It’s been great to have @alinemonjardim be open to this extremely open and consensus based process applied to #CoSocialLogoDesign, with feedback across many spaces — including anyone on the Fediverse, not just co-op members!
"Voting with your feet" is a backstop not a first resort. The first resort should be democratic decision making. We should not accept instances where the users don't collectively have ultimate authority over policy and defederation decisions.
@kylethayer@misc Thanks for kicking off this discussion, and apologies for the delayed response.
In terms of the #FediGovernancePact goals, let's start with #2: "make the Fediverse more welcoming". It's not clear to me how a pact of community-governed instances would make the fedivese more welcoming. Which of the issues discussed "Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t" or "Whiteness of Mastodon" do you see a pact as addressing?
Goal #1 ("community governance of Fedi projects and instances") seems to reflect an assumption that more "community governance" in today's overwhelmingly white fediverse, with endemic HOA racism, is inherently a good thing. Is it? Are there examples of BIPOC people suggesting that a pact of community-governed instances would be a good course for the fediverse?
Or, look at the ongoing discussion about BBC as a test case. At least in my feed, most trans people (although certainly not all!) see BBC's history of publishing transphobic post and platforming transphobic people and groups as grounds for defederation. Most cis people (although certainly not all) see BBC's presence here as a good thing and think that defederation is a mistake. So it likely that "community governance" on a mostly-cis instance is likely to lead to a policy that trans people see as anti-trans.
Of course it's possible that the cis people could listen to and prioritize trans perspectives. Unfortunately, that's not likely to be the case in today's fediverse. Look at community governenace examples like social.coop's loomio discussion about Threads or the equivalent #CoSocialMeta hashtag (both on instances you cited as good examples). There's virtually no reference to the risk to trans and queer people from the anti-LGBTQ hate groups that Meta's giving free reign to. And to tie it back to my initial point, there's also not any reference to concerns some Black people have expressed about Threads -- I've got a few exampels with links here, right after "perspectives aren't monolithic".
Don't get me wrong, BDFL is a very problematic model for open-source projects, and I think it's important for admins to get input from their communities. So it's certainly useful to think about different forms of community governance and the role it can play. But the discussions need to foreground anti-racism and other aspects of intersectional anti-oppression. And if you're talking about potential mechanisms for today's fediverse, it needs to take the realities of today's fediverse into account.
“#CoSocialCa will not pre-emptively defederate from the Threads app fediverse instance by Meta. However, we authorise the Trust & Safety team to take all necessary steps to protect user safety on CoSocial”
#CoSocialMeta The core question is what do each of the parties gain from the transaction? I’ve never used Meta so from my position I see very little upside and only down side.
Meta’s whole operating model has been to turn their users into the product for advertising. With this move they gain access to more eyeballs without even having to pay for the operating costs. What a deal!
So honest question, what do you see changing for the better once Meta federates?
> So honest question, what do you see changing
> for the better once Meta federates?
That’s the right question, because the downsides are obvious: Facebook is rapacious and entirely unethical.
The upside I see is that some number of the perfectly decent human beings who use Facebook get exposed to the Fediverse and realize that there is something better than what they’re used to.
#CoSocialists definitely check out the server announcement:
"The board of directors of CoSocial.ca is soliciting feedback from the membership on the following question: Should we defederate immediately from Meta? Please use the #CoSocialMeta hashtag to discuss. This question will be considered by the board at its next meeting on 27 Jun 2023."
@evan I think we should give Meta’s product a chance. It could be good for a billion or so Meta users to get easy access to the fediverse. But if it becomes clear that the experiment isn’t working CoSocial can always defederate at that point. I don’t see that there’s any rush. #CoSocialMeta
I’ve signed the pact to block any instances owned by Facebook and related organizations that join the fediverse. At the start of this conversation I wanted to take a “wait and see” approach. I posted a poll asking Free Radical users whether we should block Facebook immediately, shared my [...]
What I think #CoSocialCa should do is what we’ve already been doing:
educating and promoting Canadian co-op owned social media
maintain our server and moderation rules, and block individual accounts if they are problematic, and block servers if admins don’t take action
I think we also have to do a lot more in explaining our approach. I think BUY LOCAL might work generally, and especially with a company of Facebook’s size.
The Fedi folks shouldn’t have taken the NDA’d meeting. Transparency is essential.
It is not reasonable to expect ethical behaviour from Meta. It should be assumed that that if they can profit by disemboweling the Fediverse, they will.
There is an opportunity to attract some of the ordinary decent humans on Meta because they don’t know anything better exists.
I probably wouldn’t de-federate. But only by about 51/49.