@Lockdownyourlife I'm hearing that, and I'm trying to understand it. Because it doesn't jibe with what I know about the possibilities of the technology. I worry that ultimately there are a lot of people who prefer anonymous, arbitrary content police vs. a public commons. By all theory, the public commons should be *more* diverse than the private shopping mall, not less.
It all depends on what kind of content police you have, too. In the for-profit model, you're at the whim of what makes money.
@ssfckdt @Lockdownyourlife Mastodon is still private it's not "a public commons".
Someone(s) runs your instance, on some private computer(s).
Yes, it's _more_ public than twitter in a lot of very important ways, but it's still a long way from any kind of "commons" that includes robust enough inclusion mechanisms.
"it's open-source" is cool and all, but that's like bullet-point one these days on anything intended to be "secure" or "privacy-preserving" or "in the public interest", not the end-game
@meejah
> Mastodon is still private it's not "a public commons".
Whether the fediverse is a commons depends how you define "commons". If you we use the criteria put forward by Elinor Ostrom for sustainable commons...
http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons
... then the fediverse is a commons made up of an interlocking complex of commons; each server, software project, and support projects (eg fediverse.party or instances.social) operating as a commons in its own right.
@strypey @meejah @ssfckdt @Lockdownyourlife
The idea of public vs private technology favors any group of people who are more likely to have access to permanent housing, money, leisure time, and higher education, especially when it comes to running your own server instances.
@lwriemen @strypey @meejah @Lockdownyourlife Compared to right now with e.g. Twitter et al where the only people that can have any ownership are billionaires?
Weird flex to argue against people-owned communities in favor of billionaire-owned communites by saying the people-owned ones aren't cheap enough to own...
Everyone doesn't *have* to run their own server. But they *can.*
It'd be like advocating for corporate-owned mass housing because not everyone can afford a house.
@lwriemen
Funny, I remember people used to do the same sort of hand-waving about the net vs. TV. When tech bubble 2.0 finally bursts, and the only platforms that remain are those that charge subscriptions from their users and cut off or severely downgrade service for those who don't pay (as has happened with TV), the real economics of this may become clearer.
@meejah @ssfckdt @Lockdownyourlife