One of the central things the Fediverse has to offer in online discussions is being able to pull out of toxic discussions without leaving one’s community. And while this already is nice in itself, it could also result in overall better designed social apps, because due to the possibility of migrating accounts and network effects, site owners are put into a position, in which they want to design their sites less toxic for their own benefit.
By the nature of how they are constructed, walled gardens create an environment, in which site owners are motivated to fuel conflict and design their apps this way, while in the Fediverse, site owners aren’t. This happens because of two things: first, they are motivated to put sufficient moderation tools in place not to lose users to other servers (which is much easier and less costly for users due to account migration) and secondly and more importantly: it doesn’t motivate them to fuel discussion, because escalating conflicts between communities could result in radio silence between communities, meaning less user interaction between its members, most likely leading to less user time spend on the servers. This doesn’t necessarily mean defederation. It is assumed that besides defederation, there are many other possible actions to reduce the interaction with another instance or user, for example by showing their posts less prominently on one’s home feed. In this sense, the number of moderation-actions between defederation and openly federating with an instance is thought of as a span on which communities and individuals dynamically move. And because of the first argument, these moderation actions will be much more powerful than in walled garden social media.
While the first argument is a trivial conclusion of federation: because of the open nature of the Fediverse, servers are motivated to put sufficient moderation tools in place and they will become more powerful than in walled garden, the second one is more interesting: because these advanced moderation actions exist, side owners are not only impartial to designing their applications to prevent conflicts from escalating; but its in fact beneficial for them to prevent escalation between communities and design their applications this way.
In walled gardens, heated and toxic discussions were no problem for the server owner (to a certain degree), because communities had nowhere else to go. In fact, they were even beneficial, because they increased the profit of the platform by generating more attention, which in turn generated more revenue. For the worst cases, rudimentary moderation tools were implemented, but only enough to keep public backlash at bay.
Now in the Fediverse, things don’t completely change: servers will still be motivated to maximize user engagement, however, while in walled gardens, this correlated with fuelling conflicts, in the Fediverse, they find themselves in a new dilemma here: because a community can just pull out of a discussion that it finds too heated or toxic, escalations of discussions can actually hurt the sides owners. In the worst case, communities split and don’t communicating with each other at all, leading to less user time. The possibility of severing the link to other parts of the network motivates the sides owners to prevent this type of behaviour as best as possible and design their sides in this way. While they do want to foster user engagement, they need to find a balance here that keeps the user experience much more in check than before. In contrast to walled gardens, server owners in the Fediverse hold a shared resource with the servers they federate with and therefore can push for a conflict-encouraging UI-design only so far, not only because users have the option to leave the server, but additionally, because it hurts their shared resource, which makes their server less attractive and gives users the motivation to actually go through with changing servers towards healthier parts of the network. While in walled gardens, servers are pulled toward conflict-encouraging designs, in the Fediverse, this pull is reversed towards discussion-encouraging designs.
All of this of course assumes that no instance holds a monopoly in the Fediverse, which in fact again puts them into a position to profit from toxic community interaction; and that a major part of communities is interested in productive interaction with other communities.
To summarize, while of course conflict-encouraging server design decisions can still happen here and the fact that server owners will want to create a healthy yet exciting environment comes with its own pitfalls too, ActivityPub creates a fundamentally different environment that encourages server owners to push for a discussion-encouraging UI-design, which could potentially provide a better ground for online discussions and interaction in the future.
To Federate or not to Federate: is this the Fediverse’s Don’t be Evil-Moment or its own Liberation through transfiguration? And why is the current political Left in wide parts unable to answer this question without willingly letting a historical opportunity pass by?
On the one hand, you have those signing the FediPact: in fear of what they may become, they put limits on themselves to assure each other that they will stay the same even in the face of inevitable change. On the other hand, you have those that embrace Meta’s arrival blindly, that will follow whether it will take them as long as it gives them more gratification and they don’t have to decide for themselves.
But there is another option: that of acting morally based on shared principles created and agreed upon through reason.
Currently, there seem to exist two fractions on the Fediverse forming around this choice, both of which have somewhat simplistic views of it: while the first frames it as if the choice is between either blindly embracing Meta or not embracing it at all, the other side frames it as if Meta’s arrival will be good for the Fediverse in any case and the other side is just too dumb to see it. Both are wrong: there is the possibility that by cooperating with Meta to some degree, we choose the right path for the web, but there is also the possibility that the opposite will happen. In the sense of Kant, we always have to expect everything.
However, what needs to be kept in mind is the following: if we do chose to federate, we will have the opportunity to influence this outcome. We would then need to put actions in place to react to Meta, and stand our ground to work towards a better version of the web. But if we don’t federate, we don’t have this opportunity and we just let the outcome be decided for us; we hide and walk away from the responsibility.
The first decision ignores the cost that comes with ignoring Meta. On the other hand, the second one ignores the cost of federating with a much more powerful instance with a history of morally bad decisions. These arguments have to be weighted up against each other and carefully debated upon. There would be good reasons not to have anything to do with Meta at all, when there wouldn’t be network effects. But this way, it’s the only tool to bring over users from Meta’s ecosystem in ours. Actually, given this context, Meta’s moral shortcomings are even more reasons to federate with them and try to win over users and pressure Meta to implement better digital rights as well.
