously. Now I want to see your project to get successful.
Regarding moderation, did you see this text? I feel like it’s perhaps worth a try; I don’t expect it to devolve into web of trust-like “feuds” as there’ll be always people working as links between multiple groups, but it also prevents the “first come, first served” issue that you mentioned.
Great article! I was thinking along these lines, so I’m glad to see a formalized version of it.
That’s essentially what I’m after. Here’s the basic mechanism I’ve been considering:
And since content needs to be stored on peoples’ machines, users would be less likely to host posts they disagree with, so hopefully very unpopular posts disappear (e.g. CSAM).
So I’m glad this is formalized, I can probably learn quite a bit from it.