Re: A native internet protocol for social media

On 2023-04-12 12:16, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, recently spoke about the need for
> an international native protocol for social media. He also announced
> his plans to start funding social protocols, beginning with a $1
> million annual donation to Signal. There is an ongoing discussion
> around reducing social media's dependence on the domain name system.
> While a federated approach is better than a centralized one, nomadic
> identity could provide even greater benefits. This can potentially be
> achieved by fixing the ActivityPub standard to allow inverse
> functional properties and also by addressing issues with the linked
> data vocabularies. It would be valuable to discuss these ideas and
> explore potential solutions further within the context of the
> community group.
> 
> https://habla.news/a/naddr1qqxnzd3cxyerxd3h8qerwwfcqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcpramhxue69uhkummnw3ez6un9d3shjtnwda4k7arpwfhjucm0d5hsygyzxs0cs2mw40xjhfl3a7g24ktpeur54u2mnm6y5z0e6250h7lx5gpsgqqqw4rsf67qa5


Here is what I have to say about Jack Dorsey's prose (I double-quote to 
avoid any confusion with what Melvin would have said earlier ;)

>> Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.

Here we agree. He should have thought about it earlier when he did not 
make Twitter resilient from the start by making it free software.

>> Only the original author may remove content they produce.

I'm not sure about this. Spammers are the tip of the iceberg of why. I 
think Dorsey takes a naive position claiming social media are not 
hostile. And authorship, really? Are we not on our way to remove this 
cult of personality?

>> Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

Like, what? An algorithm would be better at ethics than a human? I get 
the point that exposing humans to the kind of horror posted on "mass 
social media" could encourage looking the other way and letting the bots 
take the blow, but I really think that 'moderation' is a feature of the 
(human) collective, not to be automated.

 From there, I think the rest of the article becomes much less 
interesting. We all know the drill of the repentant entrepreneur who 
realize that their work was causing harm to society.

Now, if I consider some arguments with a kind eye...

>> It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that 
>> those tools are ultimately owned by the people.

Please, come and embrace free software.

>> I’m a strong believer that any content produced by someone for the 
>> internet should be permanent until the original author chooses to 
>> delete it. It should be always available and addressable. Content 
>> takedowns and suspensions should not be possible.

I'm not opposed to this in principle, if spammers are not "someone". For 
the technical part, ERIS, the Encoding for Robust Immutable Storage 
seems to me the best way to achieve this part of the deal.

But then...

>> The internet is trending towards a world were storage is “free” and 
>> infinite, which places all the actual value on how to discover and see 
>> content.

Well, the Internet is on a planet that does not trend towards infinite 
availability. I certainly hope we'll prioritize water for directly 
sustaining life and not making more chips.

>> Which brings me to the last principle: moderation. I don’t believe a 
>> centralized system can do content moderation globally.

Thank Dorsey for stating the obvious. Also for stating that no algorithm 
at all may be an option for moderation.

>> A “follow” action should always deliver every bit of content from the 
>> corresponding account

Well, that is: if this specific account allows that follower in the 
first place. I find it tricky that Dorsey is considering accounts to be 
public ones, or at least not mentioning that this is not the case.

>> The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol 
>> and discovery of content.

Here we go again. Dorsey is not unfamiliar to free software. Yet, he 
argues that the (about 15) existing free and open protocols for social 
media today are irrelevant to his declaration. He takes for granted that 
there should be one global public conversation --- no, thank you. 
Fragmentation of the public space is pretty much a feature, as it is one 
guarantee that no SPOF will appear.

Now,the rest I cannot see with a kind eye, because of the previous 
divergence...

>> Many of you won’t trust this solution just because it’s me stating it.

No, it does not matter who states it, it matter how it is stated, what 
it does say about your intentions. And your intentions are to make more 
business, more profit. It has nothing to do with the social, cooperative 
approach that make the core of social media based on free software, 
decentralized instances, and interoperable small islands in the Net. 
Jack Dorsey wants "phenomenal business" and he wants to tap into the 
"massive collection of conversation". This is hubris talking again.

>> I do believe absolute transparency builds trust.

I do believe selective opacity builds confidence. And I take the 
opportunity of Dorsey endorsing Wikileaks to quote Julian Assange: 
"Transparency for the state! Privacy for the rest of us!" --- I include 
corporations in the State, since at all levels, the lever of Growth is 
commanding spending public money to "create jobs" and so on (it took 
3000 years for the theory of price to come back to the original 
Aristotle version that power makes price, not the so-called 'law of 
offer and demand').

As far as I know, more knowledge does not always translate into more 
action. The Snowden Apocalypse, as I like to claim, was only the Snowden 
revelations, as the press got to call it, and many other massive leaks 
followed, and Dorsey's still wondering how to make money and claiming 
"there's nothing to hide... only a lot to learn from". One thing we 
could have learned from all those leaks is that things move slowly, way 
too slowly when the imbalance of power is threatening all life on Earth. 
Criminals remain in place, belligerent strategies remain the norm, 
"public" investment keeps engaging in warfare, while global private 
banking remains a stronghold of corruption and dangerous investment 
policies. More of the same.

>> This is a focused and urgent push for a foundational core technology 
>> standard to make social media a native part of the internet.

Oh, maybe something like GNUnet, RetroShare, Tor or I2P...

"to make social media a native part of the Internet" is such an empty 
phrase. What do you mean by it Jack Dorsey? I may give you the benefit 
of the doubt, remembering that R. Buckminster Fuller wrote that 
"humanity invented all the right technologies for all the wrong 
reasons."

==
hk

P.S.: congratulations for getting Dorsey support for Nostr, Melvin.

Received on Wednesday, 12 April 2023 11:42:59 UTC