Discussion
I'm thinking *a lot* about "Implicit Feudalism" these days - the idea that mods and admins (in the #Fediverse and elsewhere) are like feudal lords, wielding the only true power in online spaces - the power to silence other's voices.
That leaves regular users to be like serfs - bound to the land with no real power to make change besides 1) petitioning their lord, or 2) maybe leaving the lord's estate (if that's even possible).
@benpate you can leave, but you can't take your possessions (toots) with you
@torstentorsten Thank you :) I'll check it out. I've been binge reading a bunch of books on the topic.
@benpate I'm very grateful for your efforts. It's not common for software-folks to think about these topics. (Hence the state of the software.)
Searching for a connection between what Ostrom considered to be the 8 rules for managing commons that she found to be intact for hundreds of years (rice terraces in the Philippines, irrigation systems in Spain, Swiss mountain villages) on one hand and digital commons on the other hand I think a good search term could be "Governing digital commons".
Maybe @p_tron has some more ideas.
This is deeper than simple "user education" -- that's just more *affective voice* that we should be DE-incentivizing.
So, how can we give regular people a more positive experience online, to have an *effective voice* in how the Fediverse operates.
I'm looking at structural improvements to our tools and protocols. I'd LOVE to hear what you all think of this, and how we can do better.
@benpate@mastodon.social as a materialist I would like to say that the deepest structure is that the servers are run by an individual that have material power over it, and can shut it down, close registrations, and so on.
If instances are to be community ruled should be community owned and funded.
I think this can be achieved by opening instances as an action taken by already organized communities or by transitioning private maintained instances to community ownership by building a community in it.
Thw microblog paradigm is very poor for this. A community needs permanent spaces. Most Fediverse software don't have even privileged instance blog, knowledge base or forum to centralize It's presence and identity. There are no tools to differentiate from user presence and instance presence.
@cochise Yes. I like a lot of this. Community ownership / community funding. This goes nicely with getting "real world entities" (like Universities, ACM, etc) to set up their own *official* staff accounts here.
And yeah, "microblogging" kinda sucks at this. So, knowledge bases, forums, maybe a community-owned version of"Facebook Groups"?
And, could you tell me more about "User Presence" vs. "Instance Presence"? This sounds interesting, but I'm not completely following you.
@benpate I think one thing is encouraging more real world entities to implement servers for their staff, members, customers or citizens. The ACM, archive.org, Vivaldi and SDF are good examples.
@livingpixel @benpate my number one target! Thanks for the reminder.
@benpate a second thing is encouraging big volunteer-run servers to become coops. Cooperatives are democratically operated and supported. Nivenly, social.coop, cosocial.ca, data.coop are all cooperatives.
@benpate I don't think it's a technical problem; it's a social and cultural one.
@evan That's always been the conventional wisdom, but I'm having second thoughts. Of course: some people are just awful and need to learn some manners.
But much of this this is just natural human response to being powerless in front of a faceless machine. We're fighting human nature instead of understanding and embracing it.
System-wise, it's the difference between "make it easier to add alt tags" vs "bully people who don't use alt tags"
Because the serfs lack the power to make real changes to the Feudal structure, they often resort to *affective voice* which is the toxic in-grouping, name-calling, gatekeeping, shaming, and bullying that you see everywhere online.
We built the Fediverse on the models forged by old social media - copied their patterns and practices 1:1 - even down to its Implicit Feudalism.
But maybe we can do better. We certainly SHOULD do better.
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