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Comment by 10111001 | Hacker News Reader

> But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.

The problem with that is people are "lazy": they're typically not going to expend extra effort that's not needed to solve the problem in front of them. It's pervasive, and it's one of the big reasons "friction" reducing technology can be really problematic: it turns necessary behaviors into issues of self-discipline (e.g. exercise becomes forcing yourself to haul yourself to the gym regularly in your spare time, instead just walking everywhere because you have to in order to go about your day).

So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.

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I tried to get a family member to use Signal, and she eventually gave up on it, because she couldn't handle switching back and forth between Messages and Signal. It's very difficult to get people to migrate to better platforms when they have that mindset.

You're asking the family member to make their life worse in the immediate term.

If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.

> If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.

But somewhat counterintuitively, you can do that by making their life a little harder first.

For example: leave Facebook/WhatsApp, refuse to communicate over SMS. Have good reasons for each, so you don't come off as unnecessarily difficult. Explain that Signal is far more secure and private than either and just as easy to use. Then using Signal is making it easier to communicate with you. It worked for me.

I left the whole Facebook ecosystem about 10 years ago, but never deleted my account. I left it up as a tombstone that makes it very clear I'm not there and tells people how to contact me.

That's why we need to separate the protocol from the UI. There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other.

I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins. But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.

Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.

Jabber would like a word: https://jabber.org/

But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.

The EU forced Apple to use USB-C on iPhones, because it was stupid and wasteful for people to have two different types of chargers in their home for their small electronic rechargeable devices. Government does have the power to regulate things like this. They would need to be educated to understand the importance and benefit of it.

Apple changed to USB-C after Lightning was ten years old, exactly as they promised ten years before. The EU regulation didn’t force Apple to do anything, its deadline was a couple years after Apple switched, and Apple assisted in the creation of USB-C and after they had already switched their laptops.

The EU was actually on the path to forcing everyone to use micro-USB. Thankfully Apple (and others) pioneered USB-C (bringing what it learnt from developing the lightning connector) in the time it took the EU to go from making all of the phone makers sign a Memorandum of Understanding to making it legislation. Now the EU is frozen in time, stuck on USB-C for the forseeable future. The economics to make a device dual port (USB-C and something new) aren't there, so we're not likely to ever see an improvement on USB-C... in an alternative timeline, we could have been stuck on the even worse micro-USB.

Bringing it back to the topic on hand, this is very much an area I wouldn't want to see a heavy handed EU legislate something that just further cements the incumbants and makes everything worse forever... just like mandatory micro-USB would have been. I can totally see the EU legislating something like a mandatory Meta communication protocol with compulsory attestation from Meta servers.

There is zero reason that Apple cannot assemble an industry consortium to make USB-D. They just can't make another Lightning connector scenario.

Which is good, because the Lightning connector has DRM in the fucking cable, and gave Apple outsized and undeserved control over iPhone accessories.

There is one good reason: abuse.

Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.

"There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other."

Maybe aside from the increased attack surface and trust issues...

I don't understand why having more than one chat app is too much for some people. I use signal, whatsapp, discord, irc, google chat, email and messenger without complaint. I can't force people to use my platform of choice so I have to compromise and use what they do with little to no notice on my end. Sure, I am not happy with this situation but I accept it and move on while keeping an eye out for alternatives.

Maybe related to how much brain space they're willing to spend on that facet of life?

There are certainly parts of my life that would be more optimized if that weren't a constraint.

What brain space? These apps take seconds to install and get an account connected. After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.

Consider the opposite direction: what if you want to message someone? What if you haven't messaged them in a while? Imagine you have seven messaging apps installed, some of the names you've forgotten ("Discord", is that obviously a messaging app?). Imagine you know that they're reachable somewhere just not exactly where.

I honestly have never had this issue. It's really about focus and effort. If the person is important enough, I will most likely remember how to contact them. I also mostly use email for all important communications so that remains searchable. The other chat apps are all for casual friends and acquaintances that if lost, well so be it.

None of my older relatives use email. They can text however (or iMessage, since it is transparent). Not everyone cares so little for friends and acquaintances.

> Not everyone cares so little for friends and acquaintances.

You misunderstand. I have had to use various apps to communicate with people I dont need to talk to again, e.g. hotel and airbnb hosts in different countries which use these services. Like the time I had to install whatsapp in Spain to get into a boutique hotel. Sometimes you are meeting someone, e.g. a potential client who only uses signal so I install signal for our meeting and promptly uninstall it after we are done communicating. I have also had to install signal when coordinating with others for a hackathon and dumped it afterwards as we all had email addresses.

