I think the “niche aggregator” part of the proposal (c) completely addresses your moderation concerns.

No, it doesn't, because that is exactly how Mastodon instances work - or rather, fail to work.

Really what I'm proposing is just a protocol between hosting services and aggregators, that they can use to accept sources from any supporting hosting service, if they so choose.

The aggregator can build their site however they want. So then the moderation and community guidance is their responsibility. Maybe the site doesn't have comments, maybe the site has a 30 day source verification timeframe. Unsurprisingly I don't have the solution to the internet's cultural problems, except to say that moderation is probably the hardest problem for any internet community, and YouTube hasn't figured it out yet either.

In some countries, the hosting services would also be on the hook for policing of content on their hosting. Not everywhere has safe harbour type laws, and some authorities have the ability to take down servers they deem break the law.

Of course, an aggregator could accept all public sources, and inevitably succumb to the unmoderated internet.

Do you have a link about mastadon's moderation problems?

In addition to Wil Wheaton's experience linked above, we have:

https://nolanlawson.com/2018/08/31/mastodon-and-the-challeng...

https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e... [1]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... [2]

[1] See section on identity and moderation - you can't decouple them when you have a hybrid between a content platform and a social media application (Which is what any video hosting service that allows comments, or shows recommended videos, or cross-links to other distributed aggregators is.)

[2] Bad[3] people show up to the community, everyone loses their mind, hard-coded bans starts happening, because the community interfaces with things like app stores, and app stores have policies that don't care one whit about your federated free-as-in-speech ideals, not to mention that developers and moderators are human beings too, and maybe they personally can't stand allowing furries/commies/fascists/homosexuals/homophobes/Englishmen in their space.

[3] For whatever someone's definition of 'bad' is.

[2] seems more like an instance where we need more app stores that understand how the internet works. The idea that we're going to ban Tumblr because it has porn on it but allow web browsers is so horrendously misguided that it's a singularly unique example of corporate doublethink.

Wil Wheaton is a poor person to choose here; He is an incredibly toxic personality who's presence on the internet causes more people to turn to the alt-right.

I say this in good faith, as I'm not part of the alt-right nor do I agree in any way with them. But toxic people are of all kinds and we should be aware of those in our camp who do harm to our causes by acting in deleterious ways.

--

However, it raises a more valid point about 'what do we do about controversial figures' in general, and you would expect, as with most federated services, to be able to prevent "non-local" personas to be blocked from interacting with local users.

In those situations though it degrades the experience; the best part about mastadon though is that you get to choose who you federate with, so you could, in theory, have linked mastadon installations for government officials (who are often controversial) and signup could be linked with an oauth2 identity system that ties back to a real identity somehow (this would be possible in Estonia with their e-ID systems).

Out of curiosity, in what way is Wil Wheaton incredibly toxic and how does he turn people to the alt-right? I did some googling, but couldn't find anything specific.

It's not just one or two things; it's his general demeanour and method of engaging with people who disagree with him on any small thing.

He will denigrate, attempt to belittle and often pick very bad faith arguments about the smallest of issues.

To give an example of his demenour: https://youtu.be/pHckKckhBYc

There's also this account from a fan, which goes into how he is: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.874144-I-need...

He also called PewDiePie "A Racist Piece of Shit Bigot" and while PewDiePie did use a racial epithet and there's no excuse for that, he did apologise profusely and regardless that's not a decent way to engage a stranger. https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/04/02/wil-wheaton-attack...

He will block you for any disagreement; and I don't mean people being crappy to him, anything that goes against what he says: https://steemit.com/blocking/@awgonnerman/is-this-why-wil-wh...

For whatever it's worth his introduction to mastadon was mired in controversy after he bleated calls to have a user blacklisted from the platform for the following joke:

> “Hey, did you watch that awesome show on Bofa last night?”

> “What’s Bofa?”

> points to crotch “Bofa deez nuts down here.”

And when Mastadon wouldn't (couldn't) blacklist the user from the platform he got viciously angry.

EDIT: His fans are on hackernews; please don't "downvote to disagree"; he is known to be toxic and curates blocklists of anyone who slights him in any way. If you disagree, please prove me wrong.

A federated system is better for this, since the instances can decide to ignore / blacklist other instances hosting content they deem unsavory, and each instance can set their rules, like PeerTube.