Yeah… you know, I’ve seen this EEE thing so many times in the last couple of days that it’s starting to feel like astroturf.
Here’s a funny thing - I was actually on Voat when it came apart and I watched it happen, and what happened there is, I think, very much relevant.
It wasn’t always a toxic right-wing cesspool - it was actually quite a bit like this in the early days - just people posting.
But then there was this sudden push to get people all wound up about an external threat - in that case, Reddit “powermods,” and especially the SRS brigaders. The hue and cry was that they were going to destroy the free and open forum unless we did something about it.
Sort of like how Meta is going to destroy this free and open forum unless we do something about it.
But the thing is that the constant fanning of the flames just led to increasing paranoia and hysteria and infighting and harassment and brigading and general ugliness, and when the dust all settled, the toxic right-wing authoritarians had shouted down, alienated, stifled and ultimately driven away everyone else. All in the name of “protecting” the site.
Not saying that that will necessarily happen here (especially in that particular way, since if nothing else the tankies aren’t going to give in to the righties). Just saying that I’ve already seen a forum destroyed by an obsessive fear of some bogeyman, and I’d rather not see it again.
In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore. And started a long quest to create a messenger, starting with Hangout (which was followed by Allo, Duo. I lost count after that).
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
And it’s not an accident:
What Google did to XMPP was not new. In fact, in 1998, Microsoft engineer Vinod Vallopllil explicitly wrote a text titled “Blunting OSS attacks” where he suggested to “de-commoditize protocols & applications […]. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market.”
Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. The specifications of those extensions could be freely downloaded but required to accept a license which forbid you to implement those extensions. As soon as you clicked “OK”, you could not work on any open source version of Kerberos. The goal was explicitly to kill any competing networking project such as Samba.
This anecdote was told Glyn Moody in his book “Rebel Code” and demonstrates that killing open source and decentralised projects are really conscious objectives. It never happens randomly and is never caused by bad luck.
It’s not exactly the same, since yes - many of those most involved in the ugliness were the same toxic posters who had been ejected from Reddit. More notably, it was different in that it was a single, monolithic site rather than a federation of individual instances.
However, the broad dynamic of it all - the way in which the destruction played out - was, to ne, disturbingly similar to what’s happening here now.
It all started with posters banging the drums of fear, and specifically fear of some external actor that was going to move in to the site and destroy it. Exactly as is happening here. Then that drumbeat of fear started to alternate with the repeated refrain that “we” need to do something to protect the site from the threat. Exactly as is happening here.
The next step was to “do something.” Specifically, a group of people pushed for a broad community commitment to opposing the invader, then appointed themselves guardians of that commitment. They began harassing and brigading people and subs that they claimed to be agents of the threat, or simply were accused of being insufficiently committed to “protecting” the site. And it was all downhill from there - the site tore itself apart from the inside.
Obviously none of that has happened here. Yet.
And yes, I’m aware of that article. Really, at this point, it’s pretty much guaranteed that anyone who’s spent even a few minutes on the fediverse is aware of it. since every single discussion of this topic brings another 37 links to that same article.
It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.
And I find it a bit disconcerting that the focus seems to be on the threat the article outlines rather than the solution it prescribes:
Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values. By starting open, non-commercial and non-spied discussions. By acknowledging that the goal is not to win. Not to embrace. The goal is to stay a tool. A tool dedicated to offer a place of freedom for connected human beings. Something that no commercial entity will ever offer.
It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.
Astroturf is created by billionaires to make it seem like a bunch of ordinary people agree with them. A legit article about several actual instances of corporations killing FOSS does not become astroturf just because a lot of ordinary people found it useful enough to post and cite.
The solution offered is not entirely clear but I read it as “do not federate with huge corporations because they will bury you”.
Yeah… you know, I’ve seen this EEE thing so many times in the last couple of days that it’s starting to feel like astroturf.
Here’s a funny thing - I was actually on Voat when it came apart and I watched it happen, and what happened there is, I think, very much relevant.
It wasn’t always a toxic right-wing cesspool - it was actually quite a bit like this in the early days - just people posting.
But then there was this sudden push to get people all wound up about an external threat - in that case, Reddit “powermods,” and especially the SRS brigaders. The hue and cry was that they were going to destroy the free and open forum unless we did something about it.
Sort of like how Meta is going to destroy this free and open forum unless we do something about it.
But the thing is that the constant fanning of the flames just led to increasing paranoia and hysteria and infighting and harassment and brigading and general ugliness, and when the dust all settled, the toxic right-wing authoritarians had shouted down, alienated, stifled and ultimately driven away everyone else. All in the name of “protecting” the site.
Not saying that that will necessarily happen here (especially in that particular way, since if nothing else the tankies aren’t going to give in to the righties). Just saying that I’ve already seen a forum destroyed by an obsessive fear of some bogeyman, and I’d rather not see it again.
Voat died because it was landed with a big chunk of the toxicity ejected from reddit. This isn’t the same thing at all.
The risk to the Fediverse from huge commercial players is described well here: How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
And it’s not an accident:
It’s not exactly the same, since yes - many of those most involved in the ugliness were the same toxic posters who had been ejected from Reddit. More notably, it was different in that it was a single, monolithic site rather than a federation of individual instances.
However, the broad dynamic of it all - the way in which the destruction played out - was, to ne, disturbingly similar to what’s happening here now.
It all started with posters banging the drums of fear, and specifically fear of some external actor that was going to move in to the site and destroy it. Exactly as is happening here. Then that drumbeat of fear started to alternate with the repeated refrain that “we” need to do something to protect the site from the threat. Exactly as is happening here.
The next step was to “do something.” Specifically, a group of people pushed for a broad community commitment to opposing the invader, then appointed themselves guardians of that commitment. They began harassing and brigading people and subs that they claimed to be agents of the threat, or simply were accused of being insufficiently committed to “protecting” the site. And it was all downhill from there - the site tore itself apart from the inside.
Obviously none of that has happened here. Yet.
And yes, I’m aware of that article. Really, at this point, it’s pretty much guaranteed that anyone who’s spent even a few minutes on the fediverse is aware of it. since every single discussion of this topic brings another 37 links to that same article.
It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.
And I find it a bit disconcerting that the focus seems to be on the threat the article outlines rather than the solution it prescribes:
Astroturf is created by billionaires to make it seem like a bunch of ordinary people agree with them. A legit article about several actual instances of corporations killing FOSS does not become astroturf just because a lot of ordinary people found it useful enough to post and cite.
The solution offered is not entirely clear but I read it as “do not federate with huge corporations because they will bury you”.