[kwlug-disc] Trust in Musk.. or go to NextCloud

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2022 at 12:29:01PM -0400, Doug Moen wrote:
> Some of the panic might be motivated by the fact that in the US, the phrase
> "free speech" has been redefined by the alt-right to mean a hellscape of
> alt-right trolling where liberal voices are brutally suppressed.

Suppressed in the sense that it's no fun posting anymore, or suppressed
in the sense that Twitter kicked them off the platform?  Most of the
banning I've seen has been either the right (like Trump and friends)
or the non-mainstream.  Twitter does not ban liberal voices.

Which also raises the question, isn't "alt-right trolling" included
in the definition of free speech?  It is the "fire in a crowded theatre"
speech that is deemed too dangerous to allow.


> Meanwhile, Mastodon is available right now, and unlike Twitter there is no
> centralized censorship system, just a few thousand instances that each define
> their own acceptable use policies. Because of its decentralized structure,
> the Fediverse can support free speech in a way that Twitter probably never
> will, due to Twitter's centralized structure and its need to keep advertisers
> happy.

I'm speculating a bit here, but suppose everyone moves from Twiter to
Mastodon.  Wouldn't the filters and fediverse policies eventually
bifurcate the speech world into separate right and left camps?
A sad day that is already here I guess.


> Frankly, Dorsey's project to create a Twitter replacement sounds more
> exciting to me than whatever Musk is doing to Twitter. Dorsey has put years
> of thought into this.

The move to federation is exciting.  We've gone far too long trusting big
corporations with our data.

- Chris