Last night I watched a video of @benpate's talk from #FediCon last year;
https://peertube.iridescent.nz/w/sW6qcdP4ogG5DXW1RUzyo3
What a ride! I found myself vigorously agreeing with most of it. But there were other parts where I was divided against myself. One part still agreeing. another part nervous, that if we go down the road of scaling, monetisation and professionalisation, we risk repeating the mistakes of the original web, and end up right back where we started in another 20 years.
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Ben identified this risk in the talk, so I don't want to give the impression it's something they're not aware of. What I'm trying to describe here is the weird feeling of double consciousness, where Ben pitched things that I've advocated for myself, and I was able to respond to them as if I was hearing them for the first time. Understanding some of the objections I've encountered from the inside, for a change.
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I've posted here at least a couple of times about the difference between "social networks" (many-to-many, relationship-based), and "social media" (one-to-many, content-based). I said that the fediverse can accommodate both, but they come with very different design and deployment considerations.
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I've noticed that mainstream use of "social media" is mostly following Jonathan Haidt's usage to describe only the mostly parasocial DataFarming platforms;
So in response, I'll reframe the above as 2 kinds of social networks;
* social communication networks: many-to-many, relationship-based, ephemeral, eg Mastodon, Friendica, Misskey, GoToSocial
* social publishing networks: one-to-many, content-based, persistent, eg PeerTube, FunkWhale, WriteFreely, BandWagon
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@strypey I agree. And there are more categories one can make, some of which I'm considering for Social experience design, and haven't really given a name yet in SX concept design.
On SocialHub I just posted about Personal social networking, which is a design approach SX uses, to make perspective and mindset shifts, between sociosphere / technosphere, when modeling
Your "social communication networks" allow new and interesting ways to design for inclusion and diversity. I just described on Codeberg in a FEP issue as those networks having..
> Social dynamics that forge cohesive 'concentric circles and bubbles' based on Trust, and a trust-first culture that attracts good behavior, and repels the bad actor from the benefit of participation.
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/pulls/336#issuecomment-13141878
Social coding commons follows for Social experience design (SX) the notion of a concept called “Personal social networking”. Which entails adopting a SX perspective for designing social web solutions. The approach first considers the so-called sociosphere, i.e. the purely social reality one experiences both offline and online, and then reasons from there to the desired social dynamics to project onto the technology layers, i.e. to the technosphere. Deliberately making these perspective and mind...
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@smallcircles
> there are more categories one can make
Oh for sure, each of those 2 broad categories can be subdivided into loads of subcategories. For example, social communication can be broken into;
* personal: replacing the original purpose of FarceBook
* community: replacing MeetUp, or the original uses of Ning
* professional: replacing LockedIn
Each of these can be sliced a few different ways, by profession, by features, etc.
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Eg professional communication includes slices like;
* freelancers: replacing MTurk, Upwork, Fiverr, gun.io, etc
* academics: replacing ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc
* Software developers: replacing the social aspects of GritHub, dev use of Miscord, etc
Yes, great categorization. But I also meant adjacent category to your top-level division, like service exchange networks, for instance, which offers yet a different form of engagement.
@smallcircles
> I also meant adjacent category to your top-level division, like service exchange networks
I'm guessing you mean things like;
* complementary currency exchanges: timebanks, LETS/ green dollars, etc
* hospitality sites: BeWelcome, WarmShowers
* dating sites: replacing Tinder, Bumble, etc
To me these all come under social communication networks.
We may need to agree to disagree on this, but let's see if we can disagree in a way that produces more light than heat : )
With social experience design I define social networking as "any direct human interaction between people", so that is very broad. A package delivery is not a form of communication (unless against a very generic definition of the word).
Btw, with Protosocial AP extension I'm ideating on, the network is inherently service-oriented, and everything is based on service development, delivery, and exchange, including Communication services and Delivery services. Services then becomes a kind of top-level concept. Services help fulfil the stated Needs of Stakeholders in a SX solution.
https://discuss.coding.social/t/protosocial-activitypub-protocol/665
Protosocial ActivityPub v1.0.0 Pro-social protocol suite for the social web, based on ActivityPub Protosocial ActivityPub protocol is an extension of W3C ActivityPub that focuses on ease of use for the development of fediverse solutions and services. Together with comprehensive guidance and design tools it provides solution developers simple ways to model rich and interactive social web experiences. 💬 Come to our Common social groundwork chatroom if you are interested...
@smallcircles
> A package delivery is not a form of communication
You mean a physical package, like a courier delivery? If it's a letter, it's definitely a form of communication. If it's a product that's been ordered (say a music album on physical media), we could file that under social publishing. But once we move onto offline interactions like package delivery I'm not sure we're really talking about the social web, or social software of any kind. That's more the domain of logistics software.
Yea, it may not be the best example, as indeed you might see the interaction with an automated online webshop, the basket checkout, and the order receipt a communication. But you don't say that the postman 'communicated' a package to you door.
It doesn't really matter. There are countless taxonomies one can make to abstract our real world, and they are chosen for their purpose in particular contexts. You can also say that all bits on the wire constitute communication, then there's no publishing. The taxonomy that is the preferred one, you choose. I need more semantic meaning and categorization.
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@smallcircles
> you might see the interaction with an automated online webshop, the basket checkout, and the order receipt a communication
> You can also say that all bits on the wire constitute communication, then there's no publishing
If you try to apply a taxonomy intended for social software to other domains, it's hardly surprising that it doesn't really make sense. As the old saying goes, the theory that explains everything explains nothing.
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I find the communication/ publishing binary helpful, for reasons illustrated by the thread the post you replied to was part of. Maybe give the whole thing a read so you've got the full context?
I'm open to the possibility there may be a third category of social software that is neither. But I can't yet think of a category of social software that doesn't fit neatly into one or the other.
What I am trying to say, everyone chooses the abstractions that are a best fit for their case. No one is right or wrong, and there is no "agree to disagree". It is "whatever works for you". I simply have need for different categorization than you. But it is good to hear about how other people categorize, to reflect on and learn from that.
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@smallcircles
> everyone chooses the abstractions that are a best fit for their case
Agreed. Well, ideally we do. Or we don't and later we wish we had ; )
> No one is right or wrong
All models are wrong, but some models are useful. While others are either too abstract, self-contradictory, or otherwise unhelpful.
> good to hear about how other people categorize, to reflect on and learn from that
Couldn't agree more.
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@smallcircles
> there is no "agree to disagree"
Seems to me that whenever 2 people disagree, whether about objective facts or subjective interpretations, there's always the option to agree to disagree. So we'll need to agree to disagree on that : )
Strypey
🫧 socialcoding..