So, after weighting up the different arguments, I think working together with Meta to some degree is without alternative, because I think a big Fedi would be a good thing and I don’t see the Fediverse growing big on it’s own. After having decided that, the question becomes about how this can happen without losing ourselves in the process. And I think this is a question that is not often asked in the Fediverse, because in the current political landscape, most cannot really give you an answer to that, especially not in the part of the Left that is so predominatly on the web: that of post-colonialism and identity politics.
Because they have no sense for objective truths or universalism, they cannot answer this question apart from the strategy they are running now: by assuring each other to stay the same and by that basically avoiding the question altogether. Because they don’t want to answer it. Because without believing in the existence of a objective truth (which they don’t, because they attribute themselves to moral relativism), it’s impossible to make moral decicions when being in power and forming global alliances and that’s why power is avoided as far as possible.
Because the solution would be exactly to try to find those moral rules, to agree upon and establish them through the use of reason.
This would also be a good ground to put up against Meta, which also the general public would understand, in my opinion. Instead of saying that Meta is evil and we don’t want to federate with them, we could say that we try to hold our own principles and will only federate with Meta if it holds them too. This way, we can put pressure on Meta to act morally in the digital and also stay moral ourselves.
For this, the FediPact is not in any way fitted. It may sound strong, but is actually a teethless tiger here. It is morally empty, without any specific values attached to it and completely dependend on Meta (which is the primary reason why its so popular): they simply define themselves by being against Meta, the smallest common moral ground large part of the Fediverse community seem to have – but how should this assure any moral acting in the Fediverse in the future or now? It is of course not the case that people that are radical against Meta are necessarily good? Morally, there is nothing gained here except self-assurance, which is empty because it is without any moral substance.
This of course has not only something to do with Meta but is a general question that needs to be answered: what are the common values that we want to thrive for? At the end of the day, we don’t define ourselves through Meta but through our principles. And then, may not want to federate with Meta at times because they aren’t valuing our principles and not simply because they are Meta. But we cannot do that, because, sadly, we don’t have these shared principles, because many parts on the Left don’t believe in them and consider them a form of colonialism. For one, they fear that through this transgression they will either become insignificant or their earlier own “oppressors”, and secondly, they don’t want to be faced with the fact that we need shared moral principles.
But now what, if another big company joins, which doesn’t acts according to our moral principles? Until now, the common solution for this was always defederation, however, when the instance is too powerful, it doesn’t work anymore. Meta is only the beginning of this; many other players will come, too, even non-corporate ones. Will all of them be added to the FediPact one after the other? This is not a long-term solution, not sustainable and feels overall arbitrary and regressive. The teachings of the postcolonial Left come to an end here. They thrive for including as many perspectives as possible (which is not a bad thing per se), but put that before agreeing on an objective truth. But only through the declarations of shared principles can we grow and remain morally intact.
Theoretically, there would be nothing wrong with a Meta that acted constantly morally. Then we wouldn’t need to do the thing we do here. The problem is that they don’t. But if we want to replace Meta with something better in the long run, we need to think about how to achieve exactly that. And this will only be possible by embracing universalism and humanism as guiding principles.
Although I still agree with the general message of my last post, I would now modify it: I see no reason why, after the Fediverse has found a solid moral ground, it shouldn’t put this up to the test against Meta and try to win over some terretory with it. Actually, it seems like the most sensible thing to do. Because we want to bring these digital rights to as many people as possible, and for that, we need to partially federate with Meta. The postcolonial left doesn’t really has an alternative plan other than leaving everything exactly as it is; which doesn’t help those suffering under the current digital landscape either (also speaking globally here) and makes the Fediverse something, that a few lucky people profit from and that is not shared with everyone else, just because we have no plan how to scale it. A possibly good solution for this is to find a new strategy for this kind of situation based on history: through declaring and then with reasonable means implementing these shared rights and principles.
This brings us again to the root of the problem, which the Fediverse doesn’t seem to want to discuss: the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles. That’s the actual problem here. And if we are being honest, if you look for example at apps like Lemmy, it’s not so bad this isn’t the current global web. It would be a complete mess. We have still enough problems of implementing principles of human rights ourselves. Only if we have found those can we really stand against Meta and make a case that people will root for. After all, people will only join us, if we have a better web to offer them. And only federation and data security isn’t everything here. It should also come with more digital rights.
This is why, in the following, I call for the creation of a Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights, which instances can sign, who don’t want to sign the FediPact but at the same time don’t want to fall under the rule of Meta. As a first draft for this, we could use the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/european-declaration-digital-rights-and-principles
When we take this document as an example, it would already change the situation completely. First of all, we could federate with Meta and then have substancial arguments against them when we chose at times not to federate with them anymore (e.g. because they don’t encourage democratic exchange, they don’t value human rights, etc.), but at the same time, we would also have to apply these principles to ourselves. We are allowing users more choice for their provider, obviously, but are we also allowing businesses to enter the Fediverse freely and let innovation develop?
These are only examples, but you see how instead of trying to shut ourselves off from Meta as best as possible, the question becomes about realizing the ideal of a better web better than Meta.
So, in conclusion, additionally to the two parties on the Fediverse already described, there could be a third party, which tries to implement these universal Fediverse rights. To my knowledge, Mastodon seems to be a candidate that tries to achieve something like this already (although it never openly said so). BlueSky would be more of a candidate for the open web and FediPact servers are of course part of the non-corporate web.
