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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3312 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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But Matrix is a mess.

It was broken by design.

People think federation is a feature for some reason, but the only people it helps are not people you should ever empower, because it allows them to bully you across instances for the crime of not sharing the same killfile.

"Federation" as far as the client sees it is just managing multiple accounts, which doesn't tilt the playing field in favor of the bullies.

Oh yeah, and the server needing 2GB of RAM to run is absurd. We accept that from clients, but when it's the server it's an entirely different story and makes it even more difficult to run.

You have this exactly backwards. Centralized services force a singular moral sensibility on everyone in the world. The cure is federation, or some equivalent of self-hosting or associating with like-minded people.

Edit: Zuckerberg, Musk, and Pichai are the people I should never empower.

Federation has already failed. A common protocol is important, but we only have that by inertia too.

People think federation is a feature for some reason, but the only people it helps are not people you should ever empower, because it allows them to bully you across instances for the crime of not sharing the same killfile.

"Federation" as far as the client sees it is just managing multiple accounts, which doesn't tilt the playing field in favor of the bullies.

Don’t these two paragraphs conflict?

And Matrix appears to have open federation, but can’t you just create your own insulated private swarm of Matrix servers like IRC networks?

"Federation" as far as the client sees it is just managing multiple accounts

The point of federation is that you use the same one. So, for instance, if Reddit was my homeserver and I wanted to post to TheMotte's Matrix instance, I'd be [redacted]@reddit.com.

The problem, then, is that if you don't like that homeserver I can't use my main identity to talk here, and it's a single point of failure to only have a single account on an instance that doesn't belong to me (in which case it's "banned for coming from an instance that doesn't answer to you").

Messaging about trying to appeal to users that were on the run from overly-censorious website operators that their selling feature boiled down to "more hassle and still just as much censorship" was the opposite of a good plan. This would have been fine in the early '00s where culture war hadn't yet come to the Internet for cultural reasons, but it's not the early '00s any more.

but can’t you just create your own insulated private swarm of Matrix servers like IRC networks?

Of course you can- Pawoo and Gab are the largest such isolated instances, though as I understand it, that's more "most of the network has them blocked".

It's one of these things that turned me into a conspiracy theorist, but it's really quite amazing how all the "decentralization" measures tried everything except for what would actually distribute the control of the information to the end users. It's always either federation or blockchain.

What designs would actually distribute control to end users?

"Literally, just sign your shit with a private key, Jeremy" with some bit-torrentesque routing and/or gossip network on top. You mentioned GnuNet in the other comment, last I looked into it, they were pretty close to what I had in mind, but it didn't seem to have much running on it.

EDIT: I just checked out FreeNet, and it seems to have the same problem.

Wordpress-style blogs instead of Substack. BBS instead of Reddit. IRC instead of Discord. All paired with some form of easy web hosting (lol).

With large companies, you can be kicked off of a friend chat or fan club for your conduct in a news discussion group.

I thought we were talking about I2P, GnuNet, FreeNet, Toxx(?)

Any technology your faction didn't create is a tactical and strategic liability. This is also the root of why people are bothered by AI censorship.

As far as conspiracy, this stuff was in the works far before tech people noticed they needed to stop giving ammunition to people who hated them- that only became apparent after 2015 or so and both ActivityPub and Bitcoin both predate the first mask-off moment.

Any technology your faction didn't create is a tactical and strategic liability. This is also the root of why people are bothered by AI censorship.

Which faction created Matrix, and how are people adopting certain design principles for these networks based on CW tactics and liabilities?

Which faction created Matrix

It's been a while since I looked into Matrix, but aren't like 99% of these projects made by California Techies? As a nation Ze Germans aren't much better, but at least they managed to keep some of the old Cypherpunk ethos alive.

and how are people adopting certain design principles for these networks based on CW tactics and liabilities?

An appalling amount of these projects is centralized either technologically or sociologically. Federation just moves from absolutism to feudalism, while blockchain decentralizes infrastructure (in an insanely inefficient way, BTW) while allowing the core developer team to maintain near-total political control of the project. Yeah, you can move to a different instance or fork the chain, but central information / influence nodes are too convenient for people, and you're not going to convince the overwhelming majority to move to a fork / manually whitelist a node / re-follow a dude you like just because the core team made an unpopular decision. This is the most common attack vector of the recent culture war, and it was entirely possible to mitigate it.

That the SocJus techies did not want to mitigate it is entirely understandable, the biggest source of my frustration is Blockchain Bros. I guess they just want to make money.

Any technology your faction didn't create is a tactical and strategic liability.

I guess I'm autistic enough that a part of me still wants to believe you can create a structurally good system, that does not rely on good people controlling it.

As far as conspiracy, this stuff was in the works far before tech people noticed they needed to stop giving ammunition to people who hated them- that only became apparent after 2015 or so and both ActivityPub and Bitcoin both predate the first mask-off moment.

I'd argue that was still pretty short-sighted in the grand scheme of things. The goal back then was to resist cyberpunk all-controlling evil corporations, it's kind of goofy, then, to bake-in centralized points of failure.

create a structurally good system that does not rely on good people controlling it

Sure, but in that case you have to make it sufficiently difficult to use that the bad/stupid people can't access it. Which is why Urbit is the way that it is and has the adoption that it does.

And while "smart enough to access something" or "conscientious enough to pay for something" usually means "a better class of person", that's still no guarantee that remains true (for instance, modern progressivism comes from SomethingAwful, one of the only paid forums).

I guess I'm autistic enough, that a part of me still wants to believe

I don't like operating in adult mode either, but not knowing when, how, or why to do that has consequences. The difference between a autist/child/classical liberal is that they're not looking for ways to hurt other people with the things that they do, where adults/progressives/traditionalists are at least preoccupied with if not actively seeking ways to hurt other people.

Child-like outlooks on life must be actively defended if they are to survive. (Actually, come to think of it, it's very interesting that in Western canon there's very little mention of how to do this- but people who have lost the ability to have anything but an adult outlook on life almost never create things with staying power like that in the first place, so I guess that makes sense.)

Child-like outlooks on life must be actively defended if they are to survive.

A hard-learned lesson, for sure...

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