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Comment by convolvatron | Hacker News Reader

more importantly, moderation is an overlay. instead of worrying about what and what isn't acceptable speech, let subcommunities form with their own policies and they can curate their own worldview

that doesn't at all address bubbleism, but trying to decide which set of statements is 'ok' for everyone seems like a lost cause

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It could still address bubbles in a small way, by making them more accessible: if you can switch the overlay easily, you can get a peek at what other people see and understand their point of view a little better. You can also see what your favorite overlay is censoring and decide whether you're okay with that.

Also, one avenue to radicalization is a feeling that your views are being censored. If you get to choose your bubble, that argument is undermined, so extreme bubbles might have a harder time growing.

Bubbles by themselves aren’t necessarily the problem. I could live in art related bubble with fellow artists, and there is no problem there.

Insulated bubbles are the problem I think, these echo chambers are a problem, especially unmoderated or those thriving by hate, aggrevation and/or exclusion.

I like the default HN approach (Slashdot used to do this too): users can upvote/downvote, and by default you don't see content that's downvoted far enough, but if you want to see everything, you have the option. That seems to work well enough against spammers.

That's the same as reddit's system. HN hasn't fallen into the pit of lowest common denominator jokes is the strong moderation, but the system still has inherent issues with high-quality posts losing visibility because they're less appealing.

Well, no, reddit "supplements" it by banning pretty much every forum whose regulars don't match the owner's political ideology. There's no "uncheck this box to see all the stuff I didn't like" option there. I remember Reddit before they got ban-happy, and it was a much friendlier place then - and actually less overtaken by extremists.

You just invented Reddit. The same thing will always happen: you say "communities should moderate themselves" and then you get "communities" that scream that 'libtards' need to be murdered, etc etc etc.. So then what?

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The difference is that each instance is a completely separate entity. They live or die on their own. They have to secure their own hosting, figure out their own revenue stream, and deal with law enforcement on their own. It's reddit minus reddit.

The main difference with mastodon is that there isn't just one server hosting all of the material ; you can create your own mastodon instance, and likewise, if a hateful/illegal mastodon instance is found, people can avoid it and/or law enforcement can find it and squash it.

It's more analogous to email and shutting down an email server than shutting down reddit.

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