Jesse"Voting with your feet" is a backstop not a first resort. The first resort should be democratic decision making. We should not accept instances where the users don't collectively have ultimate authority over policy and defederation decisions.
As long as each instance is a (hopefully benevolent) dictatorship, you can't really say this isn't feudalism. As long as users are in charge, you can't really say it is. That's the difference.
That was an atrocious construction but you know what I mean.
We need to start another fedi pact for democratic governance. And a complimentary user pact not to join another instance that is not a signatory.
Kyle Thayer@misc do you know of any descriptions or guides or recommendations for community run instances?
(Also, I think individually run personal instances should be exempt)
@kylethayer The ones I know of are cosocial.ca and social.coop. My understanding is that hachyderm.io, while not fully user governed, takes care to be transparent with its rules and decision making process. I’m not aware of a guide, but I think that would be good. Certainly single user instances should be exempt - I’d even think very small ones that are effectively consensus driven. This are definitely standards that would need to evolve.
@misc Ok, this is a thread of my first pass of what a #FediGovernancePact might look like.
Anyone feel free to copy/change anything if you think there is something useful here. And if people like this (or something like it) let's try to figure out how to share and get more input (and community buy-in) on this:
#FediGovernancePact (post 1)
Goals:
- community governance of Fedi projects and instances
- make the Fediverse more welcoming
ophiocephalic 🐍@kylethayer @misc
This is interesting. We're thinking along similar lines over here. We think the best way to insure a democratic fediverse culture would be to instill an ethos which deliberately keeps instances small enough to scale democracy and human-centered community and moderation. Here's a post of mine from earlier today which sketches out some ideas:
ophiocephalic 🐍 (@[email protected])
A Free Fediverse beyond surveillance capitalism should prioritize deepening its commitment to decentralization by keeping the maximum user count of its instances small. This addresses practical needs. Smaller communities are easier to moderate, on a human scale which doesn't involve algorithms or invasive third-party data collection. Smaller communities disperse targets for threat models like spambots, and enhance network resilience. And smaller communities are better at scaling democracy, so that we can avoid being pulled back into the circumstance now plaguing the fediverse of mega-server admins unilaterally imposing their will on everyone else. However, keeping things small can result in problems of its own. Smaller communities means more people grappling with the complexities of trying to set up, administer, moderate, and - not to mention - *fund* operations. A system of mutual aid, beyond the current haphazard status quo, is required. As an approach to solving these problems, and to instilling a ethos of solidarity devoid of the for-profit "monetization" impulse, consider the concept of the fedifam. :fediverso: 👩👩👧 🧵 1/4 #FreeFediverse #FediPact #FediblockMeta #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Democracy #Decentralization #Prefiguration #Fedifam