Bluesky thinking of a “governance” body of the fedivers

“A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory”

What exists already?

The is a pretty sorted #ActivityPub crew, then some organizing sites/forums, the yearly conference. MOST importantly some “kings”, “princes” a bit of a tech/influencer aristocracy who currently hold much of the “power”.

Where do we go from here?

On online “governing body” to be a VOICE for the #Fediverse – all done in social code:

For background on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

We have a yearly voting/consensus (online) body made up of “stakeholders”

Who are the bulk stakeholders-representatives:

  • One voice one instance – if you run an instance you get a vote – put the URL in as long as it’s online last year your vote counts.
  • The is then an equal/matching number of votes based on a “user” lottery – have to opt in by adding your account name. This is refreshed every year.

Then we have other more “affiliate” stakeholders that have to be “ratified” through the body

  • Codebases – could be factored by installed based on instance registered above. Over a basic threshold and the body agrees.
  • fedivers events – any group that regularly runs events gets a “stakeholder” vote based on them doing it last year. If the body agrees to this.
  • fedivers support organizations get a vote if the body agrees to this.
  • activitypub standards crew – get votes through all the rest and can have a vote as a  founding fedivers org.

Groups and individuals could get more than one vote – which is fine.

This would give us

A representative “stakeholder” body that could accept proposals and make decisions.

How would the body work?

#techshit all ready has way to much LOOK at ME look AT me. I don’t like competitive elections as the shit float to the top

Let’s do a LOTTERY- from these “voters” that makes up the body a lottery decides 3-5 as #spokespeople then leave um to get on with it. There is a tick box to opt out of being in the “spokespeople” lottery, so you have too wont to do the extra work if you don’t want to, its opt out rather than opt in – this is important.

They have the power to speak for the body and thus the #fedivers and can make policy decisions on consensus minus one process. Or put policy directly to the body to be voted (majority vote) on by the stakeholders.  (of course they would be subject to recall/impeachment if they fuckup too much, say proposal and 2/3 vote of the body)

Levels of “voice” anyone with an #activertpub account can put in a public proposal to be voted on by the stakeholders – if it jumps that hoop then it can be edited/pushed by an open group of stakeholders though a semiformal online process to jump to an agreement. Agreements are acted on by the “spokespeople” up to them to take these ideas forward? If non are interested better luck next year with your agender and new spokes people.

Q. what dose digital online Community “democracy” look like

If it does not have elephants running around throwing paper planes it’s likely the wrong structure.

NOTE: of course these alt-ideas have been tried in the offline world, and they generally DO NOT work. But this is no reason to go down the dead end of “liberal” foundation governances that also does not work. People are trying these ideas in Citizens’ assemblies so no issue not to try them online.

Lotteries take the “power” out of power politics… likely worth an experiment.

Compost and shovels are needed.

The power of the voice

  1. User proposals are excepted by anyone who has an activertypub account- just an idea – this can become a group.
  2. User groups – a part of the process, these come from ideas getting a level of support of the stakeholders.
  3. User agreements come out of groups these can then be enacted by the spokes people if they are interested.
  4. Spokes people can start groups to reach agreements and can enact agreements.
  5. Consensus of spokes people (-1) makes agreements body wide.

What are the risks:

* need basic security and checks – to see if an instance still exists and is real. If a member account is actively posting or a pulpit – all of this can be done with flagging some of them by code some by people – flags stuff goes to the “security group”

* Groups can be captured by agenders – being open to all stakeholder members mediates this – we solve swamping by having a dynamic short non-voting time based on the number of new members in the group.

* Bad group of spokes people, it’s a lottery, it’s up to the groups to influence and as a last resort “impeach” if one goes a new one is chosen by lottery.

* The actual number of spokes people are dynamic depending on the number of stakeholders but between 3-5 is likely a good number.

UPDATE

  • The body is made up of stakeholder one for each instance – you wont a voice you run an instance and register it. This is clearly the voice of the #Fediverse as they are the people running it.
  • This is then balanced dynamically by the same number of “users” who are interested in the process, they are chosen by lottery from the registered accounts. Your choice to register or not your account as a possable stakeholder.

On registration the is a box you can untick if you do NOT do this then you are in the lottery to get “governing positions” Sortition – Wikipedia for a background on why this path.

Only people who want to be part of the governing body AND play an active role are enrolled in the lottery.

