Repeating this as many times as necessary:
A space being online doesn't mean it needs to be public space.
A space being part of a social network doesn't mean it needs to be public space.
I don't *want* to be in a public space. If I did, I'd go somewhere else.
I remember, just barely, the days of existing on the internet when you could have a rich social life on some random forum and be reasonably confident that even though technically public, niche visibility would shield your words from being exposed to groups who wanted to cause harm.
I want that back.
@starkatt yeah, I'm over discussions in public.
@starkatt that's what most people agree on.
Some people think that it limits their freedom of expression and all should federate with all, but they just mean that they want to shout at everyone without consequences (I think)
I don't remember those days.
I remember THINKING that might be the case.
But I think most of that was how it looked, because of the inability of the press and law to suss out how things got connected, TBH. :\
I think this is one of those things that was revealed, not developed
there were always random paths of information taking circuitous routes and exposing people to attack
it just happens so, so, so much FASTER now :\
@sydneyfalk @starkatt The problem is never the people you wanted to find it to begin with, and it has become easier for others to to find/share/be exposed to/take issue with the existence of/harass/etc both more quickly and in greater volume?
IMO the problem is that these things have always been inevitable but the timeline of their inevitability was long enough that people often didn't realize
the false positive numbers are effectively much higher overall
meeting 2000 people over your lifetime * longer lifetime * no geographic constraints = meeting 2000000 people over your lifetime
giving your physical address to the "ones that seem okay" out of 2 million = HOLY SHIT NO
@starkatt That is really well put. It's how I remember the earlier blogging days. Encouraging instances to develop their own idiosyncratic codes of content and anti-harassment policies seems like a perfectly reasonable way to carve out similar environments (but even better, with all the semi-permeable elements afforded by federation).
@starkatt still technically possible; the bigger problem is just that most people migrated away from forums :(
I thought the entire point of distributed instances was so that people could build connected but not-public spaces in ways that worked for them.