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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

>a workable plan that enables more free speech, [...] That approach: build protocols, not platforms. To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface.

As I've commented before[1][2], discussing protocols and advocating for them is a popular topic but it does not make progress.

The real issue is funding and trying to make humans do what they don't want to do.

If HN is overrepresented by vanguards of decentralization and free speech, why are a lot of us here on HN instead of running USENET nodes and posting to a newsgroup such as "comp.programming.hackernews" to avoid being moderated by dang?

If most of HN knows how to set up git and stand up a web server, why do most of use Github instead of running Gitlab on a home pc/laptop/RaspberryPi or rent a Digital Ocean vps?

It's because "free & open protocols" weren't really the issue!

A lot of us don't want to run a USENET node or manage our own git server to share code.

[1] the so-called "open" internet of free protocols: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231960

[2] free & royalty free protocol like Signal still doesn't solve the "who pays for running the server" problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232499

View on HN

I think what many don't realise is that it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive. And by that I don't mean centralized technical or organizational structure, but rather stuff like a culture of downvoting destructive, inflamatory or snarky comments, a good and mostly invisible moderation, a strong focus on certain topics etc.

To have a good discourse it totally helps if that one guy over there isn't screaming at everybody that has a slightly different opinion while he is shitting onto the table in front of the rest of us. It helps if everybody agrees what goes to far.

Federated, decentralized and free plattforms need to deal with this their own way. What if the free plattform you are hosting is used by a ring of child molestors and pedophiles? Do you accept that freedom for all also means freedom for them? Or do you enforce your own law on your own turf? While this is an extrem example, anybody who tried to run such a thing in a meaningful way had to ask themselves the same question. I am btw. aware that child molesters are a common scenario used by politicians to justify yet another crack down on encryption.

The question here is, what kind of plattform would you want to run? One where the discussions enrich the lives of a thousand people, show some of them perspectives they never had? Or rather the lawless zone where everything goes and the stronger person with the louder capslock and the meaner insults wins? Or something conspiratorial?

And on a related note, the ability to browse forums with vastly different themes, cultures, and tolerance has always been there. The big networks solve a discoverability problem for end users (and get accused of being the problem when they [don't] stop certain things being discoverable). Moderation complaints have revolved around the platform companies promoting or refusing to promote stuff to their widest possible audience even though other websites exist, and I don't see how the biggest 'filter' providers don't run into the same issue (with the existence of niche and manually customisable 'filters' failing to be a 'solution' in the same sense many people are unhappy with being able to reach Gab followers but not Twitter ones)

> To have a good discourse

...is not the primary purpose of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Which may be a better way of stating the root problem than focusing on either protocols or platforms.

The crowdsourcing of moderation via the downvoting mechanism has a pitfall however that I won't get into here except to say there are mobs of irrational, bias, and laziness that get their fix of dopamine by clicking a downvote arrow rather than having the cost of time/effort to add something qualitative to discussion.

> it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive ... stuff like a culture of down-voting destructive, inflammatory or snarky comments ... a strong focus on certain topics etc.

Cultures of upvoting/downvoting are completely orthogonal to whether protocols or applications are free software or proprietary. Neither does the subject matter focus on a news aggregation site.

> What if the free platform you are hosting is used by a ring of child molestors and pedophiles?

Guess what? The telephone network is used by "rings of child molesters and pedophiles". And strangely enough, nobody expects the phone companies to "deal with this". Same goes for a decentralized instant messaging and chat platform.

Also, the government and corporate opponents of privacy routinely inflate the prevalence of rings of supposed terrorists, pedophiles etc., because bringing them up instills excessive fear and clouds our judgement. You write that you're "aware" of this, but apparently you're fine with it, as you're making that the center of your argument.

> Do you accept that freedom for all also means freedom for them?

Your question is phrased ambiguously, to manipulate us into believing that a free decentralized communications platform means that we agree that people are "free" to molest children, whatever that means.

Well, you should be free to pick up the phone and call whichever number you like, without having to first prove you're not a child molester. And the same goes for putting up some flyer on a neighborhood notice board. And for putting up a website.

> One where the discussions enrich... or rather the lawless zone...

If-by-whiskey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

Let me rephrase your argument, so its tractable.

The risks are overblown, and so its ok to create places with decentralized freer speech.

Firstly- I removed the parts where you stated that this is like the phone network.

Phone calls are temporally limited, once you are done with a call its over. You can't hear that voice again, or relive that conversation, except through memory.

