Historically, porn has organically decided which platform or formats become dominant. It’s incredibly anti-censorship, but walks many fine lines.
As Reddit now and tomorrow reveals more weaknesses, where will the OnlyFans creators, porn posters, and all those grassroots porn communities go? The creators need to make money by showing to a large and interested user base. The users need lots of content to choose from and be fed constantly, with very few hindrances between them and their…goals. Many of the niches actually have respectful and healthy communities, too. Those people deserve an easy to use platform, just as much as people that want to look at cats, some of those groups, arguably more.
The thought of how to pose this to the Fediverse, now, has been on my mind for weeks:
Can the fediverse rise to the task? Does it even want to? Should it?
Personally, I think it should absolutely try, but I’m not sure it can do so without several deep strides in tech and development. I’m aware this is a hot af take, but it’s undeniable that the internet IS for porn, and denying that would be a huge opportunity loss for inevitably winning this popularity context.
Im copying/pasting something I said on another thread but it applies here. Its what I would like to ultimately have in the federation:
I am a free speech absolutist and I want pretty much anything to go but I want the tools for users to be able to block it in any manner they want from blocking users to blocking magazines to blocking domains and I want it to include comments and actually go both ways (joke not intended but right after I wrote that I liked it). When I block something I don’t want that person, place, or thing to see any of my comments or posts. If I blocked them its a good chance its folks that might try doxing or some shit. I would like blockers to know who or what they blocked so they can undo if they choose but I don’t want blockees to know. I would like profiles to be only seeable by logged in users and I would like usernames and such masked for folks not logged in. I realize this is a lot and its not here now and that some folks may hate the idea of what I write here but that is how I would like to see something like this go. As much power as possible brought to individual consumers to prune their feeds and as much freedom as possible for creators.
Disagree on blocking them from responding. I think that this change to how the Reddit blocking feature worked was one of the largest errors Reddit made in recent years. Led to people in conversations disagreeing, one user making a statement and then blocking the other so that it looked like the blocking user would get the last word, which prevented the other from responding.
It’s also useless to stop someone from doxing you, because they can just create another account and use that. The only way that it would be efficacious in that regard would be if the whole system worked via whitelisting users rather than blacklisting them.
im not saying blocking from responding im saying I disapear to them and they to me. they can still respond and other folks I did not block would see it and possibly my last one. I would be the one unable to respond as I would not get notified of their response and no longer see it. I guess I would not expect any previous conversations that are in their notifications to necessarily disapear as thats already in their profile. I responded to someone on the doxing thing. I just want to get rid of low hanging fruit. Ultimately I just don’t want to be in the same virtual universe as them. I know it does not sound like it from this convo but I don’t block user often but when I do I really just don’t want anything to do with that person even incidentally.
im not saying blocking from responding im saying I disapear to them and they to me.
That’s a hard no. Blocking is for curating your experience, not someone else’s.
I respect that but for me I want to get away from these people in all ways. I go to a bar and because of a few assholes I stop going even though there are some folks I like. There is no way around it. Technology holds the promise to be able to stay at the bar. Making others invisible to me but not becoming invisible to them is in some ways sorta scary. Especially when you consider im not looking to make folks invisible only some. A good example is I like discourse but if someone response is something like “well then stop being a jerk you pussy”, well that is not the discourse I want so I block them. I don’t see thier brilliant responses to my discourses now but as you say lurkers do or whatever. That is polluting my discourse and I did not want to talk with this person anymore. I really don’t know how to convey this honestly but anyway I don’t think mine is the end all be all its just what I would want and I totally get others not wanting it. Ultimately I will take half a loaf like most things in the world but I would leave for an instance that has what I want in an instant.
I don’t see thier brilliant responses to my discourses now but as you say lurkers do or whatever. That is polluting my discourse and I did not want to talk with this person anymore.
Nope. The discourse ended when you abandoned it. Whether the other person is still shitposting is something you have no control over. I guarantee that if they were enough of an asshole for you to want to block them, any lurker worth their salt’s already aware of their assholishness. And really, it’s kind of silly to concern yourself with the opinions of people who might or might not even be there.
