A centralized web aināt worth fighting for.
For now, paying for a VPS is relatively affordable. But as was noted elsewhere, moderation is the real cost. Last weekās terrible antisemitism and racist trolling and spam is a case in point. It led me to raise signup effort (registration application etc). That has kind of eliminated local-instance spam by 99% and the random ones are from existing users, who we kick out as they post spam stuff.
The main problem now is in federating with instances that can be hijacked by such trolls and have their content propagated all over. Nothing we can do about that in so far as we want to maintain existing federation bonds. The moderation cost is still significant as we have to take them down manually.
In the end, I think this is an ideal set up for our instance. We are not after numbers. In fact, we want to have a small number of users as a sustainable path, and hopefully support other individuals and organizations spin up their instances.
Very interesting read. Supplement this with James Scottās State Simplifications: Nature, Space and People
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9760.1995.tb00035.x
This is a brainstorm post, not a peer-reviewed paper on moderating fediverse :) Mods with finite resources cannot compete with automated systems. The signal to noise ratio will keep increasing if a new account can post 10 items immediately they join. The alternative could be restricted signups (signups by invitations, recommendations) even though a low hanging fruit could be temporal throttling for new users. Something got to give in the long run.
Good stuff @dessalines@lemmy.ml. Successful upgrade on these shores.
If you look at their funding sources ā and therefore the structure they are constrained in ā you will notice there is a certain pro-American, anti-other sensibility. Philanthropies, while they look all well meaning (and most evolve into reasonable places for social change), they also serve to ālaunderā the shady histories of their founders. Chen Zuckerburg Foundation does not sound as ironic promoting privacy compared to if this was done by Facebook.
Funding is a VERY tough position to figure out in human rights work, and while I know people need to be paid even when they are in so called non-profit (my preferred word here would be non-monetary gains, since profits could generally be social benefits, but I digress), I also believe wherever you knowingly take money from models you in strategic ways.
Also, consider this recent post on how social indexology reproduces hegemonic relations at the global stage: https://baraza.africa/post/10070
The article critically examines how the neoliberal ethos has influenced the racialised ranking of countries using indexes, or what I propose to call social indexology (SI). SI refers to the use of quantitative metrics to measure the performance of countries based on selected indicators, often drawn from a pool of Western and neoliberal variables associated with governance, corruption, development and other value-loaded concepts. The article critically examines the methodological, ideological and cultural shortcomings of SI and how it reinforces existing racial stereotypes about the presumed natural differences between āadvancedā European societies and ābackwardā Global South countries. These racialised imageries have continued since the time of Enlightenment, colonialism and slavery and persist even under global neoliberal hegemony today. The use of SI metrics for the purpose of quantified measurement and ranking gives it the appearance of being āscientificā and as such has the implicit ideological power of making the racialised inequality of peoples and countries much more acceptable and natural.
As someone who grew up in an African country and spent sometime in North America, I would say there are various reasons one can point to [language, economic conditions, nature of available technology etc]. Most conversations in my growing up were ephemeral + oral. Mobile phones started changing the landscape. Facebook and Messaging apps like Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp changed a lot of conversations from peer-to-peer to āmediatedā ones. I would say that most African-based folks are every social and active in discussions. They are just not in the platforms Westerns frequent, and increasingly so with closed-messaging platforms like WhatsApp groups.
I tried replicating it on enterprise but also canāt seem to. It had happened to me twice on lemmy.ml so I will keep an eye on it. It could be my firefox browser or automated post updates clashing with javascript blockers.
A perspective about NSO that I find important but not usually covered is how their success is related to centralized mobile phone operating software. One vulnerability exposes billions of devices. Perhaps if we had FOSS mobile OS options as mainstream installations, it would not be as easy for these companies to hack almost anybody at once.