On discourse and decentralisation – Connected Places

The always good Laurens on the ActivityPub-ATproto open letter: "There is a large group of people who are actively moving the space forward, and who have signed the open letter that calls for mutual respect and working together for a better open social web. The number of people who voiced objections and concerns is minimal, but by focusing on procedural reasons it creates a greater level of discord ... than there actually is."

Going back to basics, he argues that among the many roles social media fulfils, "one aspect that I think is both underrated and highly important is that they function as sense-making tools... which makes control over social media and its algorithms extraordinarily powerful." Quoting Henry Farrell's post:

• "Many of the problems that we are going to face over the next many years will stem from publics that have been deranged and distorted by social media...
• our understanding of what the public is and wants – are similarly shaped by algorithms ... the ‘voice of the people;’ is actually in private hands".

"The tools we use ... to make sense of the world are in the hands of a few fascist oligarchs". Fixing this - not achieving "decentralisation" as defined by the architects of one protocol - must be the goal: "The discourse around decentralisation has elevated a form of network architecture that facilitates and contributes to a healthier social internet into a goal into itself."

For a good example, he turns to Blacksky: "That Black people can build their own social place on the internet, where the community can set their own rules, have their own moderation, and their own methods for governance is incredibly meaningful". Is it decentralised? It depends on how you define it, but "that the Black community now has their own platform they have ownership and control over is what matters".

"the discourse around ActivityPub and ATProto felt to me to have an undercurrent of resentment"

Summarising the threats society faces which these protocols can help with, he argues that we need to "updating our understanding of what it means to build a resilient open social networks ... Discourse that focuses on whether a network is ‘decentralised’ or not is too theoretical, and placed too far outside of the current threats...

Age verification laws of social media applies to the open social networks as much as Big Tech ... pose serious legal questions for people who operate social media platforms in the affected jurisdictions... All the while Apple and Google maintain near full global control over the apps we can install on our phone... a powerful control mechanism to shut down access to the distribution of social media apps... Figuring out how to handle these threats requires collaboration, and an approach that goes beyond “is this decentralised” or not."