Trust is built over time. The same complaints exist even if they provided all of the information requested. “How do we know these people are really the real people that worked on freenode?” Etc.
The solution here is trust neither freenode nor Libera.chat, but use them cautiously. Eventually one will implode and a more complete story will emerge.
I think many were caught off guard by the legal setup of freenode that allowed it to be sold, including all the staff that resigned and founded Libera Chat.
With that in mind, the lesson to take from that is to make sure the legal structure and ownership of the new service is more clearly documented and understood by everyone.
At the very least the legal name of this new non-profit they have established should be clearly displayed on the web page somewhere.
Yes. Look where it got us: fb, twitter, reddit, etc taking it all over, because people "trust" them - see ominous zuck quote. Why? Because ordinary people need faces and names. So unless libera is aiming for the oldschool nerds, like us, they need to align with 2021.
> without knowing a single name or face behind it.
That's because we are ensconced in a framework of corporate and consumer protection laws that makes that generally safe to do and provides legal recourse when it isn't. Even so, fraud and bad experiences with businesses happen all the time.
Was subjected to a corporate takeover? This happened, but it's hard to see the cause and effect, and the proposed solution is basically to do this out the gate.
Didn't become discord? Was that a goal? To be a big VC funded chat service with lots of users and a looming prospect of having to be profitable without losing them.
Wasn't a profitable business? It was always intended as a non-profit, and it's not clear they were running out of money to run the network without sponsorship, but rather used it to set up new events like freenode live.
That's not the point (edit): the only thing I'm missing from libera is an impressum. Mentioning a nameless swedish nonprofit is actually worse in my eyes, than calling it xyz's server in the basement.
That is the point. People don't use Facebook because they like using real names, people use real names on Facebook because they were forced to in order to stay on Facebook.
When that Zuck quote happened, Facebook didn't require real names.
If it's unevenly enforced, then it's not "required" in any practical sense. Nobody I know has ever been kicked off for a fake but reasonable looking name. Facebook is not a government authority. If you ask for a picture of my ID, I can generate a fake one without consequence.
Meanwhile Discord is one of the most commonly used platforms for young people, where everyone is an anime girl named after their favorite song. I wouldn’t be so sure about your assumption. Facebook is becoming increasingly known as an uncool boomer thing.
OK, it looks like nobody understood my point, fascinating.
Discord is a company. You can look it up, there are contact points - abuse, legal, etc. People who put their community there trust the entity running Discord.
I'd prefer to trust someone I actually know, and with that, I'm fully on board with librachat, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have a real, visible legal entity behind them.
I was never talking about the community on top of a platform, but the platform itself.
That's not true. The problem with anonymity or pseudonymity is that there is no way to trace bad behavior beyond the persona and back to the person behind it. A single person can even adopt multiple personas, some of which may be trustworthy, others not. The use of real names constrains this kind of gaming of the system and so makes trustworthiness easier and more reliable to establish.
This is not to say that the costs of using real names outweighs the benefits. They may very well not. But to say that there are no benefits to using real names in terms of establishing trust is just wrong.
Irrespective of real/fake name, behavior is most critical factor in trust, furthermore behavior changes, so interactions is your only information for degree of trust. Your real name is just label nothing more.
Distrust is cognitively taxing, so naturally it is easier to simply trust subject(s) because of real name, title, etc ...
It's also established by pointing to one's past behavior to demonstrate a track record of trustworthiness, of certain values, etc. If it turns out that Mark Zuckerberg is leading the charge, here, you'd be unhappy.
If new product/service is not lead by Mark Zuckerberg you should not trust it ether, since you have no track record, furthermore past performance is not guarantee of future results.