I think most will find it reasonable that both the FediPact and the go-Meta-go-team are way too simplistic; and while many people instantly root for either of these camps, I think both teams almost never exist in these extremes in reality – in fact, many parts of the Fediverse already argue based on some understanding of digital rights and paint a much more nuanced picture. These rights just need to be put down somewhere, agreed upon and lived by as best as possible. Then, we will be much better equiped for the power struggle with Meta than with what the FediPact promises but cannot hold, because there is nothing that can give you that: a 100% assurance that Meta will not change the Fediverse, that everything will stay exactly as it is and we keep our moral compass. And if we cannot achieve the former anyways, it’s better to try to achieve the latter, even if it means changing a bit in the process.
That’s also the promise that comes with the arrival of Meta: it will not make us grow up automatically, but it gives us the chance to.
The Fediverse will soon have power on the social web to shape its future, but only through and in the interaction with Meta. This is the reality the Fediverse has to start arranging itself with.
Most people see the upcoming joining of Threads as a conflict of interest, however, by now, the futures of both Meta and the Fediverse are heavily intertwined: both are dependent on one another for their success. In this sense, maybe it shouldn’t be thought of as conflict but as a fierce duopoly. In any case: both parts will have to arrange itself with this situation.
If so, it will shape the web in the next couple of years and that means, it would be a good idea to study it. At first, it could look like an unfair battle, but in fact, Meta has some weaknesses as well just as the Fediverse has some advantages.
Also: Meta is playing for time: the Copernican revolution of the social progresses merciless, and they can only somewhat control the consequences of this. At the same time, the open Fediverse will also have to be willing for this indirect coalition with Meta and if they will do that is nowhere near certain.
The Actors: Meta and the Open Fediverse
Meta
Factors that favour growth in the Fediverse:
Money
Social Capital and network effects
Located in US with more loose legislations on big tech.
Factors that hinder growth in the Fediverse:
Meta is playing against time. It still heavily depends on web2 both ideological and practical; the current shift of digital world view directly threatens its future (the Copernican revolution of the social web is progressing)
Public Image (temporarily fixed)
but memory of earlier scandals remain
also zeitgeist is against them
Wants to avoid drama (avoid political discussions on platforms, etc.), which will be hard when connecting to the Fediverse
Open Fediverse
Factors that favour growth in the Fediverse:
Sympathy of Legislators
Complete openness gives room for free innovation
Basic sympathy from most people: It came there first
Resilience and unbending nature of community
Factors that hinder growth in the Fediverse:
Little resources (funding, moderators)
Radical parts of own community (too high self-standard, toxicity, etc.)
Vulnerable to automated SPAM
Public image problem of its own (too serious, too arrogant, too uncompromising/do not live up to their own standards when it comes to an open digital ecosystem)
An Actor that could also become interesting: The Free Fediverse
Uncompromising idealists of a non-corporate social web, potentially origin of radicalisation and toxicity. Not interested in any cooperation with Threads, small or big actions against the Fediverse by Threads are held up as arguments for the permanent banning of Threads. At the same time high degree of involvement in the project and generally many FOSS-enthusiasts that are important for the overall Fediverse development.
In summary, this results in the following three ways to look at the Fediverse:
What’s your view of the situation?
Other Actors that are still there: BlueSky, X and other Tech Giants
Additionally, there is the view of competitors of the growing Fediverse ecosystem.
Will they just get irrelevant at some point? If the duopoly remains, not, if either one of the parties fucks it up too much, they will be ready to take up the reigns. They are the stand-in, only ready to take up Meta’s or the Fediverse’s place.
They too, will watch this unlikely coalition closely. And remember: Meta asks us to dance with them, but it’s not as if we haven’t also sought attention from other giants. And this was always the way it was planned to be: at some point, one of the tech giants would dance with us. If we want to get big, we need to get better at dancing.
Also, they would only be too eager to let the conflict between Meta and the Open Fediverse escalate. Maybe some will at some point join, too. There is much that could happen.
Conclusion
Meta joining the Fediverse is always portrait as a sign of goodwill – what if they are dragged into it? What if it’s their lifeline? And now combine this with the politics and the drama waiting for them there and you have a perfect storm right ahead of Meta.
All of this makes Meta’s move into the Fediverse look much less flattering and smooth and gives the non-Meta parts of the Fediverse plenty of legroom! In this sense: don’t panic, build!
In the Fediverse, Meta thinks that they have found their eternal source to avoid enshittification, polish their public image, dominate a new market and slow down their decline in the digital world view of many people. And maybe this will turn out to be the right choice. But they are probably also well aware that this energy has the power to destroy them.
That said, of course, the Fediverse is also not without its own vulnerabilities, first and foremost by automated spam, keeping up funding, its own problematic parts of the network and whether it likes it or not: the fact that its future will be heavily intertwined with Meta. Two objects, circling around each other in order not to get sucked into the black hole in-between; both dependent on and capable of destroying one another. This is the primeval soup, in which the new social web is born.
For a moment, just appreciate how exciting this is.
Will this be the future of the social web or a corporate solution like BlueSky? I hope it’s the Fediverse with its unruly dynamics.
In any case, things will surely not become boring. Hopefully, they will not become too exciting. In my opinion, an equilibrium between the two forces that stayed for a certain amount of time would be the best thing to thrive for here. Remember that at this point, Meta still has the power to shut down the whole thing completely. Also: the Fediverse needs to become big, but if the time has come that this is possible, it has to be ready to replace Meta’s ecosystem as well, and its nowhere near that. If Meta would disappear from today to tomorrow, the world would first of all having lost something that was at least in parts good. Recreating something like this that, on this scale, which is at the same time better will be difficult and take time.