Text on a forum combines the worst of phone calls and books.

Not only is it easy to create and respond in real time (Like a phone, and unlike books or letters), but it is also persistent so people can read and participate in that moment of emotion repeatedly (like a phone call).

These are great and greatly bad depending on how they are used, but they are dramatically different from the way a phone call impacts human beings.

Which brings us to the second point - it isn't only the information, it is the emotion, or in combination the "content" of speech on forums/social media that matters.

Having actively tried to push for free speech and then managed speech, I can guarantee that without moderation, forums/social spaces collapse. They fall victim to our neurology, and the scale of people on it.

So you can't avoid the use of force here, the question is the amount of force being used, and whether it is commensurate to the specific event it is being used to mitigate.

Fair point regarding the difference between phone conversations and textual forum/group discussions.

However - I disagree with your bottom line. Perhaps on the level of the _individual_ forum/channel/board you may be right. But not on the level of the _platform_. Specific forums/spaces/channels etc. which collapse - collapse, that's a problem for their founders and members.

In that respect, I'll make a different analogy: Mailing lists and newsgroups. Also not a perfect analogy, but - a mailing list or NNTP server does not have to police anything, but individual lists often need to set up some sort of moderation to avoid collapse into flame-wars etc.

So you can't avoid the use of force here, the question is the amount of force being used, and whether it is commensurate to the specific event it is being used to mitigate.

The last line of my comment was a quote, after which I intended to comment:

The mailing list might not be able to avoid the use of force (maybe). But the platform can avoid it.

The telephone analogy is a good case against your position.

The modern equivalent of the telephone network is the internet, specifically the cables, routers and switches that allow us to communicate.

The owners of said equipment are not liable if child pornography is send through their wires.

That is not a problem, we don’t close roads because child pornographers use them.

But the end point is a totally different matter.

But to the point: moderating the (tone of) the discussion, is essential for a good discussion. You can’t have the trolls interfering.

I think moderation and thus limiting free speech somewhat is actual fundamental essential for a good debate or discussion.

Yet it did work quite well in the older net. Wasn't perfect, but it was working for many. Was it just the entry barrier and limited demographics? I don't know.

I think strongly moderated places always develop some form of echo chamber, even the interesting ones. So I don't believe in the dichotomy of lawless zones and unique perspectives. On the contrary, I think strongly moderated communities will more likely develop orthodoxies.

Easy answers are often popular, but that phenomenon is true in almost all communities.

> Was it just the entry barrier and limited demographics?

Also possibly the difference in sheer volume of content and people. It's much easier to moderate when you have at most a few dozen people discussing a given topic. HN is dealing with thousands of people who sometimes, during really heated discussions like the GameStop ones, post literally at the same time and make more content than a single moderator or even a team of moderators is capable of reviewing, even with community help in form of reports or flags.

> I think what many don't realise is that it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive. And by that I don't mean centralized technical or organizational structure, but rather stuff like a culture of downvoting destructive, inflamatory or snarky comments, a good and mostly invisible moderation, a strong focus on certain topics etc.

I'm over it. I see many comments that politely present the opposing view get downvoted to oblivion. It isn't just the "inflamatory or snarky" comment. Dissenting opinion is censored on this platform.

I made the mistake of reacting to it the other day and was punished for commenting on moderation. Fair enough, I guess, but the reason for the comment was exasperation at the downvoting of opinion.

And it bites that downvoted comments just fade away, so later readers can no longer consider it, or respond to it. Remember that I am talking about unpopular opinion, which may sometimes be objectively wrong, but not rudely presented. It's common for such additions to the thread to be obliviated through moderation. (I know about showdead, but only learned about it recently).

That's the thing about free speech: we often don't like what other people say. The price we must pay for that freedom is to be exposed to speech we do not like. It's a cost, that we must pay because we are imperfect. We make mistakes, we think incorrectly from time to time. So I say, let it all ride. On HN at least, the culture of thoughtfulness and intellectualism serves to curb the worst rudeness, but let us be willing to expose ourselves to views that we don't agree with. Let's be prepared to have the argument, and possibly be persuaded.

So the next time someone says "You know, I think Trump was an alright president, for <reasons> .. ", curb your outrage. Let it ride, and engage with the argument.

I don’t think I would visit HN if the voting system worked like this. I like hearing the popular opinion, but I also like hearing the popular contrary opinion and very often - like with your comment - the popular contrary sits right below the popular.

