RE: Reminder: Unsuitable language & Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct

Hi All,

I am going to step in for a second as one of the authors of the W3C’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Thanks, Heather for sending the reminder. I have not read through the entire email list, and I am not searching code violations.

One of the roles of the chair is setting the tone of the group. When things on a mailing list or repo seem to be getting heated, even if there is not one item that can be singled out, it is a good idea to send a reminder that we operate under a code that sets a tone of respect. Newer members might not be familiar with it. People who have been around for a while might want to review it.

A few points to consider:

  *   W3C is international. Use of a political term in the US might have a very different meaning to someone in another country.
  *   Jokes are not funny if they mock something personal. Please consider how you would feel if someone made a joke about your blue eyes, your height, your gender, your nationality, etc.
  *   Lastly, CEPC has a section called “Safety versus Comfort<https://www.w3.org/Consortium/cepc/#safety-versus-comfort>”. If someone feels discriminated against, their safety is prioritized over the comfort of the person who is alleged to have discriminated against them. This might seem mild in the case of off-putting terms, but we take it very seriously. Please understand that there are people who deal with “slightly offensive” terminology daily, and it gets old fast. Heather does not owe the group any explanations. Please take it upon yourself to review your own words and consider what may have offended someone.

Tzviya

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Principal
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Joe Andrieu <joe@legreq.com>
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2022 7:35 AM
To: Credentials Community Group <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Reminder: Unsuitable language & Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct

⛔
This is an external email.
On Sat, Jan 29, 2022, at 10:11 AM, Heather Vescent wrote:
CCG Community,

There have been two recent instances of language in list messages that was unsuitable. I believe those using the inappropriate language meant well and did not fully think how their words would be perceived. Nonetheless, the language choice was unfortunate and disrespectful to some in our community.

All members of the CCG agree to abide by the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/cepc/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.w3.org/Consortium/cepc/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!scJRSNuIbs8lcbLlUZPPdqtMu3Bt2KRYMKxkxHt5m1ZfLL0T26l9TqLUfZh-I3L0iqX5ep8Jww$>.

CCG members come from all over the world and many different backgrounds. We all need to take that extra moment to think about how someone from a different background is going to interpret what we say.

Thank you,

-Heather Vescent
CCG Co-Chair

Heather, I couldn't agree more with your call to be respectful in this Community Group, however, if you were referring to my email, I disagree that my email was anything of the sort.

To that end, I'd appreciate it if either you and your co-chair, Mike Prorock, could cite the "offensive language" you reference and explain how that violates the CEPC. Whoever it is that you are calling out deserves an opportunity to clarify and defend whatever it was that caused the slight, and the community deserves an opportunity to see that debate to understand and make clear their own position on the matter should they care to. If *my* language was offensive enough to be called out, I deserve the respect of being informed what specific language is alleged to be so offensive. Often such notices are first done privately, but as you raised this as a public point, I request that you respond publicly so that whoever has caused offense may clear their name.

The passive-aggressive shaming without naming in your email, and the chiming in by your co-chair, is exactly the kind of abuse of power that *I* find both disrespectful and inappropriate by leadership in an open public forum. Please state the offense so that it can be discussed in a forthright and civil manner.

Reading between the lines, I can't help but interpret your message as in regards to my own email, to which two members of this community responded negatively (and three favorably). Since I feel personally targeted by your attack, I am responding directly. My apologies if you were referring to someone else's comments. Hopefully my comments are constructive in any case.

I don't know exactly which language you are referring to nor why, so I'll respond to the messages from individuals who were courteous enough to show me the respect of explaining exactly what in my message they disagreed with.

On Fri, Jan 28, 2022, at 2:21 AM, Nikos Fotiou wrote:
Stating that the conclusion of a blog post of a person, who leads the efforts for privacy in the internet, are equally dangerous to the opinions of a dictator that killed thousands in Europe, is offending, to say the least.

I'm sorry that the way I attempted to raise a serious issue offended you. If you or your parents or grandparents were affected by fascism in Europe, I can appreciate your reaction. However, as an American, I share with you my own frustration that my concerns were dismissed because of a reference to an historical situation that should, in fact, be seen as exceptionally relevant to our conversation and deserves to be brought into the discussion.

My own country is in the midst of an ongoing, violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow our government by force, whose leaders remain at large and many likely still hold office, potentially in multiple branches of our government, and whose leaders, foot soldiers, and lieutenants continue their campaigns of violence, disinformation, and propaganda. In the open. I'm not the first to point out that the dynamics occurring today in the United States bear a disturbing similarity to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. The arguments made during that rise are vitally relevant to what is happening today.

