To Federate or not to Federate: is this the Fediverse’s Don’t be Evil-Moment or its own Liberation through transfiguration? And why is the current political Left in wide parts unable to answer this…
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
Threads in the Fediverse is like a powerful dictatorship trying to “deepen its bonds” with a small but democratic government. The dictatorship will eventually exploit the power asymmetry to control the democracy, direct or indirectly, effectively erasing it. In that situation, the best approach is to simply not play along the dictatorship. (Defederate Threads.)
Another threat to democracy is internal: the centralisation of control over the whole into a few hands. In the case of the Fediverse, this is the reliance on central systems (front-end software, back-end software, instances, discovery systems, etc.). I see what the author proposes as a “Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights” as, potentially, a new mechanism enabling those central systems - who gets to decide what goes in that declaration?
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
An important detail is that the author falls into the fallacy of conflating epistemic and moral matters. This is specially explicit here:
Because without believing in the existence of a objective truth (which they don’t, because they attribute themselves to moral relativism),
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
You make a few good points, I will try to counter them.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
True, its for separation of powers but this doesn’t mean there cannot be any central rules decided upon. For example the consititution of the united states. However, because the Fediverse doesn’t have a government, I think a better analogy would be a league of more or less democractic countries that work together. Of course they can agree to an universal declaration, like the united nations agreed on human rights for exactly the same reasons.
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
Agreed. However, there is a difference between a constitution of a country and agreements between countries. For example, the NATO has an agreement with the US that if any NATO country is attacked, US will jump in. However, this is completely build on trust, if Trump decides to not jump in, no one will be able to stop him, meaning there isn’t any higher institution that controls the different actors in this agreement other than the actors themselves. This is why I think the analogue of a league of nations is better, because agreements can be much more loose here.
Of course, there would still be a question who would write this document, but the basic idea would be that if it was supported by many servers, it would be put up more or less by word of mouth. To do this most effectively, it would be good to create the document in a way that many servers willing to agree to it. For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers. And eventually, the most reasonable one will be hold up by the most servers. I think of it as a dynamic process.
But yeah, there would have to be put some thought into it how to craft it and most likely we don’t have the institutions yet to do something like that.
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
Could be true, I need to think about this longer. However, I still think that as a foundation, basic fediverse rights could be agreed upon through reason and that they could become effective tools against Meta and to improve the Fediverse in general. Of course, they shouldn’t be too detailed and let enough freedoms how to realize them technically.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant. Its not like the Fediverse will automatically develop in a good direction. I don’t believe in a hierarchy-free, anarchic society. We need institutions and agreements to ensure that the Fediverse stays a good place.
The US is a failed and corrupted state that we don’t need to recreate. It’s built on more wrong things than good. Keep your American propaganda to yourself and don’t infest the actually free fediverse with your liberal corporatist ideals.
And this isn’t even touching on the myriad of reasons for us not to federate with an entity like Meta. Not even gonna iterate on them because they’ve been infinitely chewed in and out.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
So perhaps the best analogy with RL politics would be a confederation with lax citizenship laws and federated entities being free to choose which other federated entities they interact with. With a key difference:
The Fediverse can be completely acephalous. And the reason becomes evident once you analyse the UN of your example - it’s effectively Europe and USA wearing a bunch of sock puppets, pretending to talk in the name of the “nations” (actually countries, but whatever) of the world. An acephalous Fediverse would not develop a similar problem.
In this case (Threads), it means that, while we should promote defederation, how to deal with it should be, ultimately, up to each instance.
NATO example
I don’t pay taxes to any NATO country so what I’m going to say is solely based on the Fediverse situation, plus whatever I parsed from your example:
We should not need to rely on “trust” on first place. Instead a better approach is to acknowledge that people will fuck it up, they will do things that counter the best interests of the whole, and that the system needs to handle it.
For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers.
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant.
Or we could leave those moral matters up to each instance to decide. And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
I said separation of powers because you said the Fediverse should be like a democracy. Then it should have that. For me, democracy is first of all a better way to control those in power, which is why I think we shouldn’t think of the Fediverse as a democracy, because it isn’t; at least not currently. It’s not like you have a say in the general development of the Fediverse, because there is no real centre to it anyways.
So, I agree with you here, I just don’t think that’s what a democracy is. If the Fediverse would be a democracy, it would have government, a constitution, etc.
But as I said, I agree with you how we should think of the Fediverse: as acephalous. However, why should it be completely acephalous? Why shouldn’t servers make agreements with one another? The Fedipact is one of those, the badspace, too. And while I’m not a fan of the first one, its generally fine, if they don’t force people into it (like you said). Why then not try to do the same thing but with some actual principles?
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
Then many servers will opt out of it and it will become irrelevant. That’s the beauty of it. Because its only an agreement that is not controlled by any centrlized entity, its not as binding. The same as with the Fedipact: it wasn’t set up by any central entity and will not be enforced by it other than the community or powerful servers. But that the community and powerful servers will try to influence the course of the Fediverse is the the case anyways!
And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
For Nazi-instances, that’s easy, but for example in the case of Threads, it quickly becomes very complicated to agree on which instances should be isolated and which not. How do you determine that if not through speaking to other servers? And if you do that, you can just as well speak to them about common rights and write them down somewhere. It’s the same thing but with more transparency.
