ATmosphere Report 143 - Eurosky Live - Connected Places

Laurens Hof's report from EuroskyLive looks at Robin Berjon's use of Elinor Ostrom's observation that "The properties that define the architecture of a protocol and those that define the rules in an institution are the same", and how this is illustrated by Bluesky's recent changes to their reporting system, which expands the "6 reporting options to 39".

In particular, there's a "newly added option to flag human trafficking content... "reflecting requirements under laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act"".

Now composable moderation "gives jurisdictional flexibility... specific categories of moderation... determined by the jurisdictions a service operates", so Bluesky could have added the human trafficking label just for the UK. Instead they implemented it "on a global scale, and when new moderation services on atproto are incentivised to follow Bluesky in implementing the same reporting categories, regional laws can shape global networking norms. This happens via an intermediary step: regional laws shape the dominant service's choices, which in turn shape ecosystem norms."

Although technically separate, "From a user's perspective, the reporting UI is the moderation architecture they experience. There's no meaningful distinction between "the protocol" and "the governance" from their standpoint... You cannot meaningfully separate the protocol architecture from how it is institutionally implemented" - hence the relevance of Ostrom's observation.

So as we create protocol-driven social media "to constrain Big Tech ... we create new systems where the decentralised protocols don't eliminate power dynamics, instead they get reconfigured in confusing, fun, illegible, and exciting new ways."