Read here: https://tinyurl.com/332he5cy

#buddhism #mindfulness #communication #relationships #democracy #politics #fear #usa #uselection

Another worthy value to socially and technically encode in the ties that could consensually bind the Free Fediverse is direct democracy. Here too, smaller instances scale democracy better, and have proven themselves the trailblazers in giving their users a voice in the decision to protect themselves against Meta, while the mega-server admins have merely decreed unilateral pro-federate proclamations and gestured to the exits for those in their userbase who disagree.

But even for those who affirm it, the cards are stacked against them because there is little in the way of technical aid built in to the apps or the protocol to assist in a democratic process. This again, is a failure of imagination, not of technical capacity. Sure, there are polls; but this function only provides a drive-by snapshot.

A couple of baby steps in the right direction would be local-only posts, and the capacity for groups, including private groups. Both of these are available in certain of the forks or alternative microblogging services, but attempts to incorporate them into mainline Mastodon have been met with obstruction (although some movement toward group functionality was recently announced for the project).

But these capabilities wouldn't directly address the democracy problem in and of themselves. The suggestion offered here is to bake "democracy as a protocol" into whatever replaces ActivityPub in the Free Fediverse. What follows is a speculative scenario. Consider it only a random brainstorm, and one not informed by a developer's knowledge.

One day, a dismissible and retrievable pinned toot appears at the top of every user's feed, issued by that instance's admins. Attention, a proposal is offered to abolish Meta from the face of the Earth, launch Zuckerberg into the sun and turn all of humanity gay. There will be two general assemblies to discuss, one in the daytime on date A and one in the evening on date B. Click here to join the assembly group, or, to chime in as they occur, comment with local-hashtag xxx.

The final proposal will be available to read at this link. The vote will activate for one week, from this to that date. To vote, click on the dancing queercat icon which appears at the top of your feed during that period.

Perhaps this dashed-off exercise gets the gears turning? There would be many other good or better ideas on how to implement a prospect like this. In a Free Fediverse beyond the pathology of growth-at-all-costs, the only limit is the exercise of our collective imagination.

*Decentralized Direct Democracy*

So, decentralization and democracy can enable one another, and a deficit of one degrades the other's viability. As a final example for modeling these principles, let's turn again to the issue of Kolektiva.

As an anti-corporate, online space for anarchists to hang out and shoot the shit, Kolektiva has been a smash. That said, so far it remains an incomplete opportunity for real prefiguration. The centralization of our kind on a single instance is not only ideologically contradictory, it has proven to be an error for the community, as proven by the database compromise.

But there's still potential here, in response to the two crises, to reconstitute into a digital democratic-confederalism within the greater federation. A collective of instances, sharing knowledge and resources. A pooling of infrastructure, a common crowdfunding mechanism and open-source platform for administrative communication (which is not Discord).

And a common charter by which to organize the admin and mod teams horizontally and distribute agency across to users who are inclined to get involved. All of this configured informally and accessible to fellow-travelling servers of any size, to reduce the costs and technical burden of even very small communities firing up and planting their own (black) flag.

Now imagine further, a Free Fediverse comprised of numerous of these confederations, aligning efforts to render cooperation and mutual aid in the task of building and sustaining online community in safety and solidarity. We can nurture whatever kind of network we want to, by routing out of the dead-ends of "monetization" and the growth pathology.

The corporate recuperation of the mega-servers is perhaps a blessing in disguise. With them will go not only the defacto hierarchy of influence which resulted in a small handful of admins and protocol specialists dragging the rest of the network along behind them, but the hierarchical thinking they imposed upon the spectrum of possibilities for what the fediverse could or should be. Towards a decentralized and democratic Free Fediverse beyond capitalist enclosure!

2/2

#FreeFediverse#FediPact#FediblockMeta#DefederateMeta#Meta#Facebook#Threads#FacebookFediverse#Democracy#Decentralization#Prefiguration #Kolektiva

Prominent voices advocating for collaboration with the Zuckerberg surveillance entity sure do talk up decentralization a lot, when they're not advocating the subjugation of the fediverse to a single vertical silo of 100 million users. The irony, of course, is that they tend to be admins of instances with tens or even hundreds of thousands. And two of the most prominent control *multiple* mega-servers, which means they're not just overseeing centralized instances, they're hoarding them.

