Adrian Hon

Listening to nerds complain about Mastodon is a lesson in why they don’t want to be forced to trust anyone other than big corporations.

“How could instances possibly moderate content?!” I don’t know, the same way it worked before Twitter? Let’s stop pretending there is one true way of running a social network that’ll work perfectly forever.

Nov 17, 2022 at 7:14pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022

“Oh boy it’s gonna be hard for Mastodon, who knows if it’ll work!”

LOL have you ever considered talking to people who’ve been using it for years?

The entire existence of non-commercial social network is bringing out the worst impulses in tech commentators who know no history.

Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022

They don’t want to know how to build and live in non-commercial online communities. They have no idea what that’d look like and assume they’d fall apart in an instant. They’d rather mock than learn.

It’s desperately sad.

Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022

The thing is, a lot of them DO remember Usenet and IRC and web forums. They just think they’re worthless or inferior to shiny corporate social networks. After all, if they were any good, they’d still be here, right?

Only something that lasts forever and grows forever can possibly be worthy of interest and respect!

Show threadDevin SingerNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon The growth thing is so true and such bullshit.I was talking about Tumblr with a friend and she said "oh I heard it was in trouble" and linked a Techcrunch article that said nothing about their actual financials except that their new monetization strategies were bringing in revenue, but - gasp - its users were down and only increasing slowly.
Show threadEric (yankeewhite)Nov 17, 2022
@adrianhon and bulletin board systems!
Show threadCoach Pāṇini ®Nov 17, 2022
@adrianhon aggressive amnesiacs
Show threadTony KennickNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon They obviously weren't around for the champagne and profit days of Usenet and IRC
Show threadAdam DallianceNov 17, 2022

@adrianhon I agree with most of that except for calling those people "nerds".

The nerds get it pretty quick. It's the normies who don't get it.

Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022
@pre I don’t know, a lot of nerds are very quick with a million reasons why it couldn’t work. I was spurred to write this by listening to a particularly heinous segment on Accidental Tech Podcast…
Show threadAdam DallianceNov 17, 2022

@adrianhon I do know one guy like that. Wouldn't call him a nerd, though he is a programmer. Learned how to do so reluctantly, for the job. Calls people "techbro" and gave up on Masto on day one because of no quote-tweet.

He ain't no real nerd.

All the real nerds were here before me, building this place.

Show threadM EiloNov 18, 2022
@adrianhon Is there a video version of Mastodon I could switch to from YouTube/TikTok? (Sorry noob question!)
Show threadDevin SingerNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon The people complaining about that baffle me. Do they think Twitter's moderation was effective? Facebook's?
Show threadBob WymanNov 17, 2022

@adrianhon There are technical alternatives that would allow users to curate content without being subject to instance-level censorhip.

Example: Various authorities, including instance operators, could annotate posts with attributes that users could then choose to filter on. "Objectionable" content would still be available, but would be seen only by those who wished to see it.

Ideally, users could subscribe to a variety of labeling services and thus be independent of instance-level decisions.

Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022
@bobwyman Yes, there's definitely room for experimentation! I hope we get a lot more of it now.
Show threadCarey LeningNov 17, 2022

@adrianhon I mean, speaking as someone who was around and very online back in the mid-90s-2000s (BBSes, MUDs, Usenet, IRC, etc ) I'd argue that it didn't work before. There was no moderation.

I was harassed, sent disgusting dick pics regularly, doxxed, threatened with... Everything you can imagine, stalked ... All for being a woman online.

Don't mistake not noticing/experiencing toxicity personally with some assumption that shit was peachy back in the old days. It wasn't.

Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022
@privacat I didn’t say it was peachy, I said it was worthy of discussion and respect rather than dismissal as worthless.
Show threadJoão SantosNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon Subsidiarity is a word missing in the lexicon of many people. Distributed moderation across communities can work much better than centralized moderation that can be fired by an autocrat.
Show threadJustin FitzsimmonsNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon This is a weird take for said nerds considering that marginalized people have found ways to carve out safer communities for themselves even within commercial social media sites. The profit motive of these commercial sites at best engenders indifference (e.g. "but our MAU would drop if we banned all the abusers 😢"), but by removing the profit motive and decentralizing the network, moderation actually gets easier.
Show threadElizabeth BearNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon This post made me so happy.
Show threadAdrian HonNov 17, 2022
@matociquala Yay!
Show threadAndy WaschickNov 17, 2022

@adrianhon I cannot count how many conversations (arguments) I have had with people where a perfectly logical statement is dismissed because it couldn’t be shoehorned into the context of the marketplace.

The convention goes, if something doesn’t exist to generate profit, it cannot exist. It took decades for the very NOTION of open-source software to be taken seriously. When it was, it was only because companies figured out how to monetize it.

Show threadsneakNov 17, 2022
@adrianhon every time you see someone say "moderate content" think "censor things for adult users who are perfectly capable of using their own block button if they wish"
Show threadLukáš KrejčíNov 18, 2022
@sneak @adrianhon you seriously think that or did my sarcasm detector fail here?
Show threadsneakNov 20, 2022
@metlos @adrianhon i seriously think that. how could you know better than another adult what they should be allowed to see and read?
Show threadLukáš KrejčíNov 21, 2022
@sneak @adrianhon well, IMHO content moderation is more about what people write than what they see and read. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the context here, but moderation is about people following the code of conduct, which is IMHO a completely valid requirement.
Show threadsneakNov 21, 2022
@metlos @adrianhon moderation necessarily happens *after* the writing part is complete. that means it's not about what people have written (in the past), it's about stopping others from being able to read what has already been written (censorship).
Show threadLukáš KrejčíNov 21, 2022
@sneak @adrianhon I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. For me there's a long way from enforcing the code of conduct to censorship but I'll give you the point that the line can be blurry at times..
Show threadHalf-bakedNov 18, 2022

@adrianhon Some subreddits feel much better moderated to me than tumblr or twitter ever have. When someone's being a jerk they actually get taken down in a reasonable amount of time, and rules can be created and enforced with specific community needs in mind.

I have no clue why that wouldn't be the same for mastodon, provided instances can keep up with their growing userbases.