You second point “common voice” comes from the working groups, agen are made up of ONLY people who are interested in playing a role.

“serving the humans trying to communicate.” we get out of the way and let the humans work it out – we provide structer for the groups, we don’t define the groups.

SocialHub though an interesting tool has strong tech aristocracy which is not surprising as this is how almost all open source project run – the Fediverse is something different which is why we do so badly at governance. Let’s continue to use the SocialHub for #ActivityPub organizing and possibly governance though it has no tools that I have found for the governance.

The money is a subject up for discusern, am just using https://opencollective.com as example.

Help would be needed to do the proposal and #UX

UPDATE

The work flow would be:

Sign up for the site, then don’t untick the box for “do work” if you become a “stakeholder” every time a position opens the lottery picks a stakeholder to fill it if it is you and you would like to do the job – get to it. If you do not wont the job then resign and the lottery will pick a new person.

If you are not picked by the lottery for a job opening the is still a meany things you can do as a stakeholder in the groups. If you are not picked as a stakeholder you can still put ideas for the stakeholders to make into group decisions.

The outcome is something much more representative of the #Fediverse than we can currently think about let alone implement.

The is #nothingnew in this idea or implementation, some examples from Wikipedia

Examples

  • Law court juries are formed through sortition in some countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom.
  • Citizens’ assemblies have been used to provide input to policy makers. In 2004, a randomly selected group of citizens in British Columbia convened to propose a new electoral system. This Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform was repeated three years later in Ontario’s citizens’ assembly. However, neither assembly’s recommendations reached the required thresholds for implementation in subsequent referendums.
  • MASS LBP, a Canadian company inspired by the work of the Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform, has pioneered the use of Citizens’ Reference Panels for addressing a range of policy issues for public sector clients. The Reference Panels use civic lotteries, a modern form of sortition, to randomly select citizen-representatives from the general public.
  • Democracy In Practice, an international organization dedicated to democratic innovation, experimentation and capacity-building, has implemented sortition in schools in Bolivia, replacing student government elections with lotteries.[23]
  • Danish Consensus conferences give ordinary citizens a chance to make their voices heard in debates on public policy. The selection of citizens is not perfectly random, but still aims to be representative.
  • The South Australian Constitutional Convention was a deliberative opinion poll created to consider changes to the state constitution.
  • Private organizations can also use sortition. For example, the Samaritan Ministries health plan sometimes uses a panel of 13 randomly selected members to resolve disputes, which sometimes leads to policy changes.[24]
  • The Amish use sortition applied to a slate of nominees when they select their community leaders. In their process, formal members of the community each register a single private nomination, and candidates with a minimum threshold of nominations then stand for the random selection that follows.[25]
  • Citizens’ Initiative Review at Healthy Democracy uses a sortition based panel of citizen voters to review and comment on ballot initiative measures in the United States. The selection process utilizes random and stratified sampling techniques to create a representative 24-person panel which deliberates in order to evaluate the measure in question.[26]
  • The environmental group Extinction Rebellion has as one of its goals the introduction of a Citizens’ assembly that is given legislative power to make decisions about climate and ecological justice.[1]
  • Following the 1978 Meghalaya Legislative Assembly election, due to disagreements amongst the parties of the governing coalition, the Chief Minister’s position was chosen by drawing lots.[27]

“blue sky thinking”

UPDATE

Some stats

population ~ 4.152.753 accounts

active users ~ 1.192.023people

servers > 6.828 instances

Let’s be optimistic and say half the instances signed up that would be over 3000 instances stakeholders and thus 3000 user stakeholders for a total of 6000 and a number from affiliate groups. This number is likely too much, so we can put a limit to 100 chosen by lottery from the stakeholders instances, this is then matched by 100 from the user stakeholders for 200 stakeholders + 5-10 affiliates it’s up to the admin group to choice the right number to build a working community, if you don’t have enough good workers open the pool up if the is to much dicushern close the pool down, try different approaches.

UPDATE

Looking at this in conversation it becomes clear it is a 3 way split of stakolder groups: instances/users/builders&supporters with the last group in big groups could be the size of the others so just to higlight they would be treted in exactly the same way if they are over the number of the body then they would be chosen by lottery just like the others.

External discuern

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/organizing-for-socialhub-community-empowerment/1529

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/what-would-a-fediverse-governance-body-look-like/1497/2

UPDATE

https://gnu.tools

Now that is serendipity timeing.