In case the numbers of deaths is relevant to your comment, I'll say this. I have little doubt that the actions of American fascists have already killed thousands of Americans, and we reach that threshold just from their continuing disinformation campaigns about Covid-19. The pandemic has claimed at least 882,000 lives in the United States alone and over 5.65 million worldwide. I don't blame the American fascist movement for all of these deaths--I don't buy into any conspiracy theories on that front--but they are certainly culpable for undermining a coherent collective response to the pandemic in pursuit of purely political advantage.

So, yes, I think the continued dismissal of the moral right to enable individuals to run their own servers, and therefore arguing that we should all just accept the power imbalance and let big tech run everything is at least as dangerous as Mussolini's advocacy of fascism based on an argument which reduces the individual to a morally irrelevant construct of the state. Perhaps I should have said "at least as erroneous". That would have been easier for many to hear, but personally, I do feel it is also as dangerous.

Is it as dangerous as actually killing people in concentration camps and on the battlefield? No. But I didn't say that. I was especially careful with my words to align the arguments of today with the arguments of yesterday. Moxie's arguments are, in my opinion, at least as dangerous as Mussolini's. The propaganda machines of the modern day depend heavily on centralized messaging infrastructure like Facebook and I see a direct link between an individual's effective inability to run their own social networking server and the exploitive and ultimately fatal impact of that propaganda. A Web3 approach to social networking may, in fact, be able to break that link.

You may or may not agree with my assessment of the situation or of the arguments, but for my concerns to be dismissed because you are offended by reference to arguments that justified violence done eighty+ years ago is inappropriate when we are seeing political violence and propaganda campaigns killing people today based on disturbingly similar arguments. And the unchecked centralization of the medium of those campaigns deserves to be called out.

Moreover, not everybody can run a full ethereum node. You need a good internet connection and an SSD disk just to keep up with the new transactions. It is nothing like running your own web server. So being part of web2 with your own server is much easier and affordable than participating in web3, which is kind of ironic.

Not everyone can run their own web server, either. Nor could they in 1995 when the Web broke through into mainstream consciousness. The fact is that, for billions of people, "running your own server" is completely impractical whether Web1, Web2, or Web3. Nor is ethereum the best proxy for what it means to run your own W3 server. IMO, there is far more interesting work going on with chains other than Ethereum, and for some platforms, like Cosmos, it is nearly as easy to set up your own chain and run your own node as it is to set up a webserver. And the tooling will only get better.

I was part of a team in 1994 that hacked server state onto a customized NCSA mosaic server to enable cookie-like features in support of a shopping cart for online sales of hot sauces. Before CGI. Before cookies. Before SSL. That wasn't easy. And most people didn't have the capability to do it. But it was possible. And we didn't need permission from AOL or CompuServe or anyone else to do so.

*That* is what I'm arguing for. That people *CAN* run their own servers and participate as equals in the next generation information architecture. That people AREN'T beholden to massive centralized players like Facebook and Twitter. That's the freedom we all deserve. The problem with Web3 isn't that some players have found ways to establish themselves at perceived centers of the revolution--that's inevitable. It's that respected thought leaders like Moxie don't realize how fundamentally important a structural shift Web3 is, whatever that term really means. To me it means systems that use cryptography to allow anyone to participate in new forms of social institutions and commerce without dependence on trusted third parties.

On Fri, Jan 28, 2022, at 3:58 AM, Philipp Schmidt wrote:
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 5:24 AM Nikos Fotiou <fotiou@aueb.gr<mailto:fotiou@aueb.gr>> wrote:
Hi,

Stating that the conclusion of a blog post of a person, who leads the efforts for privacy in the internet, are equally dangerous to the opinions of a dictator that killed thousands in Europe, is offending, to say the least.

I agree with this statement and hope the W3C remains a space for open, constructive, and civil engagement with technical standards.

I agree with your hope. Which is why I'm saddened by your reaction and disappointed by the chairs' attempt to shut down this thread on the grounds of it being disrespectful. I, in fact, went out of my way to clarify that I give Moxie the benefit of a doubt and to focus my post on their *argument* and not on their person.

I believe this community group is precisely where we need to have open, constructive, and civil engagements on technical standards, ESPECIALLY on how some ideas and architectures fundamentally support unfortunate power dynamics. Just as we must be aware of how our work affects those with disabilities or those in vulnerable groups. My exceptionally public position on many of these issues has always been for the protection of those with less privilege, especially those who can't navigate the complex risks of information services that can literally put them in harms way by divulging too much information to the wrong parties.

Ableism. Sexism. Racism. Capitalism. Fascism. If we can't talk about these issues here, where can we talk about their impact on the standards we are co-creating?

In my experience, labeling technical statements you disagree with “fascist”, makes it not possible to continue a constructive dialogue.

