This isn’t a new problem. We’ve seen centralized cellular service get shut down during protests and populist political actions before, such as during the Arab Spring.
A similar issue is centralized media, owned or captured by plutocratic interests. It was a problem during the Pulitzer/Hearst era through the cold war when General Electric used its advertising footprint on the three major television networks to leverage against the broadcast of news stories it didn’t like.
Decentralization would be great if we could, say, get every thousandth household to host a Fediverse instance.
It does raise a question of whether it would be able to handle all the moderation problems that emerge at scale, especially when hostile actors backed by state or business interests can bankroll contributors with antagonistic input. This is going to get worse with agentic LLMs.
It also raises the question if the Fediverse will segregate itself into ideology silos. We already don’t like tankies and tend to defederate from instances that harbor them. Can we do that if we’re trying to create a unified social media network for the global public? We might have to error to the side of hosting content we don’t like (and focus moderation, instead, on content that causes harm).
If we can make it work, it will serve as a great example of anarchist/ libertarian social models working. If we can make it work.
This isn’t a new problem. We’ve seen centralized cellular service get shut down during protests and populist political actions before, such as during the Arab Spring.
A similar issue is centralized media, owned or captured by plutocratic interests. It was a problem during the Pulitzer/Hearst era through the cold war when General Electric used its advertising footprint on the three major television networks to leverage against the broadcast of news stories it didn’t like.
Decentralization would be great if we could, say, get every thousandth household to host a Fediverse instance.
It does raise a question of whether it would be able to handle all the moderation problems that emerge at scale, especially when hostile actors backed by state or business interests can bankroll contributors with antagonistic input. This is going to get worse with agentic LLMs.
It also raises the question if the Fediverse will segregate itself into ideology silos. We already don’t like tankies and tend to defederate from instances that harbor them. Can we do that if we’re trying to create a unified social media network for the global public? We might have to error to the side of hosting content we don’t like (and focus moderation, instead, on content that causes harm).
If we can make it work, it will serve as a great example of anarchist/ libertarian social models working. If we can make it work.