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
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.
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.