SocialHub Community Values Policy

Community SocialHub Policy
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This is not an issue of he said, she said Yes, we are in a mess, we need a path – Hamish Campbell it’s a real issue with real mess I am being quite here due to the mess, ideas please?

And yes, linking is native to what we are doing :slight_smile:

Let’s try one more time, the conversation we used to have on here, and is missing now. Motivation for moving away from this mess. The fact that people are rebooting the #openweb by building the #fediverse in a #DIY, grassroots way, without millions in VC funding, is one of the most remarkable feats of contemporary digital resistance. It’s not about “winning” in the capitalist sense—dominating the market, scaling endlessly, or achieving monopoly status in the image of the #dotcons and big tech path. The fediverse powerful from being built on #4opens principles of decentralization, community effort, it’s a native path, outside the norms that capitalism dictates to us as essential.

#NGO platforms like #Bluesky can be fertilised by $12 million in backing and a fully-paid team, the fediverse is growing grassroots from the ground up. It’s powered by people and communities working in their spare time, without corporate salaries and benefits. The coding and creating is driven by belief and belonging, not because a corporation paying to hit growth targets. That’s a different motivation, and it has strength.

The thing we need to see here is that the fediverse exists and thrives, standing as a living counter culture to the idea of compete, capital and centralized control. It’s running against the grain of what’s considered “necessary” in tech, it’s rewriting the rules back to the “native” #openweb path. This #openweb reboot in the shows that people can build non #mainstreaming alternatives, with no paywalls, no ad-tracking, no surveillance, just open collaboration and shared values.

That it’s running at all, while not on the capitalism’s, path and ignoring its “rules”, is the victory. It doesn’t have to become the dominant social media platform. It’s already proved that another way is possible. And that, in itself, is a powerful statement that we need to build from #OMN

https://hamishcampbell.com/socialhub-needs-rebooting-as-grassroots-its-drifting/

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72

I agree. Narratives of domination are not something that I’d want to be a part of, and in brutal terms the fediverse can’t “win” on the playing field of giant megacorps backed by millions or billions in capitalisation. To “win” you have to change the game, such that megacorps can’t compete on the same terms without destroying their business model.

I am not very interested in Bluesky. Technically it might be brilliant, but it comes from the same hyperscaling mindset that only brings disaster. afaik the people running that project were hand picked by sillicon valley oligarchs, so it’s very predictable how that will turn out. I think you simply have to be old in order to be able to recognise that there is a very familiar pattern to how these things go, and it always ends with betrayed users.

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Can you define what you mean by “primarily used for”?

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The wording is not mine, but given the context:

I would say that @jdp23’s post above characterizes projects that are “primarily used for” harassing trans people (and others). These days, SimpleX, which is another great example of useful privacy-first tech, is now “primarily used for” hosting neo-Nazi groups, regrettably. The point is that if your technology or service is embraced by hostile groups, then you, as a technology creator or service provider, should do something about it because…

So if you do not fight such behaviors, you’re actually condoning them (especially when you do it repeatedly as @alexgleason has been doing.)

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75

As always great response and the acknowledgment of that it’s now always cut and dry.
I asked as there needs to be a clear as possible distinction between “primarily used for” “intended for” “ lots of people have”
As you mentioned there’s a lot of antiblackness, racism, sexism etc even on the “good” instances. So would the fact that these negative events happen daily qualify as “primarily used for”? That would be a very broad scope that I imagine its supporters would not want to fall under.

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So what qualifies the upgrade to “primarily used for” as compared to this is a common occurrence of how people are using it?

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Personal judgements, or an aggregation thereof. Which is why I’m not convinced this is a useful category (to us anyway) when applied to Free Code software.

The uses of Free Code software are - by nature - beyond the control of the developers. Any attempt to hold them responsible for what people do with the software they liberate is an attack on the safety of using Free Code licensing, and thus an attack on everyone’s digital sovereignty. I encourage everyone to have a good think about who might benefit from this, and why they might try to propagate this idea into digital ethics discussions.

Having said that, a disclaimer. What I just said does not apply to specific services, run by specific people, regardless of what software they use to run that service. They are responsible as hosts for everything that happens on their service. Whether due to their actions, or inactions.

Having said that, a disclaimer about that disclaimer. In the context of decentralised networks like the fediverse, Matrix, XMPP-verse, etc, a “service” is an instance run by a specific person or group of people. It makes no sense to treat a whole network as a single “service”, and try to hold the people running instances responsible for everything that happens anywhere on the network. This too, is an attack on everyone’s digital sovereignty.

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Would “I’m not a legalist” response fit here?

I’m not sure I understand this sequence of words.

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Free Code is another way of saying Free Software without the price/freedom confusion. Similarly it’s another way of saying Open Source without removing the reference to freedom from the phrase.

