Post by @smallcircles@social.coop

When it comes to dreaming and #vision I'd like to thank @elena who dares to #dream, and whom I quoted in my article.

And the many people who work tirelessly to foster #cohesion, increasing the connectedness of our social fabric. Cross-pollinators. In my previous blog post on Grassroots #fediverse I already genuinely thanked whom I called "the pillars grassroots standardization" @evan and @silverpill

This is such important work. In that article I make many points which are unfortunately misunderstood by people as criticism, while it is the opposite. I admire all the fabulous work people are doing and have done over the years to bring #fedi where it is today.

But I argue that to really go next-level, to #ReimagineSocial, and enter the Future of Social networking, we must be able to take more holistic approaches to glue our fragmented online spaces together, and forge a #SocialWeb that is #inclusive to more people, so they can chime in with their 2 cents of #contribution to the whole.

Uriel Fanelli

@uriel@bbs.keinpfusch.net · 2 hours ago

@smallcircles

> But what do we dream about? How do our dreams relate, where do they overlap? Might we realize them together?

Sure. Yet I think dreams differ depending on one’s priorities.

For example, while building Aktor, I am not particularly interested in changing or improving the federation mechanism itself. At the same time, I learned that it took someone 6.5 years to implement it, rather than focusing on freeing the Fediverse from centralised dependencies.

Take S3, for instance. My goal is to remove the S3 dependency and replace it with IPFS, which can work as a decentralised CDN. But honestly, I cannot imagine spending 6.5 years in frustration before having something functional to which I can attach IPFS.

By forking an existing project, I am now close to having something usable — with only a few UI bugs still pending — and in much less time I will be able to implement IPFS-based sharing of files and media.

If I had to work on this for 6.5 years? Well… no. I simply could not wait that long. So I decided to fork GoToSocial and build my own instance from there. I have now changed several things in GoToSocial to better match my own small dreams, and I can already use it — I am using it now — and even allow testers in: https://bbs.keinpfusch.net

So I would say: do not be afraid of standing on the shoulders of giants. I am very close to creating something like what I had imagined, and it saved me roughly 6.5 man-years of work. Of course, that effort has effectively been moved onto the GoToSocial team, but… this is open source.

So, to answer your question: we have built the foundations. Now it is time to use them more. Continuing to develop everything from scratch may be enjoyable for some people, but if what you really want is “an instance, just with IPFS”, then do not starve your dream by reinventing the wheel. Fork, adapt, and move forward.

This is the lesson I have just learned, after trying to implement this both in Go and in Erlang, and repeatedly hitting the usual “it is beta, almost there” stage — the one that never really ends.

🫧 socialcoding..

@smallcircles@social.coop · 2 hours ago

@uriel

Yes! Good example of cross-pollination. Social dynamics in our FOSS movement are particularly fascinating and up for some major reflection on how to elevate #FOSS practices. As the field right now is inherently unsustainable.

Nice serendipity in you saying "standing on the shoulders of giants" as I just tooted to @janriemer about a sociologist that wrote the literal book with that name..

https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116617175577189050

It follows discussion on "uncomfortable questions" about unintended consequences of our actions in-the-large i.e. what emerge at societal scale from individuals who think they are doing the good thing. The outcome might not be good, and FOSS movement might reflect their role on emergence of #BigTech and #AI. Today there is nothing, nothing at all, that withholds Big Tech and AI to say "thank you" and capture the #fediverse as their oyster, and we'll be complicit to bringing both yet even closer to our skin.

We must be able to operate more in unison and coordination.

Uriel Fanelli

@uriel@bbs.keinpfusch.net · 2 hours ago

@smallcircles @janriemer

> We must be able to operate more in unison and coordination.

I am not deeply involved in governance of everything, but my impression is that dreamers are many, and each person has their own dream. For example, someone built an instance resembling VK; I am trying, in my own way, to recreate something closer to the Tumblr experience — or at least something inspired by it.

So far, much of the Fediverse has followed the Twitter-like experience, or something similar. Now some people are exploring Reddit-like models, forums, and other approaches. I think that is very positive. But everyone dreams differently. And having a meeting where someone else effectively de-prioritizes your dream can easily become a source of conflict, in my opinion. Dreams are not really negotiable.

