← Back to context

Comment by Karrot_Kream

4 days ago

Here's my big concern: If every big social media provider has to bake American policy position into its algorithm, what's going to happen to approaches like Bluesky or Mastodon/ActivityPub which allow users to choose their own algorithm?

Can nation states ban email or bittorrent? Entities can be targeted, protocols less so. Where the algorithm is matters.

  • Nation states definitely can by using port targeting, traffic heuristics, and DPI. The US historically has not done this but several other states have. Even if protocols are preserved, I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I have to run a client on my local machine that consumes from the protocol. I want to be able to use a hosted client.

    A user should be able to use another person's hosted Mastodon instance or Bluesky AppView/Relay.