What I don’t like reading is “zinger” comments - stuff like “X is bad and people that think X is good are dumb”.

From what I’ve seen - these are the comments downvoted the most. I don’t dislike these comments because they cause me outrage, they just don’t make me feel the same way that well thought out comments - popular and unpopular - make me feel.

Can I comment on moderation since this thread is about censorship and free speech? I guess we'll find out.

Seems I've lost a point. Someone took exception to what I said above. Not sure how I went wrong, but if enough people feel similarly, then my post will fade away. It will be censored. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: I've got a point back since I wrote this comment. I won't keep editing this comment each time my comment is voted for or against. It's enough to say that people sometimes downvote when they don't like an opinion, or the way it's expressed at least, even if it is not rude.

Although it does seem a little meta, I'd like to do you the favor of telling you why I downvote every time I see someone complain about their downvotes or their post being grayed out.

It's boring. It doesn't make for good conversation. It's not falsifiable and there's nothing to be said about it. You're just unhappy about it, and it just bores me.

Maybe you feel like you're being censored, but really there can only be so much noise amidst the signal. And really, truly, an overlong and doubly updated comment where you are telling us to have our way with you is the least signal you could possibly have generated.

There are lots of complaints to be had about HN, but this is not one of them.

And to be even kinder and open to changing my mind, I thought I might see which comments you were unhappy about having cast into the gray. Would I see some glittering gems worth rescuing?

Unfortunately (predictably?), said comments employ double question marks or otherwise read angrily, or otherwise are simplistic and disagreeable and bring very little insight to the table. (And, you have a number of comments that have not been downvoted, so it's not like this is complete randomness or an inability on HN's part to accept basic facts. There is a correlation to be observed, one that perhaps you're ignoring.)

HN isn't perfect, but I think you doth protest a bit much.

It's not my comments I'm arguing for.

I don't think I'm that hard-done-by. I'm referring to gray comments that don't seem to be particularly hostile, but are just, say, conservative (for example) in nature.

Perhaps I've forgotten, but I don't think I've complained about being downvoted. Today doesn't count. It's not a complaint, just an observation in a thread about free speech and censorship.

Thanks for the feedback.

I've heard people 'just ask questions' or 'make observations' or similar a million times before, and you most certainly have comments that fit the profile of what you've been arguing in favor of. It reads like a deflection, as a result.

Moreover, this is kind of what I mean by comments that aren't falsifiable, that don't really add anything. You're not giving me anything to work with when you gesture vaguely to theoretical comments rather than specific examples. All I have to go on are yours. And yours make for very good counterexamples.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, and in the interests of honesty, [1] is a comment that I thought was an example of one downvoted unfairly. It wasn't the first one I've seen downvoted where I thought "Why? It seems they just don't agree." And it probably won't be the last. But it is the first and only time where I've questioned the downvoting in a comment [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25737065 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25739135

I appreciate you coming back to the thread to give an example. However, the comment appears to no longer be downvoted or flagged.

This illustrates a common misconception about HN's propensity to vote one way or another. Your reply came less than two hours later, whereas the voting isn't complete for a while longer and so the score still has plenty of time to change as the audience continues to process it. This phenomenon (and related handwringing about "is HN reddit now?") can be observed as far back as 2009, and likely even further[1].

You might notice that the comment you replied to (which I would argue is actually demonstrably factually wrong in a few ways, and yet) recovered from its time in the depths beyond. This is likely owing to the fact that it was at least tactfully written, so replies could be written without having to work around the expletive content of the original comment; yours did not, arguably because it was not.

Anyway, this all sort of sidesteps the fact that comment karma was never intended to represent the value of a post or how worthy it is for distribution. It's more like a temperature gauge allowing you to perceive honestly how your comment makes others feel. And disagreement is a feeling too. In the words of 'pg, downvotes have always been used for disagreement.[2]

My first reply to you originally earned one downvote. And I figured it would, from at least one person, but I said it anyway because I believed it should be said. And you have that same ability too. Don't let the numbers get to your head. Just try and have normal conversations with people and the points take care of themselves. (As an example of this, I broke even on my original reply after some time, and gained more in my second reply.) It's rare that people with the ability to read a room and at least attempt to be agreeable in some way end up censured.

Thanks for coming back to this thread! I feel like this became a little more substantive than it was when it began.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721455

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

"You might notice that the comment you replied to (which I would argue is actually demonstrably factually wrong in a few ways, and yet) recovered from its time in the depths beyond. This is likely owing to the fact that it was at least tactfully written, so replies could be written without having to work around the expletive content of the original comment; yours did not, arguably because it was not."

