@Nanook - So are you a "publisher", or becoming a sort of provider of some "liberated" platform - or are you doing this because YOU, your own PERSON, has something to say that is censored, shunned, hated, banned? There is a difference.

A truly "Liberated Platform" tolerates all narratives, let that be hate-speech, raging lunacy, all forms of conduct - including those who incite for violence. In a sane society violence is already outlawed, and its the job of Law Enforcement to make the distinction who is a danger to society or to themselves. This is the kinda platform Gab is building (or has built), and you see the result. Most of us have little interest in "truly liberated speech".

So be careful if you decide to go that route, as you must be prepared to tolerate the criminal-minded and the insane.

I prefer to go the "moderated" route, and I require anyone using my networks to keep all subject matter relevant to the narrow purpose of the network. For example, I am planning to open a forum on 3D printed guns, building rail-guns, arming land and flying drones, and such. The purpose of the forum going to be to help you turn your land, and your home built on your land, into a fortress.

Anyone not interested in the topic should stay away from That Forum. If you do not have the will-power to stay out of a conversation that is not affecting you (its my land, my home) I, the moderator, going to help you stay away. Unless you are ATF, FBI or other Law Enforcement or Government Agency you cannot tell me what is lawful, and most importantly, what is ethical about that forum. Its my land, its my home, and its none of your business.

This is the way I see truly functional and beneficial "liberated platforms". People who do not belong in that Forum are not going to read or hear anything discussed there - unless of course they pretend to be interested, register and record everything with the purpose to destroy it. In which case the aggressor is "them", not "us".

On global forums such as Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Parler all the controversial issues are spilled out into the open, creating all the upheaval in public discourse. I personally do not pretend to fully understand what is happening or going to happen - all I know that I see a real potential in Fediverse to create better-functioning public forums.

Its not about free-speech, it never was... Its about keeping content better contained, so people who have no other purpose online but to bitch and moan about issues not affecting them in the slightest may be kept out.

Well, I grew up in Soviet-occupied Hungary in the 80s and I am immune to bullshit about "free speech". For as long as there was humanity people took what they wanted - needed by the tip of a blade or the barrel of a gun, and that's never going to chance.

I agree, Western Europe is going commie - that is why the separation between Poland and the rest of former Easter- Central Europe remains. This time freedom is on the other side of the "iron curtain".

@Nanook Why in the world would you provide a platform for anyone you "vehemently disagree"? Especially to criminals and the mentally ill? If you disagree with me - you are not making any favors by keeping me around, eventually I am going to figure it out and I boot you anyways.

But again, its your platform, do as you please.

History is filled with accounts of "violent discourse", what makes you think the next one is not right around the corner? You might "hope" there is not going to be one in YOUR lifetime, but based on the track records that is pretty irrational.

If you want to read "everyone's opinion" get ready to spend your entire life with it. Look at the massively open and anonymous forums, and tell me if you think it can be or should be "fixed".

I have a different approach - which is to operate a moderated, local, privileged-access forum.
As soon as its ready I am going to install my own Hubzilla realm - until then I come online once in a while to show I am still online, still active.

I am going to find a handful of people locally, where I can move beyond "understanding all perspectives". Instead of talking I can act.

You are still welcome to enjoy the diverse opinions and discover all perspectives.

@John Doe Same here.. but I use Linux since the early 1990s and I was able to learn enough to select a sufficiently functional (for my purposes) software stack and manage to install, upgrade it.

@Nanook - here we go again, as soon as you disagree you fault the other guy for thinking differently. The difference is that I tell you straight out: I do not give a shit about what you think or how you feel. Its you who is "trying to get along with me", its not me who is trying to get along with you.

Ok, here is my "world view".

We are "humans" because we have fallen from the Grace of God, and became this intellectual animal. Away from the Grace of God there is no safety, there is no perfection, there is no redemption. We are this human animal with hard-coded tendencies that cannot be fixed, grown out, cured. We live in a reality with limited resources, for a limited time, and therefore conflict for those resources is inevitable, constant.

Its really easy to see how the physical world transposes the fundamental tendencies to behave, there is nothing a first-grader does not already understands.