So: it’s not like we have to always play nice with Meta, but let’s not give them a reason to pull the plug on their Fediverse-integration, and let’s remember that Meta is not owned by Musk and there currently exist many stable services in the Fediverse that are run by decent people. Our position could all be worse; we shouldn’t let Meta treat us like it pleases, but we should as well not be the one escalating the upcoming conflict.
If we want the Fediverse to become big, the ride with Meta is without alternative anyways. Instead of a war for the social web, we need to attune ourselves for years of tight interaction with Meta that will pendle somewhere between indirect conflicts and mutual-suspicious co-existence.
There will be good times and bad times, and there will always be those people that say that now is the time that we don’t need Meta anymore or even that we can abolish Meta now completely; but as long as it doesn’t lose its predominant position itself (which will mean that we won’t need to do any of those actions anyways) or doesn’t turn authoritarian, I will always strongly disapprove with them.
This is a unique opportunity, and we have to live up with the responsibility of this: to shape the future of a global fediverse. But it’s very well possible that we decide ourselves against it. But then, it will only be others that will drive the change, or it will not happen at all.
Meta and the Fediverse could give birth to a new social web, if they decide themselves for it. And Meta already gave signs of interest, while the Fediverse is still ambiguous. The question for those hesitant people is: how when not through a duopoly like should the big Fediverse have been created? Was there ever an alternative?
I think we are well on course if we arrange ourselves with the situation and learn to roll with the punches.
Meta’s point of view in detail: Trying to control as well as profit from the Fediverse is like playing with fire for Meta, or: Three things that limit Thread’s growth in the Fediverse
For Meta, entering the Fediverse will not be as smooth as it may seem and as many in the Fediverse fear. In fact, there are a few things that Meta is probably worried about in this whole endeavour.
Politics
Meta already said that they want to ensure to make Fediverse-connection as safe as possible. This is of course a good thing. I even think that on such a big scale, at the moment, it’s good to have someone like Meta ensure especially for younger people a save usage of the Fediverse. However, at the same time, this “safeness” will probably result in keeping users away from political views that Meta finds problematic to avoid scandal. They are already cracking down on the politics discussions on Threads, what will they say about all the political discussions that will pour in from the Fediverse and that only become louder, the deeper they get dragged into. Not speaking about Lemmy, an app that is developed by people that have Mao on their GitHub page (which I myself am actually concerned about)? People on Lemmy discuss whether to federate with Meta or not, but it could be just as likely that Threads won’t federate with them. In any case, the Fediverse doesn’t necessarily contain the discussions that Meta is searching for its apps.
This is also a point, where the Fediverse doesn’t shine in a good light: there is much drama and even toxicity in the Fediverse. It’s also a big problem of the Fediverse and of course political extremism is not good, but even mildly controversial political content is not encouraged on Threads nowadays. They want to avoid drama and politics, there is plenty of both in the Fediverse.
The Copernican Revolution of the Social Web
The way we think about the social web is beginning to change. It is no longer synonymous with Meta and as long as they cannot deny the existence of the Fediverse, they at least want to stay at the centre of it. But this is already showing some weakness and only bought them time before the next shift in world view, in which Meta is no longer at the centre.
And venturing deeper into the Fediverse means fuelling the Copernican Revolution of the Social Web. We are contradictory to the world view that they want their users to have. As written in my earlier post, Meta wants users to have a certain view of the digital, in which Meta is in the centre. The existence of apps like Pixelfed, contradicts this view. People that realize that to Meta’s services, there may be thousands of alternatives out there is not something Meta wants. This means that it’s not unlikely that they will crack down on mentions of Fediverse-related stuff, but at the same time, this also limits how far they can travel into the Fediverse, until too many people realize what’s going on there. Meta is playing all cool and in control, but they know well enough what happened to AOL. It’s now like AOL tried to surf the wave without getting blown up in the course of this (which they also did but unsuccessfully): they want to limit the Copernican revolution but at the same time don’t want to miss the innovative potential. They are in a dilemma here, because they have no choice but to continue and moderate the change that will eventually led to their decline or at least a great loss of their power in the social web.
In an earlier post, I compared Meta to the catholic church that want to stay at the centre of the universe; however, it should be added that a key difference is, that Meta is still a progressive institution in the literal sense of the word: they define themselves through technology, even if they want to dominate it. Yes, they profit from a certain limited world view of their users, but it also limits their innovative potential, which is why they are in a deep dilemma here.
Meta has all the money but lost the cultural hegemony long ago and the only reason it gained some of it in the last year was because Musk was worse; but how long will that last? Probably, in this section, too, it will be a back and forth between sympathies for both Meta and the rest of the Fediverse.
“It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. […] Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.”
– 1784, Immanuel Kant, translated by Ted Humphrey
300 years ago, Immanuel Kant was born, who revolutionized western philosophy. He was, like many great thinkers, a child of his time: a few decades before, Copernicus came to the conclusion that the universe didn’t revolve around the earth, but that the earth actually circled around the sun and later, Newton came up with laws that explained the workings of the universe. Both of these developments marked a major shift of world view, and with this state of mind, Kant came to the conclusion that as autonomous, conscious beings, we can become moral beings through reason.
A very similarly thing is happening now, 300 years later, but in the digital world. And with the help of Kant, we can apply the same conclusions that he drew, now also here. After describing the process that Twitter’s decline started, which caused a shift in the way we think about the digital, we will take a look at why an access to the Fediverse should be considered a universal, Kantian right and finally, we will see why it could make us actually better digital beings.
