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   Alek (tarkowski@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:46:59 JST Alek

   • Eugen Rochko
   • Nilay Patel

   I read over the weekend the interview with Eugen Rochko, owner and CEO of #Mastodon (@Gargron), conducted by Nilay Patel (@nilaypatel) for the Verge's Decoder show.

   It’s a great, geeky talk going into details of Mastodon’s operation as a service, a large chunk of the #ActivityPub network, and a company.

   What I really like is the frugal, sustainable approach to running an organization. It’s so different from the corporate giants, and it’s refreshing to think that you can sustain a relatively large social network not just with small resources, but also without a drive to grow big. With VC capital (which Rochko consistently rejects).

   What worries me in turn is Rochko’s take on participatory governance of Mastodon. He does signal interest in tools that provide better feedback than current GitHub issues (which are apparently the sole “participatory” mechanism available right now.

   But he also openly declares that “Benevolent Dictator for Life” is his preferred governance model. Which is worrying, because one person should not be making decisions about a network used by millions of people. And participatory governance should be more than collective petitions to a “benevolent dictator”.

   I think that the mistake Rochko makes is thinking about Mastodon as just a piece of open source code that needs to be produced. But in fact the code is just a tool for a social network, that is shaped with software tools. Allowing quotes of posts is not a decision about code - it’s a decision about how millions will comunicate.

   I wrote last year about the need for stronger participatory governance on the Fediverse. I hope that we will see some explorations that will boldly go beyond tested - but insufficient, or even flawed - approaches from #opensource.

   https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter

   • clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:10 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     @tarkowski think for a minute, it's *extremely unlikely* Rochko "is thinking about Mastodon as just a piece of open source code that needs to be produced" not realizing "the code is just a tool for a social network, that is shaped with software tools. Allowing quotes of posts is not a decision about code - it’s a decision about how millions will comunicate."

     Please, advocate for and better explore participatory governance, but start from higher and factual ground.

   • Embed this notice
     Alek (tarkowski@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:10 JST Alek

     in reply to

     • mlinksva

     @mlinksva maybe what I wrote was not clear - Yes, it’s clear that Rochko thinks about social consequences of such decisions, I’m not questioning that.
     But he ultimately points to traditions in open source development. I feel really uneasy about a governance model that includes the word “dictator”.
     If we all agree that decisions like those on Mastodon functionalities are about more than just the shape of code, then it should be obvious that some other type of governance is needed.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:11 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     @tarkowski I feel really uneasy about analyzing a model based on a label -- unfortunate word choice from when cheeky wording was stupidly deemed internet cool. Replace with "designer" for cooler analysis. Then it should be obvious that "it should be obvious" needs fleshing out! ?

     I idly wonder if Mastodon project (or mastodon.social, I thought interesting what Rochko said about default instance in interview) is most important participatory fediverse governance venue. Open question in my mind.

   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:11 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     @tarkowski ps I looked up your piece from last year which does cover various layers https://techpolicy.press/priorities-to-make-the-fediverse-sustainable/ and is worth a re-read.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:14 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     • Data Transfer Initiative

     @tarkowski pps I see you covered similar material in your reply to another subthread https://101010.pl/@tarkowski/110136125167235083

     I agree not knowing how to migrate between instances, particularly those running different software, is a big problem. Idle thought/wish, maybe @DTinitiative will intervene; probably few fediverse software designers wish to prevent migration, but making it work great is also work not at top of any of their priorities, probably.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Data Transfer Initiative (dtinitiative@techpolicy.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 00:47:21 JST Data Transfer Initiative

     in reply to

     • mlinksva

     @mlinksva @tarkowski Hey, who leaked you our product strategy... just kidding, but honestly, it's very much on our minds too.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 02:09:55 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     @tarkowski and I'm definitely not against more participatory gov. Closely held decisionmaking (whether by a would-be benevolent designer, foundation, or [too numerous to really even consider] company) often rankles users and arguably results in worse software/community/other result. Quoting and Mastodon may be an example. Lots of arguable issues stemming from this with eg Mozilla, Wikimedia, GNOME. But novel governance also costly (including risky), so I don't advocate simply for more of it.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     mlinksva (mlinksva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 02:09:55 JST mlinksva

     in reply to

     • The Spritely Institute

     @tarkowski for the fediverse in particular I'm semi-convinced (semi- because I don't understand well enough & would love to be wrong) that the technical underpinnings are such a limiting factor that governance at whatever level (other than that which results in speeding up technical improvement, so cheering things like @spritelyinst) is not going to make a big difference toward ends such as more autonomy for people and communities globally.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Alek (tarkowski@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 02:09:56 JST Alek

     in reply to

     • mlinksva

     @mlinksva i like your question, and it would be great to answer it in a more structured manner, looking also at protocol layer, instances, but also inter-instance governance (which is different from issues related to the code that is running the instances; and also not something that I have seen considered often). And Im open to the idea that we dont wan citizen / user committees popping up everywhere :)

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Hannud Abdo (aleabdo@hubzilla.com.br)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 02:10:15 JST Alexandre Hannud Abdo

     in reply to

     • yaso
     @Alek @yaso Still, I think we should be careful with where we aim at. Adding democratic governance models everywhere don't simply make systems more democratic. Democratic governance is an expensive endeavor and its cost-benefit can often be net-negative for democracy. In the Fediverse, a lot of effort goes into making sure that specific instances and their software are a choice, not a territory. This lowered dependency between users, user-admins, and user-developers guards against spontaneous monopoly, so it doesn't feel like a good target for normative democratic governance. The territory-like entity is the ActivityPub protocol, and that is not governed like Eugen's branch of the Mastodon code. If we say Mastodon is the territory to be fought for, we're shifting democratic effort and legitimacy to an entity of choice, and thus promoting system concentration. Which I fear will actually reduce democratic outcomes, as it would go against pluralism in the Fediverse. I think we'd do more good ensuring ActivityPub, and other protocols like Nomad, improve in democracy-oriented governance, democratic energy and people, so they can demand of implementations, and instances, stronger guarantees of user freedom (for which I chose to cite Nomad, which is more advanced on those issues than ActivityPub). And as such, the first thing anyone can do to meaningfully improve democracy in the Fediverse is to not use a major provider — and if you choose wisely you may even get quote-posts as a prize for your good deeds ;D
     clacke likes this.