Evan Prodromou
First, hi, Derek! I'm so glad to be following you here.
I think one thing that federation can do *better* is tailor moderation to local cultural norms and do it more quickly.
Decisions made at Twitter headquarters or Facebook headquarters have to balance the competing needs and wants of hundreds of millions of people.
A mod for a 1k-10k instance can focus on local needs instead. They don't have to solve everything everywhere all at once.
Derek Powazek 🐐
@blaine yes of course. My point was just that federation on its own doesn’t solve anything. Too many people think it does and skip the human part you just described.
blaine
@fraying it can help with moderation problems, though, in that when irreconcilable differences occur between groups of moderators, they can agree to disagree without irrevocably fracturing communities.
They can also choose to simply irrevocably fracture communities, which is what the capitalists have been doing for ages. New (old!) tools are sometimes good!
Derek Powazek 🐐
Federation does not fix moderation problems. Only moderation fixes moderation problems.
Evan Prodromou
@fraying @blaine an example from Canada is Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq.
Her Facebook account was suspended for showing a man wearing seal fur, a traditional Indigenous practice in the Canadian north.
I think the rules for a Nunavut instance or a Canadian instance would be different than rules written by a committee in Menlo Park.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/tanya-tagaq-facebook-suspended-1.3963969
Evan Prodromou
@fraying @blaine but this is a *potential* advantage. We have to build the social structures to make it real.
Derek Powazek 🐐
I’m well aware of the pros/cons of centralized vs decentralized community systems. I’ve been doing this stuff since the 90s. My only point (at the moment) is that federation, in itself, does not solve community problems. Only human community leaders solve those problems. I’m just as excited about the fediverse as everyone else is. Just don’t pretend the tech itself solves anything by default. Trust me, we made that mistake last time. I want us to do better this time.
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