Toot

Written by katzenberger on 2025-01-18 at 11:31

@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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