We cannot build the Fediverse without trust and mutual agreements. It will just not work; and we are also already doing it.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
Threads in the Fediverse is like a powerful dictatorship trying to “deepen its bonds” with a small but democratic government. The dictatorship will eventually exploit the power asymmetry to control the democracy, direct or indirectly, effectively erasing it. In that situation, the best approach is to simply not play along the dictatorship. (Defederate Threads.)
Another threat to democracy is internal: the centralisation of control over the whole into a few hands. In the case of the Fediverse, this is the reliance on central systems (front-end software, back-end software, instances, discovery systems, etc.). I see what the author proposes as a “Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights” as, potentially, a new mechanism enabling those central systems - who gets to decide what goes in that declaration?
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
An important detail is that the author falls into the fallacy of conflating epistemic and moral matters. This is specially explicit here:
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
You make a few good points, I will try to counter them.
True, its for separation of powers but this doesn’t mean there cannot be any central rules decided upon. For example the consititution of the united states. However, because the Fediverse doesn’t have a government, I think a better analogy would be a league of more or less democractic countries that work together. Of course they can agree to an universal declaration, like the united nations agreed on human rights for exactly the same reasons.
Agreed. However, there is a difference between a constitution of a country and agreements between countries. For example, the NATO has an agreement with the US that if any NATO country is attacked, US will jump in. However, this is completely build on trust, if Trump decides to not jump in, no one will be able to stop him, meaning there isn’t any higher institution that controls the different actors in this agreement other than the actors themselves. This is why I think the analogue of a league of nations is better, because agreements can be much more loose here.
Of course, there would still be a question who would write this document, but the basic idea would be that if it was supported by many servers, it would be put up more or less by word of mouth. To do this most effectively, it would be good to create the document in a way that many servers willing to agree to it. For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers. And eventually, the most reasonable one will be hold up by the most servers. I think of it as a dynamic process.
But yeah, there would have to be put some thought into it how to craft it and most likely we don’t have the institutions yet to do something like that.
Could be true, I need to think about this longer. However, I still think that as a foundation, basic fediverse rights could be agreed upon through reason and that they could become effective tools against Meta and to improve the Fediverse in general. Of course, they shouldn’t be too detailed and let enough freedoms how to realize them technically.
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant. Its not like the Fediverse will automatically develop in a good direction. I don’t believe in a hierarchy-free, anarchic society. We need institutions and agreements to ensure that the Fediverse stays a good place.
The US is a failed and corrupted state that we don’t need to recreate. It’s built on more wrong things than good. Keep your American propaganda to yourself and don’t infest the actually free fediverse with your liberal corporatist ideals.
And this isn’t even touching on the myriad of reasons for us not to federate with an entity like Meta. Not even gonna iterate on them because they’ve been infinitely chewed in and out.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
So perhaps the best analogy with RL politics would be a confederation with lax citizenship laws and federated entities being free to choose which other federated entities they interact with. With a key difference:
The Fediverse can be completely acephalous. And the reason becomes evident once you analyse the UN of your example - it’s effectively Europe and USA wearing a bunch of sock puppets, pretending to talk in the name of the “nations” (actually countries, but whatever) of the world. An acephalous Fediverse would not develop a similar problem.
In this case (Threads), it means that, while we should promote defederation, how to deal with it should be, ultimately, up to each instance.
I don’t pay taxes to any NATO country so what I’m going to say is solely based on the Fediverse situation, plus whatever I parsed from your example:
We should not need to rely on “trust” on first place. Instead a better approach is to acknowledge that people will fuck it up, they will do things that counter the best interests of the whole, and that the system needs to handle it.
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
Or we could leave those moral matters up to each instance to decide. And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
I said separation of powers because you said the Fediverse should be like a democracy. Then it should have that. For me, democracy is first of all a better way to control those in power, which is why I think we shouldn’t think of the Fediverse as a democracy, because it isn’t; at least not currently. It’s not like you have a say in the general development of the Fediverse, because there is no real centre to it anyways.
So, I agree with you here, I just don’t think that’s what a democracy is. If the Fediverse would be a democracy, it would have government, a constitution, etc.
But as I said, I agree with you how we should think of the Fediverse: as acephalous. However, why should it be completely acephalous? Why shouldn’t servers make agreements with one another? The Fedipact is one of those, the badspace, too. And while I’m not a fan of the first one, its generally fine, if they don’t force people into it (like you said). Why then not try to do the same thing but with some actual principles?
Then many servers will opt out of it and it will become irrelevant. That’s the beauty of it. Because its only an agreement that is not controlled by any centrlized entity, its not as binding. The same as with the Fedipact: it wasn’t set up by any central entity and will not be enforced by it other than the community or powerful servers. But that the community and powerful servers will try to influence the course of the Fediverse is the the case anyways!
For Nazi-instances, that’s easy, but for example in the case of Threads, it quickly becomes very complicated to agree on which instances should be isolated and which not. How do you determine that if not through speaking to other servers? And if you do that, you can just as well speak to them about common rights and write them down somewhere. It’s the same thing but with more transparency.
We cannot build the Fediverse without trust and mutual agreements. It will just not work; and we are also already doing it.