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Comment by t-3 | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be viewing the fediverse as a blob, but it's actually a federated network. There's no need to join an instance if you don't like the moderation!

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The point is that the federation mechanism explicitly means that any server that is federated will have to follow those policies, because the admins of all the large servers hew to a certain ideology that will not tolerate dissent from key talking points. So the server can technically speaking exist on the protocol but in practice won't be federated with the broader network unless it's palatable to Californicated activist types.

An alternative federation with different core tenets could exist, but it would have to do the legwork to find people interested in supporting it, build out nodes that want to be in that federation, and publicize its existence.

It's the same kind of leg work that the existing status quo of the major mastodon nodes had to undertake, and there's no reason anyone should expect that the existing status quo of Mastodon nodes would help a mastodon federation ideologically opposed to their own succeed.

What's wrong with that, though? Forcing people who don't want to interact to interact in the name of diversity isn't likely to lead anywhere productive. Those who are so heavily invested in their political views that they don't want to speak with anyone who they don't fully agree with will be siloed, and those who want diversity can be federated more broadly.

This reads like, "I don't like it because my messages won't end up on other servers," which I guess that's fine. We have to be cognizant that no one running a server is obligated technically, socially, or morally to platform anyone's speech because doing so would violate the NAP of admins.

Sure, and the result of which is an echo chamber, which was OPs point. I didn't see anyone complaining that their own speech was being suppressed. Does anyone question that it's ideologically homogeneous? It seems to me the question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing.

"I don't see anyone questioning, so we must conclude it's true," is epistemological laziness. Any hypothesis must be testable and actually tested before believed otherwise it's religion. JTB applies here too.

What the heck are you even talking about? I'm not running experiments, I'm trying to have a conversation. Do you or do you not believe the fediverse is ideologically homogeneous? I see people here arguing that it is, but that it is justifiably so. I don't see anyone clearly claiming it's not, but someone might. I think it is homogeneous for the very reasons you gave (i.e. people are not obliged to propagate speech they think is bad), but I'm not sure whether I think that's a good or a bad thing. If you think I'm wrong about it being ideologically homogeneous, feel free to tell me. If you want to weigh in on whether that's a good or bad thing, please do, that's why I asked the question. If you really want to challenge my epistemological standing to offer an opinion at all, well, I guess we're done here.

The fediverse is not ideologically or politically homogenous, there exist right-wing and apolitical instances, there exist instances targeted at exclusive and obscure subgroups, etc. If you never bother to look beyond the most popular instances, you obviously won't see many unpopular views.

I think there's a terminology issue here. If the left and the right servers are never federated, then the experience will be homogeneous even if the fediverse is itself not. In other words, I probably shouldn't not have used the term homogeneous and stuck with "echo chamber". I was trying to avoid that term because of its pejorative connotations. It seems to me there is value in being exposed to what people you disagree with are saying, and there's value in not having all the drama that entails, which tends dominate all discourse. The fediverse by and large has chosen the later, no?

Experiencing homogeneity is a natural thing. Humans always self-segregate into groups when gathered in large numbers. I don't see anything wrong with people choosing an echo chamber if that makes them happy. It's being coerced into the echo chamber or the open forum that I disagree with.

I more or less agree with that, but can't help but feel that a certain amount of exposure to contrary views (even though unpleasant/unwanted) is more healthy for society. It at least has the potential for defusing straw-man understandings and also keeps people realistic about where they stand with respect to the larger society in terms of beliefs and practices. I'm not sure that the Twitter model does much for that, but the longer form conversations like Facebook may.

Pretty much everyone gets exposure to contrary views, and they probably wouldn't seek out echo chambers for recreation if they didn't! Most people don't actually want to argue about politics when they vent on their social media, they want to engage with their friends, who probably feel similarly to them. There's no need to worry about these conversations being unbalanced any more than you worry about balance when line workers talk shit about managers and managers talk shit about employees. If people wanted balanced conversation, they would join a political debate forum rather than a social network that connects them to their real-life friends.

I'm saying that while believing in unfalsifiable beliefs or refusing to falsify them is certainly anyone's prerogative, I have to ask, why would anyone want to do that?

You're cracking me up. I should stop responding, but I can't help but wonder if you'll respond with this same sort of thing even if I say random stuff. I think pumpkin ravioli is overrated. What do you say to that?

Sounds like a personal opinion! I believe that you think that :D

Nothing prevents Nigerians from setting up Mastodon servers.

The point of federation is not to force people to talk to people they don't like (for whatever reasons).

If you literally can’t find a space where your views are palatable, then it’s possible there’s something wrong with them.

And if what you’re seeking is the privilege to compel other people who take responsibility for setting up and administering such spaces to carry / broadcast your unmoderated views regardless of their own, what we’re talking about isn’t really any principled kind of liberty.

possibly, but we could also be wrong. Tell me the solution is to not talk about it but do it without the talking?

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