I'm not sure I'd agree. It's implemented very non-uniformly, and if you get booted from one place you can just say the same thing somewhere else. Nor is it *correcting*, which is what the topic was about.
Having a community of like-minded people is fine if that's what you want. But such communities tend to be *extremely* hostile to being told they are wrong. It's not re-assuring to hear that they're so closed that nobody will even bother to try.
Let's remember that if it did degrade to "get booted from one place you can just say the same thing someplace else" that is precisely what Bluesky promises. And Nostr?
The difference, I think, is that of these Mastodon is the one that's serious about curated moderation.
See Mozilla's announcement.
Having been in it for 6 months now, it seems to work. I don't see any normies complaining that they were canceled anywhere. I did see some MAGAs say "this isn't fun anymore" and move on.
I remain, alas, an unreconstructed Wikipedia critic, for reasons I sadly know will get me no karma/clout/etc. I realize many intellectuals love it nowadays, and I understand why. But it has horrible costs, and is no overall solution.
When you say: "What this shows is that online communities can self-correct" - no, sorry, I think that's a deeply mistaken view of what happens. I'd say more that it shows it's possible to get massive amounts of free work out of people under certain conditions. But this isn't unknown in human history, see e.g. the Catholic Church.
Basically, any social media which has - well, "free speech" is really not quite the right phrase - more like "country-wide political debate", is going to have problems. Wikipedia "solves" this issue by very clearly severely restricting its truth-model. Now, that truth-model greatly aligns with yours, so this may not be so visible. But to anyone who finds themselves on the other side of it - wrongly or rightly - it's very evident.
Case in point: What "Community Notes" will get put on JK Rowling's tweets?
The question of what sort of notes will go on Rowling's tweets is an excellent one. It does require a consensus that a particular Note is "helpful" (we don't know the threshold); I'll be interested to see, though personally I don't follow Rowling, so I guess I'll hear at second hand.
On the Wikipedia/Catholic church point, yes, a lot of free labour. But we should admit that we have a cognitive surplus, and for some people a time surplus - as was also the case I suppose when the cathedrals that one sees around the UK were built. The builders are long gone but the cathedrals remain, and the abuses that might have occurred in their building are invisible. Such is the way of the world. The cathedrals, though, remain beautiful testament to what we can do.
Perhaps no one wants to hear about Mastodon, but I think one could make the argument that it has something like Wikipedia style moderation already.
Not in the sense of a full hierarchy, but a composite of instances, cultures, norms.
I personally use a standalone instance, and my view is of content shaped that way. Urbanists here, auto enthusiasts over there.
I'm not sure I'd agree. It's implemented very non-uniformly, and if you get booted from one place you can just say the same thing somewhere else. Nor is it *correcting*, which is what the topic was about.
On the correcting aspect .. perhaps it's less important when the fallacious is absent?
Sorry to go on, but I do find this interesting.
Maybe a world where saying "Fauci created COVID" would just get you booted off a server, is not such a bad thing.
There might not be a need to decorate such a posts with corrections.
Ah, but what about saying "The Hunter Biden laptop is authentic"?
Or even "This New York Times article on medical treatment and transgender youth seems to have careful, thorough reporting"? Real case! See
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/21/mastodons-content-moderation-growing-pains/
Having a community of like-minded people is fine if that's what you want. But such communities tend to be *extremely* hostile to being told they are wrong. It's not re-assuring to hear that they're so closed that nobody will even bother to try.
Let's remember that if it did degrade to "get booted from one place you can just say the same thing someplace else" that is precisely what Bluesky promises. And Nostr?
The difference, I think, is that of these Mastodon is the one that's serious about curated moderation.
See Mozilla's announcement.
Having been in it for 6 months now, it seems to work. I don't see any normies complaining that they were canceled anywhere. I did see some MAGAs say "this isn't fun anymore" and move on.
I remain, alas, an unreconstructed Wikipedia critic, for reasons I sadly know will get me no karma/clout/etc. I realize many intellectuals love it nowadays, and I understand why. But it has horrible costs, and is no overall solution.
When you say: "What this shows is that online communities can self-correct" - no, sorry, I think that's a deeply mistaken view of what happens. I'd say more that it shows it's possible to get massive amounts of free work out of people under certain conditions. But this isn't unknown in human history, see e.g. the Catholic Church.
Basically, any social media which has - well, "free speech" is really not quite the right phrase - more like "country-wide political debate", is going to have problems. Wikipedia "solves" this issue by very clearly severely restricting its truth-model. Now, that truth-model greatly aligns with yours, so this may not be so visible. But to anyone who finds themselves on the other side of it - wrongly or rightly - it's very evident.
Case in point: What "Community Notes" will get put on JK Rowling's tweets?
The question of what sort of notes will go on Rowling's tweets is an excellent one. It does require a consensus that a particular Note is "helpful" (we don't know the threshold); I'll be interested to see, though personally I don't follow Rowling, so I guess I'll hear at second hand.
On the Wikipedia/Catholic church point, yes, a lot of free labour. But we should admit that we have a cognitive surplus, and for some people a time surplus - as was also the case I suppose when the cathedrals that one sees around the UK were built. The builders are long gone but the cathedrals remain, and the abuses that might have occurred in their building are invisible. Such is the way of the world. The cathedrals, though, remain beautiful testament to what we can do.