Moss Watson
Nathan SchneiderProvocation: anyone expecting to use Mastodon at no cost is inviting the entry of ads and VCs to this space.
We need commons, not dependency.
https://wiki.social.coop/How-to-make-the-fediverse-your-own.html
Aphrodite (recharging)
Anton Hunter@Aphrodite @ntnsndr noob question here, is there an easy way to do this? How do I find out who the admins are even?
Matt@HunterAnton @Aphrodite @ntnsndr A good place to start is to put your Mastodon domain name into a web browser, in your case it would be https://mastodon.social then look for the about our funding info, again in your case that's the ... on the right, the details link to https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
Richard Hull@ntnsndr Nathan, you need to see the Loomio thread about a company called The Social Coop Ltd
@Richard_Hull already talking with them.
@ntnsndr Great, I figured you might as you follow the Medium posts from Mask
Jose Garcia@ntnsndr If everyone paid one or two bucks a month there would be plenty of resources.
@Jollyspaniard that's what we do!
Brian Hawthorne@ntnsndr @abhayakara Agreed. I donate monthly to my instance through Patreon.
Kingsley Uyi IdehenYes, but as you know: "one size fits all" doesn't work in any situation that involves humans.
The #Fediverse (by way of its architecture) will support a variety of funding models across server instance types.
Heterogeneity is the spice of life -- IMHO 😀
Billy Smith@BillySmith @kidehen agreed. But once VCs and the promise of free services for ads enter a market, they tend to drown other things out. They do not tolerate diversity, since they are predicated on monopoly. One way or another, a critical way of maintaining pluralism is to build with cooperative economics.
I entirely agree. :D
I have seen what the overload of VC capital of looking for unicorns has done to the tech ecosystem since the late 90's onwards.
While it has funded many things that would not otherwise have been made, it also funded a lot things that should not have been made... :D
Too many stupid ideas created specifically for the Pump'N'Dump IPO's. :(
The #Fediverse opens up a new frontier for both funding models and the kinds of ventures that get funded.
Fundamentally, it provides the missing infrastructure for the following:
1. Evolving Advertising i.e., making unobtrusive modalities an option
2. Evolving data monetization via new concepts e.g., #Web native ticketing using existing non-fungible tokens like #X509 certificates (driven by #DPKI rather than centralized #PKI)
3. New venture structures
"..But once VCs and the promise of free services for ads enter a market, they tend to drown other things out.."
Historically, in the #Web20 era, yes!
The #Fediverse differs in that it was chugging along stealthily until events a #Twitter took it to escape velocity. Net effect, we have an inflection that's opening up a totally new frontier that much closer to the fundamental architecture and design of the #Web.
2023 will be about new startups and funding models 😀
@kidehen @BillySmith I think the dynamics are very similar. ActivityPub is a protocol much like email and the Web in its structure: clients and servers. It is perfectly capture-able with the same tactics.
And Web3 is no different. VC is all over there. New funding models have not prevailed over it there yet either.
I've already seen it being presented as a new funding model, but continuing the same old behaviour.
One ICO was aimed at providing funding for organisations that wanted to buy CNC machines for digital fabrication, but 60% of the tokens had been pre-assigned to the VC fund that was backing the ICO, so the funding was only lining the VC's bank accounts, and not going towards paying for the CNC machines, as was promised... :(
One method that does work, and is compliant with the FSA reg's in the UK, is Bond Issues.
The Ecological Land Coop used these as a way of buying the farm land for starting up farming coop's.
They use Ethex for Fundraising and Compliance with the FSA reg's.
Let's see what happens in 2023.
I believe the #Fediverse will be different due to its underlying loosely-coupled architecture.
You have Conventional Applications (opinionated and tightly-coupled implementations of protocols operating on structured data) vs New Generation Apps (loosely-coupled implementations of open protocols operating on open structured data).
#UI/#UX used to be the capture point. Today, @Mastodon and other Fediverse apps address that issue.
/cc @BillySmith
This is just another version of the Centralisation/Decentralisation debate that's been going on in computer circles for generations.
Kropotkin wrote about a shiny new decentralised technology that would liberate the masses from the tyranny of the warlords in the 1890's/1900's. He was talking about the invention of the electric motor... :D
Tod RobbinsJust checked some of the notes i made.
It was mostly about the electrification of machine tooling systems using electric motors, rather than using the direct-drive belt-systems powered by steam engines.
The comment about the flour mills was a sidenote, that lead into the Conquest of Bread. :D
But again, Kropotkin was directly talking about the decentralisation potential of new technologies. :D
@BillySmith @kidehen @Mastodon I was struck reading Mutual Aid how much it reminds me of Graeber/Wengrow's Dawn of Everything in some respects.
Yes-ish.
IMHO, the real issue is tight-coupling vs loose-coupling of data interaction protocols and structured data.
The #Fediverse offers a great example of loose-coupling that works -- as uptake demonstrates (even if some of that's down to the #Twitter debacle).
