Are we ready for the threats to the Fediverse and decentralization movement?

I’m pretty sure @natacha would appreciate your perspective on this during the Intermapping session tomorrow…

2 Likes

Yesterday I tried to connect to BBB but I couldn’t… I will try today again. I see it’s at 17h (5pm), right? I hope I hear you all there :slight_smile: (even if my english is not like yours…)

2 Likes

My point was more that the ethical tech movement can adopt and use the economic “code” of co-ops etc as a way of sustainably funding our own work, regardless of what the existing co-op movement does with its tech use. Buy I agree it does make sense for the existing solidarity economy to defend their own software freedom, by using and supporting ethical tech, and this is another potential source of sustainable funding for us. As you say, it will take some work on our part to convince them the transition pain is worth the benefits, and to make sure that the software we recommend really is ready to everyday use by non-geeks. Perhaps we need to research, write up and propagate more case studies like this one about the Co-operative Assistance Network Limited (CAN) in the UK using Loomio?

1 Like

Yes, and coops can adopt and use the “collaborative organization way” of ethical tech movement :slight_smile: I was surprised with “Mon parcours collaborative”. There is an interesting report that shows that coops and associations don’t know much about digital collaboration tools and practices… I think I’d get the same result in Catalunya… Why? Because it seems to me there is no time to stop and think…

That’s the thing! Our networks, our tools, our rules (people, tech and mutual agreement). Shared infraestructures, glocal nodes… the possibility of other economies out of FIAT world…

Be careful… It’s Plato’s digital cave :wink: In my experience it’s exhausting and you risk to be insulted… If you try it, I encourage you to protect yourself with a huge amount of humor and empathy… I’m very sorry to say this and I wouldn’t want to offend anyone but I really feel I talk with “digital alcoholics” (because their overuse of dopaminic tools) :_(

That’s why we proposed “Equipaments Lliures” and we had the idea of the book “Totes les lluites són una: tecnologies ètiques per a la transformació social”

I prefer Discourse :slight_smile: Some experiences here In catalan, sorry…

1 Like

I’m sure both networks / movements can learn from each others’ organizing and decision-making systems :slight_smile:

At the risk of labouring the point, we don’t need to convince existing cooperatives of anything at first. We can just start using cooperative companies or B Corps to avoid the problems that come from being dependent on funding from billionaires and corporations (via either venture capital or philanthropic charities), or on purely volunteer labour. Loomio is an early example, but there is now a whole movement of “platform cooperatives” doing this. I suspect that as this movement grows, the existing co-ops will get more interested, but that’s a bonus (for them and for us), not a requirement for us to get benefit from using cooperative company structures.

2 Likes

Hi
I like the idea of Platform co-operatives.

Just reading this here.

Paul

4 Likes

Hi Paul, thanks for the link. UnFound looks like an intriguing project to facilitate the emergence of more platform co-ops.

2 Likes


This article is muddled human #geekproblem full of #encryptionsit talk, it talks about assumptions that have failed and will keep failing. And an agenda that are poison to the #openweb.

Best to keep focues
Let’s be clear we need to look at things from open/closed we need to judge projects from the #4opens we need to STOP building for defeat and build for rolling out “community” based trust networks as theses are the ONLY projects that have hope.

Yes, basic security is needed for identity and trust building, but going beyond this 90% open and 10% closed is pushing out darkness, not light. Yes trolls like to live in caves, but we are humans not trolls, and we need to build for humans not trolls.

You have all seen the hobbit, when trolls are exposed to daylight they turn to stone, darkness is their friend, light their end.

It’s simple, open is light, closed is darkness. The repression is going to happen what every we do, best to meet it with light and turn it to stone.

Think like a human being, don’t spread the muddle :slight_smile:

1 Like

I understand your points and agree fully: we need to design for communities and enable groups to collaborate in the best conditions. I only frown at the metaphor: for light casts shadows, and too much light cast stronger shadows ; the Enlightenment had its wrongs too.

