To clarify, I don't mean big P Politics, I mean political in the sense that each node is owned and operated separately, which means there are competing interests and a need to coordinate between them that extends beyond the technical. Extrapolated to N potential nodes creates a lot of conflicting incentives and perspectives that have to be managed. And if the network ever becomes concentrated in a handful of nodes or even one of them which is not unlikely, then we're effectively back at square one.

| if you don't like the way Zuckerberg and Musk run things, too bad

It's important to note we're optimizing for different things. When I say third-order social effects, it means the way that engagement algorithms and virality combine with massive scale to create a broadly negative effect on society. This comes in the form of addiction, how constant upward social comparison can lead to depression and burnout, or how in extreme situations, society's worst tendencies can be amplified into terrible results with Myanmar being the worst case scenario.

You assume centralization means total monopolization, which neither Twitter or Facebook or Reddit or anyone has been able to do. You may lose access to a specific audience, but nobody has a right to an audience. You can always put up a website, blog, write for an op-ed position at your local newspaper, hold a sign in a public square, etc. The mere existence of a centralized system with moderation is not a threat to freedom of speech.

Federation is a little bit more resilient but accounts can be blacklisted, and whole nodes can be blacklisted because of the behavior of a handful of accounts. And unfortunately, that little bit of resilience amplifies the problem of spam and bots, which for the average user is much bigger of a concern than losing their account. Not to mention privacy concerns, which is self-evident why an open system is more difficult than a closed one.

I'll concede that "worse" was poor wording, but intractable certainly wasn't. These problems become much more difficult to solve in a federated system.

However, most advocates of federation aren't interested in solving the same problems as I am, so that's where the dissonance comes from.

> You assume centralization means total monopolization, which neither Twitter or Facebook or Reddit or anyone has been able to do. You may lose access to a specific audience, but nobody has a right to an audience.

When almost everyone has access to something and you are singled out and denied that access (without due process), then there's a problem, discussions on the definition of monopoly notwithstanding.

You can try to fix that by ensuring the process is fair and transparent, or by changing the market so that there is no single entity whose services almost everyone uses.

Sure but I'd argue there's a much greater chance of a subscription service having a fair and transparent process because you are the customer versus an ad-supported service because the advertisers are the customer.

And maybe users have a right to not be deleted without cause, despite it being a private platform. Maybe scale means that they have to play by different rules.

But what if the answer is reducing reach so only explicit followers can see what's posted? Do users have a right to being algorithmically boosted? Do they have a right to a wide audience? People who have had their reach reduced on instagram or twitter don't seem content to accept that but I don't see an argument against it.

In a federated system, spam and bots are a huge problem. One way this is handled is a shared blocklist. Something I toyed with was a propagated list like DNS to handle this problem, which would go a long way, but would also mean that being blocked by a highly trusted node could mean being blacklisted by the fediverse. This has already happened in a soft way when Gab was mass defederated. As the fediverse grows, automated tooling is necessary. Even if people have a right to contest being blocked, what's the reasonable mechanism for getting unblocked in a massive federated system?

I can see it from the point of view of e.g. a politician, where reduction in reach has a direct impact on the number of votes they can expect. Disadvantaging one is as good as giving advantage to the rest, and in the context of politics that would be problematic even if a court ordered it.

That's not to say Fediverse-style moderation would solve this. I don't really know what the solution is for algorithmic feeds. Personally I'd rather go back to lightly-federated or unfederated forums, but that idea seems sadly unpopular.

Right and I'm not a fan of algorithmic feeds at all. Social media users broadly are happiest with a basic chronological feed composed only of who they follow. That's why every social media platform starts with that, then adds algorithmic feeds when they want to attract advertisers and after they feel their users are "locked in" enough.

Especially when engagement is the primary metric, which incentivizes our worst attention-seeking behavior. Well thought out, nuanced posts get lost in the ether. Hot takes, trolling and extreme positions get pushed to the top.

Reddit and HN mitigate this somewhat with the downvote system, which is hardly perfect, but at least means negative feedback is not given a positive weight in rankings.