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   mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:55 JST mhoye

   “Freedom to” versus “freedom from”, and their close relatives, “safety to” versus “safety from”.

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:52 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Because then we can start talking about the obligations of the Who, to do the What.

     Another way to see "Safety From What" is "Freedom From The Possibility Of Harm While".

     Another way to see "Safety From Who" is "Freedom From The Possibility Of Harm When That Who Changes".

     But if we aren't making these decisions and the discussions around them open, visible and explicit, we're just reinforcing existing (rapidly decaying, captured, antisocial, corrupt) power structures.

     We deserve better.

     Steve's Place repeated this.
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     Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝ (richpuchalsky@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:52 JST Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝

     in reply to

     @mhoye

     No one in tech learned anything from _IBM and the Holocaust_, no one in tech is ever going to learn anything about anything. It's just a category error to expect them to.

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:53 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     So when we're talking about safety in software, if we aren't also having a really robust conversation about Safety To versus Safety From, then the people aren't really safer.

     Both in their physicalism and their design, mechanical interlocks are specific. Safety From What, Specifically. Safety To Do What, Specifically. If we don't have those Specifics, we do not know if the safety measures work.

     In software, that conversation isn't just What. It's Who.

     Safety From Who. Specifically.

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:53 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Because no matter Who's ideas and ideology shaped that software, when Who changes, the question of Who gets to change the software and the policies behind it changes with it.

     Human identity as an immutable fixed in this context is a weapon. When state ideology and corporate identities and their intents are wholly mutable and arbitrary, there is no conversation about Safety From Who that can restrict power, or Safety To What that can put any positive obligations on that power.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:53 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     There's no such thing as safe or safety. There is only Safety From What, Safety To Do What, Safety For Who, Safety From Who. All of them In What Context.

     And when software is involved - an idea that's also an ideology that's coincidentally a totally mutable machine - that means thinking really clearly about Safety When "Who" Changes.

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:54 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     But: Software isn't just a machine, though; it's an idea and an ideology that happens to also be a machine.

     That paper cutter won't stop working if whatever's printed on the paper you're cutting is inconvenient for the authorities.

     That Hobart mixer's safety cage doesn't prevent you from making bread to feed people in line at the soup kitchen, or in line to vote.

     Software has intention and those intentions can be arbitrarily changed, and they are. All the time.

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:54 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     The other thing about software-as-a-machine is that actions and consequences can be wildly distant from each other, in time and space.

     The notion of "safety" in a software context isn't uniquely about the safety of the user. It's also about the safety of the provider's brand image, and the presumptive safety of the state, which is often indistinguishable from the convenience of law enforcement, and disk space is free now, and who throws out old data if they don't need to?

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Aug-2025 05:36:55 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Google's sideloading thing, passkeys, age verification, they're all basically the same shape; anchoring a fixed identity to a computing act "for safety".

     There are millions of safety features in the world meant to protect people from themselves; my personal favourites, as metaphors go, are the three-point interlocks on industrial paper cutters and the cages on big Hobart mixers.

     Inexperienced, distracted, even inebriated it's basically impossible to hurt yourself with these accidentally.