Evan Prodromou
Centralisation of communications media is an extremely powerful force.
The typical remediation for centralization is regulated public utilities is breaking up a monopoly into a cartel of 3-5 local monopolies.
Also not great.
We are participating here at a very rare occurrence of decentralisation.
For everyone who thinks this is important for our lives and for the world, it is incumbent on all of us to build structures now that hold this ground as the federation grows.
Evan Prodromou
I highly recommend the excellent book "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu.
It details the initial decentralization, followed by centralization and monopoly, of various media from telegrams to film, radio, tv, telephones, cable TV, and the Internet.
It's a fascinating read, and well worth your time.
Evan Prodromou
One of the big mistakes people make, over and over again, is relying on technological determinism.
That is, thinking the architecture of the technology will preserve the topology of the network.
Mastodon is Open Source. It's built with open standards.
This is necessary but not sufficient to keep the network decentralized.
We're going to need social and legal structures, plus cultural norms, that counterbalance Metcalfe's law, which pushes the network towards centralization.
Evan Prodromou
As an American-born Canadian, I mix -isation and -ization up a lot. Sorry for that!
Sean Coates
@evan My favourite quote from that whole book is:
“The industry learned how to secure the enactment of seemingly innocuous and sensible regulations that nonetheless spelled doom for any rival”
Feels like he's talking about Big Tech right now, but it's about AM radio stakeholders trying to keep FM down, 85 years ago.
Evan Prodromou
@ks yes, unless we put in place social and cultural mechanisms to avoid it
ks
@evan I am not sure. Mail for example converged to a handful of big providers and a long tail of smaller ones.
Is not Mastodon heading is this direction?
Evan Prodromou
@igorette very pro
igorette
@evan so, pro coop?
Matt :idic: 🌌
@evan here's an hour lecture of Tim Wu talking about it (not familiar with Tim Wu, nor have I watched this yet) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVZLl4EKQis
I unfortunately read pretty seldom now, being addicted to multi-media and constant stimulus. I can hardly just watch a video anymore, gotta do two things at once.
Evan Prodromou
@bobwyman one is just continuing the great tradition in the fediverse of supporting small instances of 1K, 10K, 100K people.
Second is setting up financial structures that make those feasible long-term without bankrupting the admins.
Individual operators with high hosting bills and legal liability are juicy targets for anyone wanting to roll up instances.
Bob Wyman
@evan What "social or cultural mechanisms" are you considering?
Evan Prodromou
@markallerton @ks not that I know of. :(
Mark Allerton
@evan @ks I think you are exactly right about where this ends up (large, regulated players) in the absence of some counteracting forces - but “social and cultural mechanisms” seems incredibly vague. Is there any precedent that shows communities can self-organize out of network effects rather than fall prey to them?
Evan Prodromou
@igorette well, fuck that.
Is there a system like https://opencollective.com/ for German cooperatives to work in before establishing their own legal coop?
igorette
@evan unfortunately in germany the process to establish a coop is very bureaucratic and costs aroud 8000€
Evan Prodromou
@denise yikes, big question!
One is revising legal burdens on operators, like copyright enforcement or illegal content, so they don't assume that the operator has corporate protection, a big legal team or deep pockets.
Another interim option is providing hosted services to make compliance easier (paging @lucasgonze ).
Lightweight cooperative ownership is also a great way to make "community-run" servers really community run.
Denise Howell
@evan What legal structures would be necessary/appropriate?
Evan Prodromou
@grin useful info! But wait until Tumblr joins, or Google launches a service in the spring.
grin
Evan Prodromou
@HankFacepunch good
HankFacepunch
@evan just decided to make a mastodon account for shits and giggles, and already posts like this are making it clear that it was a good idea.
Evan Prodromou
@bobwyman another one is emphasizing the equivalence of one domain with one real world group.
For example, company instances, family instances, local city or neighborhood instances, nonprofit or professional membership instances, all emphasize equivalence of a domain with a group.
We know from email and Web that this cultural norm can help a lot to maintain decentralization.
It's not sufficient in and of itself, but nothing is.
