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shacklesburstComment on this post, I just have no idea how to save this comment on my blog as well
I'm in agreement with much of what you said in this post, so I'm just going to comment on the one part I think will prove to be the hardest decision going forward: blocking capabilities.
You mentioned this as well: lj's downward spiral basically followed three axes: bans on fannish, especially derivative, work where copyright holders got involved; bans on pornography, because of prudish advertisers, investors, or governments (and porn is an integral part of fannish work, though of course by far not the only one); and the Russian government's involvement regarding political dissidents (real life dissenters are probably more prevalent in fannish spaces as well).
Those still seem, nowadays the three main axes a new hub would need to traverse. Looking at the political landscapes around the world these past few years, this will only be possible with strong anonymity guarantees, helped along by strong encryption and a distributed, highly duplicated, resilient structure. So I'm thinking a P2P solution will be, at least in the long run, unavoidable.
As the vast majority of fans in the fannish community aren't devs, these guarantees will need to be implemented in such a way that using them is easy on the average user, solving the old problem of making secure communication easy (okay, encrypted messaging has made huge strides in that regard). I haven't delved into the code yet, but the scuttlebutt approach seems to be going into the right direction here. Alternatively, IPFS, but as a social network, if that makes sense.
But, and I think this will be my most controversial statement yet, it also means essentially giving up on the notion of centralized content blocking being possible even in principle. A network as extremely roughly outlined above will not be controllable. There will be documented abuse on there, and nobody will be able to delete it. A network with such strong free speech guarantees will of course be used not only by fans, but by the worst of the worst, because free speech guarantees always draw most strongly on those whose speech is (justly or unjustly) most suppressed. Helping fans freely share fannish content without having to answer to repressive measures by advertisers or copyright holders, *will* help more malicious segments of the population use it as well. (I've always held that it'll be most helpful to all to stop such actors in the real world instead of trying to block their content online.)
However, it should of course be possible to close *yourself* off entirely from malicious content such as that, simply by not following anybody who would post or reblog anything like that. Doing that should further prevent such content from being downloaded to your device.
This is markedly more than the OTW had to do with AO3, but the multimedia world is simply much more tightly watched and controlled by both governments and copyright holders than the purely written word, even if you can ignore advertisers. But I think it's the only truly future-proof way to go. Anything hosted, even if paid for by its users, with a content policy and enforcement thereof, will sooner or later cave to outside or *inside* pressures (I mean, just a few weeks ago, there was this huge discussion among *fans* on tumblr why AO3 would need that much money, and how it's just a fanfic site, so you shouldn't support it). I'm aware it seems like a drastic approach, but getting everyone in one boat for this, fandom, derivative artists, simple discussion communities, political activists and dissidents, could be imperative for all of these communities to continue striving in the future.
I'm in agreement with much of what you said in this post, so I'm just going to comment on the one part I think will prove to be the hardest decision going forward: blocking capabilities.
You mentioned this as well: lj's downward spiral basically followed three axes: bans on fannish, especially derivative, work where copyright holders got involved; bans on pornography, because of prudish advertisers, investors, or governments (and porn is an integral part of fannish work, though of course by far not the only one); and the Russian government's involvement regarding political dissidents (real life dissenters are probably more prevalent in fannish spaces as well).
Those still seem, nowadays the three main axes a new hub would need to traverse. Looking at the political landscapes around the world these past few years, this will only be possible with strong anonymity guarantees, helped along by strong encryption and a distributed, highly duplicated, resilient structure. So I'm thinking a P2P solution will be, at least in the long run, unavoidable.
As the vast majority of fans in the fannish community aren't devs, these guarantees will need to be implemented in such a way that using them is easy on the average user, solving the old problem of making secure communication easy (okay, encrypted messaging has made huge strides in that regard). I haven't delved into the code yet, but the scuttlebutt approach seems to be going into the right direction here. Alternatively, IPFS, but as a social network, if that makes sense.
But, and I think this will be my most controversial statement yet, it also means essentially giving up on the notion of centralized content blocking being possible even in principle. A network as extremely roughly outlined above will not be controllable. There will be documented abuse on there, and nobody will be able to delete it. A network with such strong free speech guarantees will of course be used not only by fans, but by the worst of the worst, because free speech guarantees always draw most strongly on those whose speech is (justly or unjustly) most suppressed. Helping fans freely share fannish content without having to answer to repressive measures by advertisers or copyright holders, *will* help more malicious segments of the population use it as well. (I've always held that it'll be most helpful to all to stop such actors in the real world instead of trying to block their content online.)
However, it should of course be possible to close *yourself* off entirely from malicious content such as that, simply by not following anybody who would post or reblog anything like that. Doing that should further prevent such content from being downloaded to your device.
This is markedly more than the OTW had to do with AO3, but the multimedia world is simply much more tightly watched and controlled by both governments and copyright holders than the purely written word, even if you can ignore advertisers. But I think it's the only truly future-proof way to go. Anything hosted, even if paid for by its users, with a content policy and enforcement thereof, will sooner or later cave to outside or *inside* pressures (I mean, just a few weeks ago, there was this huge discussion among *fans* on tumblr why AO3 would need that much money, and how it's just a fanfic site, so you shouldn't support it). I'm aware it seems like a drastic approach, but getting everyone in one boat for this, fandom, derivative artists, simple discussion communities, political activists and dissidents, could be imperative for all of these communities to continue striving in the future.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:53 am (UTC)What about something federated like mastodon, but with the ability to move between servers more easily? That would give you the ability to outsource some of the content moderation to the admins, but with the ability to leave if you don't like their policies.