I hesitate to add to the atmosphere of dread, but Meta's increasingly unfettered acceleration of the kinds of messages that precede genocides is so alarming.
And—how to say this… Avoiding Meta platforms doesn't confer a get-out-of-atrocities-free card. This is why I'm so focused on the need to build broadly appealing, maximally accessible alternative platforms.
I understand, "It's good if the fediverse stays niche," but that's a solution for a tiny number of people.
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"People should just think more critically about technology" is not a solution. "Normies just love their evil dopamine and dumb celebs, let them suffer" is not a solution.
"I don't believe people when they say it's unpleasant or confusing because it's not for me" is not a solution.
"But Threads!" is not a solution.
The window for making fedi a robust and substantial part of an alternative pluriverse of networks is not going to be open forever, I don't think.
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I am hopeful about the changes at Mastodon. I think IFTAS is doing absolutely crucial work with very little support. I've come around on bridging, as wildly imperfect as it is, as a stop-loss and a way of keeping fedi more viable for more people who are willing to accept the (nebulous) trade-offs.
But also I love the federated model and I want it to be a real option for more people in more places, so it's discouraging to keep hitting "eh screw the normies" when the societal risks are so high.
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I wouldn't have posted this knowing I wouldn't be around to look at replies but I have to get offline now for unexpected reasons, so any responses will be slow/in a few days.
The point was, "Niche alternatives will not prevent societal damage wrought by giant corporate platforms knowingly accelerating the worst things humans do to each other, and alt-network advocates better grapple with that right now." The rest is commentary.
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@kissane
I think the "works for me" attitude of fossbros/techbros towards users that just want a computer that works out of the box is also the reason why people stick with Windows or Mac OS X instead of switching to GNU/Linux because the latter is still too complicated, especially when something doesn't work out of the box.
It's a good thing when the fediverse services don't make the same mistake with their users.
(GNU/Linux user and free, libre open source software enthusiast here)
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@mstrohm @kissane I read Erin’s point as being that if Twitter and Facebook are getting neo-Nazis elected, having your own Mastodon server isn’t going to stop them kicking in your door.
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@mstrohm @kissane I think the Linux comparison is doubly fitting. One for the harmful "works for me" attitude that limits popular uptake, but on the other hand it also shows that just because it doesn't have the popular uptake doesn't mean "the window is closing" and it's not worth having. Even as niche system for a small group of people it can stay viable and thrive for many decades, and it might even infaltrate many other places (servers, phones, firmware) without people even noticing. While I would like Mastodon to take over Twitter's inheritance, I think there might still be a long-term future even if it doesn't.
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@kissane I don't follow. Individual instances are niche. The fediverse, by definition, is not. Not that this fact necessarily helps much on its own!
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@heydon Niche as in about a million people and shrinking vs. billions of people. If we want society-level effects, we have to be providing better options for the big groups as well. (Currently Bluesky is getting most of the Meta-leavers, and I wish fedi could offer its real benefits to more of them.)
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@kissane Agreed. I don't see no issue in enjoying niche open tools and such, and being seen as a geek/activist by friends and family that find all this way too complicated. But we have to listen to them when they say "it's too complicated", understand precisely why they don't use these tools, and work hard towards a better visibility and understanding both ways. Cause it's worth it, but there's a lot of work to be done to make it happen. And if we fail, the Internet we love may be kind of done.
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@kissane
The trouble is that it is precisely those "broadly appealing, maximally accessible alternative platforms" that are required for spreading messages that precede, e.g., genocide.
There is simply no way how one could invite merely potential victims, and keep perpetrators and their enablers (who start the fire by telling people to not be "snowflakes", those who "won't be silenced by the woke", etc.) out.
I get why one would desire that, but the Fediverse of today rather resembles a Third Reich basement where the persecuted are hiding. Planting signs everywhere to show the "way to the nearest shelter for potential victims of the Nazis" does not look like a reasonable idea, to me.
The first who try to hide are the most vulnerable. Only then, the party members who once thought they'd be safe if they obeyed and looked away, realize that they'll be next.
And they don't learn. They don't show solidarity. They're entering the shelter, loudly complaining why the shelter does not offer all the amenities of the flat they were just running out of, in panic.
I believe that the existence of many different house rules is an advantage of the Fediverse, not a disadvantage. IFTAS is walking a very thin line here. Being a community where moderators exchange experiences and consent on what they feel they can consent on: fine. Becoming an outsourced moderation center that ultimately mandates what is ok, on every instance: not fine.
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@katzenberger I don't do super-long comments so I will point you here for my thoughts on refuge and broad connection: https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/
"Becoming an outsourced moderation center that ultimately mandates what is ok, on every instance: not fine." This isn't what IFTAS does or has ever done. People project so much onto a tiny org building out the tooling moderators have requested, and although scrutiny is essential, I think it would be helpful to avoid making up scenarios from whole cloth.
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@kissane
Thanks, will get back to here after I've read it.
Before I forget, on the IFTAS part of my reply, because that's a quick one: "Future classification services will include hash and match options for non-consensual intimate images, terroristic and violent extremism content, spam, and more." (IFTAS) - in the EU, we just had this hash-and-match discussion, and fought against it. The reason simply being that it can be extended from alleged CSAM to just about anything (apart from authoritarian states having their very own understanding of "terrorist" content). Just to make it clear where I'm coming from.
Looking forward to read your text.
https://about.iftas.org/activities/moderation-as-a-service/content-classification-service/
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@katzenberger Warning on that, it is comically long.
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@kissane
(1/5) Your post is an amazing text that I enjoyed reading. I'll split up my reply into a thread and I'm really sorry that it is a very long thread. I may be misrepresenting parts of your arguments, out of my preconceptions and biases.