/cc @Mastodon
Jon@ntnsndr really appreciate your work putting this together. It answers a lot of questions I had joining Mastodon and social.coop. I’m particularly interested in the “Imagining the Future” section, which has now introduced me to Bonfire!
@jtr great! There is so much more to the fediverse than just lil ol Mastodon 😋
@ntnsndr Looking forward to exploring it! One thing I’m keen to think about with others: how could a social media platform be defined and produced democratically? I know that’s far from the current reality with Mastodon, but I can imagine a future where members of the platform can contribute to and vote on feature specs / user stories / etc to prioritize what gets developed
@jtr I don't think there's an easy answer, and the best answer is probably "lots of different ways." But my starting point would be to read @schock on #designjustice :)
Sean M.Z. Anderson@ntnsndr @jtr there are some really great models and practices within the #ParticipatoryDesign mode that could be explored for this kind of work — especially “Consensus Design” that balances domain expertise with user/lived-experience expertise.
@seanderson @ntnsndr cool! I was part of some #participatorydesign panels for a neighborhood grocery coop a few years ago and loved the experience. I’d love to hear about anyone who’s used it for technology design, or who is thinking about platforms / tools for operationalizing it in a distributed setting
JCheray@ntnsndr interesting model. I like the co-op way of operations. Thank you for sharing this.
whetstone@ntnsndr my admins don’t have any fundraising set up but i keep checking the about page hoping. this ad-free, algorithm free experience is precious.
@whetstone I would be suspect until they do:)
@ntnsndr not necessary i this case, i think. small instance, and they’ve said it isn’t a financial strain now but they’ll ask if it becomes so.
@whetstone ah okay! That's good enough. At least the conversation is happening. The economics is explicit rather than an under the table swindle. Keep making sure that conversation continues.
Icarosity@ntnsndr I have looked but can't figure out how to pay.
@nancywisser your mega-instance is managed by @Gargron. See his Patreon.
Hein Ragas@ntnsndr It depends. I pay for managed hosting for my own instance, and nine of my friends get a free ride that way.
@heinragas that is super nice of you. Hope none of them get super famous and start hogging resources;) But in the meantime what you're doing is a far, far cry from what I am warning about. That is actual friendship in action.
@ntnsndr I think I'm safe on the fame issue. ;)
And two of 'my' users even covered two months of expenses for me, which they didn't have to, but it was gratefully received.
And yes, it's not what you meant, but I do think it's a good model: small groups of friends banding together. If all ten of them pitch in a euro per month, you already cover the costs.
And two of 'my' users even covered two months of expenses for me, which they didn't have to, but it was gratefully received.
And yes, it's not what you meant, but I do think it's a good model: small groups of friends banding together. If all ten of them pitch in a euro per month, you already cover the costs.
Steven Bodzin@ntnsndr what do you estimate is a reasonable cost per user per year? If it's more than about USD 10, people in middle income countries are going to struggle to pay it. How do you suggest keeping things non-commercial for the majority of humanity?
Kee HinckleyWhich raises the question.
How do we build a social network that doesn’t exclude the majority of people in the world?
@nazgul @guacamayan That is the question. How do we do global justice when we aren't outsourcing it to extractive corporations? Now we are talking! This is why the fediverse is so great, because finally these questions are ours to explore and answer. And who is "we"? Who is not here but should be?
#Socialcoop starts at £1/month, with the option of not paying. We have thought about these questions, but we don't pretend to have resolved them.
I could imagine different answers...
@nazgul @guacamayan like, for instance:
* dues weighted according to local cost of living or median income, so wealthier-country people pay a subsidy
* local instances priced lower due to lower local labor and server costs
* instances attached to local utility infrastructure, like internet cooperatives or state power companies
* global universal basic income that levels access to purchasing power and redistributes wealth downward rather than upward
@nazgul @guacamayan global economic injustice is real, and it is unlikely the fediverse will solve it. But we need to design against that injustice. And, at last, we have a real opportunity to do that.
I would rather hold that challenge than cede it to Zuckerberg and Dorsey again.
Absolutely.
It’s certainly possible (in fact, likely) that someone will create an ad-supported instance. (I wonder how many instances it will block it in principal). But my hope is that civil societies and other non-profits will sponsor instances that are specifically aimed at marginalized communities. Which also means they’ll have the desire to provide the security and support required.
That’s a model of social media, and in fact app use in general, that would make for a much nicer future for the internet than the current dystopian model.
Kaker@ntnsndr I don't agree on the governance, would be killing the federative spirit of it to setup an all encompassing bureaucracy, each instance should govern itself. On the economic front yeah let's make it sustainable.
@Kaker I think you are misunderstanding me. Our instance is self-governed, and the whole point of this is to encourage self-governance among users of their instances.
@ntnsndr on a per instance level I don't see a problem. Will depend somewhat on the good will of the admin to enforce/respect it, but people will vote with their feet I guess.
John Scott
🦋 Ben West 🐒🌻
Scott NelsonIndeed. Are you interested in turning denizens.social into a cooperative?
I have no problem with handing control of it over to a democratically-controlled cooperative comprised of its members. In fact that would be an optimal outcome, imho.