@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

polotek

@polotek@social.polotek.net

Web developer, movie buff, and pretty much the best guy you know. Married to
@operaqueenie

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

polotek , to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

I keep having a specific kind of exchange about this mastodon/bluesky thing. It goes something like this.

Me: I have a bunch of concerns around what actions people are taking if they care about their privacy on here. Yelling at one guy is not sufficient.

Them: Of course he's wrong! You must be saying you don't care about privacy at all!

It's pretty frustrating.

polotek OP ,
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I've been on the internet for a long time. This isn't a new thing. People won't have any other conversation with you until you first agree that they are 100% morally right. Anything else is a distraction. And if you aren't immediately on their side, then you must be on the other side. There can only be 2 sides. The good one and the bad one.

It's pretty exhausting. But more importantly, it keeps us from getting smarter about what we're doing to DO about any of this.

polotek OP ,
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People keep talking to me about social norms. Like I must not understand it. I understand it just fine. I wanna talk about something else. What I'm concerned about is that there are a great many people who don't want to talk about anything else. Either they chalk it up to technical issues that they shouldn't need to understand. Or they admit that they don't feel empowered to engage in anything else besides yelling in the general direction of the people who are doing things.

polotek OP ,
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It has taken me a while to work out what my actual critique is. Working on social norms is good. But the real and most present dangers that people are worried about are from people who will not respond to your social pressure. That is what we keep learning from Facebook and Twitter and a long tail of other actors who want to control our online experience. Even in the fediverse, bad actors abound.

polotek OP ,
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What I keep getting confused by is that people are putting in inordinate amount of their energy into trying to control people who are not bad actors. The bridge guy may be misguided. But he's listening. He's actually showing up to the conversation. He's just not the person you actually need to be worried about. And all I keep asking is "what about the people you do need to worry about?" And I get nothing. The answers I get are mostly "I don't know. But yelling at this guy is a good start."

polotek OP ,
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After continuing to noodle on it, I had an epiphany earlier today. You're not gonna like it.

I realized that maybe I have been misunderstanding the actual conversation about social norms. Maybe the reason people wanna have the moral argument is because they're hoping that will convince other people to take responsibility for protecting them.

polotek OP ,
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I think they're yelling at the bridge guy precisely because they know he's one of the few people who will listen. They want him to take responsibility for protecting them. They want anybody who understands this world to do something because they know the bad actors don't care. I think part of this is how people ask for the structures that they need in order to feel safe. It's just unfortunate that it takes the form of yelling and assuming bad faith.

polotek OP ,
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This fits perfectly with the other things that we see in the mastodon ecosystem. Many stories of instance admins flaming out from trying to meet the demands of their users. So many people looking around like "who do I have to yell at to get work done on my behalf so I don't have to think about it?"

polotek OP ,
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I think my biggest blind spot was I kind of assumed mastodon had a core community who understood these issues and was at least attempting to help people. But that's not how it works. There are those people who feel accountable, but only for their immediate circles. The responsibility and accountability is decentralized just like everything else.

polotek OP ,
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All this being said, I'm left with the same conclusion I already had. Just with more fidelity and a greater understanding of the real issues. A decentralized social web might be what people want/need in the long run. But there is a lot of work still to be done to make it viable and sustainable. And unfortunately there is going to be a lot of pain and harm done as people learn lessons the hard way.

polotek OP ,
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Let me share some final thoughts and then I'm gonna move on from this topic for now.

I spend most of my time talking through these issues at a high level. Mostly to increase my own understanding. I also have a habit of being judgmental when I feel like other people have unreasonable and unrealistic expectations. I'll keep working on that.

But I often forget to make some direct statements about what I actually think people should do. So let me do that.

polotek OP ,
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I'm still relatively new to mastodon. And even though I'm a technical person, I haven't bothered to get closer to the technical conversations around mastodon and ActivityPub. I'm mostly addressing the average person who's just here to do a social media without being exploited or harassed. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

polotek OP ,
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The may important thing to understand about Madison is that it is "open by default". The way most instances are set up, there is nothing preventing outside parties from pulling all of the content out of your server.

So the first thing to do is find out what settings your server instance has. I think that means finding out who your server admin is and asking them for clarity.

polotek OP ,
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I think this is a pretty basic thing about moving away from centralized, corporate controlled platforms. We all need to take more responsibility for knowing who does control our servers. I would take a strong stance and say that you should know them personally. Not just "I'm on a big popular instance and that's probably okay". Go talk to some humans. If they are faceless or unresponsive, that might mean you need to make some decisions about finding a new home.

polotek OP ,
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You need to understand and accept that it takes work and money to provide you a social media experience. Getting away from centralized profit-driven systems also means you probably need to think about who is paying for your experience and who is doing labor to maintain it. It might need to be you.

I pay $11/mo for my own single-person mastodon instance. It doesn't take a lot of technical know-how. But it probably still feels daunting to most people. I don't know how to help with that today.

polotek OP ,
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For people who have kids, maybe a good analogy is the PTA. There are clearly some people who do most of the work and also make most of the decisions. But they're just other parents. They're not getting paid, but somebody's gotta do it. Sometimes they give up or leave and then you might have to do it. And everybody is putting friendly pressure on everybody else to keep showing up. Cause if not enough people take responsibility, then things start to get bad. It's like that. That's the fediverse.

polotek OP ,
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And just to end on my original theme. I think you really should seek a better understanding of how to enable a "closed by default" model on your mastodon instance. If you're concerned enough about your privacy to go yelling at random people, then it's reasonable for you to go do the work to wrap your head around that. Because no one else is actually incentivized to do it for you. Again, that's what the fediverse is. Nobody is in charge.

polotek , to random
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Somehow found myself arguing with someone who talks about "the fediverse" like it is a) a singular thing and b) a separate thing from bluesky. It helped remind me of a fundamental truth about talking to people who are mad on the internet. What they're mad about is entirely uncorrelated with how well they understand the issues. Anger is an emotion. So is fear.

polotek , to random
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If you haven't checked in a while, Firefox is good. Like really good. If you're tired of Chrome taking literally all of your ram and CPU, you should try switching.

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