Several weeks ago I wrote in CJR that the key issue for any #journalist using #Twitter , was the dilemma presented by working on a platform where the owner actively hates and works against journalism. Nothing at all about the past week is surprising, or out of character for #Musk - maybe that the proof of concept happened so decisively. For all platforms how their ownership treats #pressfreedom is a key determining factor. (🙏 for #JohnMastodon and his well documented support of reporters….)
Well it's more complicated than that because ActivityPub federation gives individual instances the ability to not only block and censor disfavored groups of people, perhaps journalists, but even sets the stage for groups of people to be muffled by accident.
If one instance blocks another over some unrelated personal gripe of the administrator, any journalists on that instance will be blocked from users accidentally.
It's not the stark difference you suggest, but rather a messy one.
A site like Twitter is _more likely_ to have a single, predictable, professionally applied ToS, which could be better or worse.
Hmm, I can put it a different way: if a journalist wants to ensure that they're not blocked from anyone on this platform they would have to check with 20,000+ instance owners to make sure they're not on any blocklist, blocklists that change from day to day, by the whims of the often amateur admins operating as personal or vanity projects.
If a journalist wants to ensure that they're not blocked on a commercially run centralized platform, they only have to engage with that one agent, probably dealing with a professional, and maybe even susceptible to lawsuits should an agreement be broken.
So it is complicated.
One of those places in life where the value of certainty stands to be weighed.
It's not about all messages reaching all members of a group. It's about group members being actively blocked from receiving messages they would otherwise want to see.
It's about active blocking of a journalist, actively standing in the way of their reporting.
If we agree that such censorship is bad, then it matters that there is far more opportunity for that on a federated system, with so many more potential censors with so much less motivation to behave.
As for the Moderation Problem you refer to, What exactly are you referring to? I don't want to assume.
(I do appreciate the links and I hope to go through them when I have time. I have your comment bookmarked for this magical moment when there will be time :) )