Yes, I did notice it had been upvoted. The fact that is was no longer gray caused me to question whether it was the comment I was referring to. :-) But it had to be, of course. And so I take your point.

I obviously went off "half-cocked", as I have done a couple of times lately. :-)

Generally speaking I appreciate your points, and I like HN.

Below your [2] link (the PG comment) is one [1] by a petercooper. I think I share petercooper's concerns about downvoting being a means of registering one's disagreement. If your opinions drift too far to the edges of the Overton window, then you stand to be downvoted. I don't like that.

I do take your point that comments that are polite and well formed (so to speak) tend not to be penalised in the long term. I'll watch for that in future.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=395197

You're both right in a way, inane comments complaining about downvotes aren't substantive, but I also see a lot of thoughtful and frankly poignant comments bite the dust because they're just slightly outside the decidedly narrow Overton window of HN discourse.

At the end of the day, on a smallish platform like this, the downvotes do also hurt. Some days it seems more users feel like downvoting everything than upvoting anything and unlike reddit, very few downvotes immediately result in censure.

That's fair. Comments on HN don't have a permalink, do they? If so I would have made reference to one that I actually commented on the downvoting of.

Regarding your assessment of my comments, I'm beginning to wonder if your looking at mine and not someone else in the thread. I went looking for the "twice updated" one where I tell you all to have your way with me. I went right through my comment history and can't for the life of me figure out to what you are referring.

every comment here has a permalink. tap on the timestamp.

So they do. Thanks. :-)

Maybe they're just collapsing/folding the comment and sub-comments, not really mean to downvote ?

In all cases ILLEGAL speech can’t be allowed to remain on platform.

There needs to be a high tech system for logging and reporting Illegal Speech to government. And a means for government to take efficient and prompt action.

Disliked speech is not illegal speech and this article states the unique definition that each person has and poses some solves to allow people to use systems that filter out what they dont want to hear in addition to what is illegal.

The issue we are facing is what to do about the legal but disliked speech and whether to forcibly prevent people from hearing or seeing it.

The spirit of of our first amendment is very much the opposite. It is to protect your ability to speak. Our public forum is now virtual, privatized and highly centralized and we didn’t prepare for that as a society.

As they say “...Defend to the death your right to say it.”

The end goal is to make sure "ILLEGAL" speech can not be suppressed. If you can block "illegal" speech you can block legal speech any protocol designed to be immune to censorship will have to make that sacrifice; I am very much willing too.

> In all cases ILLEGAL speech can’t be allowed to remain on platform.

On the contrary. In most cases, it is imperative that illegal speech remain on online platforms. It's bad enough that governments censor criticism, alternative viewpoints (including ones we may abhor), and leaked information using the police, the judicial and prison systems, and their close ties with large media companies.

> Disliked speech is not illegal speech

Not so. There exist all of:

* Well-liked, illegal speech

* Disliked illegal speech

* Well-liked, legal speech

* Disliked legal speech

It seems like you're assuming the law, everywhere, is just and fair and should be not just followed but upheld.

> our first amendment

Most people don't live in the US, you know. In fact, less than 5% of people do. Not that I would agree with you had I lived there, but online content is not a US-local affair.

Private speech is necessarily something that the government cannot monitor. When choosing between ubiquitous surveillance and "illegal speech going unpunished," opposing the former is more important than preventing the latter.

I think this is the right set of questions. I can add my own anecdotal experience. In the past, I ran voice chat servers, IRC servers, forums, rsync and sftp servers. I gave people a way to have their own small communities that were mostly free of censorship provided they were not breaking the laws of my country. For a while, those things were popular, but as the big centralized sites came along, they designed their UX to be low friction and high endorphin reward. They added more discoverability and ability to have bigger communities. People preferred this over what I could give them. With time, my IRC servers lost favor for things like Facebook messenger and Discord. Rsync and SFTP were "too hard" and everyone moved to Dropbox and related sites. My remaining SFTP server is now just hit by bots, very confused bots. I shut down the last voice chat server because people would only use it when Discord was offline. On top of all that, internet trolls have evolved beyond psychological warfare. Now they are good at scripting uploads of bad content and auto-reporting their own content to take down domains and servers regardless of how fast response-driven moderation is. This means I would have to set up forums to require every message to be screened, or use some expensive machine learning and that gets into a whole mess of privacy problems. It's just not worth my time and effort to play those games, especially given the lack of interest in using smaller communities.