Yes, unfortunately, that's often true. However, I don't believe we can have a constructive dialog about the innate fascism in certain ideas without actually labelling those statements as such. How can we talk about the impact of ideology without first being able to distinguish between different kinds of ideas? Some ideas are capitalistic. Some are communist or socialist ideas. And some are fascist.

It is unfortunate that in the United States, and likely most of the Western world, fascism is so reviled that the term "fascist" has become a derogatory slur, which for decades could not be heard as a legitimate point of argument. When actual real fascism returned to political discourse, many took (and still take) the adjective as the equivalent of a personal attack and ignored (and continue to ignore) the actual statement about fascism re-emerging into public discourse without critical debate. "That's fascist!" was (and still is) interpreted purely as an attack, because we no longer had (and have) the ability to understand and discuss what fascism actually is. Perhaps you also hold this misinterpretation of my statements, that I was simply attacking Moxie because I disagree. Or perhaps you're just being pragmatic and pointing out the essence of the paragraph: people often can't handle discussions about fascist ideas. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt. I agree. It's a challenge to discuss these issues. That doesn't mean they aren't important to discuss.

This effect is referred to as the Overton window and although it is real, as technical architects of the next generation of the World Wide Web, we need to be able to discuss technology beyond the bounds of normal discourse. We must be able to move outside the Overton window, else we risk propagating those very ideas so many are uncomfortable discussing. The safety of real individuals outweighs the comfort of those of us in this conversation.

To clarify where I'm coming from, allow me to cite Benito Mussolini himself, from "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932). Quotes are in order from the Doctrine, to reflect the dialectic of his argument.

"...man is man only
by virtue of the spiritual process to which he
contributes as a member of the family, the social
group, the nation, and in function of history to which
all nations bring their contribution."

"Fascism is therefore opposed to all
individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth
century materialism;"

"Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life
stresses the importance of the State and accepts the
individual only in so far as his interests coincide
with those of the State,"

"Liberalism denied the State in the name
of the individual; Fascism reasserts
The rights of the State as expressing the real essence
of the individual."

"Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed
to the doctrines of liberalism,"

"If the 19th century was the century
of the individual (liberalism implies individualism)
we are free to believe that this is the
“collective” century, and therefore the century
of the State."

"The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception
of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims.
For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals
and groups relative. Individuals and groups are
admissible in so far as they come within the
State."

"The Fascist State organizes the nation,
but it leaves the individual adequate elbow
room. It has curtailed useless or
harmful liberties while preserving those which are
essential. In such matters the individual
cannot be the judge, but the State only."

When Moxie claims that the difficulty of running your own server as justification for dismissing the motivations of people who want to ensure that people CAN run their own servers, they are explicitly denying the moral authority of the individual in this digital world. He is arguing that we should curtail these "useless or harmful liberties" because in effect "the individual cannot be the judge, but the [group] only." However, if we, as individuals, can't run our own servers, we are forced to be subordinate to those organizations that can. Moxie argues that's the right way to approach digital infrastructure.

Thanks to the business models of Internet Service Providers, it is already untenable for most people to run their own servers in their homes. You have to pay extra if you want the privilege of incoming traffic, often much more if you want static IP addresses. With the advent of IPv6, this is no longer a technical problem. It is a purely capitalistic one. We have already ceded far too much to this denial of the right of individuals to present themselves on their own terms in the digital world. The W3C isn't the place to correct the capitalistic excesses of ISPs, but it is a place where we build specifications that become standards. As such, we should take into account the fundamental value in enabling individuals to chart their own course, to be masters of their own domain, and to run their own servers.

Moxie said "We should accept the premise that people will not run their own servers by designing systems that can distribute trust without having to distribute infrastructure."

I reject this premise.

What we should do is acknowledge the challenges facing people who want to run their own servers and make it easier to do so.

It is also hard for the underprivileged to participate as equals in a free society. Should we take that as justification for ignoring the needs for the underprivileged to participate in a free society? No. We should take that as motivation for making society more open and more accessible to those without privilege. Can we truly flatten social hierarchy? No. Can we strive to make it flatter and more egalitarian? Yes. Do we do that by denying the fundamental value of individual participation? No.

When we deny the moral authority of the individual at the architectural level, we engender runaway corruption by those parties who have the resources and wherewithal to host their own infrastructure and stand as digital sovereigns, for whom individuals are merely a means to an end.

THAT is what I mean when I say that Moxie's arguments are, in fact, fascist.

-j

--
Joe Andrieu, PMP                                                                              joe@legreq.com<mailto:joe@legreq.com>
LEGENDARY REQUIREMENTS                                                        +1(805)705-8651
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