Why the Fediverse is no Self-Runner and why we need digital Enlightenment
Our world view determines how we think of the world and how we navigate it, and as already described before, over the course of the last year, our view of what we call “the digital” or social networking more specifically, has changed drastically for many people.
About one year ago, Twitter went down and with it for many people the knowledge followed, that in fact, the digital world didn’t revolve around them, that Twitter in fact wasn’t the centre of the digital world but that there were potentially many alternatives out there. They started to look at an alternative, which was at first exhausting, because the best fit eventually turned out to be not so great either, and eventually outright frightening, because after one service-hopping too many, the realisation followed that the digital home itself is a myth, that migration both in real life and in digital life, is part of the human experience, and eventually, that there is potentially a whole universe of these services out there. Can you remember the first time you decided to try out a different service than the one you were using all this time? How much effort it felt like, how cold and unfriendly it felt like? Well, it required that much effort, because it was more than just the physical act of signing up to a new service, it was more than that: it was signing up to a completely new view of the digital. Because if you once changed to another service, you might always again. And instead of a space that you can stay on forever, it makes your current digital home suddenly look very fragile and temporary.
In this metaphor (which of course also has its limits), Meta could be seen as an institution much like the catholic church at the time of Copernicus, because it benefits greatly from the digital world view still most people have, which has a digital centre, because it effectively means that the whole digital universe revolves around them, Meta. However, at least it seems like they made the decision to consciously destroy that illusion themselves before others do for too many people by joining the Fediverse, although how this will actually look like, remains to be seen. Probably, it’s more of a strategic decision. Up until now, the social web was Meta, the Fediverse and alternatives were either insignificant, or were bought or copied by Meta. However, with the spectacular failure of at least the original idea of the Metaverse, which was the only logical culmination of this strategy, it becomes increasingly hard for Meta to deny the existence of the Fediverse and other competitors. And if they have to admit the existence of the Fediverse at one point anyways, at least they can try to become the centre of it. And that’s also what they will want to sell the Fediverse as: as what they have tried to accomplish with the idea of the Metaverse all along.
Currently, there exists two main camps on the Fediverse: those who want it to become big, like really, world-spanning big, and those that want to keep it small like it is.
In the second group, there is a paranoia, trying to see through Meta’s hidden agendas, when they are in fact so clearly visible and in the first group, there seems to exist a very naïve optimism towards Meta’s decision to join.
The story about the future of the Fediverse that they tell usually looks something like this: the Fediverse is coming, we just let it grow and everything will eventually turn out fine, right? Threads will join, and Medium, and Flipboard and WordPress and Mastodon will still be there, it will be this whole sprawling ecosystem and then network effects will kick in and the whole thing will basically become a self-runner, right?
But what if at the end of this development, everything will effectively stay the same? What if everyone on the world had an account on the Fediverse – but it would actually make no difference, because 95% of all instances were owned by Meta, just part of Threads, or federated Instagram or federated WhatsApp. What if people considered all of that the “Metaverse”? What if they considered it the “standard” social web and the fediverse a niche curiosity by nerds? What do we do then?
After all the years, people are still faithfully praying to the digital gods they hold so dearly, they believe in them, they think that everything will work out fine, they still believe that after all, they have only the best in mind for them and a great enough vision of the future. And it will be very hard to change that. Will it change, when the sky above their self-imposed prisons will break away and make room for the endless depth of the Fediverse? No, because they don’t even consider the sky worth looking at anymore. And even if they did, it would make no sense to them.
In the current docile, immature digital state of its members, Meta has nothing to fear from the Fediverse. Expanding in it will be like expanding in its own backyard.
First, Meta joins the Fediverse all nice and quiet, and then, when they have become big enough, they sell it as their own. They call it the Metaverse at some point, like it has been their plan all along. Sure, there are some nerds that still call it the Fediverse or something, but they are so insignificant that no one listens to them; the average user doesn’t even usually come across another account from anything other than Meta’s ecosystem of franchised fediverse instances. And if the rest of the Fediverse really gets too big, Meta doesn’t show their accounts as prominently on their feeds and keep them in control this way. The social web and the metaverse effectively become the same. Just like it has been before.
You see, the clash for the future of the social web is also a clash of narratives and ideas – and Meta will probably be in a much better position, because it has the money, the social capital and a solid, if somewhat tarnished narrative to begin with. In any case, I don’t see them advertising the Fediverse as their new, big future for free. They won’t rebrand themselves (again) to “Fedi”, won’t they? Hell no.
Many people are asking themselves, why Meta is joining the Fediverse. The question should rather be: why shouldn’t they?
What is digital Enlightenment?
I think it’s clear that it’s not enough to just “let it happen” and it will all work out – we would end up in the same situation, but with a slightly better view, nothing more. We will have helped Meta take a step closer toward their Metaverse and that’s it. But we still want the Fediverse to become big, right?
So, what do we have to do?
Additionally, to pushing the technical development of the Fediverse, we need a new state of mind. We need to become mature, digital actors and we need to convince the rest of the web to do the same. Only with this change of our minds can we actually realize the true potential of the Fediverse for us as digital beings. We need a new enlightenment for the digital age, a digital enlightenment.
But how will this digital enlightenment look like?
For sure, it will be much harder than many people realize because it’s one thing to sign up for a new server, but another to sign up for another world view; a world view, in which you are responsibly for your own digital data, behaviour, security and safety. It’s hard, its unpleasant, but what we lose if we don’t do it is even greater, and if we did it, we be better off than before. But it will be hard.
