(2022-11-22) Hon S13e23 Colliders Speedrunning Benevolent Dictators Verification Deserts The Inflationary Epoch

Dan Hon: s13e23: Colliders; Speedrunning; Benevolent Dictators Have Significant Failure States; Verification Deserts; The Inflationary epoch.

1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

This episode isn’t entirely about Mastodon, it’s more that the birth of a new social network is an exciting time because it’s when the abstract/theoretical collision of people and computers becomes practical.

While Elon Musk is speedrunning the content moderation learning curve. (Musk Buys Twitter)

so too is everyone else, or at least, everyone else involved in running a social network. Right now that means Mastodon instance administrators and their moderators

also the participants and members of these new loosely-joined communities.

What does it mean to get decisions wrong?

There’s a few things to tease apart:

What a community means by free speech,

Abuse, and a community’s approach to abuse

Social mores and conventions

Outright illegal content

There are small instances, which I’ll say are on the < 300 range

And then you’ve got a middle ground, say, the 3,000-5,000 mark, and let’s say only 10% of your community members are active posters

Then you’ve got what I think might be More Likely To Be Too Big, which off the top of my head is definitely in the ~10,000+ members, which would be at least a thousand active posters. That… is a lot!

Mastodon.social has two hundred and forty-six thousand active users

I guess what I’m saying is mastodon.social may well collapse under its own weight and splinter into smaller communities and maybe that’s okay or even maybe we have to accept that because as a species/global community we simply aren’t ready for communities that size

If the people running these instances are sincere and understand the need for moderation and management, then you’d expect they should improve because now there is a clearer cost: they will be defederated

And then, you’ll have spotted that getting decisions “wrong” is all about shared values and tolerance (and the completely valid decision to not tolerate certain behavior).

Benevolent Dictators Have Significant Failure States

Mastodon.social will not change much because it is run by a benevolent dictator who, all signs indicate in my head, thinks that they’re a benevolent dictator, but the evidence is not so clearcut on the first point.

Here are my signals and what I think they imply. They are in my head, which means they are not necessarily true

Eugen appears to be happy with Mastodon.social being the main instance

Eugen’s strong opinions (apparently also strongly held) extend to being unwilling to accept pull requests from forks like hometown that provide better support for local posting. In my head, this is an ideological position about preferring open, public federation which again, is a choice.

Some notes on institutional instances, power dynamics and needs

Here are some institutional instances:

I’ve advocated for news organizations (and others) to set up institutional instances

I wrote about this from the point of view of a member of a social network community: how I want to be able to find and trust journalists and news sources

But that doesn’t say anything about the relative power dynamics, needs and incentives of news institutions (and their owners) in relation to journalists and their staff.

it’s in the interests of staff and journalists to have portability of their following/audience/graph and to also be independent of their employer. Independence for a news staffer is not provided by that staffer having an account/identity solely at an institutional instance

this is a terrific reasoning for the standing up of professional organization or union instances that represent the collective interests of their members

Multiple accounts? Aliases?

Verification Deserts

conversation with Blaine Cook I mentioned at the top today: there are places where you just can’t get cell service. Some people live there. Which means you can’t receive SMS 2-factor auth.

I would call these places verification deserts

The Inflationary Epoch

There’s a way I’m thinking about the birth of a social network that’s similar to our theories about the development of our universe. It’s the existence of an inflationary epoch.

In this inflationary epoch, it is easier to make connections because the perceived distance is smaller.

Later on, as the, uh, growth of the network settles down

the rate of expansion is different.

during the inflationary period, if reach is important to you, it’s going to be easier to develop greater reach.

If reach is important, you need to get in early, because that will offer you the best result in terms of effort/reward. (a-list)