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This can quickly change if the public sector ever wakes up and smells the coffee. Imagine if every city would run activitypub type servers and offer them to th

This can quickly change if the public sector ever wakes up and smells the coffee. Imagine if every city would run activitypub type servers and offer them to their own residents as local tax funded service. Its an entirely plausible scenario, cities are managing far more complex infrastructure. Suddenly you have the pull of the entire planet and resources to keep evolving and innovating the software stack. We have the cesspool social media that we have because society is forgeting what democracy and sovereignty even mean. One just hopes that the in-your-face possibility of better alternatives will tip the balance somewhere in the world and start the revolution that will help us out of this sorry period.

briandear 2y ago
So would the city government allow criticism of government officials? I specifically don’t want the government running anything like that.
- openrisk 2y ago
  What people say on such platforms would be down to charters, democratically agreed. Everything is in principle open to design so as to prevent abuse. So is the possibility of checks and balances, observers etc. People abandoning their civic responsibilities is what delivered "government" (and practically everything else) to the oligarchs.
tpm 2y ago
> and offer them to their own residents as local tax funded service. Its an entirely plausible scenario It sadly isn't, if by this you mean that residents can create their profiles there and use it to post stuff. Because now every city is a social network operator that has to police the server. But even if the city only had a server with accounts for the city admin and only posting city stuff, that by itself would be great. > We have the cesspool social media that we have because society is forgeting what democracy and sovereignty even mean. Maybe, but more specifically it's because social network operators refuse to police them properly. I have seen that scenario play out on a small non-commercial social network in the 00's and then countless times again: well-meaning people are too pacifist (at least online) and the rest is hands-off. Not very good people are always going to exploit weaknesses like that. And then it's too late, you can't put the cat back into the bag, the whole network is gone. And if the society as a whole doesn't act, well we are seeing what happens. > One just hopes that the in-your-face possibility of better alternatives will tip the balance somewhere in the world and start the revolution that will help us out of this sorry period. I don't think there will be a revolution. What I hope for is there will at least be a slow trickle of people into stuff like Mastodon, so that we leave behind the era where 99% of value was captured by facebook/instagram/tiktok/twitter.
- openrisk 2y ago
  > every city is a social network operator that has to police the server the "policing" problem (I think moderation is a better word) needs to be solved one way or another, there is no doubt about that. The question is what is the most democratic and economically viable way to do that. You need to find an organizational unit that embodies decentralization, has a stake in the matter and could realistically execute. Can't think of anything better that the city. Plus, we don't really need a utopic perfect solution that works for everybody all the time. What the open source fediverse really needs at this point is a sustainable source of funding to reach more mass-market usability. People would always be free to fork and build their own quirky communities.
  - tpm 2y ago
    > the "policing" problem (I think moderation is a better word) I don't, because this also involves deciding who can have an account on your server, once you are federating then you also have to decide who you federate with and any possible defederations, what data to store etc. > The question is what is the most democratic and economically viable way to do that. It doesn't even have to be democratic; once it's federated with enough nodes in the network, freedom of movement of accounts between servers and a possibility of defederation between nodes, the democracy is somehow implicitly there. I'd say economical (or resource including admin and moderator) viability is the only important thing. People have to stay motivated; individuals will always come and go, it's just important there are enough people willing to work on infrastructure, motivated by money or otherwise. > What the open source fediverse really needs at this point is a sustainable source of funding to reach more mass-market usability. One think to consider is that it also needs sustained funding of operations, not only of development, as opposed to capital- and ad-funded commercial social networks. I'm doing my bit by sending a small amount of money to a mastodon server each month.
    - openrisk 2y ago
      I agree, there are countless issues and challenges (and ideas, designs etc. how to tackle them). The most fundamental is for mainstream, non-technical people to realize that "social media" is not rocket science invented by Zuck, its infrastructure. Every bit as vital (actually more) as the roads and parks and water utilities of a city. There will be some happy surprises required to overcome the inertia of network effects but enshittification is now terminal, so it actually looks promising :-)

briandear 2y ago

So would the city government allow criticism of government officials? I specifically don’t want the government running anything like that.

openrisk 2y ago
What people say on such platforms would be down to charters, democratically agreed. Everything is in principle open to design so as to prevent abuse. So is the possibility of checks and balances, observers etc. People abandoning their civic responsibilities is what delivered "government" (and practically everything else) to the oligarchs.

tpm 2y ago

> and offer them to their own residents as local tax funded service. Its an entirely plausible scenario It sadly isn't, if by this you mean that residents can create their profiles there and use it to post stuff. Because now every city is a social network operator that has to police the server. But even if the city only had a server with accounts for the city admin and only posting city stuff, that by itself would be great. > We have the cesspool social media that we have because society is forgeting what democracy and sovereignty even mean. Maybe, but more specifically it's because social network operators refuse to police them properly. I have seen that scenario play out on a small non-commercial social network in the 00's and then countless times again: well-meaning people are too pacifist (at least online) and the rest is hands-off. Not very good people are always going to exploit weaknesses like that. And then it's too late, you can't put the cat back into the bag, the whole network is gone. And if the society as a whole doesn't act, well we are seeing what happens. > One just hopes that the in-your-face possibility of better alternatives will tip the balance somewhere in the world and start the revolution that will help us out of this sorry period. I don't think there will be a revolution. What I hope for is there will at least be a slow trickle of people into stuff like Mastodon, so that we leave behind the era where 99% of value was captured by facebook/instagram/tiktok/twitter.

openrisk 2y ago
> every city is a social network operator that has to police the server the "policing" problem (I think moderation is a better word) needs to be solved one way or another, there is no doubt about that. The question is what is the most democratic and economically viable way to do that. You need to find an organizational unit that embodies decentralization, has a stake in the matter and could realistically execute. Can't think of anything better that the city. Plus, we don't really need a utopic perfect solution that works for everybody all the time. What the open source fediverse really needs at this point is a sustainable source of funding to reach more mass-market usability. People would always be free to fork and build their own quirky communities.
- tpm 2y ago
  > the "policing" problem (I think moderation is a better word) I don't, because this also involves deciding who can have an account on your server, once you are federating then you also have to decide who you federate with and any possible defederations, what data to store etc. > The question is what is the most democratic and economically viable way to do that. It doesn't even have to be democratic; once it's federated with enough nodes in the network, freedom of movement of accounts between servers and a possibility of defederation between nodes, the democracy is somehow implicitly there. I'd say economical (or resource including admin and moderator) viability is the only important thing. People have to stay motivated; individuals will always come and go, it's just important there are enough people willing to work on infrastructure, motivated by money or otherwise. > What the open source fediverse really needs at this point is a sustainable source of funding to reach more mass-market usability. One think to consider is that it also needs sustained funding of operations, not only of development, as opposed to capital- and ad-funded commercial social networks. I'm doing my bit by sending a small amount of money to a mastodon server each month.
  - openrisk 2y ago
    I agree, there are countless issues and challenges (and ideas, designs etc. how to tackle them). The most fundamental is for mainstream, non-technical people to realize that "social media" is not rocket science invented by Zuck, its infrastructure. Every bit as vital (actually more) as the roads and parks and water utilities of a city. There will be some happy surprises required to overcome the inertia of network effects but enshittification is now terminal, so it actually looks promising :-)