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I read over the weekend the interview with Eugen Rochko, owner and CEO of (@Gargron), conducted by Nilay Patel (@nilaypatel) for the Verge's Decoder show.

It’s a great, geeky talk going into details of Mastodon’s operation as a service, a large chunk of the network, and a company.

What I really like is the frugal, sustainable approach to running an organization. It’s so different from the corporate giants, and it’s refreshing to think that you can sustain a relatively large social network not just with small resources, but also without a drive to grow big. With VC capital (which Rochko consistently rejects).

What worries me in turn is Rochko’s take on participatory governance of Mastodon. He does signal interest in tools that provide better feedback than current GitHub issues (which are apparently the sole “participatory” mechanism available right now.

But he also openly declares that “Benevolent Dictator for Life” is his preferred governance model. Which is worrying, because one person should not be making decisions about a network used by millions of people. And participatory governance should be more than collective petitions to a “benevolent dictator”.

I think that the mistake Rochko makes is thinking about Mastodon as just a piece of open source code that needs to be produced. But in fact the code is just a tool for a social network, that is shaped with software tools. Allowing quotes of posts is not a decision about code - it’s a decision about how millions will comunicate.

I wrote last year about the need for stronger participatory governance on the Fediverse. I hope that we will see some explorations that will boldly go beyond tested - but insufficient, or even flawed - approaches from .

theverge.com/23658648/mastodon

The Verge · Can Mastodon seize the moment from Twitter?By Nilay Patel
@Alek @yaso Still, I think we should be careful with where we aim at. Adding democratic governance models everywhere don't simply make systems more democratic. Democratic governance is an expensive endeavor and its cost-benefit can often be net-negative for democracy. In the Fediverse, a lot of effort goes into making sure that specific instances and their software are a choice, not a territory. This lowered dependency between users, user-admins, and user-developers guards against spontaneous monopoly, so it doesn't feel like a good target for normative democratic governance. The territory-like entity is the ActivityPub protocol, and that is not governed like Eugen's branch of the Mastodon code. If we say Mastodon is the territory to be fought for, we're shifting democratic effort and legitimacy to an entity of choice, and thus promoting system concentration. Which I fear will actually reduce democratic outcomes, as it would go against pluralism in the Fediverse. I think we'd do more good ensuring ActivityPub, and other protocols like Nomad, improve in democracy-oriented governance, democratic energy and people, so they can demand of implementations, and instances, stronger guarantees of user freedom (for which I chose to cite Nomad, which is more advanced on those issues than ActivityPub). And as such, the first thing anyone can do to meaningfully improve democracy in the Fediverse is to not use a major provider — and if you choose wisely you may even get quote-posts as a prize for your good deeds ;D
Mastodonyaso (@yaso@mastodon.social)6.24K Posts, 446 Following, 543 Followers · Working, dreaming Former fellow at @hks_digital★ affiliate to @BKCHarvard ★ Feminist and all that comes with it
Alek

@aleabdo @yaso thanks for these smart thoughts, and I really like the concept of “territories”. I agree that should also be a prime target, not just of governance, but of support, maintenance and funding.
I would also argue that the instance-level choice is limited by the space within which it takes place, and that is one of a monopolistic service on the Fediverse. Everyone likes to mention and but for now is dominated by communication dependent on Mastodon code. So maybe that’s another important avenue - ensuring plurality of the Fediverse. Which, I would argue, will not happen organically. In the interview, Rochko signals that he’s expecting further centralisation around mastodon.social - with key design decisions about the shape of a key mechanism - the server selection interface - being decided by him alone.
And on your last point, I agree, but would add that this is not just about using alternative providers, but also services. I should switch to . :) (But I don’t know how to do that!)