Emelia 👸🏻Mar 10

So there's a tiny tiny percentage of people in my mentions right now that are accusing me of horrible things because they don't like Bluesky and I've taken money from them.

For these people, I'm not saying you have to like Bluesky's moderation practices or the decision they make for their own app, I would never say such.

These people fundamentally do not get standards, and especially web standards, and how they are made. So here's a small explanation for people.

In the standards community, there's practically a code that is we do not argue about our employers or financial supporters' corporate positions, we leave our companies at the door when we participate in writing open standards.

Sure, some of us my represent our given employers within the standards community (and there's a requirement to disclose affiliations), but there's also a bunch of us that operate entirely independently of any given company.

At the W3C, which is the home of the FedCM standard, they have what are known as Invited Experts, and the W3C enforces that they act independently and that they disclose any affiliation, especially financial.

I am an Invited Expert, that happened before Bluesky decided to fund my work. Bluesky, like them or not, are one of the few organizations that actually has the capital to fund standards work. Doing this work isn't cheap either! It's a tonne of work seeking consensus and reaching agreement to move things forwards.

Like, I'm current budgeting 30-50% of my productive time over the next year will be working on this standard.

When I first chatted with Bluesky, they were initially like "we want to do a three month freelance contract to implement FedCM for AT Protocol", and after some conversation, we settled on "no, this shouldn't be a contract but instead a grant, that allows you to be completely independent of bluesky and explicitly enables you to work across decentralized protocols, making FedCM better for everyone"

The grant is explicitly clear contractually that I am entirely independent from bluesky, like I could make a technical decision others at bluesky do not like (unlikely, but possible), and it would not affect the grant.

It explicitly requires me to work across protocols.

Show threadEmelia 👸🏻

Standards work is about coming together and working on reaching a shared consensus on a thing. We don't do corporate politics, or government politics, at standards meetings nor venues.

Sure, you can disagree on things outside of the standards world, but within, the only thing that matters is advancing the standards and building them right.

Like, when running the ActivityPub Trust and Safety taskforce, we had Meta employees show up to our meetings, and they were genuinely helpful (volunteering for instance to scribe the meeting, which is like one of the hardest jobs to fill at a standards meeting), and when they joined I had to repeat that golden rule of standards: we leave corporate politics and our company's at the door.

We did have one or two people mad that they were present, but luckily I didn't have to explicitly remind anyone of the W3C code of conduct which governs those meetings.

Standards work is truly a bit weird like that. It takes a lot of discipline to separate out those things severance style: an innie and an outie with regards to the standards work.

Finally, we live under capitalism, or at least the vast majority of us do (it's always interesting when someone from the CCP shows up at a standards meeting!), and living under capitalism means everything revolves around money.

W3C membership ain't cheap: membership dues start at like €2,000 and go up to like €60,000 or something.

As an Invited Expert, I'm allowed to participate without paying the W3C. However, I still need to be paid for my time, because time equals money under capitalism for 99% of us.

Bluesky stepping up to fund this work is a genuinely good thing, regardless of what you may think of bluesky as a company or social app.

There weren't really any other companies with an interest in decentralized social that could fund work at this scale. An NLNet grant probably wouldn't be workable for this, and operates at a much slower pace.

Anyway, hopefully that gives you a better idea of how standards are built and funded.

Mar 10 at 3:12amWeb
Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Mar 10
Here's these posts in blog article form: https://writings.thisismissem.social/how-standards-are-made/
How Standards Are Made

Recently I received a large grant from Bluesky Social PBC to fund my work on FedCM for decentralized web. So whilst the response has been overwhelmingly positive, there's currently a tiny tiny percentage of people in my mentions on the fediverse right now that are accusing me of horrible things

Writings of Emelia
Show threadebluMar 10
@thisismissem I just saw the replies and 😬. I don't even know how these people managed to connect bluesky with nazis, much less made it out like you were being sold into slavery. I swear a lot of people here think they know more about software development and ethics than they actually do
Show threadMirishuliMar 10
@thisismissem You trusted Meta to take accurate minutes? Dear God.
Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Mar 10

@MiriShuli they are collaboratively edited and yes, they did take accurate minutes for that meeting. During calls we usually have multiple people editing the notes, but the lead scribe is a hard role to fill, as it means not being as active in talking. Talking and typing what was said (listening actively), are two very different roles.

Within the standards community, we collaborate across companies, and if anyone misrepresents things we absolutely call it out and resolve it.

I also do an edit pass on all notes we publish to make sure my recollection is consistent (and ask others for clarification if the notes are unclear.

That's how standards work works.

Show threadMirishuliMar 10

@thisismissem From what I can tell the only standard Meta meets is one of Abuse and Exploitation.

I’m happy to know other people read and collaborated on the notes, but it seems very risky to let them frame how the discussions went. Trusting Meta, Google, Oracle et al is how we got here.

Collaboration with Nazi’s, and Zuck is a card carrying Nazi, isn’t that impressive.

Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Mar 10

@MiriShuli once again, in the standards community we leave our companies at the door. That's how it works.

There are countless standards you'd be using right now that were lead or contributed to by each of those companies

Show threadMirishuliMar 11

@thisismissem Emilia, would you be surprised if I said I don’t believe these people leave their company at the door?

I know you believe it. I know you’ve worked with the people for years. I understand there can be good people in an awful company. I simply do not believe any company leaves their financial interests at the door. Especially not those intent on a totalitarian/surveillance state.

I’m glad you are willing to be in the room with them.

Show threadStefan BohacekMar 10

@MiriShuli While I completely understand having reservations, it's important to remember that there are still amazing, dedicated people working at some of these companies, who put their jobs and livelihoods on the line for the things they believe in.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/18/1245654926/google-fires-28-workers-who-protested-selling-technology-to-israel

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

@thisismissem

Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Mar 10

@stefan @MiriShuli yeah, and it's because of stuff like that that we leave our companies at the door. Everyone speaks as an individual unless they say "I'm speaking on behalf of my organisation, this is what we're doing"; without that, standards simply wouldn't happen.

Like, pick a few random W3C or IETF documents and have a look at the names involved, you might find it surprising.

Show threadMirishuliMar 11
@stefan @thisismissem And what they believe in is a surveillance nightmare state, intent on controlling my life and the lives of my children.
Show threadHrefna (DHC)Mar 10

@thisismissem

It's also just how… meetings work.

Like the secretary is one of the hardest roles to fill. Under Roberts (and a lot of other systems) you review and vote to ratify the minutes, but even where you don't do that: multiple eyes are on minutes, taking them accurately and having a single manager is a godsend, and if you don't have accurate minutes it tends to _get noticed_.

@MiriShuli