I like the idea of Dissenter (the browser extension) - having a comment section for every page which doesn't depend on the owner of the page and isn't moderated either. Unfortunately the idea was developed by people supporting extremists and got really bad press.

@rodolpho Thanks for mentioning it, Rodolpho. I found a page with some detailed notes and comments on it (haven't read it yet, in the middle of many things here)

Leaving it for reference:

blokt.com/guides/dissenter-rev

@rodolpho I just tuned out of the fedi for a bit and started catching up with my To Do tabs.

Read this page I linked above, and liked his report, which was veiledly critical of many organizations and people. Other than Gab and it's members.

I imagined the 'comments' being left by anonymous people in the manner described in the article, which is enabled by the extension and now by the forked version of the Brave browsers Gab has released, those comments would be what I would consider awful.

A screenshot in the article confirmed my assumption, more or less. This whole thing would be a gift for troll farms working on influencing people and policy in the western countries.

@Full_marx , you might want to read this?

@design_RG

Hey thanks.

Never really knew much about Gab, except for their highly memeable mascot. I just use safari with adblock. Never explored brave either. Thankyou for this. I really like the concept of Dissenter.

🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

If one sticks a massive boulder in a stream of running water, they would be foolish to assume that this would stop the downstream flow.

Entropic / Chaotic systems like human society are always going to try and reach towards their natural state. Any attempts to stop this will at max cause a delay, but you can never stop the motion, never.

The internet is part of human evolution. By it’s very nature its an extension of collective thought.

Tribes survived because of collective thought, they communicated ideas through songs, dances, tribal art, sculptures.

This is how humams attained some level of synchronicity and this augmented the collective strength of tribes.

Thus improving their chances of survival and producing viable progeny.

🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

If tech companies try and control narratives it is only a matter of time that the blocked stream would start overflowing, flood the surrounding area and then either find a new path to flow downstream or somehow reach the old path and continue

Dissent is inevitable.

This very dissent could actually lead to a permannet change in the way the internet works.

The internet has a way of things. It’s nature is quite divine. It is not for man to excercise jurisdiction over it.

All attempts at hitting a wall with your forehead will only lead to concusions and bruises.

The internet is a force beyond the control of a few tech companies.

Where will it take us, we don’t know. But the engine’s running, we are on top gear, the windows are down and the wind is cool.

Let’s just enjoy the view.

🌴 🚌🌬 🌳 🌲

@rodolpho

@Full_marx
You are welcome for the mention I placed above, I see you took it in stride and produced a large and thoughtful response to it - wonderful.

WE need to think about the issues, and how one can react and continue on with their own activities. Plus there is the mosre difficult wider discussion, which can turn noisy, and worse, nasty, unfortunately.

I enjoyed that you mentioned the tribes; it's one of my beliefs that true humane forms of governing a community went downhill from that, the tribe level.

Ideally, government wouldn't be necessary - but that seems not to work above the tribal level, if it ever does.

I will have to reflect on the points you made and return to them. Glad we have nice discussions like this.

The technology that enable the internet was made to be distributed, by design - to survive a nuclear war, as the protocols and routing were created on projects funded by DARPA, way back in the 70's and early 80s.

Soem great people worked on this, and the suite of protocols, TCP and IP are still robust, alive and well, with the deluge of traffic we have today.

Technology can be used for Good or Bad, it's inherently neutral in my opinion. However, the development of any programme can be funded and directed by political or economic interests - and that largely molds what they result in.

My opinion is that a lot of Net content has gone downhill since the mid to late 1990s.

@rodolpho

@design_RG Definitely, once the barriers against extremist, or just bad, comments are removed, they stick out.

But as @Full_marx mentioned, I agree this is inevitable. Suppressing opinions and ideas won't make them go away.

Even as individuals we have to integrate the darker sides of ourselves or it inevitably leads to worse consequences. If as a society the only way these opinions are managed is via oppression, disaster is bound to happen.

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