Evan Prodromou
@bobwyman I think you've probably thought about this problem more than I have!
What social or cultural practices might help to keep the federation decentralized?
Evan Prodromou
@markallerton @ks let me flip it: what non-technical things would you do to keep things decentralized?
Evan Prodromou
@jrd so, let's do what we can to stop that now
jrd
@evan exactly. reminds me of cryptos. there's a lot of interacting factors involved in new tech innovation. human nature would always seep in for weal or woe. once the fediverse becomes mainstream, im sure corps and govts would intimidate and strike instance operators and moderators with all sorts of legal goobledygook and burdensome regulations
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
#Hyperlink that denotes the book you referred to.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switch#this :)
Joe Hildebrand
@bobwyman @evan Metaphor: we just shook a bottle full of 1/3 oil, 2/3 water vigorously. Right now there are little droplets of oil suspended in the water, but they will start to coalesce immediately. Adding an emulsifier would keep the droplets in suspension.
This hasn't pointed me to a potential solution yet, but I'm thinking about the different ways that emulsifiers work.
Bob Wyman
@evan We should neither rely on technological determinism nor ignore it.
I am concerned that relying on instance level content filtering or blocking by admins shifts control of the scope of visible content from individual readers to intermediaries. But, relying on intermediaries is necessary if individuals have insufficient curation tools.
A system that did more to empower individuals' ability to curate would reduce individuals' need to subordinate themselves to others' value judgments.
Evan Prodromou
@hvdsomp to me personally? Or in general?
herbert
@evan I very much recommend reading Mark Nottingham’s perspective on technology centralization https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-avoiding-internet-centralization/
Evan Prodromou
@ben BEN ADIDA
Ben Adida
@evan it's necessary reading for anyone interested in federation!
Evan Prodromou
@mekkaokereke I agree. I think JM is a great structure for making default policy for the network. Requiring active moderation and use of shared allow/deny lists is a great criterion for entry.
I also dislike a shared allowlist. It shuts down growth at a time when we need to be reaching more people than ever.
There are 12000 Mastodon sites up, according to some estimates. There are 150 sites on the Rapidblock list. I think a blocklist makes more sense here.
mekka okereke :verified:
The best thing to do to "counter" this coming centralization is super easy to do, but from my short time observing here, it won't happen:
1. There should be stricter criteria for an instance being listed on "join Mastodon." Insufficient moderation gets you de-listed. Handle cynical false reports.
2. It should be easier for a new admin to just check a box and opt-in to a whitelisted federation that excludes the worst instances.
mekka okereke :verified:
It's entirely possible for decentralized instances to provide safety, but most don't/won't. I'm super happy with hachyderm.io for example. ♥️??
But a larger company is going to integrate with the fediverse, and fulfill the most basic user feature request: "As a user of your product, I would like to know that signing up will not expose me to death threats from nazis" ??♂️
Then more new users are going to flow there.
mekka okereke :verified:
As a Black person, simply signing up for a Mastodon account can expose you to vile racist slurs and threats of violence. Most Mastodon users are one popular toot away from discovering that their instance mods are either unwilling or completely unprepared to deal with this.
Because a centralized whitelist was abused in a cynical attack years ago, the fediverse kinda gave up on that idea, and has been very resistant to it ever since.
mekka okereke :verified:
I do agree that centralization is coming to the fediverse, but not for any of the reasons that most people on here think. That centralization is coming for the exact same reasons that centralization came to email, and it's a reason that many folks that would like things to stay decentralised keep ignoring.
And that is user safety.
A lot of Mastodon fans keep pretending that Mastodon is inclusive. It's not. But it could be.
Evan Prodromou
@Caliban64 Are you aware of the barrage of harassment people are getting?
It's an organized campaign by racist, homophobic, transphobic trolls.
Here's a good thread by @tomcoates . Warning: there's some really graphic content in there.
https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/1595848852942114816
Can you really imagine saying to someone who'd just been abused at that level, "Hey, you're not allowed to talk about this until you pay $1 to the absentee instance operator who let it happen?"
Come on.