Some people live in two dimensions like that Square from Flatland, using only the intellect and some imagination. The result is a pattern of behavior trying to "fix" things, because they do not understand that some things are the way they must be, some things are in their natural state, in balance. Some human behavior is that fundamental to this plane of existence, and trying to "fix" them is a fool's errand.

A Person must have Faith in something that is beyond reason, and beyond imagination. This is how our Human Civilizations persisted believing in Gods, and this is how our Technological Civilization survives - submitting to forces and circumstances which are beyond anyone's control.

Before your try to fix anything look back and see if its rational. If you keep trying, keep insisting do not be offended when you are called a fool for it.

Everything I do is to find people interested in manufacturing, 3D printing, industrial supply chain, and the sort. I could not care less about anything else unrelated, irrelevant.

To me everything else is white noise, its unproductive, its useless. If people decide to spend their entire life posting shit about nonsense online, to other people who spend their lives with pretending and virtue-signaling - its their CHOICE. Let them waste their lives with issues not affecting them in the least, cannot control, or even barely understand.

For this I have been called ignorant, arrogant, selfish.
Which suits me, I do not need a 1.2 million post notification every time I log on. I need only a handful, and I wish they were all relevant to my purpose here.

Fantastic, a real pleasure to meet you then!

I maintain an entire infrastructure: 4 separate installs of BIND/Debian 10 VPS on three different continents (North America, Australia, Europe). I have a secondary Hubzilla directory server here (zot.factoryfouroh.net), three Hubzilla hubs with the main going to be the hubzilla.kane-il.us (for Kane County Illinois users only).

I have my main Wiki at welcome.factoryfouroh.net/dokuwiki where I describe the full service stack for deployment.

I have a local supply chain ERP system building on Joomla and Fabrikar web forms.

For the last few weeks I was working on a conveyor scaled-down model for my daytime employer, and as of yesterday I am working on the production (full-size) prototype. I specialize on using commercial off-shelf products such as steel nuts and bolts, twobyfour tie-plates, hardware cloth (chicken-wire), PVC-pipes, etc. to build functional models of industrial equipment. For this conveyor I use PVC pipes for bearings, mosquito-screen frames for guides and containment, and 1/4 inch welded chicken wire for the conveyor mesh.

I am 53, by the time I am ready to retire (in 10+ years) I would like to build a manufacturing association which is focusing on the self-employed, garage-shop, and only in a limited geographic area such as cities and counties. The one I am building in Kane County is going to serve as a template to be built elsewhere.

In my daytime job I work as a production engineer, scrubbing electronics BOMs for EU compliance (using services like Silicon Expert, BOMcheck) and support production office demands. I am a jack of all master of none expert, I do not even have a formal engineering degree. I was trained as a railway engine repair mechanic, and in the last 30 years I self-trained in everything else.

One of these days I am going to learn basic PhP programming ass well, but not today or anytime soon. 3D printing and OpenSCAD is going to keep me busy for the next few monts.

This is some great back and forth. I actually started my hub to use the channels features to separate my online identities and interests. Some of my friends are through my community work, church I belong to, hobbies, profession, etc. Having one place I can do this and own my content was my primary motivator. While I do have two of them enabled for signups, I figure this will be rare and probably only people joining to see more info (like my family so they can see posts with pictures and my current contact info).

As far as moderation is concerned, that's a tricky one, for me. I see two sides to this:

1. Hate and ignorance is running rampant, visibly particularly in social media. It'd be nice to have a community where I'm with other people who are like-minded in that they are just generally looking to be kind people and find common ground with everyone. Discord and vitriol is infectious and can sour a community pretty fast, online or otherwise. Of course those conflicting opinions are out there but it would be nice to have a community where safe discussions could be had, free from eye-roll-inducing ignorance, hypocrisy or rage.

2. You can't just bury your head in the sand and surround yourself exclusively with people that agree with you. A whole world of opinions exist and you grow exactly no amount if you live in a world of confirmation bias and moral superiority with literally everyone else who doesn't agree with you. We need to hear from others, if only to have a tempered view of reality. We live in a world where we have to get along with people we don't agree with, where morality is indeed a very personal choice, though I and many other agree the source of true morality comes from a supreme being (I happen to be Christian), it means accepting others' opinions as valid, even if we think differently.