> If HN is overrepresented by vanguards of decentralization and free speech, why are a lot of us here on HN instead of running USENET nodes and posting to a newsgroup such as "comp.programming.hackernews" to avoid being moderated by dang?

Because the point isn't to have no moderation, it's for the power of "moderation" not to be vested in a small number of oligarchs pressured by angry mobs spurred on by media companies with bad incentives to want to damage their political opponents and market competitors.

Also notice that you're using a web page delivered via HTTP over TCP/IP over Ethernet, resolved via DNS, secured via TLS etc. These are all standard protocols. But Facebook isn't one and that's at the root of the problem.

> If most of HN knows how to set up git and stand up a web server, why do most of use Github instead of running Gitlab on a home pc/laptop/RaspberryPi or rent a Digital Ocean vps?

The network effect.

> It's because "free & open protocols" weren't really the issue!

It's because "free & open protocols" are an important thing but not the only thing, and their importance relative to other things was until recently not under the spotlight.

> Because the point isn't to have no moderation, it's for the power of "moderation" not to be vested in a small number of oligarchs pressured by angry mobs spurred on by media companies with bad incentives to want to damage their political opponents and market competitors.

This is not a statement many people who have been angry recently would agree with.

Trump would've gotten himself banned from any of the forums I hung out in from 2000 to now. Not for being conservative, for being an asshole.

The "only remove illegal content" crowd has a problem with that. I don't.

>This is not a statement many people who have been angry recently would agree with.

Well, what "angry people would agree with" is a pretty strange basis for an argument, anyway...

>Trump would've gotten himself banned from any of the forums I hung out in from 2000 to now. Not for being conservative, for being an asshole.

And that would be neither here nor there, cause your forums are not so massive as to shape public opinion and influence elections and news.

In smaller, disperse and diverse, discussion platforms, you would be entitled to think that he should be banned for "being an asshole" and even ban him from your forums, while others would be entitled to ban others that say the same or worse things from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

When one side, in a major public-opinion-influencing service can ban a whole side of the political spectrum though, and even the sitting president, that's a problem.

It's actually analogous to election influencing - same as if 9 out of 10 channels in TV only carried the views from one party and not the other(s).

> It's actually analogous to election influencing - same as if 9 out of 10 channels in TV only carried the views from one party and not the other(s).

Thanks to the Reagan administration, that's fine, yes? It would violate Twitter's free speech rights to force them to do otherwise?

This is an ancient argument and Twitter neither "banned a whole side of the political spectrum" (the asshole Trumpian wing is hardly all of conservatism) nor did anything new to US history.

The reason Trump is pushing for the "public square" aspect is because in a decentralized world, his crowd would still be pushed to the fringes because it's expressing fringe (but loud) views. 90 out of 100 forums would have issues with him. So instead, he wants to have access on his terms.

>Thanks to the Reagan administration, that's fine, yes? It would violate Twitter's free speech rights to force them to do otherwise?

Well, I don't particularly care for a corporation's free speech rights. I think it's better for citizens to have free speech rights, not corporations. Besides, I don't think Twitter's free speech rights are in danger or would be in danger if they were forced not to censor people. They could still print whatever message of their own (Twitter's) they want, exercizing their free speech. They just wouldn't be able to exercize censorship.

Same way I want net neutrality from ISPs, I want it from social media.

>And that would be neither here nor there, cause your forums are not so massive as to shape public opinion and influence elections and news.

Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news. Maybe having a Twitter account is a privilege, and not a right, and that privilege is correctly granted on the precondition that one will not use the platform to act like an asshole.

Then again maybe we shouldn't elect assholes President to begin with, but that's also neither here nor there.

>When one side, in a major public-opinion-influencing service can ban a whole side of the political spectrum though, and even the sitting president, that's a problem.

Except the "whole side" of the Republican, conservative, or even pro-Trump spectrum hasn't been banned. I don't know why people keep repeating this when even a cursory look on any popular social media site will show that there's still plenty of that speech active online.

>Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news

And who judges who is the asshole objectively?

For example, in my book a president who actively bombed 7 countries, continued wars he was elected to stop, under whose terms ICE deported more people at the border than Trump (wall or no wall), gave Wall Street a "too big to fail" bailout, enlarged surveillance and hunted several whistleblowers and threatened journalists, is more of an asshole (and a danger) than another who is just a crass business/tv personality that wrote mean tweets and that rednecks liked. That's whether the former has had more political experience or is a smoother talker, and polite company.