Caliban64
@evan @markallerton @mekkaokereke @ks My view is that any account that uses the word #moderation in any context should be automatically required to pay $1 a month to a server admin via #Patreon or PayPal.
This isn’t funded by venture money or ads. So if you expect a commercial level of moderation, then support the cause monetarily.
Evan Prodromou
@Caliban64 I've been running my own instance for about a week, and I've had *four* incidents that have made me put down my phone and take a walk. Really loathesome racist, homophobic and transphobic attacks.
And I'm a cis, white, straight, affluent man. Nothing that was said to me was a credible threat to my physical safety. And it still shook me up pretty badly. I can't imagine how it must feel to someone more directly targeted.
Evan Prodromou
@Caliban64
I got the news about setting up Rapidblock, which has kept the incidents at bay for the last 24 hours. But it's not easy to use. It's not even scriptable; you have to manually update the blocklist.
Evan Prodromou
@escamoteur @mekkaokereke @markallerton @ks yes, but you have to see a harassing message to block it, which can be really traumatic.
If there are 100 people on an instance, and each of them has to block an harasser manually, that's 100 incidents of harm.
If the first harassment incident results in a site-wide block, then 99 of those incidents are prevented. It's still terrible for the first person, but the overall harm is less.
Thomas
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks don't the blocking features from users side help here? Especially if you can block evil instances?
Evan Prodromou
@tanyatussing Adding it to my queue, thanks!
tanya tussing
@evan I'm a big fan of Tim Wu. I haven't read that book yet, but I read "The Curse of Bigness" - short read about #antitrust considerations, implications. This book would be a very timely read.
Evan Prodromou
@heidilifeldman it's a wild ride! Have fun.
Heidi Li Feldman
@evan The book looks excellent. Have just started.
Evan Prodromou
You should take a look at some of the actual stuff people are talking about.
Here's a good thread:
https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/1595848852942114816
I don't think we're talking about matters of taste. This is egregious intentional harassment , designed to terrorize, that's outside the bounds for everyone and illegal in many countries.
If you don't want to use a shared blocklist, don't. Your choice. Let's make it easier for people who don't want to be brigaded by trolls to have a fighting chance.
Gabriel Bauman
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks your argument is basically "I prefer a filtered view of reality, and I want someone else to define it." User safety is ill-defined.
I'm not calling you down for that. Many users want the same. But you should probably acknowledge that not everyone wants the same thing.
Top down moderation is not sustainable if we don't want to end up with Twitter again. We can and should make it easier for users to choose their view of the Fediverse.
mekka okereke :verified:
Personally I care a lot more about user safety than decentralization. I care about decentralization as it pertains to user safety, product innovation, and inclusion. Which is why for the day job, I choose jobs where I can make sure that small companies compete and win against the big company I'm at. This creates a healthier world, and works better for everyone.
But I don't value decentralization for decentralization's sake.
Evan Prodromou
@siobhan @mekkaokereke have you tried https://rapidblock.org/ ?
It's a shared blocklist and catches a big number of very bad actors.
Siobhán :heart_bitrans:
@mekkaokereke @evan As an admin, I've found myself wanting the same thing, and the closest we have is going around to other instances and looking at what instances they block/silence.
It's inconvenient, of course. But the much bigger problem is that most of the longer lists are full of "we block this instance because too many people don't put '''politics''' behind CWs"—which is absolutely not a reason we want propagated to widespread blocking.
Evan Prodromou
@dvd @mekkaokereke @markallerton @ks agreed
david van duzer
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks Bayesian filtering is an incredibly useful tool combined with Human moderation. There is a clear opportunity for Federation Hubs that aggregate and share Bayesian "perspectives" with each other, without re-centralizing, uhh, feudal group identity.
david van duzer
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks i have been posting about this on the birdsite re: The List Everyone is Talking About Today.
I think the 20% technical answer needs to give Instance Admins a protocol for sharing moderating, filtering, and discovery policies. Of course, the 80% answer needs to be communities (like hachyderm) to support these measures.
