Tag: activertypub

Really good questions, let’s try and address some issues.

The need for “governance” came out of a practical problem, the #activitypub community is made up of “cats” you know the slogan “herding cats” we were doing seminars outreach to powerful EU Eurocrats on why they should be interested in #activertypub and interesting they really are interested. We had no voice, only “cats” with everyone pushing their own tiny projects, it was a lot of work and stress, but we got the presentations done.

Back to the questions. A lot of the issues you are outlining are actually covered outside what is normally though of as process – It’s designed to be messy, it’s not designed to be tidy. Let’s illustrate this by answering each point.

Yep, they do, but they are subject to “recall”, and gain a lot from working with the “groups” the voices only get TOTAL power with consensus -1 which is a hard thing to acheave without the first working to building consensus through the body and groups and other voices.

You are right the is no sense checking in the formal sense, but remember the is no hard power, people only have to do things if they want to, its “governance” of a disorganization not a traditional power structer. if people get too “nutty” the is the power of “recall” if the body becomes to nutty the is the power of “dilution” more people can join the body.

The groups don’t have to talk to anyone, though will work better when they do, the voices can be involved or not worked better when they are – good to remember the “cats” at the beginning on this one.

The is no statute and no laws as this is “governance” with equation marks – there will be a growing body of mythos and traditions that people can call on when making decisions. There are no police or courts, nobody has to do anything – “cats”.

The body has negative power over the voices, it can recall them, which is the same as not signing off on their actions. The problem we are trying to solve is focus in a anarchistic/libertarian movement – how to talk to traditional burocraceys while still talking/being relevant to ourselves. The is a level of trust involved which is held in place by the #4opens

That’s a good question, that is not defined. It’s important to look at the codebase here, everything we talk about is the “default” the actual codebase can redefine just about every variable, it’s a set of tools for horazonatlish “governance” It’s up to the body to decide everything on how to use these tools if they change the default.

We have the traditional voting modals, we have a threshold etc.

The body can be restricted in size by fixing the first variable in this case it would be the instances/stakeholders or can be left to grow organically this is up to the body itself.

The group is made up of anybody in the body who needs to be a part of it – in this everything is a mirror of the same process #KISS You ask a hard question about “outside” experts/original submitter which i don’t have an easy solution to – so we would add it as an option that can be turned on or off.

They serve the same as the body, currently have two options 1 year, half every 6 month rolling to facilitate hand holding or easy/simple one year.

Due to the sortation and work load you will likely have a high turn over of new body members, the “recalling” will add to this as there are a lot of “nutters” sortation will bring up fresh people for the body to work :wink: this is a good thing as “trust” is built from this.

The voices are “trusted” to be a voice of the fedivers for their term, if they are not “trusted” they will be recalled to the body, and if they are nutters they will be recalled out of the body and a new member added ect.

Yep decisions can be made at different levels, on the image the thickness of the arrow coming out (with the blunt end) is the strength of that voice.

The group says it shite, and then move on, if the group keeps pushing shit then the voices ignore this group and in the end the body likely recalls it and replaces it with a new group – this is up to the body/voices.

Yes, sadly some good decisions that are not popular inside/outside the body/groups will be ignored we are still self “governing” cats the is no getting away from this.

Yep, based on the #4opens so everything is done with activertypub in open process, its a trust based network, if people won’t privacy then they can resign/not sign up from public governance and work through people who are happy to do open process.

Whistleblowering is a case for media not “governance” so is dealt with in this sister project Home – Open-Media-Network – Gitea: Open Media Network

Thank you for the interesting questions.

Some questions answered on fediverse “governance”

An important word that needs some thought is “permissionless”

The body is made up of three different, balanced groups:

  1. Stakeholders – the people who do the work, who run/mod the fediverse
  2. Users – the people who use the tools/services, who use the fediverse
  3. The Affiliate Stakeholders – the people who commit time to support the work of the fediverse

This is a very broken web we live in so let’s clarify issues. The names can change, they are placeholders

Anybody can become a stakeholder, in the case of the fediverse this is setting up and running an active instance – could use mastohost for the less technical to do this or a home hosted instance on a old laptop.

If’s simple if a user wont to become a stakeholder setup and mod an instance.

Users are self-explanatory, they buy in but don’t have time or focuses or inclination to run a part of the fedivers.

