TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Diaspora social network cannot stop IS posts

55 pointsby codeoclockover 10 years ago

24 comments

peraover 10 years ago
This is like saying "E-Mail cannot stop X mails" or "XMPP cannot stop X chats", which is pretty obvious. The whole point of a decentralized service like Diaspora is that it can't be completely censored. Internet providers could partially block the access to pods that don't censor this kind of content, but then they could setup their own Diaspora pod in a Tor hidden services...
评论 #8207985 未加载
评论 #8207775 未加载
deweyover 10 years ago
I think it&#x27;s a bit weird that instead of using this to promote their values (Decentralization, Freedom, Privacy as mentioned on their landing page [0]) they are essentially pressuring pod admins to take down the content.<p>I know they could just setup their own Pod but these values are what makes them any different from the likes of Twitter and I would&#x27;ve expected them to stand by them a bit more.<p>[0] <a href="https://diasporafoundation.org/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;diasporafoundation.org&#x2F;</a>
评论 #8207687 未加载
评论 #8207656 未加载
higherpurposeover 10 years ago
Maybe Diaspora will finally take off now that the other social networks will begin to get heavily censored.<p>I for one would like Twister to take off as alternative to Twitter:<p><a href="http://twister.net.co/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;twister.net.co&#x2F;</a><p>EDIT: It also seems to be compatible with Tor now:<p><a href="http://twister.net.co/?p=366" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;twister.net.co&#x2F;?p=366</a>
logfromblammoover 10 years ago
It seems odd to structure a project around freedom of speech, control of your own information, and dilution of central authority, and then act disappointed when it actually gets used for those purposes.<p>If a group that posts videos of journalist executions can use it without getting shut down, it is certainly usable for any other group that may be unpopular with their local majority: Tibetan nationalists, Falun Gong, breastfeeding moms, cop watchers, Iranian women&#x27;s rights groups, Ukranian rebels, homosexuals, German Nazis, Quebec secessionists, eco-terrorists, unschoolers, conspiracy theorists, anarchists, red-state liberals, blue-state conservatives, and people who text while driving.<p>To get the good, you have to take the bad with it. The same Bitcoin that can buy a pizza can also buy a murder. The same typewriter can write both a beautiful poem or an extortion note. A hammer can build a house or crack a skull. A fire can chase away the cold and the dark, or it can burn your home to ash.<p>The early adopters are going to be the most blatantly offensive, and the most suspiciously paranoid, and the most idealist. The mainstream people already have their mainstream network, and won&#x27;t see any reason to switch until they find themselves penalized in some way for being different from the owners of the system.<p>This is <i>good</i>. If someone as nasty as a journalist beheader can&#x27;t get silenced, I know with reasonable certainty that if I go to Diaspora, there&#x27;s likely nothing I would ever do myself that would result in me being erased from the network. And I can share information with just my friends, rather than my friends plus all paying Facebook customers.<p>And in addition to all that, how can you expect to get more jaw-jaw and less war-war if you slap a gag on the other guy every time you see his lips move?
评论 #8207894 未加载
jacquesmover 10 years ago
This is one of the reasons I never felt that I could run a TOR or freenet node in good conscience.<p>They have good uses but I can think of plenty of bad uses and I suspect that the bad uses will outnumber the good uses at any moment in time.
评论 #8208311 未加载
goatforce5over 10 years ago
<a href="https://diasporafoundation.org/about#features" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;diasporafoundation.org&#x2F;about#features</a><p>&quot;diaspora* is completely Free Software. This means there are no limits on how it can be used.&quot;<p>Sounds like the IS people are using it as intended.<p>(Life will get complicated for any pod admins in western countries though.)
yarrelover 10 years ago
Microsoft and Dell cannot stop IS using computers.<p>Xerox cannot stop IS using photocopiers.<p>Sanford cannot stop IS using pencils.<p>BBC cannot stop IS listening to World Service.<p>etc.
samirmenonover 10 years ago
&quot;The team behind a social network being used by Islamic State (IS) militants has <i>admitted</i> it cannot prevent the spread of extremist material.&quot;<p>&quot;admitted&quot;? What&#x27;s with the tone of this article? What crime are they &quot;admitting&quot; to?<p>In my experience, BBC should be better than this.
Scorpionover 10 years ago
Isn&#x27;t that kind of what it was created for? They had to know from the start that not all the people and groups who used it would have noble intentions.
mikeashover 10 years ago
