Washed into my timeline, in between:

"Traditional federation lacks modularity. Hosting, distribution, moderation, algorithms, and business logic are located in the hosting instance. This creates a weak separation of powers. Ideally, users reduce the power of a popular instance by devolving specific functions to other providers. We want to preserve rights in the default course of operation; separating powers helps achieve that."

https://www.pfrazee.com/blog/practical-decentralization - definitely worth reading. In virtually every paragraph of it.

#digital_technologies #social_networks #atproto #activitypub #federation

Remote conversations for the road:

"In this episode Mike Masnick gives us a history of the early internet — starting with what was called the Eternal September, when millions of AOL users flooded the scene, creating a messy, unpredictable, exciting ecosystem of open protocols and terrible UIs."

Enjoyed listening to this. I do have a mixed opinion on that protocols-over-platform point of view but there's a ot of stuff in here to wrap head around for a bit. Specifically, that kind of looking back at the early internet, at how things transformed from a per-se decentralized, fragmented environment to a set of services that were actually fun to use and made technology accessible to a whole wider load of human beings before eventually turning into shady, despicable structures one should rather avoid. Specifically, too, that looking back at how a certain group of people nowadays tends to ignore that part of the story and opts to limit things to the negative aspects that came along later. Specifically, too, that ATProto / Bluesky approach of trying to learn from both - decentralization as a crucial aspect for being in power, in control, and usability, accessibility for less tech-savvy people being an undisputable requirement to make technology that serves a particular purpose. Worth checking out.

https://www.themaybe.org/podcast/nodestar-the-eternal-september-w-mike-masnick 

#podcasts #social_networks #social_technology #mike_masnick #the_maybe

Listenings started: 

"[...]No, I'm so excited about it. It really, I'm really passionate about this. Because, I think some people because we chose to build on the AT protocol. Some people have asked me where it's like, oh, did you not like ActivityPub? And I'm like, no, no, no. Like, this is a yes and not an either or, right? I think of that. I don't know if you know that the Spider Man meme where there's like three spider mans and they're all pointing at each other. I'm like, we do not want to become that. We are all Spider Man, you know, and we have some bigger fish to fry. We are working together, and we are going to fry those fish well.[...]"

Not completely done listening to this one, and there are some assumptions I feel uneasy with (like, the in some of these networks reoccurring assumptions that users are basically just "content creators" aiming at in whichever way collecting and keeping followers to consume whatever they produce), but some other aspects definitely resonate, and this one about the need for collaboration rather than competition in the "open social web" space definitely standing out. Worth checking out.

https://dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/tori-white 

#podcast #social_networks #atproto