Comment by righthand
7 hours ago
Social sites should have all have a tree-based invite system. This would allow wiping out spammers and their enablers in a single hit. It would allow vetting of good actors too.
7 hours ago
Social sites should have all have a tree-based invite system. This would allow wiping out spammers and their enablers in a single hit. It would allow vetting of good actors too.
I feel like the dream solution is more like tree-based content: you see content that is vouched for by people you vouch for; if someone's account is compromised then their vouches get updated to not matter anymore, cutting their whole tree off at the root to make it invisible. Spammers should end up in largely disconnected components of the trees.
Pretty much what xwitter / bsky is on the following page. The algorithm layer atop twitter was pretty good connecting me with people/content before daddy elon came along. And this algorithm layer is actually needed (in my view) to make the social network thing work, otherwise there is no critical mass
Thankfully bsky is not that good, so I don't get hooked by it at all. But i miss it
How does new content or content from new accounts get seen by anyone?
A feww options:
1. get some people who trust you to vouch for you when you join (similar to requiring an invite to join but maybe more flexible?)
2. some kind of induction process, maybe the algorithm surfaces your stuff and gets feedback, like the 'new' queue on HN
3. same as before but the AI tries to do it (scary though)
4. use the same account as on other sites, or otherwise tie it to a global reputation or something you had to invest a fair amount to build. Not great for privacy but I think it has to happen eventually; otherwise new accounts are too cheap to make.
Regardless, once you're in the system your credibility is only as good as your contributions, so you should be filtered out again if you're nefarious.
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People search for a thing, find said thing, then share it themselves under their own name. You know, like how conversations work in real life
Same tree that gave them credentials gives them weight that is used to spread their content.
New User problem has been around for a minute though - wikipedia and stack overflow both faced it, as does every social media platform nowadays.
Reality is, though, new visitors are getting the same blast radius as early adopters got when they started, just that the early adopters now have blast radiuses that are much bigger
iykyk rules
I don't think so. "sleeper" accounts are a thing. A more sophisticated spammer could create a "high-reputation" account over some time that only posts useful info, then turn up the spam after the trust level is high enough - or even turn the tree system into a business opportunity and sell vouches to other spammers.
It doesn't solve as much as it sounds.
- You can't vouch for downstream invites, so the tree aspect isn't useful.
- It's not your fault if someone's account gets taken over by a spammer.
- Just because you vouched for someone once doesn't mean you vouch for them in the future.
- What should the punishment be if you accidentally invite a bad actor?
- Your community has to be large and desirable enough for people to bother. The vast majority of sites will die before anyone cares about jumping through hoops.
Addressing issues like these ends up kinda defeating the ideals of the proposal and regresses it into a mechanic that simply makes it harder to register. Which might be useful wrt anti-spam, but it has its own issues, like people having to constantly grovel for invites, shutting out earnest contributors, etc.
In the "real" world we keep our relationship bubbles to a small number for just this reason - we have our close relationships, the people we trust, and then we have gradually less and less close relationships - people we know to greet, or know have done x or y or z
We know that people who are on our outer orbits should not be shared with in certain ways.
Our communities are in fact lots of overlapping bubbles, x knows y, and y knows z, but x sees them as a stranger.
The internet changes that dynamic, and we don't yet know how to manage it - we cannot all live in the town square, and we know to be very careful there, pickpockets, thieves, and robbers abound - and we have no idea who is who
Again our historical approach has been places like universities, where we have "trusted" advisors (teachers) who guide us on subjects being discussed openly - but who also ensure that we avoid pitfalls, like heated debates where people abandon logic and instead use rhetoric or violence, and who ensure that commercial interests are managed - that is, some advertisements are allowed, but unauthorised advertising is forbidden
That approach (moderation) has its own set of problems
You still need criteria to handle reputation: does an account invited years ago and now spamming affects the reputation of the inviter, how much? What about the hacked accounts?
For small platforms it makes a lot of sense, for larger the potential for abuse is still there in different forms.
Now you just created a market for farmed "legit" accounts.
Yes, but the site operator can significantly increase the market price for such an account. This makes spamming more expensive.
Blue tick accounts :)
That’s literally how Facebook started
I remember begging my older step brother for an invite since he had the college email to get in
Then it’s just hacked account whack-a-mole and deciding who legitimately got their account hacked and who is lying.
It raises the bar at least somewhat though!
Interesting to compare this site and lobste.rs for that
Both from safety and volume perspectives, I’d imagine. Openness has value.
I find myself much more interested in the conversations here, but I enjoy the more tangential discussions.
Yes Lobste.rs is great but much more limited in conversational scope. I don’t think the content on each site is directly comparable. The sites are not equal in audience and intention. For example, Lobste.rs doesn’t allow rampant evangelism or want to attract start-ups and thus doesn’t attract a more “spammy” crowd.
Lobste.rs has an invite based system however.