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As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Conservatives are flocking to a new 'free speech' social media app that has started banning liberal users
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @09:54PM (9 children)
That's why the internet was built on open protocols instead.
Then the 'platform' people just started buying standards boards...
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:22PM (8 children)
It's just a website provided by an entity. Same as Soylent and 4chan so I'm not sure that's the root cause.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:51PM (7 children)
The function of the platform is conceptually quite simple, though the API has developed some complication it's still fundamentally doing the same thing it's always done - allowing people to broadcast very short text messages to their 'followers' and to receive the same from those they 'follow.' It's a simple idea, and certainly one with some utility, however it could be implemented many ways. And the devil is in the implementation.
Twitter, and Parler, and these 'platforms' generally are deliberately designed to have a single point of control. This gives whatever entity is behind it the ability to collect rent, which is what they're after, but it is an abominably poor choice in every other way.
Want a twitter without censorship? It has to be a peer to peer protocol. No central authority with the power to ban anyone - or to force ads down anyone's throat either. Which probably means it would have to be 100% produced and maintained by volunteers, because without generating revenue it can't have employees. You could 'ban' anyone you wanted, by simply ceasing to follow or publish to them, but it wouldn't affect their relationship with anyone else.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 20 2020, @06:53AM (6 children)
Usenet? Everyone running a news server? Usenet died due to being overrun, sure you could continuously add to your killfile but after a while the signal to noise ratio got so bad that most left.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday November 20 2020, @12:17PM (3 children)
But with this, there would be no group to follow or spam out of existence. Just one-to-one relationships. So spammers wouldn't have a group to spam, they could only broadcast to those that specifically follow them, and would get unfollowed quite quickly by anyone that doesn't like spam.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 20 2020, @03:40PM (2 children)
Seems if it is 2-way, the circle that you follow would still quickly grow. You follow person A, who posts something and you want to see the responses and respond to some of them. 1-way would likely get boring.
I do admit to not knowing how things like twitter works besides statements from others having never used it.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday November 20 2020, @09:46PM (1 child)
I think what you're talking about is if you follow person A, who follows person B, but you don't follow person B, right? So either way person A effectively quotes and reposts what they're responding to, so that you can still see it, even if person B has banned you from their feed; at least as far as I understand that's how it works now, and how it would work P2P as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 21 2020, @01:48AM
OK, then you're depending on quoting sanity., and judging by email, that might be a hope.
Anyways, I'm happy with sites like this and some focused forums where off-topic is pretty clear and I almost never see politics. The cupcake forum should be free to kick off the barbecued meat people if they choose.
I also seem to have got stuck doing a bit of support and do see political crap, I ignore it as it is off topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @04:34PM (1 child)
Bittorrent with DHT would allow for serverless peer-to-peer connections. It's not a huge leap from there or the many similar technologies to a fully-distributed open source social media platform, and the main barrier is actually getting people to use the tech.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 20 2020, @04:46PM
Which can be quite the barrier. I guess if it came in a simple app, it might catch on.