This is the best phrase Iāve read this year, Iām pretty sure
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Wow, looks like Iāve got plenty of posts to catch up on in hereā¦
Hereās my latest as I reflect on 2024 Reflections 2024: Parenthood
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last post of the year!
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Another reflection, this one for 2024ās music in my life: Reflections 2024: Music Rewind
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The reason I was asking about webmentions the other day:
Edit: separate thread here.
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Curious to know your position on something: If a platforms decides to do no moderation whatsoever but at the same time also decides to do no algorithmic curation of any kind which means that no content is proposed to you by them and itās entirely up to you to build your own network graph and your timeline is entirely the result of your decisions, would you be ok with that setup?
Because the point youāre making in the article is a reasonable one but at the same time itās when things become muddy that these discussions break down.
For example, you wrote
So instead of communicating, for instance, āif you see a flagrantly racist post, report it to staff, and weāll take it down,ā the BS stance on the matter is āif you see a flagrantly racist post, use this optional feature to label it as racist, and other users can opt-in to your moderation judgment about that post while we as a platform continue to host it.ā
In the case of a āflagrantly racist postā that decision is somewhat easy. But what about the infinite number of situations where the decision is not, in fact, easy? What should they do then?
Should we just follow the moral compass of a US based company?
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I am a certified Twitterlikeā¢ hater and I thought this was quite a good read.
Iām not a fan of knee jerk banhammer applications, but at the same time itās pretty obvious that trumpeting free speech is often just an excuse for not doing anything, the Singal person you linked about being an obvious example of someone repeatedly crossing the line without consequence.
Offloading moderation entirely onto the community is also a complete cop out, Iād rolled my eyes when I read that Bsky featured mass blocklists as a touted feature, but I hadnāt really thought of it from the perspective of not having to do the work.
Iād just assumed it was a handout for the people that really love having echo chambers that they can sally out from as they please, without the isolation and loss of network involved in actually going somewhere away from other people to build one.
I suppose my ideal of moderation for a platform is simple rules strictly enforced without exception, anything that doesnāt pass the smell test is banned immediately, anything that passes is left untouched and users can take or leave it as they wish.
But that isnāt really compatible with a profit seeking motive. Bsky et. all are old wine in new bottles, and the people crowing about how itās like twitter but better are going to have a rude awakening when the VCās come to collect return on their investment
This is more or less what Mastodon seems to be like from my limited forays into its various instances and it just results in ghettoization. Every instance has its list of pet peeves they donāt let you talk about and utterly insane things theyāve decided are fine, actually, and they all block the instances that diverge too far from their lists.
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If the platform is even a little bit open, shared blocklists can be implemented.
Notably, Mastodon has lets admins import CSV block lists through the web UI but provides for no way to sync or easily remove entries. I imported such a list during a spam wave and now thereās no easy way to re-federate with instances that have cleaned up.
So if youāre going to do shared blocklists at least do it properly.
Well, I donāt know the legal landscape internationally, but in my country āno moderation whatsoeverā would be illegal. If we amend that to ālegal bare minimum of moderation,ā thatās a line that a lot of companies have been already pushing the boundaries on. That aside, it sounds like your proposed counterbalance here is āno algorithmic curation of any kind,ā by which Iām guessing you mean automated recommendationsā¦ and thatās something Iām already so used to about the sites I use that I honestly forget Iām not supposed to take it for granted.
I could go into more thoughts about this, but I didnāt know if sharing my post link here would generate any discussion, so if you want to dig further into it let me know if I should go make a separate thread.
Thanks. :3
That sounds like the open web to me. Personal websites generally arenāt being āmoderatedā unless their operators break the law so blatantly that the authorities must crack down to retain legitimacy, but I have to find sites and collect their feeds (when available) on my own.
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How would you best do this with no central authority? Have each block list loaded as a table thatās referred to rather than as input for one megalist?
Then to modify a block table a listed instanceās mods validate themselves as cleaned and pass the validation to the list maintainer for removal, then you load the new version of the list?
I put up a post about a handmade journal case I did over my last few days of vacation. Guaranteed to have bright colors and overly busy fabric designs!
https://www.thefrugalgamer.net/blog/2025/01/01/handmade-custom-journal-case/
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For blocklist import via CSV in the Mastodon web UI, it ought to allow records in the CSV to indicate a server shouldnāt be blocked anymore. Support for blocks that expire could be added so the federated network can recover from future spam waves.
For people syncing blocklists using the API there is not much the project can do.
It is 9 AM and I want to fill a tub and scream into it.
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I live with somebody like this at the moment. I feel your pain. My housemates all complain about it and say theyāre done picking up the slack and theyāre going to make him do them, then they tidy up after him anyway. Itās driving me insane.
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Got me a shitload of posts. Gonna list 'em chronologically.
Might submit this for the year in review eventā¦
This used to be an about page on my old site.
https://starbreaker.org/grimoire/entries/nine-š„-to-know-me/index.html
Iāve taken to updating my /now page monthly, and it gets archived, too.
When I find poems in the public domain that I like, Iām posting 'em on my site.
I want to post more about heavy metal albums and books from my collection, too.
And hereās a small courtesy for people pulling my RSS feed.
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Yesterday I ranted about humans, today I rant about machines! Technically itās still humans not letting me just talk to the machine directly, but still.
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Yay! I got this in my feed reader, LOL. I was wondering when the big site update was coming.
This is a great idea. Maybe I should start a āflorilegiumā of other peopleās (public domain or free-to-share) poems on my site.
Iām familiar with āoĆ¹ sont les neiges dāantan,ā but didnāt know all the women mentioned in the poem. I ended up going down a wiki rabbit hole about HĆ©loĆÆse. Fascinating stuff.
Now those are two solid, effing rants. I like the variety of things you talk about on your blog. That post about the unhelpful professor stays with me, I feel like it sums up so much about college.
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2025 is largely going to be a year of figuring myself out and expression of identity. so i definitely donāt know what iām doing, but iām sure going to have fun figuring it out as i go
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