mahal

mahal OP , 7 months ago

[2/3]

The Fediverse is decentralised, yes; but at its core, it is not democratic. Instances, including my favourite ones, are owned and moderated by a handful of private individuals with complete power and control over moderation. Users, especially non-tech users, have little influence beyond opining, reporting, and giving feedback.

You can pick and choose the instances you want to be on, but this is simply a distribution of private ownership. Of course, it’s still better than commercial media; but I digress.

This is not to downplay good moderators, administrators, and instances — or even developers. Fediverse is a step in the right direction.

In the “Public Service Internet” scenario, these moderators and developers, together with the users, would constitute a democratic collective. There are many challenges to this endeavour — such as the Sybil question if granting users suffrage; bad actors and trolls; the danger of fascist infiltration; the opt-out measure if the platform goes stale — but I think they are challenges worth tackling for a Public Service Internet.

mahal OP , 7 months ago

[3/3]

Above all, they should not be imitations of commercial media platforms.

The reason why things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, TikTok, and others succeeded (initially) was because they were unique at the time (well, Vine and TikTok are the same, FB and MySpace, MSN and Skype, etc., but you get me).

Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mastodon — these are all just their commercial media peers, except decentralised, distributed, and surveillance free (varies instance to instance).

I’ve been here for a while now. Don’t lose heart, though, if you’ve found your place in the Fediverse:

There are two ways you can take this.

1. That means this whole thing was a waste of time and amounted to nothing!

2. All our time spent here + time we will spend here can lay technological/social foundations for what can become a “public service internet” — initiatives like ActivityPub and the Fediverse are things we can build on.

I prefer the latter.

My time here is temporary — but I won’t move “back” to SV media like threads, new commercial media, or stuff like Bluesky.

I’ll wait until public service internet is a thing. Remember, this is a social element that requires social efforts/ideas rather than technological ones. We can’t tech our way out of social problems.

mahal OP , 7 months ago

P.S. forgot to mention:

Interoperability. The ability of such a platform to talk to other platforms as well as an opt-out function. To eliminate switching costs so that users will never be trapped on a platform or by code again.

@pluralistic explains this in better words than I do in his book, The Internet Con (also a recommended read).

@bookstodon

mahal OP , 7 months ago

There's actually a recent paper that I feel really illuminates this stupid phenomenon: http://dx.doi.org/10.3176/tr.2022.1.04

"Media frames become vehicles for representing reality as well as knowledge thereof in a meaningful and symbolic yet somewhat simplistic, stereotypical and distorted, or, so to say, neo-mythological way.

Post-truth and populist politics, but most recently the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how simplistic yet emotionally charged narratives have away to capture people’s interest and attention, as well as affect policymaking. For instance, research done by Brookings Institution shows that in the US, “Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them” (Rothwell and Desai 2021).

It is therefore the mediated performative and standardized dramatization of socialand political issues that creates neo-myths. A neo-myth is hence a schematic news story that is mediated, received and performed in public, in accordance to media frame-defined scripts...

Here are some of the most popular contemporary stereotypical scripts for public neo-myths: a school shooting in the U.S., a refugee crisis in Greece, a breach of human rights in Russia, and so on."

@academicchatter
@politicalscience

mahal OP , 7 months ago

@academicchatter @politicalscience

"These are real-world political issues, yet they have a stereotypically recognizable form and a predictable narrative content.

They in their turn also produce predictable reactions from public and politicians.

It is as if under cue that the public becomes outraged by some events and utterances, and worried, sending their ‘thoughts and prayers’ during other events.

At certain stages of the script, politicians feel compelled, or a proper tone requires them to express their opinion, while specialists are urged to explain the contents of the issue at hand (Thunström and Noy 2019).

There is thus a certain choreography to how asocial drama is being performed and mediated in the public sphere. The characters and circumstances in these social dramas change, but the plot and the performance remain schematic and stereotypical."

mahal OP , 7 months ago

@academicchatter @politicalscience This paper DEAD-ON describes America, its politicians, its media, its coverage of international crises, and EVEN how its politically charged public (especially public figures, officials, and so on) RESPOND TO CRISES.

You can then imagine just how fucking frustrating it is to watch them treat us all like cartoon characters and TV show co-protagonists/antagonists. I'm not exaggerating, there is actual discourse into this phenomenon.