I read over the weekend the interview with Eugen Rochko, owner and CEO of #Mastodon (@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 #ActivityPub 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 #opensource.
https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter
@tarkowski think for a minute, it's *extremely unlikely* Rochko "is thinking about Mastodon as just a piece of open source code that needs to be produced" not realizing "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."
Please, advocate for and better explore participatory governance, but start from higher and factual ground.
@mlinksva maybe what I wrote was not clear - Yes, it’s clear that Rochko thinks about social consequences of such decisions, I’m not questioning that.
But he ultimately points to traditions in open source development. I feel really uneasy about a governance model that includes the word “dictator”.
If we all agree that decisions like those on Mastodon functionalities are about more than just the shape of code, then it should be obvious that some other type of governance is needed.
@tarkowski I feel really uneasy about analyzing a model based on a label -- unfortunate word choice from when cheeky wording was stupidly deemed internet cool. Replace with "designer" for cooler analysis. Then it should be obvious that "it should be obvious" needs fleshing out!
I idly wonder if Mastodon project (or mastodon.social, I thought interesting what Rochko said about default instance in interview) is most important participatory fediverse governance venue. Open question in my mind.
@tarkowski ps I looked up your piece from last year which does cover various layers https://techpolicy.press/priorities-to-make-the-fediverse-sustainable/ and is worth a re-read.
@tarkowski pps I see you covered similar material in your reply to another subthread https://101010.pl/@tarkowski/110136125167235083
I agree not knowing how to migrate between instances, particularly those running different software, is a big problem. Idle thought/wish, maybe @DTinitiative will intervene; probably few fediverse software designers wish to prevent migration, but making it work great is also work not at top of any of their priorities, probably.
@mlinksva @tarkowski Hey, who leaked you our product strategy... just kidding, but honestly, it's very much on our minds too.
@mlinksva @DTinitiative i would say this is not just about Mastodon instances, but also about other services on top of ActivityPub.
@tarkowski @DTinitiative absolutely, that's what I had in mind with "fediverse software designers" rather than say "maintainers of Mastodon and Mastodon forks", though I understand attraction of focusing on the latter.
@mlinksva i like your question, and it would be great to answer it in a more structured manner, looking also at protocol layer, instances, but also inter-instance governance (which is different from issues related to the code that is running the instances; and also not something that I have seen considered often). And Im open to the idea that we dont wan citizen / user committees popping up everywhere :)
@tarkowski and I'm definitely not against more participatory gov. Closely held decisionmaking (whether by a would-be benevolent designer, foundation, or [too numerous to really even consider] company) often rankles users and arguably results in worse software/community/other result. Quoting and Mastodon may be an example. Lots of arguable issues stemming from this with eg Mozilla, Wikimedia, GNOME. But novel governance also costly (including risky), so I don't advocate simply for more of it.
@tarkowski for the fediverse in particular I'm semi-convinced (semi- because I don't understand well enough & would love to be wrong) that the technical underpinnings are such a limiting factor that governance at whatever level (other than that which results in speeding up technical improvement, so cheering things like @spritelyinst) is not going to make a big difference toward ends such as more autonomy for people and communities globally.