Re: Netnews: The Origin Story

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Fri, 8 Nov 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

D  <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Wed, 6 Nov 2024, Rich wrote:

One did have to do both, and even so, the volume was impossible to keep
up with if the group was at all active.

>
On Usenet, I often had very aggressive killfiles, not because I had
anything against the postings but just because I wasn't interested
in another thread about digital audio workstations again.  Some
groups I would go into to find that 90% of the traffic was taken out
by the killfile.  But there was still plenty, plenty to read.
>

This is an interesting problem.  How is it solved in modern social
media?

>
Very poorly.  Most of those systems are just firehoses and they will
prioritize postings based upon their own (profit-oriented) notions
of what is most important, not the user's.
--scott
>

 
Yes, it does seem like the killfile is the "state of the art".  ;)

It does leave the decision process of what part of "the firehose" to
either ignore, or boost, up to the individual receiving "the firehose"
of information.

But it also requires that same user to have to put in the small effort
to "curate" it as it were.  And that's part of its downfall.  The lazy
'content consumer' user (i.e, the 90+ percentile of users) does not
even want to put in that effort.  Plus it has one other item those with
"fragile sensitivities" dislike.  The user needs to be exposed to at
least one post on a topic they do not want to see in order to recognize
a need to add a killfile entry.  For the "snowflakes" of the world (of
which there are way too many) they think their "sensitivities" are soo
fragile that they can't even stand to see "one" of something they don't
like in order to be able to say "no, no more like this".  They want
"god" (the algorithm) to provide it all to them, prefiltered in just
they way they want, with no effort on their part, and with never having
their sensitivities triggered by seeing something they don't want to
see.

The only addition on top of the killfile I could imagine, would be
the "communal killfile" where you add accounts to a common list and
then use that list together.
 
The weakness is of course that it can be abused, so I think a communal
killfile would most likely only work for a smaller group of individuals
with similar taste and ideology when it comes to politics and free speech.

As you say, the 'communal killfile' has the problem of abuse built in
from the start.

And, for countries that purport to support 'free speech' a communial
killfile is also very close to a 'free speech suppression' mechanism.

At least with personal kill files there's no 'free speech' erosion
situation, due to the simple fact that in all 'free speech' regimes,
the 'freedom' to 'speak' is what is allowed, but there is no
requirement that "I must listen to you speak".  The personal killfile
fits that perfectly.  Bob can "speak" all he likes, but I can set it so
I don't have to listen to what Bob is speaking.