Discussion
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
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.
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Another possibility that no on ever seems to consider, is that a perceived lack of people of [insert identity category here] could be a case of people choosing handles/ avatars that don't broadcast their personal identity markers. Because they just want to get on with some technical work, rather than being pulled into the Culture War posturing and drama-mongering that a subset of white USAmericans/ EUropeans seem to be so excited by.
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I get that AP dev spaces being exclusive wouldn't help, and we must avoid that. But the absence of those people isn't in itself evidence that AP dev spaces are exclusive.
It could also be evidence that people of [insert identity category here] are more interested in created bounded, self-governed social spaces online. Which conflicts to some degree with connecting those spaces to an unbounded, mostly ungoverned meta-space like the fediverse, which is still a wild west to some degree.
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@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.
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.
