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The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
(privacy.thenexus.today)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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It’s fine if single instances do consent-based federation that prioritize safety over openess, but why should it become the default for all instances? It will result in instance protectionism and an overall decline in discussion quality. Making it opt-in means people will connect less likely with folks from other instances, meaning people will mainly stay on their instances, meaning it supports tribalism in the Fediverse. More safety usually comes at a cost, too. In this case: less interaction with other instances.
But if you federate with instances that you trust good enough in the first place, constent-based federation is not necessary imo.
No wait, I was wrong Its not necessarily instance protectionism. For especially vulnarable groups consens-oriented federation might make sense.
The question is whether this is the desired state for all instances and I would disagree here. I think this falls under a bigger societal debate: should the fediverse become a place were all potentials of harm are completely erased? In other words: should the Fediverse become a safer space?
First of all, minorities should be protected as by the laws of many countries. However, what harm looks like beyond that should be dynamically defined in social debate. Now you want to skip that and erase all potential out of the stand.
This ignores that these societal norms change over time and that a certain risk is part of the human condition. There always needs to be a balance between freedom and protection for the whole society. But as said before, safer place are also needed, but they dont work as blueprint for the whole society.
Early christian groups can also considered safe places. You are aligned here with what to me are totalitarian argumentation patterns that thrive for a garden eden that will never exist.
That doesnt mean that we shouldnt thrive for certain ideals but not for things that cannot and shouldnt be expected of people, like giving up their free will for complete safety.
I agree that different instances will make different choices based on their priorities, but follow this through. Take trans people as an example of an especially vulnerable group that consent-oriented federation makes sense for -- so trans people will be be less safe on instances that don't take a consent-based approach. What instances do you think trans people will prefer to be on?
And there must be something I'm issing, because I don't understand how you got from consent-based federation to "giving up free will". Consent is literally about having the ability to choose, so exercising your free will.
Well, there are always people who want a more safe space and in turn leave (or threaten to leave) a certain environment. Whether the environment then choses to make itself more safe or to stay the same is a careful consideration. Making it more safe might make other users leave, but also attract others to the instance.
In the same way, there will be people calling for more openess/"free speech", prompting the same consideration.
For me, the basis of this is given by law; everything else needs to be negotiated dynamically, how open/save an instance is might change over time depending on its users.
Now, in this debate, identity politics tends to favour more safety by default, which might make sense at first, but if you follow it through consistent, you end up in something like garden eden. Because there, everything is safe, you don't need to fear any threat whatsoever, but you are also not really doing anything. If you default to "safe is always better" you end up in a totalitarian system.
So safety/openness is in general a worth consideration and it should be dynamically debated. Maybe in a few years, consent-based federation proves itself to be a best-practice to make a place safer for trans people and becomes a standard; then we all adapt it happily - that would be fine with me; but if so, I see it at the end of a process.
Yep, I agree that instances and social networks that focus more on safety will attract some people but others will leave. Today, there are a whole bunch of social networks that don't focus on safety, and very few that do. So there are a lot of options for people who prefer "openness" and very few for people who prefer safety. Strategically, that's an opportunity for the free fediverses today.
Yeah, probably. Question is how big it will become. Let's see.
In the short term, they'll be much smaller than Meta's fediverse (because mastodon.social and most of the big instances are federating with Threads) and of course much smaller than Threads. Longer term, we'll see, but I wouldn't expect them to be as big as Threads for a long time if ever.
Ok, I may have blown the discussion a bit out of proposition earlier. It's just that I thought you meant basically the whole Fediverse. The name "Free Fediverse" is a bit misleading imo.
Yeah, one of my takeaways is that I should have been clearer that this isn't a proposal for the whole fediverse. And not sure what the best term to use is, "free fediverses" is what I'm going with for now (based on the freefediverse.org).
Free fediverse(s) makes sense, building on top of that already floating term sounds sensible
How about this as a revised first sentence to clarify the focus is on an alternative (not the whole fediverse)?
As I discuss in the first post in the series, the "free fediverses" are regions of the fediverse that reject Meta and surveillance capitalism, and these strategies position the free fediverses as an alternative to Threads and "Meta's fediverses".
Sounds fine at first glance
Thanks! I included a slightly-modified version of it in https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7194307 , we'll see how it goes.