And what if you want to contact someone? Are they on signal or WhatsApp or telegram? Or is it discord? Which server? How can I find that thing someone sent? Let me just open all those apps and start searching

I think you underestimate how little tolerance the average person has for this kind of friction. These huge platforms win because everyone is on them and it all just works.

You are speaking as someone who gives a shit about technology. Many people don't. "Just another account" is a big ask for many, as lots of people don't have password managers. There are a whole shit ton of people who want to use as few apps as they can. Even lots of tech-savvy people, myself included, feel this way.

> After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.

Until you get a random notification asking you to take steps to keep your account active or whatever. You may not care about this, but many people get stressed out about this kind of thing.

Every app you add to your phone is another potential vulnerability. I'm not installing a random discord or irc app just because that's someone's preferred platform. In fact I haven't installed any chat/message apps at all, I use the Messages app from Apple.

The network effect is powerful. But we also need to be honest with ourselves. Signal is an objectively worse client than Messages, especially when the average person does not value privacy.

The problem is not that people are lazy; the problem with open systems is that they are much harder to moderate and people want effective moderation. Usenet was open, decentralized, and wound up dying because there were too many problems with moderation and white supremacists etc. would show up and flood NGs with their nonsense.

There are also legal issues that kill decentralized/user-controlled systems. Copyright and child abuse are the most prominent, along with terrorism and drug trafficking. Who gets sued or prosecuted when the system is open, decentralized, and user-controlled? The users, and that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died, why so few people are willing to host a Tor exit node, etc. Before talking about banning centralized systems we need to talk about updating the legal system so that it does not force centralization, which is a much bigger project and much harder to get right.

The moderation problem wouldn't have been hard to solve on USENET, it's just that nobody wanted to do it. It could work exactly like moderation does on Mastodon, where each admin is responsible for the content on their server(s). There isn't a technical reason why you couldn't do that, and even give individuals moderation rights on specific lists. Of course, this only affects your particular news server, but it lets the white supremacist post their insane ramblings over on Giganews, while you and I read less toxic version of the thread over on Cozy News. If you don't like the moderation on your server, go find another one.

> that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died

p2p file sharing is still huge, though. Most people just put their seedboxes behind a VPN to avoid getting DMCA notices.

> So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.

I disagree. You don't have to ban the centralized alternatives (which is problematic) -- but you do have to make the alternative as frictionless as possible.

Repeal section 230. If they want to shape speech for their own agenda then they should be liable.

Right now they have it both ways. They have the users, money, and data and they speak through their moderation decisions while being legally immune from consequences.

We need something different than "repeal 230" because this is largely believed to be something that will chill speech. Platforms will take down speech out of an abundance of caution.

I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but we can place two constraints

1. Anyone can say anything online, free speech for individuals

2. Algorithms that act as "editors" are not free speech and should be regulated.

Perhaps the answer is to say that social media algorithms can only be chronological and M0% from your direct network.

Reposts and quotes seem to be one of the core features that enable virality and dog piling. We need to "slow the spread" - to borrow a phase from one of our least favorite times.

Another thing we need is a privacy preserving method for proving humanism online.

I disagree that it would chill speech (we also thought Section 230 as-is would work) but I also like your suggestions as a compromise.

Maybe the algos outside of what you mention should not get 230 immunity?

I'm not sure it's possible. Platforms want to be an enticing place for advertisers. Spam, porn, and bots, are all free speech. It's a hard problem.

Banning targeted advertising is higher on my list of priorities. That business line is one of the most toxic for humanity. Let's go back to placement advertising.

You Facebook et al. to be _more_ aggressive in their content takedowns (out of concern for liability)?

You do realize that will accomplish the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve right?

And they literally exercise more editorial control and reach than any magazine or newspaper editorial board ever did.

Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.

If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.

No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.

If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.

I've never had a phone company disconnect a phone call because they didn't like what I was saying https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101 Twitter was stopping people from tweeting or sending direct messages containing links to the New York Post article about Hunter Bidens Laptop in October of 2020. They put their thumb on the scale.

I've thought about this a lot. Section 230 essentially differentiates content sites into two categories, which I refer to as:

1. Publishers. Think CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. These are first-party sites;

2. Platforms. Think any social media site. They host user generated content ("UGC").

Section 230 doesn't use this exact language. But what it does is remove the strict liability from UGC for (2). So if I post something defamatory on Facebook, Meta isn't liable as long as they satisfy their obligations for moderation, takedowns, etc.

My opinion is that social media sites are essentially cheating. They're now a third category. They enjoy the benefits of being a platform while acting like a publisher.