The Affiliate Stakeholders are a little more complex and are thus treated differently, it’s up to the body itself to decide if the play a active and useful role.

Nothing in this is top down, nothing is this elitist, nothing in this is discriminatory, nothing in this is undemocratic. Its #KISS and looks safe to the “normal world” while at the same time being native to the fediverse and its roots.

All the coding is and based on #activertypub

We need a grant to make this happen who is helping to write the grant app.

Undated text Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network

outreaching ActivityPub to the EU – draft

This was an interesting process playing a role to do the document – outreaching ActivityPub to the EU https://pad.public.cat/p/ngi0-ec-activitypub-liaison-presentation-2021-04-19#/13

Good to get an outcome from this:

  1. #activertypub as a cross-platform standard for #dotcons who operate in EU
  2. funding to further this – we would need democratic structures in the #fedivers style to make this real rather than a Eurocratic/power politics dead-end structures.
  3. Is the path with a good outcome – I have been involved in a number of groups/projects that have received Eurocratic money and the outcome has always been sub optional not to say a compleat disaster. I have seen no/little thinking to mediate this outcome.

So on balance good to do this BUT we do need not to go down unrealistic paths.

Am trying to shift the focus so that the story is more “interesting” and “representative” ActivityPub in the EU sense is a movement as much as a standard – standards by themselves have little/no value. If the story comes from the standard it is easy to ignore, and it will be ignored. A movement, with a bit of jingoism (the ActivityPub speck is maybe largely a European thing?) is an easer story to tell/hear.

Good points, the #fedivers while having a good community, as individuals we do tend to act like cats.

Prepping the presentation is going to be a “herding cats” so best to concentrate on #KISS and focus on the ordnance – what do they need to hear.

The second day we can reveal the all to human delight (and worry this brings)

securaty modeal for mastodon

securaty modeal for mastodon712×478 66 KB

 

Like the focus on European as this is true – the #Fediverse mirrors the federated European dream and clearly moves away the US tech imperialism (soft power) of the #dotcons something that is a #EU agender.

My thoughts/feelings are pragmatic on a good outcome.

We have a clash of languages and assumptions for example “surveillance capitalism” and the “social dilemma” both come from inside business and Silicon Valley thinking – so they are not good examples to use for an ActivtityPub presentation which itself is COUNTER Silicon Valley thinking and has its own way of expressing these issues. Just use natural descriptive language instead of quoting the terms.

I don’t have an issue with web01 and web02 yes they are not correct, but they do communicate.

 

The first question is why – It’s a good fit both strategically, in challenging the big US tech corporations dominance and tactically, in it being simple to implement and open to innovation as it is outside of anyone group control and agendas.

But we are unready as a community if a big institution like the EU takes up ActivityPub you can see this in what happened to RSS when it was taken up by the NYT.

#activertypub like #RSS and the #www came out of grassroots movements, they bring world views with them its WHY THEY WORK. Yes the world view are in part incompatible with #mainstreaming, so the is a strong burocratic desire to hide these world views and then push them out of view/existence.

Why work with big vertical organizations like the EU – The bridges, allow our careerists and wona get statues crew a way to cross over to the mainstream to feed. By doing this they strengthen the bridge by adding mainstream value to the bridges.

Then the refuges from the mainstream shitpile have an easy path to get to alternatives gardens when the stink becomes too much to live with.

The bridge shifts out “problems” and “brings” in resources, expirence and skills to build real alternatives.

We need bridges to the mainstream to build alternatives.

Though the process will likely not go well. When dealing with power politics/vertical orgs in the end the grassroots is ALWAYS shafted – it’s the normal outcome they can’t help this behaver. So we need to keep the bridges in place no matter how bad there behaver is, keep calm and carry on – their behaver is shit to shovel for compost to plant seeds to grow a better world.

Am thinking we need more structears “from chaos comes order” rather than “order over chaos” its trust or control.

In the internal process. It’s interesting that people coming into non #mainstreaming projects and spaces then push “common sense” #mainstreaming ways of working and outcomes can’t see that they are creating a problem.

You then inevitably get Clouds of smoke to cover up the mess. When it clears everyone is covered in soot. it’s not a good look for anyone.

