Hacker News Reader

Comment by hello_marmalade | Hacker News Reader

This is a nice idea in theory, but the issue then becomes inconsistent moderation that affects what is visible to everyone. If you get banned or have posts deleted on one platform, presumably those posts disappear from that instance, and thus the Fediverse as a whole.

This also leads to some pretty insidious siloing since (at least with Mastadon) you can have instances block themselves off from other instances or instances at large, which seems pretty unhealthy.

Not to mention, people don't typically want to pay for these services, or pay to host them, they want to access them for free. On top of that, with something like Twitter, the desire is to be visible to all, rather than just a few. Most people use Twitter to interact with 'the world', not just a local part of it.

View on HN

> This also leads to some pretty insidious siloing since (at least with Mastadon) you can have instances block themselves off from other instances or instances at large, which seems pretty unhealthy.

I really keep coming back to this sentence and still continue to not see the downside. Why is it a problem if an instance walls itself off from the Fediverse? What right do you have to force an instance to do literally anything? This idea that people think you should be forced to engage or interact with content they don't want to see is ... disturbing. Free speech gives you the right to say what you want but it doesn't give you the right to force people to listen to you.

I really want to give the benefit of the doubt but your protests seem entirely based around this idea that you have the right to force people to interact with you. That aspect of Twitter is entirely what enabled Twitter Mobs to mete out life destroying "justice" over the smallest of infractions.

I think people should just drop the expectation that they can just be "visible to all". Not everybody wants to see your content. If they want to block you, then they should be able to. If a group of people wants to block you (think: getting banned from a mastadon instance), they should be able to as well. At least in the case of the Fediverse, you can look for a community where you'll be accepted. That's not possible on Twitter, you're either allowed or banned.

I don’t pay for my account on my home instance. I don’t want to interact with the world and I think most people are tired of living under threat of being one misstep away from a Twitter Mob.

Your complaints are features. People are fleeing to group chats for a reason.

As for the problem of your data being deleted if you’re concerned with that export your data regularly or run your own instance. Anyways, while it’d be nice to take a stab at that problem, it’s no worse than Twitter banning you.

> most people are tired of living under threat of being one misstep away from a Twitter Mob

I think you severely overestimate most people's capacity to give a damn about Twitter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com