It is important to note that the substrate is only *conceptually* centralized in how things ultimately come together. It is a mental model. Our task is to project that notion onto chaotic commons and evolve healthy and diverse grassroots standardization process(es) in that environment.
yeah exactly this. the ideal case would have a fairly singular shared understanding of "this is where you can talk about activitypub", but operated in a decentralised and federated manner.
Good discussion! I see it more as multiple understandings of "these are places where people talk about ActivityPub, and here are the qualities of the different places". For example I don't think there's shared understanding of SWICG (and W3C in general) as a place where fascist organizations are first-class participants and there are systemic barriers to women and feminist organizations. I don't think there's shared understanding among people who participate on SocialHub that it's an anti-Black space.
It is important to note that the substrate is only conceptually centralized in how things ultimately come together.
What value does this conceptual centralization add ?
@laurenshof@indieweb.social @smallcircles @fediversereport@laurenshof@connectedplaces.online
I share your concerns about the variety of issues with inclusion in the mentioned spaces. For me, framing the need for a centralised substrate for a decentralised network actually further accentuates how important those problems are.
For example: If there are 10 different forums to discuss FEPs, and a few of those forums are racist, than thats bad
If there is 1 forum for everyone to discuss FEPS, and that forum is racist, than thats extra bad
I consider the #FEP process as a "best-we-can-manage" at the moment. There is room for a ton of improvement in the grassroots standardization process. What I would be much in favor of is to see more organization around specific themes.
The FEP is nice but it is a random collection of bits and pieces collected as best-practices from across the ecosystem.
Examples of where decentralized ecosystems focus on specific use cases or verticles are #ForgeFed, Podcasting, and Forums.
Several people on SocialHub have pointed to the FEPs as a place where the discussions are working relatively well -- and it's certainly a good thing to have a grassroots-oriented process. But, safety is a huge problem in the Fediverse. How many FEPs relate to safety? In the rare events it actually happens (like Blocked Collections) , how much input is there from marginalized users or admins of instances that focus on protecting marginalized users? There's an example in that threat of somebody bringing up in issue (instance blocking) that's very important for marginalized users and admins, and somebody who has a reputation for not interacting with Black people and blocking many trans users says it should be out of scope. Nobody pushes back. Nobody starts up an alternate FEP to address this other issue.
"If there is 1 forum for everyone to discuss FEPS, and that forum is racist, than thats extra bad"
Most fedi platforms have a track reord of ignoring Black users priorities; at least oOne of the most-widely-used opensource fedi platforms is run by somebody who has a history of anti-Black behavior. Still, their input is important for FEPs -- and ideally their projects will adopt the FEPs as well. If you've got a single centralized space, it's going to reflect the overall anti-Blackness -- which winds up reinforcing fedi's anti-Blackness as a whole.
Drat, I thought I had him blocked from here, but no that was another account. Oh well, my bad, he's blocked now.
But this highlights one of the challenges with bringing conversations to SocialHub. Yes, it's sometimes useful to be able have convos there with people I've blocked on Mastodon -- or people like Evan who have blocked me. And, they have just as much of a right to participate in SocialHub related discussions taking place on SocialHub as I do, so I don't necessarily mute them there.
But, whether or not I've remembered to block them on all accounts, I don't want them crashing in on random conversations that weren't intended for the SocialHub audience. Sure, this post was public, so it might have happened anyhow if @smallcircles hadn't linked to this thread from SocialHub (and for all I know he saw it directly and not through the lik). Still, linking here significantly increased the likelihood that it would happen.
In this case, we were the only ones on the thread so it was no big deal. In general though there are a lot of situations where I'd ask permission before linking to a post from SocialHub -- or before looping SocialHub in on a post.
(1/?)
@jdp23
> FEPs ... happening in a space where Black people almost never participate and there are only a handful of women
The people working on FEPs are (a subset of) the people working on AP implementations. If there is a lack of people of [insert identity category here] in FEP process, then this is symptomatic of a deeper problem; a lack of those people using AP in their software.
> What value does this conceptual centralization add?
Convergence towards technology (in the form of open standard specs) that guarantee good level of interoperability for a broad range of social networking use cases. Specs of good quality with a process to mature and evolve them over time, and on which basis a healthy ecosystem can form.
FEP does its job but collects random grassroots best-practices. Forms a patchwork at best. Isn't sufficient.
Regarding diversity and inclusion themes, now is a great time to bring that up on SocialHub. Bring the topic to community team and general discussion on direction. Some community plan should be made still. I think it would be great if there were e.g. task forces and actual projects being defined. Approach, invite people who are affected. Get together finding ways to address these issues and what must be done both at social and technology levels.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