Same on the back-ends.

For example, someone might say: “S3 works, so it is not a priority.” And I would answer: “For me, removing S3 is priority number one, for many reasons.” Of course, different people may dream of different ways to get rid of S3: in my case, IPFS; someone else might think of torrents, Syncthing, or even a simple SFTP upload to some nginx host somewhere. In theory, all of these could work.

Each of these ideas is part of someone’s dream. I think we should build what we dream of, and then see how well it works in practice.

One possible common ground, in my view, would be to agree on broad principles, such as: “Do not hand over content and access logs to IT oligarchs or to governments.” That kind of principle makes sense to me.

But going too far into implementation details, and trying to decide them collectively in advance… I am not sure that would end well.

🫧 socialcoding..

@smallcircles@social.coop · 2 hours ago

@uriel @janriemer

Your observation is spot on. Yes, we all have our individual dreams that we pursue. Our problem is that they are less likely to be realized, as the world about us turns to shite due to the vile Hypercapitalism that festers and rules supreme.

What I am talking about relating to #SX has much to do about #Emergence. How can we realize our individual dreams in emergent cocreation spaces that help us do the realization?

That's NOT about #Governance. Not directly at least. Governance is top-down overlay structure to manage power dynamics at small scales, in the large scale its entirely emergent too. At least it is in our chaotic grassroots #commons.

SX takes all that into account, and is based on intrinsic values of #Humanity and #Freedom as the starting point for solution development. SX solutions can be small, but might be society-scale just as well, designed for having profound societal impact.

But that requires the ability to foster emergence at scale first of all.

2+ more replies

🫧 socialcoding..

@smallcircles@social.coop · 2 hours ago

@uriel @janriemer

> So I would say: do not be afraid of standing on the shoulders of giants. [..] So, to answer your question: we have built the foundations. Now it is time to use them more. Continuing to develop everything from scratch may be enjoyable for some people

In my blog post I briefly mention that related to Social experience design, and the mindset / perspective shifts that are involved, there is a different way to perceive our commons, which is less likely to lead to all kinds of expectation mismatches.

I mention the counter-intuitive first rule of Hedonic peer production again, of:

> Do not ask what you can do for the commons, but what the commons can do for you.

This turns things upside down to how we usually view our #commons participation e.g. in an implied "I created this FOSS project already, so now I deserve your contributions". That is a false notion. You should not be expecting that, can't expect that, and have firm drivers and motivators.

#SX #SocialCoding

Uriel Fanelli

@uriel@bbs.keinpfusch.net · 2 hours ago

@smallcircles

> But what do we dream about? How do our dreams relate, where do they overlap? Might we realize them together?

Sure. Yet I think dreams differ depending on one’s priorities.

For example, while building Aktor, I am not particularly interested in changing or improving the federation mechanism itself. At the same time, I learned that it took someone 6.5 years to implement it, rather than focusing on freeing the Fediverse from centralised dependencies.

Take S3, for instance. My goal is to remove the S3 dependency and replace it with IPFS, which can work as a decentralised CDN. But honestly, I cannot imagine spending 6.5 years in frustration before having something functional to which I can attach IPFS.

By forking an existing project, I am now close to having something usable — with only a few UI bugs still pending — and in much less time I will be able to implement IPFS-based sharing of files and media.

If I had to work on this for 6.5 years? Well… no. I simply could not wait that long. So I decided to fork GoToSocial and build my own instance from there. I have now changed several things in GoToSocial to better match my own small dreams, and I can already use it — I am using it now — and even allow testers in: https://bbs.keinpfusch.net

So I would say: do not be afraid of standing on the shoulders of giants. I am very close to creating something like what I had imagined, and it saved me roughly 6.5 man-years of work. Of course, that effort has effectively been moved onto the GoToSocial team, but… this is open source.

So, to answer your question: we have built the foundations. Now it is time to use them more. Continuing to develop everything from scratch may be enjoyable for some people, but if what you really want is “an instance, just with IPFS”, then do not starve your dream by reinventing the wheel. Fork, adapt, and move forward.

This is the lesson I have just learned, after trying to implement this both in Go and in Erlang, and repeatedly hitting the usual “it is beta, almost there” stage — the one that never really ends.