Yeah the uni-directional relationships are also significant. It also happens to translate well; if Mr.Beast goes to randomcorp.com he is almost guaranteed to pull more people over than if SchmoeJoe went. Those people in turn would cause the website to be a more attractive option (less weight on the edge).

That would mean that there even is nuance within tyranny, which is funny to think about.

There’s also the possibility of cycles! What a fun rabbit-hole. Definitely worth a thesis paper or large-scale open discussion.

P.S. Also agreed that with a “limit” it is not TSP, and is much simpler. It evolves into TSP only when you think about a message originating from a source and making it to everyone - with the same effect for responses.

First off, agreed that monkey brain + internet = unsolved.

Second, I think that this overall is a math problem and what you’re describing is metadata. Before I continue, there are many ways to solve and interpret problems - this is just how I see it.

If you think about this as a graph, it makes a lot more sense as a math problem. People want to communicate and the message has to reach each of them once through the shortest route. In essence, this becomes the “Traveling Salesman Problem”.

Next, imagine the distance between points on the graph become longer (when people group together) and shorter (when people split apart) - we now have described tyranny of the majority.

What you are describing (from my perspective) is the cost of going from one part of the graph to the other. This indeed is a very important part of the problem and directly relates to the tyranny, but does not solve it. Instead to solve this problem, we would have to find a way to standardize the distance between any two points in the graph (i.e it cannot take more than 30 feet to reach any given destination).

I cannot begin to describe how difficult this would be, but my brain is telling me it’s solvable.

The comments (and your github post) helped me think about this a bit deeper. This is why discussion is helpful.

There’s a lot of nuance to be had here, but it’s a conversation for another time.

You bring up something interesting though

IRL you would leave but on the internet you want them to leave.

I wonder if this is because people view these spaces as a home or a “third place”. Like if someone did something offensive in your home, you would indeed ask (or force) them to leave.

People also find it insanely difficult to “leave” because all of their friends are on the platform. Since it’s almost never open-protocol, that means being locked to said space - so you can only get people you don’t like to leave.

We generally agree the moderation has become overbearing. I would argue most of it is straight up ineffective and performative. We need actual data and science backing moderation policies, not just “this feels good”.

This is interesting perspective.

If I’m interpreting what your saying correctly, this becomes an alternation of the “Traveling Salesman Problem” - where people are the nodes, sending information is the destination, and medium of communication is the weight. The goal being finding the shortest path for two-way communication (go to destination and return).

If this is the case, “tyranny of majority” is indeed a very difficult problem to solve. This phenomena causes the weights of the graph to become change based on the number of surrounding nodes. Higher when less nodes (i.e Lemmy) and lower when more nodes (i.e Reddit).

To go even further, companies are manipulating their weights (creating closed ecosystems, etc) to make is so two-way communication is only viable within their bubble (think an edge of infinite weight). And it would also mean that it truly is unreasonable to expect laymen to “memorize the graph” (know a forum for everything) - it indeed would be just easier to know a subsection (i.e Reddit, Facebook, etc)

I’m just spitballing here, but a lot to interpret if true.

The problem is engagement - which in turn means building a community.

If someone goes to your forum, hijacks your posts, and them puts them on Reddit; there is no incentive to use your platform, which stifles and dies since no one is communicating on it. This is also part of the tyranny, as people can figuratively walk into your house, eat all your food, and then expect you to restock.

On the old internet, this was not really an issue since there was a better culture. But if all your friends use Reddit, and all the content is reposted there, why use the internet forum?

It’s frustrating but true.

To use an extreme example, if I saw someone just spamming the hard-R I would want their comment immediately removed. The rhetoric makes the space becomes completely unserious; just not a good environment.

The funniest part is that this mirrors real life. If someone did that IRL, I would just leave.

I am not going to argue in terms of right/wrong because I’m just not equipped to. But in terms of platform result, I do not want to participate on a 4Chan clone - because it always leads to unserious discussion, bad faith, and death.

I think this is an XY problem.

People keep trying to bring back the old internet ; This is an broken and outdated solution.

The root problem (in my opinion) is that we need to share critical information to the masses, but the masses introduce “tyranny of the majority”. It’s a really tricky problem to figure out, and I really really really want mathematicians working on this.

If you live in the states, the Electoral College exists because they were looking for a practical solution to this problem. Considering the outcomes, it did not work - but there is no shame in this, as I think this is actually a really hard problem to solve.

The only known solution is to not share information to the masses (a.k.a keeping the normies out). In essence, this is what the old internet was - and a large part of what made it great. But this is not correct as it does not meet the criteria of the problem. Nor does it translate well, since your neighbors are apart of the masses.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, please share. If you do math for a living, please gather your friends and make an open-thesis about this.

EDIT

After some discussion in the comments, I have a general hypothesis:

• One platform, one name.

People must be able to distinguish the resource they are accessing - highly recommended this process be easy. This provides consistent “edges”.

• Open protocols only.

Looking at “tyranny of the majority” from a different perspective, one answer is to standardize how people communicate. This means no closed ecosystems nor convoluted protocols. This provides “standard weight” while preventing “infinite weight”.

• Server-wide censorship cannot be allowed.

This eliminates every platform I know of. Servers should not be given any tools to prevent incoming nor outgoing data. People should handle moderation individually - sane UI can of course be made available (BlueSky block filters could be inspiration?). Blocking should only be handled by the “nodes”, this also prevents “infinite weight”.

I find it really funny that this conclusion kind of alludes to the early internet in a lot of ways. Maybe it wasn’t the internet-forums, but the internet itself that has changed.