But that's just me, and neither is even my President, so...

>Maybe having a Twitter account is a privilege, and not a right, and that privilege is correctly granted on the precondition that one will not act like an asshole.

No, I'd say that having an account to social platforms above some population reach level shouldn't be a "privilege" but a right (that is, subject to due process/law, not up to the whims of the company).

Else, those who control said platforms (where the majority of the public frequents and where most of public discourse happens), also control the public dialogue.

>And who judges who is the asshole objectively?

If Obama, or any other President, had acted the way Trump did on Twitter, I'd have no issue with them being banned, either.

>No, I'd say that having an account to social platforms above some population reach level shouldn't be a "privilege" but a right

And who judges what is a "social platform" objectively? Because you've just granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to remove fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold.

To me, that's a lot scarier than platforms fact-checking statements or banning racists and people calling for violence or spreading misinformation.

>(that is, subject to due process/law, not up to the whims of the company).

Companies aren't anarchist collectives, they are subject to due process and the law. You just disagree with companies having the right to choose with whom they do business, and with Twitter and other big social media platforms being able to moderate content and ban people. But they're still doing so within the framework of a state and its laws.

>And who judges what is a "social platform" objectively? Because you've just granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to remove fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold.

Actually it's the opposite: I "granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to ENFORCE fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold".

And the arbitrary threshold wont be that arbitrary if it's legally defined. We have lots of such thresholds in law (from "age of consent" and "21 to be allowed to drink", to "statue of limitations").

>You just disagree with companies having the right to choose with whom they do business

They can pick their vendors (whom they do business with), but not their users, same way a grocery store can't (and doesn't in a civilized country) just send you away ("refusal of service").

I mean, or that the angry mobs don't like violent insurrections being encouraged and planned openly on these platforms. Is that what you mean by "damage their political opponents?" Phrases like that make it sound like the "opponents" are some innocent little scared children who did nothing wrong. If demanding that calls to violence are stopped is political for you, then ok, sure.

As I've said and will keep saying: those most vocal about protecting the 'freedom' of domestic terrorists to terrorize are the ones most certain they'll never suffer from that terror.

Forcing your way into the capitol and taking over a police station are both illegal and should not be done. They both meet the formal definition of "violent insurrection" and they both happened over the last year. The media response has been asymmetrical.

Also, people are being excluded who have never called for violence. What "violent insurrection" was Discord suppressing by /r/WallStreetBets?

The reason people don't run nntp servers is the same reason I don't go to Antarctica to socialize.

The reason people use github is because it it there.

> It's because "free & open protocols" weren't really the issue!

Why do VC funded startups build platforms? Because that's how you get the gate-keeping function. Protocols do not get funded because they do not let you exclude.

Chiding others for not making progress on hard problems against well-funded opponents doesn't make one look wise.

GitHub is an interesting example, because if I push code to GitHub, I still have my local source, and being an open protocol I can easily push it elsewhere as well.

Which is fine if you're only managing code and not using all the other functionality like bug tracking/feature requests, documentation, pull requests.

There's no conflict between these things. You can run your own private/semi-private repo, mirror to github and use github for the public facing features you're mentioning. That doesn't stop your own repo from continuing to exist (whether or not it is considered canonical or not).

Can an open source repo contain illegal speech commented in the code itself? What happens then?

A secret police knocks on your doors?

One of the ISPs in my home town runs a nntp server and it is very popular among locals, not even tech-savvy ones. It’s been around for at least 16 years and last time I checked it was still very active. I think the point is - nntp is still acceptable if the community is large enough.

I think a very important reason why people don't run their own USENET node or Gitlab instance is because it's not easy. In fact, it's the opposite of easy. It's extremely difficult in the long run. If using your own server was as easy as using an iPhone, then we would see way more people doing it.

It will never be easy. People should understand that and take the hard part as a fun part or as a price to pay for their digital independence.

That's not true. There's no reason why hosting a server should be hard. This is a UX issue, and an eminently solvable one at that. Imagine a self-hosted, easy-to-install Heroku-style server platform with a public repository for application images.

It's not hard because it needs to be hard; it's hard because no one has invested the time and money to make it easy.

It doesn't matter how much you invest in making it easier. It will never be as easy as doing nothing, which is what the competing alternative provides.