This looks like a tech/process based attempt at grassroots governance. Must say straight out, in my expirence, I have seen many process lead models like this, and they have NEVER worked.

Though it is always a good thing to try iteration. And good to contrast this to the humane/serendipity based aproch that we have been working on at the #omn

I like it.

As with most metaphors (and real life) the definition is not exact

* Fluffy – asking/pressuring for change though the system

* Spiky – fucking shit up to enact change and directly and sometime ethically using “violence” to property – not to people.

* Beyond spiky the is WAR where direct harm to people happens – that’s outside the metaphor.

It’s interesting to take a few moments to look at this more. #XR talks spiky by blocking bridges and occupying spaces, but they do it for a #fluffy agender of asking for change. As we are seeing now with their co-opting into “normal” this has limits on outcomes.

Where #climatecamp invaded and shut down the direct courses of #climatechaos with some limited property damage – though there were some in the movement that pushed for more property damage, was always “non-violent” to people. Though the police did regular violence to people in return, so was a one-sided agreement. This was lived “respect for diversity” and was affective in till the internal process ossified and #mainstreaming moved it to a more #XR agender where it promptly failed.

The #animalrights crew were #spiky doing damage to property, and some were not above doing damage to people. These guys were pretty intolerant but got stuff done and seceded in many of their objectives, though at heavy personal costs.

In the UK we have not had war in our movements since the Irish “troubles” though the has been way too much state violence around the world in our name.

Q. I remember when people were spiking trees to break chainsaws. Do you think the name came from that?

A. yes, the same movement. Spiky in both ways damage to the chainsaws and with possibility of hurting the users of the chainsaws this is meditated by clearly MARKING the area as spiked so sorted “diversity of strategy” #spiky in hand with #fluffy it works.

The problem is often from the dogmatic #fluffy crew collaborating with the police to stop this direct action. Due to the possibility of hurting the people with the chainsaws, this blocking effective action. Not respecting the diversity of strategy.

UPDATE

It’s interesting to look at this more as it’s an example of the success of the “Diversity of Strategises” and also their failures. Many spiky protesters see protecting nature from commercial logging as a war, with the possible injuries to the chainsaw works as exceptable to save nature. BUT in respect for the fluffy side of “Diversity of Strategises” they generally put up the notices about the spiking to stop the workers getting injured while destroying the trees. A good balance of spiky/fluffy, the fail is the liberal protesters then betraying them to the police as often happens which is a clear non respect for “Diversity of Strategises”. Possible social/ecological change is thus BLOCKED by this failing.

 

Doesn’t OMN need to fit into some economic relationships?

The big #fedivers is run in the voluntarist economic model of patron and donations to cover basic costs. The technical federation allows this to happen at a humane scale. This was how #indymedia was run for 10 years – not without stresses that we do need to mediate. at the #OMN we have seed funding for 3-4 years and looking for sustainability here.

We are building “grassroots” at #OMN the is a role for #mainstreaming journalism and media. Projects like @novaramedia etc. they can be funded in different ways. Diversity is always a good thing, its were real humane power lays.

What is the #OMN project for

The #OMN is about building #KISS bootem up trust based media networks for publishing and soughing content with enriched metadata flows. In the end you have a “stupidly simple semantic web of media object “cauldrons” and flows build up from a local level. What you/we do with this is up to the users/producers… this is held to radical politics by #PGA

Initial projects are media #indymediaback and archiving #makeinghistory with the resistances’ exhibition. There are likely lots of other things you can build as its just pipes and flows – the internet as a “open/trust” database of humane objects/people.

How this fits into traditional or Alt economics is not rarely up to us – but bounded by and #PGA so up for “connections” based on opendata flows – #RSS or #activertypub are good starts.

 

hashtag storys #4opens

Q. While I agree with everything you wrote in that post, I don’t get how that illustrates the geekproblem. Is the #geekproblem the same as the #encryptionists?

A. The #geekproblem is illustrated here http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2021/03/06/over-the-last-10-years-we-have-been-told-a-lie/

Q. In one post you wrote that the geek problem is replacing trust with control. That immediately communicated clearly to me.

A. The #geekproblem is a general issue of misunderstanding of “total control” and what it is to be human. The #encryptionists are an example of this, that have been dominate for the last 10 years, the solution to everything is “privacy” “lock down” isolated individualism, me only me “no such thing as society only individuals and their family’s”.

