Why twitter users keep complaining about censorship?

Intro

This article will only consider a short message service over ther Internet to build a social network. We assume private and high privacy is not required, so end-to-end encryption is not mandatory, users post public-oriented messages. User accounts are not meant to be hidden, nor anonymous at all.

Twitter model

Twitter is a proprietary and fully centralized model. Terms of service didn’t read is a nice web site that summarizes complex terms of service, most users never read and care about.

This is the result for Twitter:

Now, would you still consider fair to complain against Twitter that they apply the terms of service you just accepted to use the service? Isn’t that weird to pressure Twitter directors to disrespect their terms of service just because you disagree?

Sure you didn’t care for the terms of service when you started using it, sure you don’t care for legal contexts, sure you only complain when something happens against you interest.

As in many areas, if a recurrent issue occurs, don’t point at people, but consider the model you are using and the model you contribute to sustain.

Proprietary centralized models can only lead to such censorship situations. So why use it and persist using it? Whoever is at the board of directors, the centralized proprietary model work with profit and does not care about freedom of information.

A small group of people cannot decide for everyone, that just doesn’t work, because we all have different interest, desires, goals, and groups sharing same goals will oppose at a certain time to other groups. So letting a small group lead a centralized model, means you rely on their decisions.

It is a very popular platform, this is true. But popular doesn’t enforce you to use it. Or let’s put this way: as long as so many people don’t care about censorship power in the hands of Twitter directors (whoever they are or will be), Twitter will continue to be so popular.

So, assuming people turn to another service, most users will be reachable on another service. And…what if this other service provides a magic concept, Internet has brought for its resilience,

interoperability?…Hey that could be cool…this would mean any application built this this interoperability mechanism can communicate with another….like…email…

Every Internet user has probably at leat one email address. However there are many many different email services on the Internet. Nobody cares who is the hosting email service, it just works with anyone having an email address. This is plain stupid for any usual user.

This is interoperability : you don’t care who provides the email service, as long as the email service is interoperable with the others.

Before Internet became popular, it was the war of proprietary networks and systems. For the older readers, remember PC vs Mac war? You wouldn’t be able to share documents easily. If you had subscribed to network A, you could not connect to network B, and so on.. It was a fight to who would enslave most consumers. Doesn’t this sound like proprietary online services today?….think twice…

Do you really want to use and support models of communication from the 80s? Or would you prefer to take advantage of the benefits of modern features Internet permit? Because…yes..Twitter is a model of communication from the 80s…event 70s… I mention twitter in this article, but Instagram, tiktok, all share the same old model. They have built a model from the 80s on top on Internet…..ahem…what revolution…

Mastodon model

mastodon is a federated, decentralized model of social network for short messages (500 characters). It is build of a free software license that protects from a company to be bought and become a proprietary platform.

Mastodon is built is the all the modern concept, features, and advantages Internet permit. It does not lie to you as being new while being what people used in the 80s.

Federated means, as for email, that anyone can run a mastodon server, being someone into computers, an association, a club, a group of friends, a school, a university, a family, a city hall, you-name-it..

So there are a lot of mastodon servers on the Internet, but those do not belong, as oppose for Twitter to the same board of directors or sharehlders should I say, to be more accurate. Each mastodon server, or group of servers, belong to a different entity.

Each entity has different interests, rules, policies. So you can select an existing instance of a mastodon server, or run you own, self-hosted, or community hosted, managed.

Each mastodon server can then interact with the others and build a global social network, as email today build a global network of email servers but run by many any different entities.

Federation is built dynamically and rely on the users of a server to follow people from other server instances. As long as you follow a user from another server instance, or, some from another server instance follow you, The mastodon server will share posts with the other server instance. This means that the interaction with other mastodon servers evolves, as much as user interact with other user account across the social network. It follows users habits.

Now, with this big picture in mind, do you see that interoperability is key to federated models, federated models are important keys to fight against censorship? One director of an entity cannot decide for other entities.

Mastodon uses a protocol called ActivityPub, W3C standard since 2018, so public 4 years since this article post. This protocol permits interoperability with any application also using the same public protocol. This means that Posts (Toots) from Mastodon can also be received from other social networks, and Mastodon users can follow user from others social networks.

Hey! But this is cool, so I don’t fear losing my friends if they use a different social network!! Correct. So what other social networks provide that awesome modern Internet feature?

• Friendica social network
• Nextcloud file sharing and management application
• PeerTube federated video streaming network
• PixelFed Instagram-like in the libre-free-software world
• Misskey social network like Mastodon
• Plume federated blogging
• Hubzilla web sites federation
• Socialhome social network
• Pleroma social network

Fediverse is the social network. Find here the map of the network.

So…you see that this a completely different model from Twitter, ActivityPub ensures you can continue to interact with users of all these applications/services.

To be fair, the principal mastodon server reported via tosdr.org is not the best:

But there are many different server that you can subscribe to with their own policies, you’ll find one that satisfies your needs and expectations, or you can self-host your own instance also.

The huge difference with Twitter is that you can find a server that meets you policy needs, or you can run your instance. Of course some entities will deny some contents others will accept, but that’s completely different to a global censorship.

Find the interesting mastodon instance, this will guide you and help you find the interesting servers. Prefer a small-moderate size than a huge server.

Mastodon also helps you to migrate your user account from a server to another. So you’re not lost alone if you want to change the server.

Mastodon…hopefully…won’t replace Twitter

There is a trend, many legacy Twitter users seek to create a user account on some Mastdon instances. Some admins must increase the resources of their mastodon servers. But Mastodon must never grow towards vertical silo such as Twitter.

Mastodon in the fediverse network is meant for federation of many many servers, managed by different communities. As such, no global directory of users, no incentive to be the most popular user in the social network.

Mastodon is not designed to replace Twitter, no content managed by algorithms, no ads, no money-profit (bad buzz won’t give you money). Global diffusion is much less efficient, as any mastodon server administrator can filter, block, based on her decision, local site policy. Also, a mastodon server will only interact with other mastodon servers, if a local user follows a user from the remote mastodon server, there is no global broadcasting. All interactions depend on user interactions.

As such, the usual Twitter user won’t meet the same usage, the same icentives. Mastodon, while also carrying good and bad quality posts (toots), as users as real people, won’t empower bad contents in the same way as a global managed communication service. For instance medium-small size mastodon servers will easily block contents/users/servers they disagree with, so viral toots won’t experience the same consequences.

Hopefully, the new users will learn to appreciate better content at a lower pace, without pressure on users, generated by content algorithms. Hopefully, users will have a better understanding of all the benefits from decentralised services.