Sometimes it seems like people are more upset about the words of killers than the fact that they go around killing people.
评论 #8207683 未加载
评论 #8207774 未加载
dangeroover 10 years ago
I don&#x27;t like what these guys are posting about but should we really abandon freedom of speech over it? Wouldn&#x27;t that be an example of the terrorists winning?
评论 #8207741 未加载
评论 #8209752 未加载
anelizatover 10 years ago
A stranger here, i stumbled on this thread as i&#x27;ve been mulling over Diaspora&#x27;s reaction to ISIS&#x27;s sudden and dreadful arrival. It&#x27;s heartening to read these threads and consider your reasoned and civilized exchanges.<p>My own perspective is largely reflected in the early post of logfromblammo, which puts me in the extremist free (i.e., decentralized&#x2F;uncensorable) speech camp, i guess. logfromblammo&#x27;s observation that early adopters rarely come from (anywhere near) the mainstream seems an especially salient aspect of the good-with-the-bad argument in this case.<p>The only thing i&#x27;d add, as an old school free speecher, is that the traditional anti-censorship answer to bad speech is more good speech. ...still thinking about how that model plays out on a distributed social network (social networking being an activity i personally mostly avoid).<p>Anyway...GRATITUDE for the cogent, respectful conversation i&#x27;ve had the pleasure of eavesdropping on.
dlkdgover 10 years ago
What about this: the Diaspora team does not betray their principles for encouraging pod admins to block IS content, mainly because they do not make up their minds and say &#x27;Oh shit, maybe this decentralized thing was not that good an idea&#x27;. What they&#x27;re saying is that they do not approve of what IS do and say, and think that you shouldn&#x27;t neither.<p>As it was said before, saying that certain assholes should shut up does not equal betraying the principle of freedom of speech. Now, that is philosophical subtleties aside. <i>Of course</i> this invokes hard questions, like, who gets to decide which assholes should shut up. But let&#x27;s not split hairs -- IS case is not a borderline case. That is, if we all agree that what they do is universally harmful.<p>If someone doesn&#x27;t then I think there&#x27;s not much to discuss.
tedunangstover 10 years ago
<i>&quot;It&#x27;s absolutely inevitable that organisations like IS are going to be among the early adopters of this sort of innovation.&quot;</i><p>That would have been a great quote to have on the crowdfunding page.
评论 #8207659 未加载
alexchamberlainover 10 years ago
Scientists have ethics committees, but what do we turn to in these situations? Undoubtedly, many of us would argue that free speech is one of the best things that has come out of the internet, and open source and decentralised software is often created for this very reason. On the other hand, it gives extremists a platform for communication. It&#x27;s a fine balancing act and I&#x27;m not sure there is enough debate around these sorts of issues.
mottersover 10 years ago
If they set up their own pod then they can spread whatever propaganda they want. Earlier in the year IS made the foolish mistake of setting up on a Red Matrix server administered by someone who opposed them, and they promptly got kicked off.<p><a href="https://libertypod.org/posts/7a778c00f3a201319eb700163efe12c9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;libertypod.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;7a778c00f3a201319eb700163efe12c...</a>
kordlessover 10 years ago
I&#x27;ve been thinking about this type of problem for a while now. One possible solution would be a requirement for the content to pay for its &#x27;right to be visible&#x27; or &#x27;right of existence&#x27;. Rates for right of existence could vary based on network sentiment&#x2F;karma regarding the content. Karma could be earned by users providing storage or purchased in bulk for a fee.
peter303over 10 years ago
There was strange premonition of this in the 1990s Left Behind scifi series. This was at the dawn of the web. In those stories the true-believer Xtianss are guerillas battling the forces of the anti-Christ whom control all government utilities like the web. Yet the guerillas use the web for their planning. I always wondered why the anti-christ couldnt stop the web.
k__over 10 years ago
Hey, there are people who use it to do more offensive stuff than I ever would and they can&#x27;t censor them.<p>Sounds like a quality criteria to me.
thisjepisjeover 10 years ago
Never heard of Diaspora, but based on this article I think it sounds good.
unclesaammover 10 years ago
Groups conducting subversive activities all moving to one service..? This sounds like DARPA&#x27;s lucky day.
lazylizardover 10 years ago
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?
Alupisover 10 years ago
&quot;IS&quot;, aka Islamic State, does not necessarily mean &quot;Extremist&quot;<p>(and for the record, &quot;IS&quot; is not a synonym for &quot;ISIS&quot;)
评论 #8207797 未加载
评论 #8207812 未加载
评论 #8207819 未加载
u124556over 10 years ago
So it works.