I’ve been using it for a decade, but it doesn’t seem to have taken off. If the meaning is that non-obvious, even to someone deeply immersed in the software freedom movement, I guess it’s time to give up and regress to one of the more standard terms :confused:

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What is this? Why do I get a notification for a topic I’m not mentioned in? :thinking:
Especially one where I don’t understand most of the key words. What is CareFoo? What is the Social Web Incubator CG? Does this have anything to do with me?

And about the values:

I’ve seen topics here about Threads, Bluesky, Flipboard & co. I don’t know if any of those who posted these are contributers of such projects, but all capitalist social media platforms are designed exactly for those purposes.

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This thread is the SocialHub Code of Conduct. I think the idea is that you don’t have to agree to it, but if you don’t, you just keep getting the notification as a nudge.

@how is there a way to add something like a pop-up that appears on first login to a new account, informing people of this? Along with the unreliable verification emails, it’s one of a few missing stairs that need repairing here.

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I’m not a developer contributing to any project. So this doesn’t apply to me.
More people disagreed than agreed to this policy and some of the most active accounts here are on the disagree list. So this doesn’t seem to be enforced.
This forum has 899 accounts. 548 accounts voted here. So 351 people get regular reminders about this topic?

This doesn’t seem very effective, transparent or welcoming to me.

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83

I disagree. Having a values statement available is very transparent, and it’s also very welcoming for people who agree with those values, and they’re the target audience.

In terms of effectiveness, it’s certainly true that people don’t have to sign it and then still stick around (or even lie by clicking on “I disagree and will go elsewhere” and still stick around) , but so what? The clear statement of values means that there’s grounds for the admin or moderators to take action if and when somebody here acts in a way that’s not aligned with the values and it’s a big enough problem that something needs to be done about it.

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84

I’m totally for enforcing this policy. I did not yet, because I’d like that the community take a stand for itself. As far as I’m concerned, I would like this policy enforced, and all fascists, proto-fascists, and fascist-friendly people to GTFO the Fediverse, and my servers. But, being not a fascist myself, I let other people decide. Note that my (antifascist) organization will not tolerate more of this in 2025 and you should be preparing to move on if you’re not willing to comply with this very simple and sensible rule.

So, I propose that accounts that hit "I disagree and will go elsewhere” will be terminated in 2025.
And that accounts that did not accept nor refuse the policy will be suspended until they reach out to the team to do so. This means that the suspension or termination will be automated in 2025. You’ve been warned.

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As we have seen a few times over the last few years, SocialHub lacks goodwill consensuses, It’s easy to see, an example looking back at this last posts and you can see this.

Then we have tried social consensus building Proposal - linking to SWF - #3 by hamishcampbell and the bad will, can be seen, it’s a real challenge.

Imposing the SCVP in no way a path to fix this.

What would build social consensuses that all good social groups are grown from, I talk on this subject a lot (won’t link due to bad will mess making, you can find it if interested)

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As @JoinFediverseWiki points out, it would result in most of the active participants being blocked from the forum. Not for actually violating the policy, but simply for disagreeing with some aspects of it. This strike me as needlessly bureaucratic and profoundly authoritarian.

Please, please, @how don’t do something this disruptive without some consultation with the community of people actually using this forum as a work space. Ideally after a decent number of us are back from our Christmas/ New Year/ summer (for those of us in the southern hemisphere) break. As it happens, I’m only here to notice this now because I’ve been profoundly unwell for a few months, and have had to delay learning for my summer travels.

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Also I wonder how this will work with federation? Do all users on other Discourse forums and lemmy instances that we federate with have to follow these guidelines? Or will there be minimum rules that the other communities have to enforce to federate with us?
Is it possible to block remote users? Or is it possible to direct remote users to this topic and let them vote before they can post in any of the local topics? I don’t know the first thing about Discourse federation yet.

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This is not what silence means. Silence means they don’t care. If they don’t care, maybe they’re against the policy. So if they do care, they should speak up. It’s not authoritarian: the policy has been here like, forever. It’s just enforcing it. Also I didn’t say January 2025. I said 2025, that’s a long period. But I think it should happen. Especially with Threads and Musk around.

Blocking remote users is possible, yes. Simply flag an offending post and the process begins. The ActivityPub plugin can also block remote actors I think (is this what Reject means, @angus?)

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So in summary, you are proposing to block most of the active membership here from interacting with SocialHub, as well as the entire fediverse. If they don’t all come here and agree to this policy, dictated by a handful of the people currently in control of mod policy on this longstanding community forum.

Again, not for doing anything to violate the spirit of the policy, or the letter. But simply because they haven’t complied with orders to complete a box-ticking exercise.

With all due respect, which aspect of this is not authoritarian? Not to mention counterproductive. If you are committed to this path, then I call on the SocialHub community to take up the offer by @JoinFediverseWiki for their organisation to take over stewardship of SocialHub, and move it to their infrastructure.

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I’m proposing that people take responsibility for their political position and state it clearly. I don’t want to deal with fascists.

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