The hashtags have different meanings if you look at them from different directions – but always #KISS and radical at base. Metaphors, soft knowledge. The are no hard definitions – but add them together and they tell a story of “control”. The opening is that YOU have the opertinertly… maybe its a bit Qanion, first time I thought about that one 🙂

Q. I assume open data, which is good in some contexts but shades into surveillance in others.
Open processes? Which again I like in most of the contexts I work in,
What else?

A. The is a few pages http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/projects/4opens its a radical “social” definition of the open-source/free-software process. can be used to judge any tech/social project. It’s needed to lift the lid on what #dotcons and #NGO say and what they actually do, always different. If people make judgments it’s likely to put to one side 95% of the current tech crap and concentrate on real #openweb projects that get lost in the churning of #fahernista and #geekproblem agenders.

With #opendata currently we have a control issue. All the #dotcons data is open to corporations who pay and government agencies who spy, it’s just closed to us. What is the role of data in society is a complex issue that we do almost nothing to talk about in any real sense.

Social (data) ideas to think about:

What is a “free-market”

A. Ain’t no such thing and never has been nor will be

What is a command economy.

A. Any capitalist supply chain.

What are humane relationships.
A. longer conversation…

Q. But this is such a thing as a “free-market” in inverted commers 🙂 it’s the data we have on the things we “value” which we exchange for “data” that is created and guarded by our “states” with lots of guns and bombs.
A command economy is what the soviets tried and failed and china is trying to recreate with a state “manoalay” on data and metadata.
The “humane data” is the interesting one for and #OMN which are planting seeds for.

Over the last 10 years we have been told a lie

The is no security in CLOSED – The is security in OPEN/social

The is no security in individualism – this is only security in community.

The is no security in “trustless” – The is security is in social trust

Over the last 10 years we have been told a lie. A thought to set a spark – this is easy to see in tech – look at #opensource and think if there is any CLOSED in this?

Over the last 20 years there has been a battle between OPEN/CLOSED and over the last 10 years CLOSED has come to dominated with #dotcons and their shadow puppet the #encryptionists Both are CLOSED- both put on the cloth of OPEN and say the words, but words are wind, look at the ground we live in a closed world. Please do not add to this mess.

At the #OMN we have a number of #openweb tools for you to use

* A non filter bubble/not tracking search engine https://openworlds.info
* A radical (fluffy/spiky) offline/online TV project http://visionon.tv
* Social media, https://campaign.openworlds.info for fluffy and https://activism.openworlds.info for spiky.
* #indymediaback test servers https://indymedia.openworlds.info and https://indymedia.hs2rebellion.earth and https://roadstonowhere.openworlds.info for testing and use.
* A code hosting/organizing site https://unite.openworlds.info
* Funding/money https://opencollective.com/open-media-network
And we have chat/wikis, bots and other projects. The running cost of all This is currently just over £500 a year as we have upgraded the visionontv server to host lots more video.
 
Feel free to use/support the #openweb projects and get involved in running them, become a mod, its #DIY

Open/closed, hard/soft or trust/fear.

Metaphors are human, soft. Code is hard and machine. But something we often do not see is that machines are made/invented/imagined by soft humans, so the idea of hard logic is ALWAYS backed by soft. This is why not seeing the world with “ideology” is a blindness at the root of our current mess. That explains much of the “code” the #geekproblem shapes our digital world. We need to move past this mess to START to shovel compost and plant the seedlings of a humane world.

 

Looking to build a low power boat computer/electric network on my boat

Looking to build a low power boat computer/electric network on my boat
 
The whole setup has to work off 12v and use both 4g data SIM or Wi-Fi
 
Navigation computers with backup. Small PC with openCPN and LCD screen and external GPS aril
An android tablet with Navionics with built in GPS
 
A DIY AIS would be good
 
Wi-Fi hub and rooter with external 4G data Arial. Network attacked storage unit for backup.
 
Directional external Wi-Fi areal
 
Hidden GPS tracking device
 
lpo4 battery management with solar/charger data logging vie wire and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.
 
Sound system for living and driving with USB storage and Bluetooth
 
Wi-Fi/USB sonar with logging.
 
Waterproof external security camera 4K and internal IP security camera. These will be used for video blogging.
 
VHF radio with external aril.
 