It will be similar hard than the passage from geocentric to heliocentric world view. Basically, Twitter was the catalyst for many more people than before to become aware of this issue and bring it to public attention. For the first time, many people realized that their service, their go-to microtext messenger, wasn’t the center of the social web, but potentially only one of them, maybe even thousands of hundreds of possible services, in fact a whole universe of services out there, to explore, to innovate, in the so-called Fediverse. For many people, that conclusion is still ahead. But if we cannot change, we won’t come out of the digital immaturity we still find ourselves in.
And before anyone asks: no, we don’t need to kill the metaphorical digital gods. Trying to kill them would only be another act of our own immaturity. We just need to abolish every trace of their authority, which exists mostly in our heads and start thinking for our own. Then we can act as our own gate keepers, by the moral that we have set for our self through reason.
The same holds for Meta: immoral actions against them are of course wrong in any case; and if they manage to stay a monopoly on the Fediverse too, then it’s not their fault but ours, because this would only be possible due to our own immaturity. Rather, we should think about ways to help others out of their own immaturity, because many of us have only come into this position through privilege or luck.
And there is after all, still many reasons to be hopeful: Meta does join the Fediverse. Their idea of controlling everything on the social web has clearly failed, they cannot deny our existence any longer and they are themselves signing up for a digital world view, in which alternatives at least openly exist. Kind of like the transition from flat world to geocentric digital world view. One cannot really hold it against them that they will try to stay at the centre of this, of course, but they won’t be everything. It doesn’t seem like much, but it could be. And we may have to expect that it will take some time.
Different Digital World Models and the three big next things to expect on the Fediverse
Now, let’s take a closer look at this idea of different digital world views. What does that actually mean? Well, we have to realize that many people on the web don’t share our enthusiasm for the Fediverse, in fact, they probably don’t even know what it is. And not, because they are too lazy or too dumb, but because of attention economy: they don’t gain anything by having the Fediverse as part of their view of the social web. It’s a very complex concept and even if they heard of it, it was never necessary for them to adapt it, because it plays no role in their day-to-day experience on the social web.
As we will see, with the decline of Twitter and the joining of Threads to the Fediverse, this has changed drastically, because it made many people (including me) question their view of the social web and form a more complex model. And in the next years, many will follow.
We will take a look at these different models, what leads to changing to a new one, and what advantages it has if large parts of the web community have a fediverse-understanding of the social web.
So, let’s take a closer look at the social web, how it is commonly viewed, and how the Fediverse comes into play here. What does the abstract idea of the Fediverse actually mean? Why was it even invented in the first place?
In my view, the common views on the social web are caused by different models that people form on their journey on the social web:
Provider-Exclusive: “There is only the app of my provider.”
Provider-Centric: “There exist other apps, but the one I’m using is the main one.”
Service-Centric: “There is no main one and I’m trying to use the one that fits my ideal the best.”
Protocol/Ecosystem-Centric: “There exist other protocols/ecosystems, but mine is the main one.”
Fediverse-Principle: “There is no main one and I’m trying to use the one that fits my idea of an open ecosystem the best.”
Let me explain, what they mean in detail.
Usually, a new model is formed when people experience something that they cannot understand in their current view of the social web. For example, with Twitter, the service was bought by Elon Musk, which was a world-shattering event for some people, because they didn’t realize that this actually could be done; the same as with Musk basically destroying the Twitter-Brand and changing the whole purpose of the app to his idea of an “everything”-app.
In their world views, things like these weren’t possible. They came as a shock. They couldn’t understand them in their current world view. For the first time, they realized that there might be alternatives to their app. Maybe they didn’t actually tried them; but it felt reassuring that they existed.
Or another example: for a long time, people snugged at Meta “copying” Twitter, however, over time, people grew less concerned about this, because they entered the next stage of their digital world models: they began to separate the product from the idea behind it. Elon Musk could buy Twitter, but not the basic idea behind microblogging.
However, this led to a revolutionary thing. By separating the product from the abstraction, people suddenly had an ideal with which they could compare the actual thing with. And that’s why many left and started looking for an alternative that fitted their ideal more closely.
Along the way other, irritating things happened regularly: why is it for example that when I’m on Mastodon, I can view posts by a WordPress blog, which is clearly not micro-blogging? Why can I follow a Lemmy-community, which, also, is no micro-blogging but a replacement for Reddit? It didn’t make sense in my world view. Slowly, it made me question my limited understanding.
The next stage came with me signing up to more and more other Fediverse-services beside Mastodon as well as setting up my own Lemmy-server, this way getting to know some of the workings of open-source services on the Fediverse and also the dynamic creation and decline of other competitors to apps like Mastodon or Lemmy, which again broadened my view on the social web. It became easy to imagine a client, in which you could show posts from Mastodon and Reddit, basically merging two social ecosystems that I had never before thought of working together in the same app. And with ActivityPub, it would actually be possible to merge these communities, too.
All of this made me realise that it’s actually not about the apps, it’s about the protocol. Therefore, I needed to expand my model, in which social apps can be connected by a protocol like ActivityPub.
And after that, there is another layer, which I’m just discovering now: that in fact there already are many of these ecosystems out there, but that the idea behind them is rather simple: you post stuff, and you can subscribe to people. And this abstract idea is called the Fediverse; for which most open version also the thing that calls itself the Fediverse can only thrive for.
