Well formulated re: #SocialHub and indicative of larger challenges that exists in our grassroots ecosystem.
For #ActivityPub et al open standards its vital that the people involved in the ecosystem look beyond their own project's scope and tend to foundational tech they rely on.
[removed quote]
There is a sort of paradox where the more we decentralise the ecosystem the more important it is that we can rely on open standards to guarantee good levels of interoperability.
Yes very well formulated re #SocialHub and the larger challenges!
its vital that the people involved in the ecosystem look beyond their own project's scope and tend to foundational tech they rely on.
Yep. Fedi as a whole doesn't have a great track record with collective action and contributing to or fundraising for shared / shareable infrastructure.
That said I'm not sure that a centralized substrate is the only approach. The article says
"money can only flow and deals can only be made if everyone has a consistent sense of property rights and contracts, and the definition of those concepts will typically be determined by whichever participant in a transaction has the more sophisticated financial and legal system"
That's very much the kind of thing a white American guy would say. For one thing it reflects complete ignorance of the history of money flowing and deals being made between different countries and cultures which despite having very inconsistent legal systems somehow made it work. But also white American guys assume our system is the most financially and legally sophisticated (because American exceptionalism) -- so evertybody will adopt the US sense of property rights and contracts, grounded in stealing Native Americans property and ignoring treaties, chattel slavery and white supremacy, and women as property.
Of course a centralized substrate is the most straightforward path, and it's not easy to imagine other approaches. But a singlie substrate is inherently power-centralizing and squeezes out diversity. And think about the ecosystem that includes some entities in the ATmosphere and some from fedi. The article talks about protocols as a substrate from the technical sense, fair enough, but here there are two and that is unlikely to change.
A bit of unintended side-effect of the microblog medium. I'm interested in the quote, the notion that a paradox exists people may not be so aware of, and that there is this substrate needed of people and processes that get things into those (centralized) open standard specifications. Article mere source attribution, but the toot turns it a full opengraph preview as if I recommend the whole article. I do not. I care about the quote and these concepts.
Will edit that link out.
When I 1st read the article, the paradox was most interesting given fedi discussions at the time were all 'decentralization happy joy joy', working in ways that would eventually destroy interoperability through protocol decay (we still largely work that way, but with some improvements to our substrate).
The realization of the need for a substrate that binds us together despite all being part of a chaotic grassroots commons, is the real point. We are in unique position here.
thanks!
and yeah, I considered adding that quote to the article, but I wasnt really sure how to work it in without spending a lot of time explaining what you already mentioned here: the quote is (for me at least) is less about being 100% correct in a literal meaning and more about providing a useful mental framework that decentralised networks need a substrate for collaboration
I'm very glad you didn't include that quote. Thiel and Andreessen both blurbed Byrne Hobart's book. Sure, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day ... but fascist tech oligarchs and their minions aren't all just stopped clocks, some are quite good at using apparently politically neutral "insights" to warp people's thinking by disguising their pro-fascist framing -- and at getting people who don't agree with their politics to amplify their propaganda.
Anyhow, agreed on the importance of substrates for collaboration -- I just don't think a centralized substrate is the right approach. It's an interesting thought experiment to look at what kind of more decentralized alternative structure that would work that's also less developer-centric and protocol-focused -- and more inclusive and anti-oppressive.
Of course most of the folks currently active on SocialHub and the SWICG don't seem like they're interested in that. Enough people see enough value in continuing to do FEPs, and don't care that it's happening in a space where Black people almost never participate and there are only a handful of women ... so one way or another that substrate will probably move forward. And given the software's limitations, it'll probably continue to be mostly-centralized. But it's not the only substrate we need!
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
