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

[zleap]

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

TikTok moderator sues over ‘psychological trauma’

TikTok moderator sues over 'psychological trauma'

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

[strypey]

@how

Decentralization became a problematic notion to me, especially as I considered the model of “decentralziation” used by the French State

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.

[aschrijver]

@how

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

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:

• Wiki: Ideating organization structure for the Grassroots Fediverse (wiki)
• Discussion: Continuing the DoOcracy

[how]

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.

[aschrijver]

Wonderful initiative, Hellekin

[strypey]

@strypey

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.

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.

@how

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.

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