Now, we can try to compare the different states the web2 apps and their communities are currently in one their way toward an Fediverse-understanding of the social web.
It is interesting that the first two big transitions, Elon Musk managed to do all in about a year, first by buying Twitter and then by rebranding it to X, his “everything”-app, which at least in the common view, altered the service completely from what it once was and with what most of them actually wanted it to be like. But he didn’t realize the innovative energy that he set free with this, just like Ludwig the 14. didn’t expect to greatly influence the age of enlightenment.
The consequence of these drastic changes in world view for Twitter in basically only the last year but in general for the community of any app that experiences such a change are huge. With Twitter, we have seen it the most obvious: after the buying of Twitter, there was a big migration, which is usually called “Big Twitter-Exodus” on related services. After that, when the app is changed without recognition of what it once was, another stage is entered, best shown with Elon Musk renaming Twitter to X, trying to convert it into his everything-app, which made many people realize that their old Twitter is definitely gone and that it is not something owned by Musk, but an idea. This made people separate the product Twitter from the abstract idea behind it: micro-blogging. While for people this is more complicated and also more frustrating, because you could be on a service that realizes the idea less good, its fosters competition and ensures quality of the service way better.
And now with Threads joining the Fediverse, people will be able to experience service-centric-irritations on the current second-biggest Twitter-realization.
A similar thing happened on Reddit and, not so surprisingly, Reddit-alternative Lemmy very soon became the second-most popular app on the Fediverse. And with Reddit now going to stock market, this could lead to the next stage, in which the longing for an “Reddit”-alternative, is replaced with the idea that always laid behind it: a link-aggregator. The idea is decoupled from the primary product; they are separated.
With the other apps, which are mostly owned by Meta, things will probably take much longer, because Meta will not be as stupid to make the same mistakes. This is already shown with Threads: they join the Fediverse and this way, stay in control and avoid enshittification. And this way, people will also stay in the provider-exclusive or at least provider-centric world view, which also plays in their hands.
In stage 3, maybe even in stage 4, many competitors emerge that try to thrive for that lost ideal and in the forth stage, this abstract ideal gives way to all the possibility that the protocol offers.
After that, one realizes that there may be many other ecosystems like that out there. Of course, Google, Microsoft and Apple are also their own ecosystem. Actually, they at least partially already do what the Fediverse tries to do: in their ecosystem, you have a unique user handle, with which you can connect to your friends across various services.
The revolutionary idea behind the Fediverse is that there is no centre to this. The idea of the ecosystem is abstracted into an abstract idea, in which everything could be connected to everything.
Basically, whether it’s the Metaverse by Meta or the Everything-App by Elon Musk, all of these companies and people are trying to achieve this thing. This idea that we call the Fediverse. And I think ActivityPub is currently doing the best job at it; but it, too, only tries to achieve this abstract idea. However, in contrast to their proprietary competitors, it does so openly, and encourages its members to help toward that goal, which for me, already makes it by far the most sympathetic runner.
It is no surprise that Meta now jumps to the rescue of/claims this idea. After all, their grandiose idea of the Metaverse comes closer to the idea behind the Fediverse of all Silicon Valley ecosystems. It goes the farthest in this direction (because its Meta primary focus of course), because it realizes that the massive scale it wants to achieve, cannot be done inside their walled-garden ecosystem. But they will probably not openly advertise it, because they don’t like the openness that much.
But overall, the joining of Meta is not a bad thing. After all, it introduced many people to the next digital world model: that of the protocol-centric one. At least to an open one. Of course, they have known protocols like Sign in with Google or Facebook for all their life. But still, this is a major step.
A very important thing, however, will be that the Fediverse manages to advertise their idea of an open fediverse, rather than being drowned out by the advertising of the semi-open Metaverse that Meta will most likely at some point launch without mercy.
And I think, we might have a better stance here than many expect, because we simply have the best case for a social web that we all want to live in.
What to take away from this? Well, I guess what I’m getting here at is: even for me, a tech-apt person it was a significant effort to really understand the concepts behind the term “Fediverse” and lots of it done both with videos and trying out things. And I think, almost a taboo: there are many people on Mastodon that actually have a Provider-Centric view of the social web. It will be hard to get it across to people, and it will take time, but the changes it causes would potentially be huge.
Think about it: why is the idea of the Fediverse not so popular in the Silicon Valley? Well, because it makes users not mere users but agents that can contribute to drive that change. In the metaverse, the tools and the ground are provided by Meta; there is a limit to how far the ceiling goes, and that limit is defined by Meta. In the Fediverse, everybody can contribute to building it, there is no ceiling above us, only an endless universe with unlimited possibility in the digital. And this view is what Meta, Elon Musk and many other people in the Silicon Valley don’t want us to see. Because it makes us realize our own potential, because it brings us into a position to see a path for becoming autonomous digital actors, because it lets us form a vision for the future of the social web for ourselves, because it makes us independent from their stories.
In this sense, the bird really has been freed. Freed from the product that it was bound to.
That said, authoritarianism could become a problem on the Fediverse. In this sense, also, we don’t need to demonize Meta. They are not playing nice, but they also are a monopoly, and politically, they are not authoritarian, which is a good thing these days. We can look at their Metaverse, if they will call it that, as a digital, social ecosystem, but there are many others out there like it; Meta just has been the most ambitious with it. And if it helps us get bigger, we should get on for the ride. Everything else would be contradictory to our own ideals of the abstract idea of the Fediverse.