I had not heard of the centralized whitelist/allowlist incident with Mastodon. ActivityPub will need its SpamHaus
mekka okereke :verified:
There's increasing evidence that good moderation just doesn't scale well. Having a mod to user ratio of under 1 to 1000 seems ideal. There's all the opportunity for decentralized social to be safer than centralized. And we're squandering it.
By funneling marginalized users to big instances like mastodon.cloud and mastodon.social, letting them experience horrible abuse, and then blocking them for not using CW when they ask for help.
mekka okereke :verified:
The analogy that several Black users have said, is "Mastodon is the digital equivalent of fleeing 'regular' racism in the deep South, just to experience 'racism doesn't happen here!' racism in Boston." ??
Mastodon has more cultural norms around not talking about racist abuse, than around preventing it from happening. I don't know how to convince y'all that this is bad.
So yeah, this creates an opening for centralizers.
mekka okereke :verified:
@evan @markallerton @ks It's ironic and sad that we're seeing the biggest spikes in fediverse adoption in history precisely because users are fleeing a centralized network that is becoming less safe... and yet we still don't acknowledge that for social networks, safety is the P0 feature.
Yes, the fediverse is safer for some users than centralized social networks, and I'm truly happy for them. But for other users, it is much less safe.
mekka okereke :verified:
@BertL @evan @markallerton @ks
You aren't listening, you're talking.
You're telling me how Mastodon is better, in response to me saying it's worse (but could become better).
You're presuming that I haven't reported racist abuse on just about every major social media platform there is. I have. And I'm telling you Mastodon's response was by far the worst.
Lots of Black folk are telling you this and you're just not listening.
Why is that?
Evan Prodromou
You're right!
I'm going to pipe down, read more, comment less.
Thanks for the reminder.
Bert Latamore
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks I totally agree that Mastodon is not perfect. We are talking about human beings, and as far as I know none of us are perfect. But at least on Mastodon you can contact human beings who can do something about your issue. Try that on Twitter or Facebook. That is the beauty of the Federvere. And compared to the monolithic social media companies, we do work to improve. All they do is try to make more money.
Evan Prodromou
@technoshaman001 @Caliban64 @tomcoates I'm sorry to hear that. What recourse did you have? What happened next?
J. R. Damon (technoshaman001)
@evan @Caliban64 @tomcoates I experienced it this morning
Amelia Bellamy-Royds
Worth mentioning that "allow" vs "block" aren't the only two options. There are "limited" settings, where users from an instance can follow & be followed but don't show up in more public content.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/
So it is possible to imagine a set-up with an allow-list of known well-moderated sites, a block-list of known bad actors, & limited setting for new/unknown instances (maybe with new limited settings that work better for cautious discovery of new servers).
Not particularly hype for current thing??❤️??
mekka okereke :verified:
Years from now, someone is going to cry about "Automaticc or Flickr used 'embrace and extend' to bully us! This always happens! They did this to us!"
But the reality is going to be that "At a time when millions of users were desperate for something, anything, other than Twitter... Automaticc and Flickr took the guesswork out of signing up for an Activity Pub based service that would protect you from Nazis. Noone else did."
Evan Prodromou
@corvusbrimstone @sinclairinat0r @mekkaokereke @markallerton @ks it's a common thread from American history. Southern states called upon a principle of "states' rights" to justify their resistance to abolition of slavery and universal civil rights.
The analogy with the fediverse is that we have devolved power from central entities to smaller ones with consequent problems of user safety.
Saint Baal-MAŠ
@sinclairinat0r @mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks states rights to what? /S
Jeremy Sinclair #ฺNET
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks
The best description I've given about how Mastodon works is, States Rights as a Service.
Sean :TwinPines:?
@ks @evan @markallerton @mekkaokereke Thanks for all these great points. Centralization seems easier for the users in that they give up some control in exchange for a company putting resources toward user safety (very understandable for people to want that). Decentralization gives users full control, but will also require a lot of organization and effort from all members to ensure safety for themselves and others in the community.
Evan Prodromou
@uc not explicitly. But there are great patterns to borrow from email. Any server can refuse to deliver any activity. Bayesian filtering and shared blocklists can help, too.
