Putting Neb Through The Gauntlet of Good Ideas
Preface
A quick note before we start, when I mention Neb in this post, I'm referring to the socail network I'm building. This piece is about thinking through the potential impacts it could have on society.
Introduction
I just read a post called The Gauntlet of Good Ideas1. It talks a lot about Hitler. But, it does so by using that fuck face as a tool to judge the potential impact of ideas.
To wit, The Hitler Rule: When you're considering something,
Consider the worst-case scenarios in a very visceral, emotional, and reactive way.
The Gauntlet piece uses activism as the lens through which to apply the rule. The idea is to know where you'll draw the lines that bound your ideals before you run over them.
The exercise is useful for me in a different way.
The Best And Worst Of Neb
I spend a lot of time thinking about the impact Neb2 will have on society. Most likely, it'll have none because no one will use it. I'm fine with that, at least I will have taken my shot.
But, I don't get to stop my thinking there. I have to apply the opposite of The Hitler Rule. What if the best-case scenario happens? What if everyone abandons massive, corporate controlled social media, and moves to Neb?
It's when I'm doing that though experiment that The Hitler Rule comes into play. That second order thought I'm obligated to take:
If everything goes great, what's the worst-case scenario?
Warming Up
It's hard to think about folks doing awful shit with something your building. Hard in two distinct ways.
First, it's uncomfortable. A squirmy feeling that comes from realizing what you're building to improve the world can be used against it.
Second, it's hard to step back from what you're working on. To look at it with an eye toward objectivity. To keep from getting so focused on the fantasies of success that you miss the traps lying in wait.
But, I'm trying.
Running The Gauntlet Part 1: Hosting
Neb combines individual websites into networks. It does so by adding a few technical files to a site and defining a way for sites to used them to communicate with each other.
There is no centralized control. That's kinda the point. But, that means there's no way to put centralized moderation tools in place.
In terms of content, there's no difference between a site that's wired up to join Neb and one that's not.
Any site based moderation has to be done at the server hosting level. That's something that individual hosting providers can perform, but there's no way to stop someone from setting up their own server and posting whatever they want.
The only remedy I'm aware of if a server host doesn't shut something down is for law enforcement to get involved. That would only happen for illegal content. Lots of the worst stuff out there isn't illegal.
As far as I'm aware, there's no way to stop any given piece of content from showing up on Neb in the same way there's no way to stop it on websites today3.
Running The Gauntlet Part 2: Apps
So, we can't control what's out there. How about controlling what we see?
There are two ways to think about Neb:
- A technical specification for a set of files and optional APIs4. Websites that implement them are able to join other sites on the network.
- The apps that use those technologies to provide a way to read and post on the network.
The files and APIs are plumbing. For our purposes here, they don't effect the content or moderation. We're interested in what apps do with content they receive and what types of communication they have between each other.
Version 0.1.0
Neb is a work-in-public project. I've got lots of ideas for what to do with it5. The first step is to start as small as possible. To make a Minimum Viable App6 and see how things work as quickly as possible. In the case of Neb, that means an RSS reader7.
Content flows across Neb in RSS feeds8. The first step in building the app is reading and displaying those feeds.
Content filtering is done at the feed level. It comes down to who you follow. That is, if you follow someone, everything they post will show up in your app.
Version 0.1.1
The next step in filtering will happen at the individual post level. It'll come in the form of a "mute list". A collection of words that remove posts if they contain one of the words one the list9.
Version 0.1.2
Neb includes the optional ability to publish lists of who you follow. Browsing those lists is the main way to find new people. It's also the first thing that exposes content you didn't explicitly follow.
These feeds are implicitly filtered by the person who selected them. Assuming the people you follow aren't following folks you wouldn't want to, this provides some protection.
That assumption isn't always safe, though. There will be times when you end up being connected to feeds you'd rather not see.
Block lists provide a way to limit this exposure. In their first iteration you'll be able to block objectionable feeds so you only see them one time (i.e. if you run across a feed you don't like in someone's follow list you can block it. From that point forward, you won't see it even if other folks you follow have it on their lists).
Version 0.1.3
Shared block lists are the next step. Using to one will prevent anyone on the list from showing up in your app. This will help prevent seeing some feeds even once.
Shared block lists will be able to be shared publicly or privately. Some social networks make these block list public. Neb takes the opposite approach. Anything you block is private by default. Making a block lists public is an explicit decision made by the person who made the list.
Version 0.2.0
Up to this point, everything in this post has been about consuming feeds. There's been no mention of how to deal with receiving communications (e.g. follows, favorites, or replies). That's because the design of cross-site communication is still under way.
The results of the first few iterations of the app will inform the thinking that goes into making decisions about how these types of communication will work. A key part will be ensuring that security and moderation are primary considerations in the process.
Running The Gauntlet Part 3: Feedback
As much as I've researched and read about content moderation, I'm nowhere near an expert. It's a complicated topic. There's no single answer that "just works".
If we had that, it would be easy. But, it's not. It's a collection of compromises. Decisions aimed at finding an acceptable balance between letting folks do what they want while protecting others from harm.
As the person designing the network, the final decisions fall to me. That's daunting. No matter where I draw the lines someone is gonna be on the wrong side of them.
The best I can do is gather as much information as I can about the consequences of each option and go from there.
In that light, I'll be reaching out to folks who know more about this stuff than me. If you've got feedback as well, I'm all ears.
You can reach me on Mastodon or Bluesky
-a
Endnotes
I list specific version numbers here. They're more for illustrating a progression than defining specific numbers for when things happen. For example, it may take from version 0.1.0 to 0.1.27 to get the RSS reader ironed out. In which case filtering would probably show up in 0.2.0.
I generally describe things in this post in terms of people (e.g. "this person's feeds" or "that person's follow list"). The language stems from the fact that my mental model of the network puts people first. That said, Neb sites could just as easily be maintained by groups, businesses, etc.
There's a bunch of other ideas around moderation in Neb Reference App (Possible) Features List.
Footnotes
Content Warning from this site:
"While this post is about activist spaces, I do talk about abuse, assault, and Hitler, all in the abstract."
Neb is a portmanteau of "networked" and "websites". It's the social network I'm building by connecting individual websites instead of relying on a centralized site or service.
There's a nuance here in that some governments have vast monitoring and censorship networks. That's a category of law enforcement, just at a broader level. Thankfully, that type of control doesn't exist currently at the global scale.
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It's a fancy way to describe how two computers talk to each other. It's basically the same way a person would talk to someone else. The language may differ from conversation to conversation, but both sides can communicate as long as everyone uses the same one.
A collection of various ideas for what to do with the official Neb app.
Note: I said "Minimum Viable App", not "Minimum Viable Product". Neb is free, and open-source. There's nothing to buy. No venture capital involved.
An RSS reader is an app that provides an alternate way to view websites. Any site can put its content into what's called an RSS feed. The RSS readers use those feeds to provide the alternate view.
You can read a more about RSS feeds and how Neb extends and uses them here in Introducing Neb - A Social Network For People.
Post will have tagging capabilities in future iterations. The mute words will apply to them as well.