In the end, I want to have a safe place to engage with a wide variety of people. Keeping illegal content out is definitely a must but I think moderation in all things is possible without curtailing freedom of speech. Mind you, everyone who pounds their fists on the proverbial pulpit about how their freedom speech is being stifled needs a reminder that we have that right to non-interference in our speech from our government. It's definitely "a free country" if you want to express yourself in a public square. If you come into my house, for all purposes of speech and any other similar freedoms: I'm basically the sovereign supreme ;)

Thanks to this discussion, I am determined to post some ground rules and reasonable expectations of my users, should they ever exist. You don't have to adopt them, of course, but basically they'll be (apart from the obvious no illegal content rule) that they can express any opinion so long as they don't belittle and attack problems, not people. Like I'm teaching my kids, anger is a valid emotion but our expression of it is what we have to keep in check. That, and posting nonsense that is very easily debunked -- and we've all seen some doozies on both sides of the political fence -- won't be deleted but certainly called out for any holes in their arguments that I see (and they can do the same to me!). And then, yeah, if ultimately someone isn't a good fit for my community, they'll be "encouraged" to find another one.

And that's the beauty of the Fediverse. They don't need to be silenced, they just need to find a home where they can engage as they prefer. For myself, I'd like to engage everyone in civil discourse. I'm just going to maintain a fairly high standard of how that conversation will go so people feel respected.

@Nanook I have TWO forums - one for the LUG and one for the Kane county manufacturing supply chain. They each have 0 (zero) members, because so far I could not find anyone in Kane county who would work with me on compatible projects.

This public stream is where I am going to send people from my hand-outs, my talks and my other contacts on the street and online. On that I did not make any effort so far, because I am still designing - printing my showcase pieces.

I do not really need the public stream, that's why I spend relatively little time here. In my opinion the public stream makes everyone into an evil bastard - one might never having a brush with the law, but here the very same person is made into a racist, a criminal, a monster. Every time I read someone posting righteous garbage I feel like throwing up.

You are 100% correct about Jews and such, but do not forget to add that this is The Musical Chair - the Romans, the Catholic Church, the Nazis, the Templars, the Freemasons, the Communists, the Jews - around it goes and goes, and as long as there is a Civilization it will never stop.

All I know is I be happy when I may finally close my eyes, and open it again in the Grace of God. A lot of people feel this way but they are too scared to admit it, or they have no faith and no hope. That too, is a personal CHOICE they really cannot blame it on Trump or on global warming LOL!

There always was, is and will be privileged groups of people - today if you remove it from the oligarchs who is going to step in their place? These useful idiots who think the Government or their Employer or the City Council is going to "represent" their best interest never consider this.

There is no greater power than the individual looking after the best interest of his own and those under his charge. In the coming months this is going to become ever-so painfully apparent as the useful idiots who served their purpose in the last few years are ditched by their masters.

I do not believe a better thing could have happened than the DNC stealing the US elections. It reminds me of the movie Lancelot, played at the time when the Roman provinces were retrieving back towards the center, as the Roman Empire singing into decadence could not longer afford their protection. We are living the beginning of that same era, where the super-wealthy oligarchs believe they are able to manage something as complex as out 21st Century Technological Civilization.

All we need to do is sit back and enjoy the show. The US is going to rebuild, better and stronger than ever because Oh look -- I am not crying and bitching, I am working on building a manufacturing organization! But the oligarchs are done, they overplayed their hand and soon everyone is building Social Networks, learning to code, learning to be just as deceptive and just as vicious than the bestestbest communist agitators.

I waste no time on righteous actors who think they are better than anyone else because they write so from behind anonymous. Unless I can hop in my car, drive 30 minutes to meet you I do not give a rat's ass who you pretend to be. Once I met you, shock your hand I am ready to trust you but not before.

This is going to become incredibly powerful - just as citizen journalism has become incredibly powerful. In your own local environment you are effective - once people learn that the oligarchs power is going to be sapped.\

But we all need to start somewhere, and we all need to figure out the process, learn from our mistakes.