It’s hard the same reason I can’t put a ton of solar panels on my roof and pump large amounts of electricity into the grid. The upstream infrastructure is not sized appropriately. It’s not that running a server is hard but that most internet infrastructure is designed to consume and not produce.

I can tell you why I stopped using USENET: because so few other people were using it it was no longer worthwhile. I would go back to it if enough other people did. I use Reddit now, and Reddit is just an inferior USENET.

> it does not make progress

FUD. Making statements like this totally discounts the healthy and vibrant communities that exist today making use of open protocols. Either your head is in the sand or you have an interest in stalling those systems from taking root.

I got news for you though. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back inside.

Github is a hosting service built around git. Likewise, gmail is a service built around e-mail protocols. It's fine for services like these to exist because you have a choice of whether you want to use them or not to facilitate the use of the underlying protocol (you are free to set up your own e-mail server if you want, and doing so does not prevent you from communicating with users who choose to use gmail).

I think rather the big issue is, for instance, the use of Facebook Messenger for IM. If everyone I know uses it, I have no choice but to use it too because there is no underlying protocol behind it.

> don't want to run a USENET node

I would love to run a Usenet node, I just suspect my hosting provider would shut me down after too long.

You do not have to carry all newsgroups, and the last time I used a free Usenet node they explicitly did not carry any binaries (too much traffic and too much liability). The reason nobody uses Usenet is that unmoderated newsgroups were taken over by nazis and trolls, and moderated newsgroups have no particular advantage over forums as far as "free speech" goes.

(Though I take issue with the idea that moderation somehow implies less free speech. It is hard to express an idea when you are buried under a pile of off-topic trolling and nazi conspiracy theories.)

> The reason nobody uses Usenet is that unmoderated newsgroups were taken over by nazis and trolls

Some of the sci.* hierachy was taken over by the mentally ill and crackpots. They aren't hateful or intentionally trolling with their insistent claims that they have discovered free energy, come up with new insights into the evolution of human language, etc., but the effect on fruitful discussion was much the same.

At some point, trolling becomes indistinguishable from mental illness and crackpottery.

only in sufficiently advanced civilizations.

Moderated forums and moderated Usenet groups both have the characteristic of not being subject to the whims of a central platform. Contrast Facebook groups and subreddits.

Except for alt.hackers. It was a moderated newsgroup but there was no moderator. How do you post? That was the point. It was a fun group.

>If most of HN knows how to set up git and stand up a web server, why do most of use Github instead of running Gitlab on a home pc

You missed the point of the article. It wasn't advocating for everyone to run their own servers. git is a protocol, github is a site that wraps the protocol with its own rules. There's nothing wrong with that. Github is like the Gmail example of the article. Facebook is not.

It also wasn't advocating for zero moderation.

> why do most of use Github instead of running Gitlab on a home pc/laptop/RaspberryPi or rent a Digital Ocean vps?

Well, for me, it's because GitLab is still too heavy for the Pi.

And even if somehow it became light enough, running it still couldn't help you if your goal is to have a better portfolio for a better job or/and reputation. GitHub is more of a community than a platform, and building a community is way harder than building a platform.

So it's more than just the founding.

Also, sure, you can setup your own website and post contents there, but nobody is going to read it before somebody discovers it. And discovery is really hard.

What those "Big platforms" really got right, is that they've found a way to efficiently deliver the contents created on the platform to their users, and allow the user to give timely feedback about the content. This feedback loop itself is more valuable than the tech behind it.

If decentralization movement want to be successful, it must also create this feedback loop. Otherwise people will just get bored and disconnect.

You're exactly right that funding - or rather adequate effort - is what's missing, necessary to enforce and guide people along a protocol that will need to evolve as we learn how to better, more efficiently guide people towards calm rationality and reasoning; helping to open people's hearts and minds, healing whatever past unhealed/unprocessed trauma they likely have - along with helping them work through whatever blocks they have, whether misconceptions, emotion, or from an unhealthy body, nervous system.

> avoid being moderated by dang?

Maybe we like being moderated by dang? Maybe he’s a key feature of the “hacker news application” that runs over the open protocols ...

Decentralized doesn't have to mean "everyone self-hosts": it just means there's more than one offering on the market.

I pay an email provider because I don't want to deal with configuring Dovecot, but I don't use Gmail because I don't want the risk that some algo deletes my account, and I'm glad that's (so far still) an option.