We need ideas on how to mediate this without going down the #mainstreaming paths.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507/179

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/meeting-notes-for-prep-call-ec-webinar-19-april/1567

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/outreaching-activitypub-to-the-eu-are-we-ready/1589/11

 

The fedivers – We need to now not fight like we always do

Let’s look at tech politics for a moment, all technology is based on political and economic assumptions.

The fedivers is born outa “stupid” anarchism

There are a crew pushing for cooperative socialism

The is the #mainstreaming of common-sense capitalism

We have our athoratern side but it has little focus

All of human history has been mediated by struggle around these issues. And what is happening now has a long inhumane history, look back to the Spanish Civil War for an easy-to-understand example.

We keep making HORRIBLE mistakes.

The #fedivers in its decentralization is at its roots an anarchist project, yes we have our remnants of feudalism in ???? As king and a few growing “influencers” princes. What we do not currently have is strong socialist roots, just the crew and structures around #activertypub which touches on socialism and capitalism with a anarchist undercurrent.

We need to now not fight like we always do http://hamishcampbell.com/?s=process and look with open eyes at what to build from. The first #ESF article is a good example of the mess we could be heading for.

#indymediaback is a #openweb project of consensus based radical grassroots journalism

The #IMC project is an affinity group – so we are planing to work through consensus and diversity of strategy to move the project past where it was ripped apart by internal stresses after 10 years of running as a successfully worldwide radical grassroots media project.
To do this we have a #nothingnew policy beyond moving the project into modern standards #activertypub we need to reboot the project with work flows intact. Thus, we are working to this #UX https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/issues/26 and the original workflows and process.
Of course this can and will be updated as needed, but we have a “chicken and egg” issue that we need a working affinity group/s to reach consensus on where we go. The #indymediaback project is a way of bootstrapping this code/process in way.
To keep “diversity of strategy” in place we are using the #OMN framework.
Update

What would a non #mainstreaming movement look like.

* firstly it would have to get past meany #BLOCKS that are now common sense.
My action is to jump back in time before these blocks solidified and build up from there. Not a bad idea and will likely work if people embrace it.
* Non #mainstreaming tech is SOCIAL/community and needs to step away from the current geek agenders to have real power for social change.
#OMN project we use the to build from this.

That would be a battle worth of a saga

Challenges the #fedivers faces and were next.

The #twitter #bluesky thing comes from #blockchain crap – but don’t think it will end there – they will likely come up with a “new” standard that will #fashernista flash then promptly be forgotten.

Would be interesting if they tried to colonize #activertypub we would see a wholesale selling out balanced with a community fightback – think the selling out would win, but this would kill the value in the standard, so everyone would lose. If #bluesky and the #dotcons go for #activertypub and the community wins the fight for the standard in long bloody trench warfare vs the #fahernista sell outs funded by the #dotcons then you see the possibility of real social change.

That would be a battle worth of a saga and a story to tell your grandchildren siting in front of the camp fire.

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read…”

If you want to have a hope of having a good outcome with a CONTROL battle with the #dotcons you need to build structures that are attractive we have this with #activertypub AND they must have no hard structures that can be captured to take CONTROL, this is counterintuitive as people feel they need harder structures to stop capture. This feeling is obviously a trap and needs to be strongly mediated 🙂

I start outlining a workable path to think about with a good outcome in mind http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2021/03/13/bluesky-thinking-of-a-governance-body-of-the-fedivers/

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.

 

Rolling out the test #indymediaback projects

https://indymedia.hs2rebellion.earth

https://roadstonowhere.openworlds.info

https://indymedia.openworlds.info

We have a #activertypub codebase ready for testing, we have two campanes that asked for instances. We have stable hosting paid up for the next few years.

What we don’t have is any on the ground outreach/training/networking due the covide shutdown. We have limited tech dev needed to update the code from user feedback as a part of the roll out.

With this level of commitment we would be in danger of taking focus away from their current #dotcons outreach and taking up energy rather than helping with good outcomes for the campanes.

What do you think we should do next?

#indymediaback #OMN

Were next for #indymediaback

The #OMN project is more important for what it does not do. The is a core/ perfiery outlook, more than 99% of peoples input from mainstream tech culture is clearly coming from the perfery for the human centred workflow of the #OMN Our mission is to shift through the tech pile and find the 1% that is core to the human project. Avoid getting lost in the stinky, shiny, fashions that the majority push.