In contrast, by default Pixelfed servers are limited to a maximum of 1000 users. Though a deep dive into the parameters can override this, its status as a default is an affirmation of the decentralizing ethos. "Thou shalt keep thy instance small."

The microblogging space of the fediverse hasn't been allowed to develop an equivalent consciousness, as the agenda has been set by mega-server admins who drove the conversation around topics like "smooth onboarding". But these aren't evil people; the problem is that they have no real vision.

A comment circulated recently - receipt unfortunately not saved - suggesting that the development of fediverse tools useful to organizing community would be an effective alternative to the "how to funnel in granny" mentality, because then there would be incentives for entire communities to migrate in together; surely a more holistic view of "onboarding" than fretting over how to pick up confused and wandering individuals one at a time. *That* is the kind of exercise of technical *and* social imagination we need.

To become viable, the Free Fediverse will need to define itself by not just what it stands against - corporate enclosure by the Meta monstrosity - but by what it stands for. Real and actual decentralization - not just shallow lip service towards it - can be one of those foundational values.

This value can then be encoded into the technology, as it was with Pixelfed; because, let there be no doubt, Zuckerberg is not just absorbing certain of the fediverse's communities, but also certain of its technologies. We'll need replacements, but that's an opportunity to break the current state of developmental stagnation in the predominant microblogging service and ActivityPub. And more important still than protocols and apps are those who create them. Essentially, the Facebook Fediverse gets the techbros, but the Free Fediverse gets the catgirls - which means we win!

Real decentralization - lots and lots and lots of quite small communities, distinct yet federated - has already proven itself to be a better facilitator of good moderation, and will enable another important value to be addressed shortly. But on the moderation issue, a timely real-world example of why decentralization matters is instructive.

There has recently been a calamity visited upon our instance, Kolektiva. Among all of the discussion following its disclosure, there was not a full analysis of its chain of causality. Let's take a flyover of the recent timeline.

April - A massive spambot wave first hits mastodon-dot-social, then spreads quickly through the entire fediverse. Kolektiva, and many other servers, temporarily limit dot-social until the invasion is under control.

Early May - Another spambot attack hits masto-dot-social, and of course, everyone else. This time, an error is made, and a Kolektiva admin defederates rather than limits dot-social. All Kolektiva users irrecoverably lose their follows and followers from dot-social. There is disquiet.

Mid-May - In an attempt to restore the lost follow-follower data, a Kolektiva admin recovers a snapshot backup of the database from before the defederation, an operation which occurs with what turns out to be "spectacularly bad timing".

Receipt: https://kolektiva.social/@admin/110641928258590367

Yes, there was a fuckup; in fact, a fuckup compounded by another fuckup. But - beyond noting that both mistakes were attempts to do right by the users of the instance - the wellspring of the disaster actually wasn't Kolektiva, but mastodon-dot-social, that mega-server with hundreds of thousands of silo'ed users, open registration and next-to-no-moderation; that irresistible honeypot for spammers and scammers, that 500-pound gorilla with a bullseye painted on its ass.

The mother of all instances has repeatedly proven itself to be a problem for the rest of the fediverse, as in the examples above, when the admins of literally every other server federated with it were put in the position of having to locally address a crisis not of their origination, each an opportunity to make mistakes they would not otherwise have needed to risk.

Smaller instances are easier to moderate, larger instances more difficult. And if masto-dot-social is any indication, a large enough instance becomes a lost cause - take a look at dot-social's local feed and see if you agree. Decentralization distributes moderation agency more effectively, both to admins and even to users. And by scattering targets, it creates network resiliency against threats like spambots and crypto scams. Decentralization isn't just a foss-nerd buzzword, it yields tangible benefits for those seeking safer community online.

(edit - minor typo)

1/2

#FreeFediverse#FediPact#FediblockMeta#DefederateMeta#Meta#Facebook#Threads#FacebookFediverse#Democracy#Decentralization#Prefiguration #Kolektiva

Read here: https://tinyurl.com/3n95d3d4

#buddhism #commentary #usa #politics #election #democracy #wisdom #buddhistethics #buddhistpractice #courage #peace #donaldtrump #joebiden #kamalaharris