• jadero@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Everything is about community. Usenet all but disappeared because it got overrun with selfish assholes. It’s not that hard for a community to be killed by its own membership. There are many examples both online and off.

    Moderation isn’t the answer, or at least not a complete answer, because Reddit brought to the fore that moderators can be selfish assholes, too. If I understand what’s behind certain recent defederation decisions, those selfish assholes are already here.

    Explicit federation (and defederation) is an interesting twist on decentralized, but it is unlikely to be a panacea.

    I think we’re all running the Red Queen’s Race. Some of us are forever doomed to run away from the selfish assholes and the selfish assholes are forever doomed to chase us in the hopes of finding a place to showcase themselves. They are not and never will be happy to just be selfish assholes in their own spaces because that would be neither selfish nor asshole-ish.

    • evilsmurf@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Usenet lost out to the convenience and better styling options available on Web 2.0. Not because of it’s users.

      • jadero@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Perhaps, but my personal experience was that Usenet was well on its way to being a dumpster fire of trolls, creeps, and spammers before the Web 2.0 technologies were more than a glimmer in anyone’s eyes.

    • Scew@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s the best explanation of the internet I’ve ever heard.

      “If I understand what’s behind certain recent defederation decisions, those selfish assholes are already here.”

      From what I’ve seen, they are. It does seem like they don’t have a majority quite yet but it’s probably not far off.