Thing is, I don't think most people want to replace subreddits, Facebook groups or HN. The issue is that for two of these three communities, they are hosted by a company that has a large amount of power over the communities. It doesn't make sense to replace HN with some federated/p2p alternative, because HN is already independent.

And not everything needs to be a decentralised system, that's just a false dichotomy. If GitLab.com deletes my repos or stops offering the features I like, I'll just move elsewhere, I could even move to another GitLab instance. It's much harder to move a group of people.

Besides, not everyone needs to run a server in a federated environment. As long as it's a possibility, one rogue actor can't take over the whole network. Most people don't host their own email/Matrix server, and that's okay.

Yeah. Recommendation systems, like HN, are attractive to people and difficult to replace with open protocols.

I don't know, HN isn't much more than a focused subreddit (no offense meant!).

I could imagine some kind of federated Reddit where HN could be a community fully managed by dang et al. according to their own needs/wants.

Then you just subscribe to each community as you like. Much like you can unsubscribe to all the default subreddits and only subscribe to the subreddits that interest you, only this time you don't have Reddit 's commercial interests/standards hanging over your head with the power to shut you down.

Granted I'm not sure of the value (other than censorship resistance) vs. a set of fragmented, specialized forums we had way back when.

Lemmy is Mastodon for Reddit, so it lets you have a instance with a set of subreddits, basically, from a user can also subscribe to other instances' subreddits. I'm not involved with the code or anything, I just think it's neat. https://lemmy.ml

Thansk for the heads up, will give it a look!

I don't think dividing sidewalk ownership among many companies is enough to achieve free speech. We need something more.

ON the contrary, I think HN is a good example of the open web, a protocol based around pages hosted in all manner of places and links between them. HN is one of many places you could go to find recommendations for content hosted elsewhere.

Hosting comments is platformy, but other than that HN doesn't try to get people to host content on HN, and while dang can decide that HN won't recommend a particular piece of content, he cannot remove that content from wherever it's hosted (except by recommending it too much and hugging the server to death).

Peer-to-peer communication with sparsely decentralized data storage is the answer.

For me the issue is more that communities as they grow seem to be bound to become either burning dumpster fires or turn just uninteresting and boring as they converge on the lowest common denominator of interests/opinions.

I have self hosted IRC, forums and git servers in the past, but honestly what the point if free speech is not really an issue where I live and it’s just maintenance cost for me? So far I found mob mentality and self censorship within communities much more worrysome than anything imposed by government and big tech.

Exactly this. I can't run protocols. And I can't afford to open anything I run to the general internet, because I'm not a sysadmin, I don't know how to be a good sysadmin, and I don't want to be a sysadmin. It's a respectable job I just don't want to do, and attempting it as a dabbler will mean I get pwn3d basically immediately.

I still think it's quite strange how peer-to-peer systems are dismissed offhand these days. At one time the idea was quite popular. I believe it will come back into popularity again.

One thing that probably will affect that dramatically is rollout of IPv6.

But the author also addresses another aspect of it which is the economics. Cryptocurrency can help with that.

You are exactly right. And you can see the same thing with the Internet as a network as well as with Bitcoin.

Both of those can, by design, be run by individuals and independent entities. However, in the end most people end up preferring to delegate the administration of their share of the network to someone else, either out of ignorance or convenience.

> A lot of us don't want to run a USENET node or manage our own git server to share code.

Yeah. See how well it goes when everyone takes the comfortable approach?

> A lot of us don't want to run a USENET node or manage our own git server to share code.

Now you're suddenly making me feel alone :(

Well said. Free and lazy over freedom and work.

Economies of scale and specialization. Same reason not everyone is fabbing their own chips, running their own power plant, digging for their own oil and growing their own fruit. Aside from people living in complete isolation from the rest of the world, we all put a price on freedom at some point.

I think we are here because of PG and YCombinator, not because we don't want to run our own servers. Many HN users probably do run their own servers, even discussion servers.

The real problem is how to attract the right people. YC is a fascinating case, actually. WHY are we here, and not on some reddit forum?

Even though it seems PG is not very active here anymore, it seems the seeding community has stuck to some extent.

Of course they also have their theory of how to maintain a community and did some coding and moderating to try to maintain it.

To my personal taste, they have overdone it, and ruined it in a way, but I haven't found a good alternative yet.

The next iteration of online news and communities will perhaps take more than dedicated servers, it may require a usability leap. Maybe some convenient way to filter messages, that is not centralized (Twitter/Facebook algorithms don't optimize to my benefit, but to the benefit of their owners).

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