Mike McCue
A thread on some tenets regarding open systems I feel compelled to relay:
- It’s extremely hard for open to ever compete with closed. It almost never succeeds.
- Every now and then open is given a chance due to unprecedented external events or pressures.
- In the rare event that open gains momentum, any actor can adopt it. That’s the point.
- The actors who adopt open will inevitably range from good to indifferent to bad.
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Mike McCue
- There need to be mechanisms to prevent the bad actors from screwing things up, to reward the good actors, and to educate the indifferent so they appreciate their new found openness.
- Most people outside the tech industry don’t understand open and aren’t motivated to switch to something just because it’s open.
- If open looks and feels the same as closed, closed will win.
- If open is more confusing than closed, closed will win.
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Mike McCue
- If those who have been working on open revert to closed in the name of preventing bad actors, closed will win.
- If open wins we get things like the web. Imperfect but far greater for humanity than most everyone being online via AOL.
- We’re at a precious moment in time for the fediverse. When it comes to social media, open has a real chance right now. And closed is on the ropes. Let’s not blow it.
Mike McCue
@mastodonmigration I think there are some important actions to take in the coming months to prepare for the federation with threads. Has anyone made a list of key things we should focus on to protect people in the fediverse? For example @evan talked recently about the importance of being able to delete replies from a thread you started. I think people should also be able to opt out of quote posts as another example. Is there a group of people already talking about this?
Mastodon Migration
Completely agree we are in a moment in time that is precious and we will not easily get another chance at this. The real prospect of a broad based open social web is incredibly exciting.
For it to succeed, users will need explicit protections from surveillance and exploitation. Open will not work if users feel like they are just throwing open the door for all their thoughts and ideas to be hoovered up and processed into sophisticated personalized influence campaigns.
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Mastodon Migration
It therefore becomes incumbent on those who are building the protocols and applications to communicate the value proposition. Not just the wonderful future that such interoperability will give users. Also, the comfort they can derive from technical features and legal terms, ensuring them that their personal data and content contributions will not be exploited without their consent.
Mike McCue
@fromjason I don't know. But maybe I'll go and ask them.
fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻
@mike Great points Mike. Thank you.
Can we expect a public outline of expectations for Meta and its executives in the same vein?
Something published that identifies what tactics are or are not acceptable, with clear mechanisms to hold Meta accountable if it does not meet those standards?
Mike McCue
@mastodonmigration @evan great point. Mastodon already has a number of these built in which is a good start.
Mastodon Migration
Technical features are one thing. Not familiar with any organized work, but that doesn't mean there isn't any. But the other area which would go a very long way to addressing user concerns is explicit public data use and privacy terms. Thinking of an opt-in/out-out framework that gives users explicit control over their content and personal data. Such frameworks, particularly in the EU, are now common for internet services. If we want open social to work, we should do it here too.
Mike McCue
@vmatt well, you raise a good question. For purposes of this post Win=most people around the world do social media via an open standard like ActivityPub from whatever app, whatever provider, with whatever group of people, using whatever algorithms with whatever compensatory model they prefer.
Lose=the big social media companies continue to own and run and lock in the majority of people on the planet.
Matt Ⓥ
@mike Food for thought, appreciate the post Mike.
I hope I’m not splitting hairs, but what’s your definition of “win” here? It reads to me like you see it as a zero-sum game. Open survives, closed dies, or vice-versa.
Does it all need to be a competition? Surely the fact that both exist proves the pool that both swim in is open already?
Isn’t the availability of an open option the win already?
Brendan Jones
@mike “If open looks and feels the same as closed, closed will win.”
Not sure I fully agree with this one. Definitely agree with all the others, but if the general look and feel of an open system looks like the closed one, the design and UX of it is probably quite good … as long as it’s not exactly like the closed system, because the closed system might have some dark patterns in there that work to lock in and retain users.
What are your thoughts here?
Brendan Jones
@mike Are you saying that if the two products are the same, then the closed system has business resources and other advantages that give them the competitive edge over the open system? Because that I generally agree with, but I’m not sure it’s always a cut and dry case.
Mike McCue
@Brendanjones You make a good point that familiarity is helpful. i.e. I don't have to relearn something from scratch. The point I was getting at is that it's not enough for the open experience to be the same... it has to be fundamentally better to motivate people to switch.
This happened with AOL vs. the web. When really cool web sites emerged that were far better than anything AOL could do on their own, people switched. If the web was just a carbon copy of AOL, nobody would have switched.
Tim Chambers
@mike @mastodonmigration @evan
This is a 5 months old list of PR’s for Mastodon I created when threads announced federation, over holiday break was going to look at which made it into mastodon 4.2 or which new ones should added or old removed. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bOWpXfyx0qz202L-G6AKl9Rgxwj20QzBRVHGvqWng1U/edit
CHADMicDUP
@mike I like you
I literally just got here.
Via 'Tusky' on my entry level (what I can afford) smart phone.
You are the top & therefore first post of my feed.
I only just read about 'Flipboard' yesterday or Wednesday (it's still Thursday for me as far as I'm concerned) "going fediverse" & barely understood whatever 'Flipboard' is.
But by your second bullet point & mention of 'AOL' I knew exactly what you were saying.
And agree.
Let's stay open.
Doing my part.
CHADMicDUP🎙️
Tim Chambers
@shtrom @mike @mastodonmigration @evan
As I've seen: The hitch with quote posts - even tho every major masto app supports them now is that there are at least two tech standards for how fedi servers implement them. (This may be resolved but wasn't months ago) If not fixed already, then we need to pick one winner and standardize, THEN we need to see if quote post permissions settable by users are technically feasible and standardize those.
Olivier Mehani
@mike @mastodonmigration @evan I'm always puzzled about quote posts. Aren't they just, at their core, just a link to another message?
It feels like they're not entirely preventable. The UX of quote posts can make them harder, such as no UI to automatically create one, and no preview on links, but... isn't that the case already?
What am I missing, and what else could be considered as a feasible measure?
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