Stop thinking of these exchanges as debates you need to win, and think of them instead as conversations that either are or aren’t worth your time. When you block, you’re making a decision the conversation’s not worth any more of your time, so stop giving it your attention–and that includes wondering what else has been said and what others think of it.
yeah I generally am not looking to win. I consider some of the best discourse to be when someone changes my mind. I don’t block people though to end a converstation. I just stop replying. blocking was becuase the person just replies with insults and just generally behaves badly. So its not about a particular discourse but about just wanting to be completely seperated from anyone like that.
im saying I disapear to them
This approach is incredibly open to abuse. Reddit implemented this to a lesser degree and abuse already started happening. By blocking everybody who disagrees with you, you can start threads that are only visible to lurkers and your supporters, creating a warped perception of public opinion and false consensus.
this sounds a bit like arguments I have had on this about it will create echo chambers. its up to lurkers to curate their own feeds and echo chambers will always be there. I want the ability to cut bs out of my stuff and others to do the same and I want freedom for creators to make what they want. Im sorry if it means bad stuff will be out there but that ship has sailed anyway. The more we get to something like this the more I think bad ideas will fall to obscurity. I really don’t see how blocking shit out is open to more abuse than shoveling the shit out. Honestly one thing I would hope with something like this is that I would need to filter less because hopefully some folks blocking me would increase the quality of my feed.
I want the ability to cut bs out of my stuff
What are you talking about? Nobody’s disputing that. You seem to have lost the thread of the conversation, which is about preventing people you’ve blocked from seeing your posts. At that point you’re not cutting BS out of your stuff, but other people’s.
I don’t see how you could effectively block people seeing you if the person wanted to, because even if a system is made so you can only be seen by logged in users, that user could make an alt. Heck, they could have an alt that they don’t use for commenting, so one wouldn’t even know to block it.
well I wouldn’t expect it to in that circumstance. I just want the most out of what it could do. Stalkers going to that extreme will always get the way around to some degree. I just don’t want it easy for them to notice and honestly I would prefer in the long run they not exactly advertise that stuff but just have it be the way it is and someone would have to look into it to know blocking works both ways. It will certainly cut down on the casual jerk. Jerk being a realtive term to the individual. To me a system like that would approach more what organically happens in life. You hang with those you like and avoid those you don’t.
I think the idea of shadow-banning yourself on other people’s accounts is something that only makes sense in extreme cases.
It could easily make a mess in comment threads if it is used too much.
It’s already personal when it’s needed, so I doubt it would stop trolls, stalkers or harassment very much.
If someone makes a federated porn app, they could call it “Feddish” … just give me a mention in the credits.
I want to make an app that defaults you to lemmynsfw just because of this comment now. Like pick a name and password and boom you have a porn feed now. No knowledge of instances or Lemmy needed. Would be pretty cool.
I mean you could just create a second “porn” login on lemmynsfw and switch between profiles on a app like connect or jerboa… I’m pretty sure I know a guy who did just that 😉
Modern problems… Require Modern Solutions 👍🏿
Currently defederated from kbin.
Just make a NSFW account at lemmynsfw.com and use Connect for Lemmy to switch accounts.
Yeah, the Fediverse is pretty much designed to be able to handle stuff like this. They just get their own Instances, and anyone who does not wish to see that content can defederate with them.
You can’t keep anyone, at all, not porn, not Zuckerberg, not Nazis, nobody, off the Fediverse. It’s actually impossible. All you can do is defederate the things you do not wish to associate with.
This is a non-issue, and hand-wringing about it is largely pointless. If you want to talk about the rightness of defederating different platforms, that’s a different story. But that’s also up to the communities of each individual Instance.
You can’t keep anyone, at all, not porn, not Zuckerberg, not Nazis, nobody, off the Fediverse. It’s actually impossible. All you can do is defederate the things you do not wish to associate with.
Isn’t that possibly creating echo chambers again?
They could host a Lemmy/Kbin accounts, although I feel like Twitter will be their next choice, since it’s algorithm-ridden and has a huge amount of people in it.
It’s true that porn is a big part of the internet at large. You can point to countless examples where a product (even social media) lived and died by porn.
But there are also countless examples where porn was never a factor. Most of the major social platforms today have always had an anti-porn approach. It’s debatable whether that helped or hindered their growth, but it’s always been a thing.
Now, I can’t think of any where porn was a big part of their platform that got removed, and they came out ok. Maybe that’s (part of) why Reddit has been downplaying porn for a while.
Right now, there is plenty of porn in the fediverse. But there will be the same challenges as any user-submitted porn site. There’s currently a big discussion about categories that are unwanted, generally offensive, and illegal in certain jurisdictions. The fediverse makes all of that more complicated. There’s also a big concern about the content being uploaded directly, increasing the load on every instance that federates.
There will definitely be porn here, but I don’t think it’s going to work the same as it did on Reddit.
Reddit had been to go-to place for NSWF content, which drove a ton of traffic and engagement for reddit. If the fediverse is to succeed, it must target the same use case.
You say that like lemmynsfw.com isn’t one of the most popular instances.