A good project needs focus, without it you just have a diluted mess. In a world driven by #stupidindividualism we have problems with en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_fait to constantly overcome. Generally people have no idea they are coursing a problem which makes it difficult to deal with.

For the January meeting am interested in looking in detail at #activertypub (and the new tech around it) as we should have a wider outline of the social #OMN project by then and have an urgent need to find technology that fits into it. Good focus for this meeting. Of course everyone is welcome.

This should lead to working on the next codebase of the #indymediaback project.

We are on a mission

 

Lets build a real world example base on the OMN tools set- a indymeda instance/network.

Looking at this very simply they are two pools of data – trusted and moderated

– the trusted data is displayed on the site and flows out from the site as feeds.

– the moderated is displayed on a back end moderation/draft feed the mods of the site get to decide what to do with this content, to add it to trusted, to leave in draft/mod for consensus, to remove it.

The content that is trusted is unedited, though the long tail of metadata can be edited and updated by mods.

The site banner and side links are static.

The site display is based on two main flows that are both #activertypub and #RSS.

Newswire and features (and optional individual flows based on user accounts)

* The first main flow, newswire, is made up of a number of sources

– user accounts from this instance (if turned on) based on roles defined by the .

– boolean logic tag created #activertypub or RSS feed – there should be on both ends of this flow in the best implementation – we can live with one end. These feeds are added by the mods of the site to allow a local network of publishing sites to be created and nurtured

* The features is a feed for storeys created from the resources published to the newswire, linking back to them. The flow is original content published as a feature by the mod crew based on if its in moderation it is treated as a draft not yet reach consensus if it is trusted it appears on the page and flow feed. This feed is a prime news resource to other newswires of indymedia sites that subscribe to it.

Rich compost in technology

Think of the fedivers as a flowerbed in a big (#openweb) garden surrounded by concrete. We are interested in the garden and bracking up the concrete (#dotcons) to make room for more flower beds and wild forest.


 

#Activertypub is a part of the flow, as is #RSS and maybe #Odata etc. The apps are the pipes. The human community produces and mediates the flow, in a metaphorical sense is the flow.

The fedivers is lovely healthy’ish flower bed, a small part of the #openweb garden that we are caring/nourishing in our work. When we are down and dirty working in tech it is important to remember this. In the end the garden is the human community’s living as part of a wider natural ecosystem.

The current priority is to get the flow working in a small and sustainable way – thus the hyperlocal test rollout and #epicyon.

This is why i use “mess” “shit” “compost” and “spades” as communication metaphors. The stinking mess we are in is a fertile time for change. For the last 10 years the #encryptionists agender and the #dotcons have been a sterile time, in this shit is a good thing, to live in stinking times 🙂

We have to keep focus on nurturing the seedlings with nutrition rich flows otherwise they wither and die. “Priority is to get the flow working in a small and sustainable way – thus the hyperlocal test rollout and epicyon.”

Looking at wordpress (WP) as a option, would like to try this out on my blog (http://hamishcampbell.com) thus the desire to get it working better. We have already mastodon and peertube. With out a bigger crew we should concentrate on creating a flow with epicyon as this is work anufe. If we can join WP to this flow a bonus.

Remember we are ONLY planting the seeds in the cracks and nurturing them. The roots of the plants (community) bracks the concrete. If we spend time trying to break the concrete we will soon be exorsted and achieve little.

So our mission is to find cracks and plant seeds. Of courses gathering the seeds (crews/code) is a first step – thus outreach and the messiness this brings – we do live in stinky times.

Then think of #searx (http://openworlds.info) as the map to the garden and as a way for people to find out of the concrete paths to the fresh #openweb grass fields. It can all grow up slowly if we keep a nourishing flow going. If we forget, it dries up and dies as it has done meany times in the last 20 years.

You would be surprised how fast nature reclaims concrete given a chance 🙂

Indymedia

We are a wide affinity group working to reboot the global indymedia network using modern federated protocols such as #activertypub. This reboot will be based on the OMN project code.What is the OMN (Open Media Network): The project is to shift power to the producers and consumers of media. It’s about good UI and simple empowering #KISS tools to move content, by categorising it with a grassroots folksonermy. This simple approach is balanced by shared site level syntax for the complex crew.
Working Project Site https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/organizations
Background http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/tag/indymedia/
In the end it’s about bringing trust back into news.