Think about it this way: let's say a group of users make 1000 posts supporting Ukraine and 1000 posts supporting Russia in the current war. Posts from some of each might make defamatory of erroneous or intentionally false claims. But I, as the platform, use algorithms to surface certain posts and suppress others through a newsfeed, a recommendation panel or whatever. I can tweak that algorithm to surface the pro-Ukrainian posts or the pro-Russian posts. I am essentially taking a position and acting like a first-party publisher but I don't have strict liability issues.

So I don't think we need to repeal Section 230. I think we need to treat content suppression and promotion as being a publisher because that's what you are.

Well said, I concur. There is so much different information being posted that the platform can "say" anything it wants via moderation knobs without liability.

Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:

1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work

2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work

Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)

ah yes. Because they don't know technology their movement has no useful information for you and you already know better than all of them.

Amazing.

Above all, activists need something that other people are on.

TFA (and you) are just discounting the power of network effects. Tells me that your judgment is poor and I should not listen to you ;)

I would consider myself an activist, but not the Blue MAGA variety. Too much of the issue is people still think they can change minds online. In reality you are just chanting to the base, a negative feedback cycle for bad ideas that do not resonate with those outside your group.

Instead, go to where people all are, real life in the real world. I go out and talk to people all the time. I listen to them before telling them. I'm more interested in getting people talking than I am in changing their minds (right now) and providing them with ideas they are unlikely to hear online. I see my "sapphire gals" (retired nokingers) becoming less extreme, not repeating the shallow talking points. I hear them asking new questions.

Talking and working with others in person is 100x better.

Sure, I agree with all that. I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive with the need to be able to organize large gatherings of loosely connected people.

We were able to organize large groups of loosely connected people before social media. Women's sufferage and the Civil Rights movement are two notable examples. Speedrunning the moon landing after Sputnik and Kennedy's assasination another.

Yes? I’m not sure what you’re arguing or what you think I’m arguing.

And you are expecting countries to play by the rules when their existence in under threat. The EU will get people off Google, off Facebook, off fucking Pinterest even if it means moving back to Teletext.

(yes, there were "irc channels" on telext)

Idk who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about.

I certainly don’t “expect” (in the normative sense) countries to continue relying on these services. Breaking network effects is hard, but I wouldn’t blame a country for trying and I’d probably be happy with them succeeding (to the extent they facilitate free expression of their people).

China does that - how is that working out for their population?

Of course, the huge difference is that China also actually invests in replacing them with something. EU doesn't and only France has given it the least of efforts.

But that won't stop EU countries from just outlawing these services.

3. they are non-technical people who go where an audience already is

The problem here is the audience is largely their own group and the opposite extreme looking for fodder or to troll. It's the same for both extremes.

This is overly harsh; it starts with the (flawed IMO) perspective that people are dedicated "professional" activists rather than amateurs from many different backgrounds who come together around something they care about and grow/evolve/deppen over time. It makes complete sense that they use tools in front of them AND don't necessarily get -what are quite subtle angles to most - all the issues with their use. It doesn't make them lazy or stupid, but if you have the skills & talents to help with this yet do nothing you might be projecting...

> Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:

> 1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work

> 2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work

Your comment is a pretty good example of what not to do: society/technology makes good choices harder, so flog individuals about their lack of self-discipline when they don't do yet-another hard thing. People only have so much time and self-discipline, have some empathy.

The only thing the flogging does is give the flogger the chance to feel unjustifiably superior.

> Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)

What you're doing is a generalized method to dismiss anything and anyone:

1. Find a thing.

2. Search for some aspect that isn't perfect. Viciously criticize that aspect.

3. Dismiss the whole thing on account of that aspect.

The only thing that using Instagram tells me about these activists is that they weren't setting out to solve some ideological communication technology problem. They had other priorities.

They need to reach people where they are, so basically all the platforms where people hang out. It's not the activists who are lazy - it's people in general, who continue to use FB even though it is cluttered with ads and other distractions.

It really doesn't matter how you get to the most important take away, as long as you get there :)

It's because the corporations were all banding together to censor their opponents a few years ago, so they got used to the idea that large corporations are your friends. The left took an opportunistic stance on this instead of a principled one, despite the fact that they're the side that on paper is supposedly opposed to letting corporations turn into pseudo-governments.

More likely these activists chose the most convenient platform for getting their message out. IG is popular and that makes it an obvious choice. Also keep in mind that activists will generally use what they are already familiar with, and Facebook runs three of the most popular platforms i.e. platforms that activists were probably already using before they became activists.

The only reason activists would switch to something else is if Facebook gives them a reason to do so. I doubt this one incident is enough of a reason.

They don't organize over Instagram. One of many social accounts had issues. Around 3000 communities participated. They are doing fine.

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