Yes, agreed. We need fresh carrots… 
I outlined a different approach above and in this topic so I will not repeat that.
But I would like to touch on other points. It is often mentioned here and across the fedi that: “you can’t herd cats” i.e. you can’t project onto and enforce power structures on fiercely autonomously operating individuals and groups of people, hope that they will just listen and obey.
The reason we think we need such power structures is that we want to feel we have a certain measure of control. While that is needed, designing it as a ‘rigid house’ gives these endless discussions where the boundaries, the walls, should be. It is, to refer to @RokeJulianLockhart’s argument as nuanced as morals, ethics and values can get… and then drag in philosophy and all social sciences, etc.
A lot of activism today is based on the idea that a rigig frameworks and - more importantly - a moral test and also willingness sacrifice (sacrifice-based activism) to participation is needed as the pre-condition to participate. And all kinds anti-patterns flow from this in actual practice, where imho activism is more likely to backfire than help. I sent a range of toots out on my account on the subject, like this one I tooted today. Because they are ephemeral I will include it below:
Here btw is some writing I did years ago at Humane Technology on the dynamics around purity spirals. I think these are the winning weapons of fascism today, that just keep on giving and giving:
I might refer to many other posts I created there when the community was still very active (it is dormant now, waiting patiently for either dispersal of value or continuation with sustainable force, i.e. the community is ‘emergent’ under social coding movement umbrella, also emergent):
Quoting Huxley:
“Take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily cooperating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.”
“Therefore, if you wish to avoid the spiritual impoverishment of individuals and whole societies, leave the metropolis and revive the small country community, or alternately humanize the metropolis by creating within its network of mechanical organization the urban equivalents of small country communities, in which individuals can meet and cooperate as complete persons, not as the mere embodiments of specialized functions.”
So what are different ways we can walk?
Well, first of all find, take notes and analyse all the gazillion anti-patterns that are brimming wildly on our current fedi. Fedi has social and culture sauce, but things explode into parasociality based on a simple typo. It is paradise for a culture warrior who has ‘special purposes’ for the echo chamber that flocks to their sphere of influence.
I called current fedi doomed for a long time… not doomed as viable social media. But doomed as next-gen commons-based social networking environment that is able to “reimagine social and uphold a peopleverse” that is in turn able to carry a global society. Unless several severe challenges are tackled first.
These challenges I study (as a ‘professional hobbyist’ as it were), interested in the unique social dynamics that exist in grassroots environments. There are several wicked problems to deal with. Yet looking at root causes there’s one overall wicked solution that can solve them all:
Foster emergent collaborative forces and ways to allow them to choreograph strategically.
That’s a different approach than creating a bunker with policy walls, or @hamish approach of creating a one-size-fits-all governance approach, where people should willingly give up control of their pet projects to varying extent. It might well work, but I lack the experience to think how it could.
So what does this “fostering of emergence” mean?
It means attracting good players while repelling bad actors… in natural ways. For good players, and for players one step better, there should be ever increasing synergy and value, low-hanging fruits. Intrinsic motivators to be even better in aligning to what people generally need to live together in harmony. Like the humane harmonious technologies of the open social web. Now we get workable material: What is humane technology, what is a harmonious technology system? All these things I made part of social coding movement (where “feeling” yourself a member is enoug to become a social coder and follow that path further).
I mentioned multiple wicked problems. One is that the FOSS movement is inherently unsustainable, and never in current form able to fend off any kind of serious corporate takeover. I am not going to bikeshed the following point, but imho Meta has taken over strategically. It is now the big spider waiting, biding her time. We are the opposite sex, tiny spiders improving Meta’s web. Thinking ourselves free, while we help build skynet instead. Big Tech is the real benefactor of FOSS imho (no need to discuss, I did that already).
“FOSS” is a totally unworkable concept, only usable to discuss software freedoms from license and legal perspective. Hence I defined SOSS which stands for Sustainable open social software / systems / services. Now SOSS follows the best-practices of the Free software development lifecycle, the FSDL. This make SOSS measurable for its suitable as building block for a Peopleverse.
If Mastodon significantly drops the ball on facilitating Gab by their software, then that is something that can be specifically pointed out in ways that make it better addressable. Projects can be ranked for these kinds of things. And projects - if that ranking happens at SocialHub - can serious egg on their faces, if not publicly shamed, if the ball-dropping continues without serious attempts to improve.
At The Center for Humane Technologies they have a Ledger of Harms (unfortunately a static pamplhet). Alja Isacovic and her husband developed a pledge framework at Responsible Tech Work that social coding movement intents to take inspiration from or adopt and extend. A Hall of Shame might be created for those fediverse projects that go deeply off the virtuous track.
SocialHub can experiment with these attracting and repelling forces to create gravity and convergence around her mission and vision. The social coding movement functions as the ‘value accretion disk’ where best-practices are crowdsourced over time by proactive participation and synergetic mutualistic relationships that are being fostered and strengthened.
PS. I think I will follow up with a topic at social coding movement, because …
… can be established by moving from working-in-public to working-in-commons, the wicked solution.