Ben ✌️
@bynkii @tess @evan I love #ww4d ? is there anything in the protocol that stops someone spamming activitypub endpoints? Just bulk delivering spam to any username that can be found?
Dana Fried
@bynkii @evan fediverse is inherently vulnerable to different classes of attacks (as well as a few of the same classes or attacks) compared to traditional, monolithic social media platforms.
It's important to identify the likely vectors now and have plans against them rather than taking a purely reactionary posture and constantly being one step behind the bad actors.
Remember: always ask yourself "WW4D" - "what would 4chan do?"
Mark Allerton
@bynkii @sophieschmieg @evan @tess @ks @mekkaokereke my personal view is that a federated network would be good for preventing a Twitter style disaster where one guy walks in and destroys the place, but there’s nothing wrong with the components of that federation being large, and having some regulation involved - and that Mastodon will probably evolve in that way if it is to survive.
Bynkii
@evan @tess @ks @markallerton @mekkaokereke @sophieschmieg however, the fediverse is also more vulnerable to coordinated bad-faith reporting attacks that also use external social opprobrium to boost demands to defed “bad” instances.
Bynkii
@sophieschmieg @evan @tess @markallerton @ks @mekkaokereke it really is yet another implementation of “I got mine, fuck you”
Mark Allerton
@bynkii @sophieschmieg @evan @ks @tess @mekkaokereke it’s the same libertarian ethos that drives cryptocurrency - the automatic assumption that it’s bad to have government involved in regulating some activity. We are seeing how well that is working out in the crypto space.
Bynkii
@sophieschmieg @evan @ks @markallerton @tess @mekkaokereke T H I S
(De)centralization is an implementation strategy/method. The idea that either carries any inherent moral superiority is so bizarre to me, and as I’m seeing, leads people into some rather serious “Animal Farm” ideology.
Sophie Schmieg
@tess @mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks
Honestly, I just don't care either way about centralization as a first level property, I care about my experience as a user. If centralization improves that, great, let's go with that, if decentralization is better for it, also great.
"Decentralization" by itself is just not a moral value
Dana Fried
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks hate to say it but my *ideal* social platform is a centralized platform with good moderation and safety policies.
Twitter was moving in that direction before it sold out. There were still serious problems but it was the best it had ever been.
Darius Kazemi
@datn @mekkaokereke @hallam @ks @markallerton @evan anyway, my number one priority for medium to long term planning is federated user safety
Dan Shick
@hallam @darius @mekkaokereke @ks @markallerton @evan sir, with respect, they are already here. they have been here for years. this is a present tense thing, not a future tense thing.
Phillip Hallam-Baker
@datn @darius @mekkaokereke @ks @markallerton @evan
And furthermore, the right wing trolls who prompted Elmo to buy Twitter are not going to allow their audience to leave without a fight.
The NAZI little turds are going to be coming to Mastodon to wreck it, just like they did in Gamergate and the Sick Puppies etc. etc.
Dan Shick
@hallam @mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks i think this misses the point. people have put up search engines already, and they have been defederated and decried into oblivion. it just happened again like three days ago.
as @mekkaokereke points out, it’s the user safety issue that’s bleeding by far the worst right now. why? because groups that had some kind of a safe haven on twitter are essentially being forced to migrate away as it becomes a right-wing nightmare. the fediverse has a unique chance to accommodate the needs of those groups.
so now is the time to address user safety, not things that have yet to successfully pose a problem but a thing that is a live, on-fire problem for many, many people joining the fediverse. all hands and all resources on deck IMHO –
i believe @darius had some thoughts about moderation as a service that wouldn’t be out of place here. i hope it’s okay that i link one of his comments here:
Phillip Hallam-Baker
@mekkaokereke @evan @markallerton @ks
Agree but for different reasons.
Centralization is going to come to Mastodon because someone is going to put up a search engine. And that search engine will become a point of centralization.
Evan Prodromou
@Holobrine maybe you could read the referenced books and that might help? I don't know how much more information I can provide to you.
Holobrine
@evan I feel like there’s a missing link about centralization making it easier for new users to join, or something
Holobrine
@evan How does Metcalfe’s law push toward centralization? I’m not following
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
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