Comment by asenna | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asenna | Hacker News Reader

I've always wanted to ask the HN community about this problem, what exactly can be done from a technology standpoint?

I feel we're already at a point where tools are available to make a censorship resistant social network.

The main challenges would be: - Kickstarting a network is a difficult problem - A way to ensure sane content moderation (child porn / abuse, etc) while still keeping the decision-making decentralized enough - Easy enough for the first time mobile internet users to onboard

Would love to hear your thoughts. In my opinion a blockchain based solution seems appropriate (I know there's a lot blockchain-hate on HN but requesting for constructive comments).

I know something needs to come up soon because the situation on the ground is actually quite bad.

If just enough celebs could be convinced to adopt & evangelize a new platform.

The last time I remember being excited about a new social platform was Quora. I was quite amazed by the quality of answers in the early days. I wonder how they managed to gather their first settlers.

I think Mastodon might be similar to what you're describing?

Yeah I've heard about it and will be looking into this. But I haven't actually ever seen it in the wild anywhere online which makes me wonder why it hasn't gained traction much.

For a country like India, the solution needs to be dead simple. Exploring a mastadon server a bit, it doesn't feel like it would cut it.

What’s a “censorship resistant social network”? Would Trump be allowed on this platform? Would it be hosted on AWS? One person’s censorship is another person’s moderation.

Exactly, we already have the “censorship resistant social network” (gab), but for reasons completely unrelated to not restricting speech third parties seem hell bent on nuking it from orbit. Such is the fate of any similar social network.

> Kickstarting a network is a difficult problem

Crypto networks can solve this through incentivising early adopters, e.g. https://bitclout.com

> A way to ensure sane content moderation (child porn / abuse, etc) while still keeping the decision-making decentralized enough

Subscribable mute and block lists. This allows each user to tailor moderation to their comfort level.

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