2 Likes

How to build out “design for communities and enable groups to collaborate in the best conditions” we have this, but its unspoken and thus fragile and transitory at the moment. For the #openweb to grow in relevance we need strong foundations, currently we have sand with a few twigs, nice and organic but not “society”.

We need to bridge “hard tech” funding agenders to be “tech social” agenders, we have to overcome “On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity” to build and hold this needed bridge in place.

There are lots of challenges and darkness is not helping in this process.

Yes, there is a role for closed in working around naked repression. BUT we are privileged middle class kids playing with sand and sticks, we don’t need it, and wider society does not need it.

I have been in places were closed is a practical path, I have used darkness to hide from repression, but the solution was always open in the end Diaz

On the level of fantasies vs reality we still have way too much of the first, we need to build out the second, for that to happen we need light, democracy and #4opens in tech.

1 Like

Most importantly we need way more people to help us with that. Depicting fantasies (or rather dreams for the future) as inspiration of “what might be” is a good way to entice people to join the effort. Right now we have many people using the fediverse, and too few people building the fediverse (and this applies both to technical and non-technical ways that people can contribute to that).

2 Likes

Democratic “governance” is needed to escape from the inward looking cliques.

#KISS power breeds social power.

The important question is how the power is shared and what it’s used for. The #deathcult and everything it builds has no ideas and no solutions to this, you have to look else where, OUTSIDE the current world view.

I am doing this here:

3 Likes

Maybe this post helps to see the bridge we need to build http://hamishcampbell.com/2021/05/29/misunderstanding-out-reaching-the-omn-openweb-projects/ to mediate the unthinking threats we face.

2 Likes

Decentralization became a problematic notion to me, especially as I considered the model of “decentralziation” used by the French State ; the prerogatives of municipalities have been shrunk to a minimum, and the Regions became the actual power source for local decision-making ; Regions in turn are in the hand of Prefecture – a military / police institution that makes executive decision for the whole region, effectively ignoring local specificity – and the Regional Council which is made up of elected people whose agenda is to develop industry (with a neoliberal stance on that). Obviously this model of decentralization does not work at all. So we should be wary about making it a label, and rather question its meaning, what we want from it. I currently prefer the term dispersion that evokes a splash of water drops in a fractal / holographic configuration.

Indeed, we must find a way to get closer to the grassroots movements everywhere and start working from their own requirements and specificity.

3 Likes

I am not sure if this is applicable but sharing anyway from BBC news

TikTok moderator sues over ‘psychological trauma’

Raises the point of ensuring those tasked with running instances or moderating are properly supported.

1 Like

Anything involving a state is not decentralization, by definition. What you are describing is devolution, in which responsibility is moved to the bottom of the hierarchy, while power (especially over funding) is further concentrated at the top. This is totally the opposite of the “partner state” concept that Michel Bauwens talks about, where the hierarchy is flattened as much as possible, and implementation power and funds moved to the edges, while responsibility for long term strategy and oversight remains in the centre. But neither of these models have anything to do with decentralization.

4 Likes

In follow-up to @strypey I might take another part of @how’s post and point to these two topics that make another attempt here:

1 Like

With petites singularités we’re considering looking for funding to support the ActivityPub community in several ways: covering domain and infrastructure costs for a year (including SocialHub, paying a contribution to Codeberg for the #standards:fep, some useful sites like fediverse.info, fedidb.org, etc., to determine) , supporting community animation, including moderation here and organizing a meeting such as what @strypey proposed) and supporting working groups towards actual cooperation across software to specialize services and ease their usage across apps – e.g., posting from a client to multiple servers taking care of specific media (images, sound, video, long-form documents, etc.). A clear objective of this investment would be to uphold existing initiatives and pave the way for a decentralized organization where ActivityPub-based software would cooperate rather than compete.

6 Likes

Wonderful initiative, Hellekin :heart_eyes:

:tada:

1 Like

Incidentally, this is exactly what proprietary software corporations do by adopting the ‘Open Source (Almost) Everything’ approach. Again, this is devolution, not decentralization of software dev.

This OTOH sounds like real decentralisation and I totally support all these initiatives.

2 Likes