cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24598576

The state of the fedi superficially parallels what Eric S. Raymond articulated in the 1990s on software construction. There are two models for digital community building within the fediverse. The intent was a decentralised bazaar whereby power is well dispersed, with no single entity excessively wielding disproportionate power. Activitypub was designed to enable the bazaar model to exist, but it neglects to curtail the antithetical model that anarchy-minded folks want to escape: the cathedral.

The hope and expectation was simply that builders of giant monolithic cathedrals would have no interest in the fedi; that they would want their empire to take the conventional path of walling themselves off. Fedi founders did not envision ambitions for power would emerge within the fedi. Who would have predicted that Facebook would decide to compromise its garden walls in exchange for influence over a quite small population? Or that Cloudflare’s centralized walled garden would be exploited to supercharge disproportionate growth by node operators intent on using the network effect to concentrate power? These kinds of technofeudal actors have traditionally vied for absolute power without attempting to cannabalise and occupy a fair structure to then coexist with.

Fedi founders thought the federate/defederate option would sufficiently control for actors who would work against the vision of the bazaar. This blunt tool relies heavily on the demographic of relative pseudo anarchists being larger than it is.

I think it was Kensanata (Alex Schröder) who notably stressed what I regard as a true dichotomy, the sentiment of which was something to the effect of:

you can simply go where the people are, or you can go where the platform and tech is well-designed.¹

The former are utilitarians and the latter are deontologists who find other people (though far fewer) that share the same understanding and appreciation of structures that feature resistance to tyranny. The separation is comparable to anarchists (at heart) seeking out a small freedom-rich niche away from the ivory tower cathedral.

The bazaar (decentralised) segment of the fedi comes at the cost of utility, as principles of digital ethics trump the instant gratification of a large audience. The sacrifice is not in vain. It’s made with an expectation that wisdom will spread and sustain. Though it seems clear that the cathedral will always exist and perhaps always enjoy dominance of the majority who serve it (are pawned by it).

There is a noteworthy contrast from Raymond’s C&B essay. Raymond likens the bazaar to “selfish agents” attributed to “utilitarian” Linux hackers under the idea that Linus harnesses their egos collectively (“egoboo”). Whereas in the fediverse of community builders, it is the selfish agents unwilling to compromise time and convenience who fill the cathedrals, baited by heavily populated communities.

Raves and Burning Man started off small and great; rich in culture, before rapid growth diluted the subculture and commercialisation did what it does. The natural response is to “take it underground” to try to restore the original greatness.

The fedi has passed that inflection point. We have LW serfs popping into */c/privacy communities to heckle whoever they perceive as “paranoid”, or worse, deliver a lecture on privacy (from Cloudflare). There is a profound and somewhat ironic number of CF cathedral folks making way into digital rights types of communities, not seeing the starkness of which would be comparable to Donald Trump appearing at a reggae festival, or an AOL user in the 1990s stepping into an engineering usenet newsgroup.

So here’s a fun search result:

🌩 lemmy.world🌩|decentralization 🌩 kbin.earth🌩|decentralize ⚠lemmy.ml/c/decentralized

There are just 3 communities specifically for decentralisation chatter and they are all on centralised hosts. It’s actually useful that they exist in those places from an outreach standpoint. But it’s likely being overly generous to assume they exist for outreach to those who need to be reached.

Anyway, going forward we need tools and datasets with metrics. The metrics currently serve the utilitarian who simply looks for the most exposure of their content without regard to the ethics underpinning decentralisation. Metrics that serve the bazaar would have to measure degree of power centralisation.

¹ paraphrased - not an exact quote