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Comment by mnd999 | Hacker News Reader

Last time I looked at peertube it had worse problems than that. The content was mostly neo-nazis and conspiracy theories, incels and other stuff that wasn’t on YouTube because it would get banned. I’m not interested in that. Has it got any better?

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All that stuff and worse is on Youtube too, and probably in higher quantity. It doesn't get banned - not reliably. The algorithm is just good at hiding it from you.

Youtube is really good at surfacing videos you want to see. Peertube isn't. That's why you see stuff you hate, not because of censorship or the lack of it.

Maybe, I don’t know, I don’t go looking for that stuff. Most of the stuff I watch there is video games, retro tech or hiking. I was kinda hoping for some recommendations for interesting stuff on peertube.

Especially retro tech, I think a lot of it is fan funded (I do fund some myself). It's probably not a ton of money you get from YouTube unless you're Adrian Black.

Niche youtubers you already support, but especially retro tech, are probably prime candidates for putting their stuff on Peertube too.

Really depends on which servers you follow.

Wah, there is no Incel content on YouTube? What about Pearl Davis, or the flood of shorts extracted from this podcast I just cant remember right now?

Personally, I much prefer a uncensored platform over arbitrary censorship by big tech. Without censorship, I can at least decide for myself if I want to watch it.

In fact, I find it quite concerning that people like you seem to actively advocate for voluntary censorship.

They're not "advocating for voluntary censorship", they're simply pointing out that the Peertube (and the Fediverse in general) needs to avoid being the dredges of the internet.

> they're simply pointing out that the Peertube (and the Fediverse in general) needs to avoid being the dredges of the internet.

I don't think that's quite right. It just needs to make sure there's plenty available in addition to the dredges of the internet. Sometimes the dredges are useful to be able to sift through, but that can't be the only thing on offer and ideally users would be able to filter that stuff out when it isn't wanted.

I would agree with this take in general, yes. We are more or less saying the same thing though I appreciate the nuance injection. :)

I've never understood this concern with online platforms. It really shouldn't matter what content people publish if discover ability is user-driven.

A Twitter alternative could be full of neo-nazis, butbif my feed is only populated with people I follow them I would never know or care.

The problem is getting to critical mass: every service has to start somewhere but if I join and only see uninteresting stuff, I probably won’t stick around long enough for you to follow me, etc. Niche services have that bootstrapping problem where they need early users but also don’t grow if their primary adopters are people who were banned elsewhere (e.g. Gab) or are very tightly ideological (Truth Social has a whole political movement pushing it but is still failing to catch on because even most Republicans don’t want shouting 100% of the time).

Discovery is a challenge for sure. I just wonder how far a service could get with an entirely user-driven discovery, follows, search, etc.

Platforms get into the business of censorship when they attempt to currate content (handpicked or algorithmic). Engagement is obviously much lower if you aren't running an algorithm designed to hook everyone on doom scrolling, but plenty of people still happily use an RSS reader and just go away when their list of new posts is empty.

But where did those people go away to? My memory is that we moved from web rings and blog rolls to social media sites which increasingly made certain that you’d never lack for new content. Even if you’re not doomscrolling, this feels like humanity’s equivalent to moths chasing the brightest light around.

That's my recollection as well, and I take the same lesson from it with regards to human nature.

There is still a comparatively small bit active community of webrings, blog rolls, etc today. What I'm less certain of is whether the driver really consumers chasing the brightest light or platforms taking advantage of basic psych tricks to drive addictive behavior (or both).

I’d definitely say both. The social networks combined easier / more polished experiences to get a lot of people over but then they really ramped up the social tricks to get people to stay longer and look at more ads.

Sure, but you may never have found yourself on Twitter to begin with if it was full of neo Nazis. It’s like showing up to an important meeting in the wrong attire - how you present matters.

The issue isn’t hiding it away - be it by user or other - it’s that it hampers growth in general when you’re all of a sudden the platform of the deranged. It’s fair to question whether it’s seeing actual use outside of those communities.

(It might be telling that we’ve spent this many comments discussing it rather than pointing out e.g GNOME/Blender/etc use it - it’s not like it’s all bad)

Peertube is a software, not a service. If you find hateful content, it's not because of peertube, it's because whoever is hosting it (and how you got there)

I’m not gonna argue with that. But I’m not going to use the software unless it hosts something I’m interested in.

And how would PeerTube avoid that, without actively censoring particular content? Ask nicely? Pray? Hope?

There are multiple PeerTube instances. You can pick or start a censorship free one.

That's impossible. When you let people host their own content some Nazis will host Nazi content, and there's nothing you can do about it because you are not the one hosting it. I guess we should ban HTTP so there can't be Nazi websites.

By censoring?

You are the second person to imply that OP was saying we need censoring, when the comment could be read very differently.

We can do better than jumping to that conclusion. ;P

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