For me, the most important sentence was something that we agree upon: "Home rule and genuine resilience both require the existence of many places, many of them at least partially interconnected."
I almost didn't make it there, because the text started with ascribing an experience of "paranoia" to some people, and piled upon that, later on ("failure not only of imagination, but of nerve"; "retreat into private spaces").
I've deliberately spoken of a "basement", because giving shelter is only a single function of a basement, and a defensive one. A problem focus (what do we want less of) is a natural reaction, but it does not define people, as you seemed to suggest. You are right in saying it centers "harm to individual well-being and social status—to mental health, to reputation, to productivity". My solution focus though (accidentally, an established form of brief therapy that has outgrown its original domain), a focus on what we want more of, instead, is always the backdrop.
There is no "full retreat into the bushes", here, no recommendation that people build a "nice bunker of their own". Since you have referred to cultural artifacts as well, let me mention that my understanding of this role of the "basement" resembles the one depicted in "Le Dernier Métro", a 1980ies French movie: "Lucas", a Jewish theater director, is not just hiding away in its basement, but he's integrated into the evolution of the theater. Without the basement, he'd simply not able to do that. It's nobody's belief that "the only viable strategy is to stay quiet and hide", as you seem to claim. Lucas isn't quiet, at all.
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@kissane
(2/5) It seems the central point where we disagree is what you summarize as "The public social internet is worth designing and governing", " the business of building systems for civilization", the call to "build human networks resilient enough to withstand every kind of weather" by "people with the ability and willingness to work on network problems".
I sense a discomforting contrast between such global aspirations claiming the existence of a quasi-elite that can handle such a program; and your criticism of "the flattening of global diversity to fit the norms and interests of any given American techno-culture". The belief that we were facing some kind of a global "network design" problem that can be solved by "able" persons is part of a detrimental culture, not the means to overcome it. The unspoken "Trust us on this!", combined with ostentative diagnosis of "paranoia" that I mentioned above is particularly discomforting, in this context. Context collapse is not the problem of the "wrong" culture imposing their rules everywhere, but the idea that context itself badly needs as much "good globality" as possible.
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@kissane
(3/5) There is no "societal refusal to take on the responsibilities of governing our increasingly complex commons", it's just that what you describe as "Facebook but open-source and federated" looks like the much better alternative for many, despite it also being differently bad, as you say. It is both the acknowledgment that you "can't fix people problems" with software (that you should even engage in #AlgorithmicSabotage); and that the existence of "many places" may not resolve them all, but is required as a safeguard against global feasibility fantasies.
We try to partially solve these problems by strategies leaning on the principle of subsidiarity that has both served humans well, with respect to protecting smaller entities from being steamrolled by larger ones; and done harm, too, by giving power without accountability, in many cases.
To use an (unappetizing) image: "global solutions" lead to everybody walking up to their ankles in manure, because a majority decided "they" can tolerate it, so "everybody" can, up to that height. "Federated" solutions lead to a pattern of absolute cesspits in some places, and relatively dry floors in others. Establishing boundaries, also against "design globalists" infringing upon subsidiarity, is crucial. Less figuratively, my instinct tells me to e.g. prefer a landscape with some defederated Nazi server instances over a landscape with Nazis spilling to everywhere, that are allowed to say barely legal things, because of the "barely".
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@kissane
(4/5) Why global feasibility attitudes make me cringe: those promoting them keep thinking they're more enlightened than, e.g., "American techno-culture". You have quoted from Governable Spaces" by Nathan Schneider. Let me paste a longer quote here that almost gave me physical pain when I first read it, merely as an example for the "design attitude": »For instance, while the legal system would respond to a case of partner abuse by charging one party or both with a crime and seeking to punish accordingly, a community accountability process would begin with conversations. How did each partner experience what happened? Along with a trusted facilitator and allies, they might meet in a circle, where the person who caused harm agrees to take responsibility for it and apologize. Forgiveness may or may not be involved. The process might further reveal that an unjust eviction had been exacerbating tensions in the relationship. Together, the participants develop a strategy for publicizing the landlord’s behavior and making exploitative evictions less likely in their community.«
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@kissane
(5/5) Getting back to the IFTAS issue, I'll point to the specifics of https://about.iftas.org/activities/moderation-as-a-service/content-classification-service/ again, because I often see "Come on!" replies that gloss over them:
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@katzenberger As I said, this is not a place where I do long posts—my server doesn’t accommodate blog-length posting—so I’ll keep this tight:
We do indeed disagree. I do not endorse your summary of my work—a number of hostile assumptions and assertions bolted on, along with some points of genuine disagreement. And I think comparing an unencrypted social network to basements where genocide victims can hide is pretty shaky foundational metaphor.
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@katzenberger I do have strong concerns about hash and match used for anything other than CSAM, and will probably bail if IFTAS moves in that direction, but at the moment it’s purely about CSAM. I think positioning CSAM hash and match as a slippery slope that must therefore not be provided is a mess of an argument that denies local and community agency and expressed needs.
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@kissane
We do indeed disagree on many points, including your assessment of my reply.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I'll leave it at that.
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@katzenberger (Oops, sorry for tacking on another, I was still writing and didn’t see this. Should have numbered mine.)
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@kissane
Never mind, I was a bit put off by the IMO unsubstantiated claim of "hostility", but I guess that if we ever meet in person and feel mutually inclined to discuss this topic, we'll have an interesting time. Have a good day.
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@katzenberger (I think a context that may not have come across is that the essay I linked is rooted in an elite panic in US technology circles, centering above all on terror of getting canceled.)
Anyway! My orientation remains toward local norms governed locally, connecting more broadly as suits each community.
Possibly we could cut through the confusion here if we met elsewhere, but I don’t see further engagement of this kind benefitting anyone, so I’m going to tap out.
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