@pluralistic@mamot.fr
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pluralistic

@pluralistic@mamot.fr

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
@doctorow.

Archived at pluralistic.net

I post long threads. If you don't like these in your timeline but want to read them, I suggest unfollowing me here and subscribing to my RSS, or my newsletter, or any of my various long-form feeds. Links at https://pluralistic.net.

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pluralistic, to random
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The classic trilemma goes: "Fast, cheap or good, pick any two." The Moderator's Trilemma goes, "Large, diverse userbase; centralized platforms; don't anger users - pick any two." The Moderator's Trilemma is introduced in "Moderating the Fediverse: Content Moderation on Distributed Social Media," a superb paper from @arozenshtein U of Minnesota Law, forthcoming in the journal Free Speech Law, available as a prepub on SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4213674#maincontent

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pluralistic,
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A good case-study here is , a Fediverse server by and for far-right cranks, conspiratorialists and white nationalists. Most Fediverse servers have defederated (that is, blocked) Gab, but Gab is still there, and Gab has actually defederated from many of the remaining servers, leaving its users to speak freely - but only to people who want to hear what they have to say.

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pluralistic,
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This is true meaning of "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach." Willing listeners aren't blocked from willing speakers - but you don't have the right to be heard by people who don't want to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Fediverse servers are (thus far) nonprofits or hobbyist sites, and don't have the same incentives to drive "engagement" to maximize the opportunties to show advertisements.

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pluralistic,
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Fediverse applications are frequently designed to be - that is, to prevent spectacular spreads of information across the system.

It's possible - likely, even - that future Fediverse servers will be operated by commercial operators seeking to maximize attention in order to maximize revenue.

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pluralistic,
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But the users of these servers will still have the freedom of exit that they enjoy on today's volunteer-run servers - and so commercial servers will have to either curb their worst impulses or lose their users to better systems.

I'll note here that this is a progressive story of the benefits of competition - not the capitalist's fetishization of competition for its own sake, but rather, competition as a means of disciplining capital.

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pluralistic,
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It can be readily complimented by discipline through regulation - for example, extending today's burgeoning crop of data-protection laws to require servers to furnish users with exports of their follow/follower data so they can go elsewhere.

There's another dimension to decentralized content moderation that exit and voice don't address - moderating "harmful" content. Some kinds of harm can be mitigated through exit.

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pluralistic,
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If a server tolerates hate speech or harassment, you can go elsewhere, preferably somewhere that blocks your previous server.

But there are other kinds of speech that must not exist - either because they are illegal or because they enact harms that can't be mitigated by going elsewhere (or both). The most spectacular version of this is (), a modern term-of-art to replace the more familiar "child porn."

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pluralistic,
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Rozenshtein says there are "reasons for optimism" when it comes to the Fediverse's ability to police this content, though as he unpacked this idea, I found it much weaker than his other material. Rozenshtein proposes that Fediverse hosts could avail themselves of , 's automated scanning tool, to block and purge themselves of CSAM, while noting that this is "hardly foolproof."

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Viss, to random
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well that was fun!
went to see @pluralistic at his book signing!

pluralistic,
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@Viss @gaileyfrey SO GREAT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, Viss!

pluralistic,
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@bishop6 @Viss Thank you for coming!

pluralistic, to random
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Remember ""? promised us that was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

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pluralistic,
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Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person's life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person's life by a mere two years.

It's a ghastly, nightmarish prospect - as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well.

2/

pluralistic,
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More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam "cost-sharing" systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern.

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pluralistic,
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Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people - seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours' worth of home care.

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pluralistic, to random
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Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: How Amazon makes everything you buy more expensive, no matter where you buy it; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/greedflation/

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pluralistic,
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Tonight (Apr 25) at 7PM I'll be in for the launch of my new novel, Red Team Blues, at Books, hosted by . Please come and say hi!

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/event/42523Doctorow

Tomorrow (Apr 26), you can catch me in at Dark Delicacies at 6PM:

https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2873/Wed%2C_Apr_26th_6pm%3A_Red_Team_Blues%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#

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pluralistic,
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How Amazon makes everything you buy more expensive, no matter where you buy it: Most Favored Nation is my least favorite scam.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110260912605591851

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pluralistic,
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Hey look at this

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pluralistic, to random
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Red Team Blues is my next novel, a anti-finance finance ; it's a major title for my publishers Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and it's swept the trade press with starred reviews all 'round. Despite all that, will not sell the . In fact, Audible won't sell any of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

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pluralistic, to random
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Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: How Goldman Sachs's "tax-loss harvesting" lets the ultra-rich rake in billions tax-free; Happy Independent Bookstore Day; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/

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pluralistic, to random
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Amazon is very proud of its : at first, the company offered subsidies to customers, which lured in sellers. Then, it demanded that those sellers lower their prices, which lured in more customers. With more customers, more sellers piled in. Faster and faster, the flywheel spins, creating the :

https://fourweekmba.com/amazon-flywheel/

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pluralistic, to random
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Competition is just a click (and $45b) away
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1328941/download

> pays $45 billion a year for contracts to lock out rivals, signing deals with “Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb— to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors.”

pluralistic,
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buys an entire EVERY SINGLE YEAR to make sure we don't ever use its competitors' products.

pluralistic, to random
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A Collective Bargain: Workplace democracy is a training ground for true national democracy

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Does anyone have a recommendation for a tool or web app that can ingest a @Kickstarter survey results spreadsheet and then spit out custom reports, e.g. "Email addresses for everyone whose reward or add-on includes a specific item, who completed a survey since my last d/l"?

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

My next novel is Red Team Blues, a grabby thriller about how finance curdled the dream of tech as a force for human thriving. It comes out in a matter of days, and to get you ready for that release, I've been serializing the first chapter all week - and today, I wrap up the series.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#henched

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pluralistic, to random
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Versus : Are the Serpents in Our Garden of Ethical Sharing

https://doctorow.medium.com/commafuckers-versus-the-commons-4e8dcdcf7dee

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