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Comment by d4mi3n | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to call out that individual responses to this don't matter. What matters is if Twitter remains a place for public discourse. So long as we allow public discourse to happen on private platforms that aren't held responsible for maintaining the availability, accountability, and freedom (as in speech) of these public forums, Twitter will continue to be problematic.

Whether it's Musk or a private group of shareholders, the ownership doesn't much matter if whoever controls it at the time can decide what the public is or is not allowed to discuss or share.

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The platforms themselves, expressions of free enterprise and free association, are part of the discourse - not merely a location.

We're not, and never really have been over the full course of the information age so far, in need of new, online public fora. (Go to your city council meetings.)

They are just neat.

If you think people on Twitter are crazy, go to your city council meetings. Especially if you live in a major city.

Maybe people will finally start moving the "official" accounts of politicians and government agencies to something federated like Mastodon or Pleroma.

That's one approach. Regulation is another--we have regulatory models and regimes for broadcast television, radio, and newspaper. Social media is a bit more complex as it is both broadcast and at times bi-directional, but I suspect a lot of concepts between mediums still apply.

EDIT: I'd appreciate counterpoints over downvotes. This isn't Reddit. Make your thoughts known, I welcome insights or opinions other than my own.

I didn't downvote you but I think regulation here could only make things worse. IMO it only did harm to TV and radio. Most people are probably tired of hearing and debating this idea.

Apologies for the confusion, my previous comment was not directed at you @usrn, but at downvoters not participating in this dialog.

You may be correct that the topic is a bit of a dead horse. In my own experience, I find regulation is both an unpopular and controversial topic on HN. I suspect this is why it has been a frustratingly difficult topic to solicit substantial counterpoints on. Your thoughts, while different than my own, are very much welcome.

It still boggles my mind how none of the big media conglomerates haven't even tried to set up their own servers.

To me is the biggest evidence that big media doesn't really care about the the quality of public discourse of the dominance of closed platforms, and all those editorials are just posturing.

They've pretty much all tried having comment sections, and removed them. Turns out, it's kind of hard and the incentives discourage it.

This is not what I mean. What I mean is that they (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NYT, WSJ et caterva) could, e.g, set up a Mastodon server and give accounts to their staff and at least encourage cross-posting. They could give free accounts to their subscribers. There is so much that they could to send a strong signal that they are against Twitter/Facebook as the single place of public discourse.

But of course they don't do any of that. The NYT is more interested in paying 7 million dollars to buy Wordle than in combating the Big Tech oligopoly.

They don't even need to use Mastodon itself. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NYT etc could put ActivityPub in their content management systems and be direct participants to this wider standards-based ecosystem.

btw it'd be nice to see the fedi grow beyond being the "mastoverse", other implementations of AP exist

Definitely, I used Mastodon as an example because it is what has become associated as the alternative for Twitter. But the important thing would be for them to adopt ActivityPub and get the "public square" out of the control from any single entity.

I don't think this is the best way to send that message. The best way to send that message would be to stop breathlessly covering the various goings-on on Twitter. If done well, that sends the message that there are plenty of other ways to have public discourse than on two specific websites. Edit: Trying to compete with Twitter specifically will just reenforce the impression that what's happening there is uniquely valuable.

Attempting to clone Twitter, even if only for their staff and subscribers and/or in a federated form, opens them up to the exact same issues that motivated them to get rid of the comment sections. There would even be the additional problem that they'd need to advertise the thing. The software being available off the shelf doesn't matter, because the software is not the only hard part.

Of course NYT are more interested in buying Wordle than in trying to "combat" the big tech oligopoly. They also didn't try to compete with, say, Ma Bell or Clear Channel, but they have been a big player in the word game space for longer than the personal computer has existed.

> The best way to send that message would be to stop breathlessly covering the various goings-on on Twitter.

Reporters are going to report on what brings readers, and one of the most upsetting things about the press nowadays is this idea that they should help "shape the narrative". If the press is truly independent, they could and should report on what happens at Twitter.

In any case, your idea and mine are orthogonal.

> Attempting to clone Twitter

I used Mastodon in the example, but it wouldn't be a twitter clone. This is not what ActivityPub is.

The point of adopting ActivityPub for them would be simply to be able to claim that they can be in control of their own discourse and that they do not depend on Big Tech and their social networks.

> They also didn't try to compete with, say, Ma Bell or Clear Channel,

Is not that they would do it to "compete", they could do it simply to stop contributing to the problem that they are so frequently writing about. And it certainly requires infinitely less resources to run an AP server than to create a phone network. I can profitably run a Mastodon server for the NYT for less than $500/month.

freedom of peach is only a thing in the USA. Your forget that most of the humans on this planet aren't in the USA an don't expect freedom of peach.

...Twitter ... a place for public discourse..." lol

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