——-
I already have most of these things as discreet tools the idea is to rebuild from scratch as a network using cheap off the shelves bits and open source as much as possible.

 

A link on the subject https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/#_not_so_good

Let’s talk about the journalism

How do we move the #indymediaback project forward.

let’s start with history. The editorial workflow of #OMN is based on #indymediaback which is based on basic grassroots journalism growing from radical anarchist traditions.

The newswire is made up of original content published to the site and aggregated flows from a trust network of sites built out of a community of interest/affinity groups.

Using the and we start the step away from “post truth” by grounding this flow in a community of action bounded by physical locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

The “news” value of “this happened” Who, What, When, Where, Why.

From this a feature flow is built by the core affinity group to show the storeys from different views as a “consensuses” centre column articles.

These articles are then aggregated to other subject/geographic instances newswires.

In this the small streams/flows build a strong river of “social truth” that feeds into seeding a more humane world.

The wider #OMN network, using the fresh newswire and aggregated features to build wider features – these “social truth” networks links the humane world from a grounded real grassroots action/communities.

We build society from the bootem up rather than the old top down of #traditionalmedia/governances.

This itself shifts and moves solutions by aggregation and drives social economics to humane agender. In the end we play/build a new more humane/ecological world.

To move this part of the project on:

We need “news” a flow of subject/geographic 5W newswire posts on the 3 test instances – then we need to cross-link these by turning the instance based flows into feature articles.

These are aggregated across to the other instances and pushed out to the #fedivers for comments and feedback which then flows back into the #indymediaback instances to the newswire. This new flow needs to be cross-linked into articles, all linking back to the source.

From this we can flesh out the training resources and start the outreach of the project properly, build the power of different voices.

 

The #hashtags tell a storie

Dot for profit for few con for the rest – took over the #openweb during the #dotcom era.

#stupidindividualism is our internal poison that we breed from the #deathcult

#failbook will/has failed us as individuals and as a society.

#openweb is a good view of what we had and what we won’t.

is a path out of the #geekproblem

The #geekproblem is a humane failure of trust and its replacement with control.

The #hashtags add up to tell a story and thus build a way out of this mess.

The #deathcult is the last 40 years of neo-liberalism.

Need to work in shovels, shit and compost to the story. Hashtags a tool for #openweb organizing ideas/stories/community’s. The is obviously a balance with self-expression. At the moment this “balance” is pure #deathcult being pushed by our shared #stupidindividualism

We have a #shoval, common storied #hashtags we have piles of #techshit to shovel for #compost to build up fertile soil for planting flower and vegetables to nourish our soles and actions.

Why talk in “soft” metaphors?

The issues are soft as are the explanations/metaphors. You can’t have a hard explanation of the social world without building it up from an ideological foundation. As most people are in denial of the possibility of different world views/ideologies this makes “hard” conversations a largely pointless way of communicating. People asking for them have not taken the first step so talking their hand to help them will soon lead you down a different/ideology path. As the project is about #KISS and focus this is something we have limited time/focus for.

 
If you can glimpse the world from different views/ideologies than the soft/metaphor will talk to you and the attraction for hard will be less strong. These people have a hope of building a different/ideology world/process so can help in real ways.
 
As we need to focus, it’s not an issue to talk to the first and more important to consolidate around the second… question is finding people that have not been “broken” by #mainstreaming agenders.

 

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia as a lot of the most shitty behaver was taken offline as a part of the ripping that tore the project apart. For the #OMN this is a problem that we strongly need to mediate when implementing “individualistic” rights/workflows. We need to keep metadata flows intact to build trust and history. This challenge raises questions on the balance between privacy and transparency.

The were internal and external forces… I tend to concentrate on the internal as it’s the area that we actually have power/responsibility to make work. The external is a harder task that we then have to fight to challenge/change.

A good (non-neutral) write up of the #death of #indymedia https://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2011/04/478397.html

The start of the end for #indymedia with the project splitting into open/closed and the growing intolerances on both sides https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391384.html

How do movement die. Some #indymedia crew trying to unblock the ossification and growing open/closed conflict https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/02/391385.html

We need to not repeat this mess for the #indymediaback project.

What should #indymediaback look like?

For some of my views from living/working through this mess

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2020/03/17/a-look-at-the-internal-mess-of-the-uk-indymedia-project/

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2013/03/28/a-brief-history-of-activism/