New: SocialHub and the Substrate of Decentralised Networks

[jdp232]

"In theory. But in practice, universalism does not work. Everything and everyone who ever tried to impose their truth on others have been imperialist, colonialist, fascist, patriarchal, and so on. People pretending to be apolitical are indeed ndeed siding with those dominant narratives who try to come across as universal."

Exactly. The so-called “shared vision” of the United Nations is to give four Western imperialist governments and two authoritarian Communist imperialist governments special status and a veto power. The so-called “shared vision” doesn’t involve membership for Palestine.

In a fedi context, the SWICG working towards the so-called “shared vision” of ActivityPub gives de-facto veto power to Meta, and doesn’t involve any Black people or people from the Free Fediverse.

"I guess the shared vision -- in the context of ActivityPub -- can ever emerge through shared discussion. "

In a reply you talked about shared vision in a specific context, but even with that I'm not sure how it applies here.

It seems to me that if Meta (and their allies) and anti-fascists are both using ActivityPub, there's no way that a shared version -- or cohesion, or unity -- is ever going to emerge. The goals are too different, and so are the expected use cases of the protocol. But maybe there's a different sense of shared vision that I'm missing here?

"Protocol decay demonstrates the lack of coordination and the lack of will to coordinate, because we do have the tools at our disposal, and dogfooding them."

SocialHub today is a unfortuately great example of the impacts of protocol decay, so going forward this can be a place to have a positive impact.

@how

[aschrijver]

A problem to tackle is the lack of nuance in so many of the discussions, which makes it impossible to make a good start and come to a breakdown of wicked problems and challenges into more manageable chunks.

[indieterminacy]

There are some interesting things in this talk.

I got a fair bit out of being aware of Taylorism (which is discussed early on) at an early stage.

While Im not a fan of approaches too easily used to reduce people into economic assets, I can still appreciate it as a means of improving surplus; minimize inhibitions; and improve sustainability.

In any case, I can reconcile the work within the Liberal canon and impose enough carnets and constraints to reduce moral hazards and improve power distances (ie reduce them and the asymmetries that further abuses and harms).

This diagram from Xin Yao is an example of her own nuance:

Her thoughts on the need for pluralistic inputs make her more nuanced than managerial knuckle draggers.

I tend to go further back for handpicking perspectives in part as (like coding), a lot of the more powerful ideas were already in place but forgotten in the knotty explanations and decaying subtleties.

While, I have in the past referenced Adam Smith’s analogy of the Butcher, Brewer, and Baker regarding the advantages possible from overlapping self interest, this quote in many respects more pertinent:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices

In many respects pluralism is often overlooked, one could in many respects consider it as the ‘furry tongue’ in holistic systems–its a signal that that other aspects of the environment is out of kilter.

When it comes to the above quote, distinctions and competing interests in a social environment are needed to provide fuller and more correct input but additionally to police against collusion and centralization against the commons.

When it comes to collaboration and community cohesion, I recall Brian Paddick’s recollection of his experiences as a police officer in Brixton.

In recognising the transactional importance within frontline policing, he gave an example of his inability to enter an estate .

One one occasion, he chased some youths because of cannabis but this reason was need enough reason for the block resident he was appealing to access.

When facing a similar dance another time with the same individual regarding (more serious ) criminality hiding in the block he was permitted through.

This and other behaviours had an enobling effect to encourage him to orientate to positioning his responsibilities to consensus based policing in his role as Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Policy (historically one of the most abusive and corrupt of UK enforcement agencies).

… Its such a pity the asymmetric games played against him to upend his leadership,

he was too isolated from the power of tabloid innuendo and libel to continue in his role.

We would do well to understand that true success is built upon working across aisles (for wider civic goals) and permitting people to do stressful work without intimidation (so that human centric governance is able to reach its natural scale).

[indieterminacy]

Ive been increasingly thinking about the League of Nations over the last three years .

… and that ‘four second handshake’ between Queen Elizabeth I/II and Martin McGuinness, something which involved an inordinate amount of ugly and painful discussions (both within camps and between).

In the 1990s you would have been told to fuck off if you suggested that Ireland and UK would be cohosting a football tournament.

But enough networks were brought to bear to harmonise allies and enemies around the table so that The Goodfriday Agreement became a protocol.

This isnt to mean there is absolute peace or justice but people gave up enough of themselves to ensure that new patterns could emerge.

Thinking about another analogy, the EU is an example of social systems being part of the political discourse but evidently as the younger sibling to the kernel of the ‘Coal and Steel Pact’ as a means of economic interdependency to secure cooperative behaviours.

The system has evolved to break down demarcations over the decade.

Subsidiarity is one of the things which became of greater importance as the bloc grew and became more heterogenous.

Its not perfect but I consider it a boon.

[aschrijver]

Indeed EU is another example based on shared vision - to greatly simplify it - of how integrated internal markets would lead to such dependencies between countries to provide enough incentives to keep lasting peace with one another. Other than that indeed it is far from perfect, to the extent that most people have a love/hate relationship to it. Where it comes to lack of nuance in discussions there are many people stating “EU = evil → discard!” and throw the baby out with the bath water, as EU represents a “best-we-have” and the value judgment of “evil” is based on singular unnuanced areas where EU operates. What is the transition path to a better system, other than bloody revolution, is then usually not a subject that can be constructively held with such people.

For the fediverse we can collectively conclude and enumerate the activist causes we hold dear, and after the observation that “Meta = evil”, try to define what are value-aligned sustainable business efforts that we do embrace as beneficial to the ecosystem (if any), and where we start drawing the line. Then follow up with how we can defend that line.

[indieterminacy]

Its worth noting that the EU is risk adverse regarding accession of countries (becoming members), which would also include returning members.

When it comes to standards bodies I take a logarithmic attitude to integrity regarding stakeholders’ scale.

For instance, Willy Heidinger type problems are likely to dominate a lot of flow and suffering for at least a generation.

Its imperative to ensure that greater attention is directed towards embargoing pernicious enterprises from comitology committees (among other means of formalising protection) - including regarding Fediverse and Internet technologies.

I dont have the context behind a recent EEE post being censored elsewhere but that sounds rather disappointing (and I dont have the spoons).

Directing attention towards volunteer groups or even individuals is more likely to be counterproductive (my use of the word ‘tabloid’ earlier is still ringing in my head).

Especially, as alluded to by my first post today that its actually important to be able to work with antagonists to resolve collective problems - but this can be achieved with respectful dialogues with subordinates in a system rather than an institution/entity itself.