So, following this logic, the next three things to look out for could be the following:
Threads joining the Fediverse: People will be able to follow WordPress-Blogs from Threads. It will be huge.
Reddit separating its abstraction from its product: Reddit going public will most likely give fuel to that separation; because it alters the product without recognition from what it was a few years ago, in which it was basically non-profit
Science Community creating their own ecosystem based on the Fediverse: Soon, Open Science Collective launches, which is explicitly created in comparison to other, less open ecosystems. The Science Community seems like the first collective (apart from the Opensource community and parts of the queer community of course) that actually wants to build their own ecosystem on the web that is not proprietarily owned and not sealed off to everyone else (“The scientific method must be liberated”).
The one I’m most excited about personally is Threads joining the Fediverse, because yes, it will be tough, but it will introduce so many people to the idea of the Fediverse and lead to so much innovative ideas.
In the bigger picture that could happen we are at the beginning of the second big opening:
Half of the social web is still on web2 and the other half is already dipping its toes in the open social web.
Even many people in journalism still have an under-complex understanding of these services, which shows for example for the reaction of Reddit going public on the Guardian:
For all the understandable sorrow over having lost something dear, you can see here that the author clearly still has a “provider-exclusive” view on things. It doesn’t seem like any possibility that this service, which functionality basically only are forums, will never be built somewhere else. Then, there is commonly the talk that the internet is getting “more and more fractured” and that there will probably never again be “this one place”, which in a way, is true, but given the nature of the internet, sooner or later leads to more connectedness and shows the limit of these authors understanding of the matter here.
That’s also why it’s important that the Fediverse shows an active presence on Threads: to encourage people to think out of their digital world view that they have lived in for all these years, some even since always. Point them towards things that confuse and irritate them; that question their current, limited world view (of course only in a reasonable way) and they will eventually come up with a new model of the social web themselves and start asking questions that Meta don’t want them to ask.
Again, I want to press that this is not a call to smash Meta or any other web2 platform to pieces or take immoral actions against it, on the contrary – it is the view of the digital in our mind that needs to change, and it will push this Copernican revolution of how we look at the digital, additionally to practically implementing the Fediverse itself of course.
In any case, once reached, this Copernican conclusion is frightening as well as empowering, and it was made by many after the decline of Twitter; however, for most people, it’s still ahead. But we can already think about which conclusions to draw from this, and as we will see, with the help of Kant, we will be better off than before. In fact, we will become more mature and moral digital beings because of it. Because with this new, Copernican look on the social web that we have now, we can now apply the same conclusions that Kant drew for moral beings in the physical world, for the digital as well. But first of all, we need to turn our minds to another question that the Fediverse needs to answer for itself: can we consider Fediverse access a universal right? After shown this, we can take a look at what that actually means for us as digital beings.
A Kantian Right to Fediverse Access
Until now, we have always assumed that a universal access to the Fediverse is something that we should thrive for and much has already been written about whether the Fediverse should replace our current social media or stay small, by some deemed “small” and “Big Fedi” standpoints.
However, while usually, these arguments were made based on utilitarism, in the following, I will make another case for the “Big Fedi” standpoint, bolstered by some, hopefully convincing arguments by Immanuel Kant, which will lead to a broader vision on how the Fediverse could help us to become more moral digital beings based on one of the central ideas of Kantian thinking in the last section of this essay.
The idea to declare access to internet infrastructure a universal law is not new. In his paper “Palladium of the People: A Kantian Right to Internet Access” (https://philpapers.org/rec/BUCPOT-6), Christopher Buckman argued for a basic right to internet access, however, what he mostly argues about is for a basic access to social media.
The text argues that access to high-speed internet, including social media, should be considered a basic right due to its significance in connecting people to vital resources and facilitating informed democratic participation. It examines criticisms of social media, highlighting concerns about polarization and misinformation but argues that it can also serve as a bridge between morality and politics, aligning with Kant’s vision of the public sphere. Despite challenges, the text suggests that social media’s potential to unify and democratize discourse justifies the right to internet access. It addresses criticisms and provides examples such as the Black Lives Matter movement to illustrate how social media can influence public opinion and drive political change. Ultimately, it advocates for universal broadband access as a means to uphold individual autonomy, foster enlightenment, and safeguard against authoritarianism.
Notedly writing this in 2017, the timing couldn’t be worse, right? Social media leads to polarization, the movements that it sparked never lead to any real change, or do they? And on the web, people act immoral anyways, right? While these are of course heavily exaggerated, these inconsistencies in his argument exist, because social media as it is today is not helping society, and the problem will not disappear by scaling social media by getting more people internet access, as Buckman argues: “Increased inclusivity, made possible by the recognition of a universal right to internet access, would allow social media to fulfil its potential as a Kantian bridge between the moral and political.” Because the current, walled-garden social media is bad for society by design.
But these inconsistencies could be overcome with the introduction of the Fediverse. The Fediverse actually allows this public sphere to develop as it should, and that we can actually browse it and explore the World Wide Web with it. While Buckman argued that a universal internet access would actually make the public sphere that bridges morality and politics that Kant calls for, the Fediverse could be the more realistic thing to make that happen, and that will not necessarily lose this ability when it scales (at least there is no reason for this). And because the Fediverse so obviously achieves this bridge much better, his argumentation can also be used for a universal right to Fediverse access.
Why I’m worried about Reddit going public, or: the Choice between destroying something or building something
With a good argument for the “Big Fedi” now, there are also things that I do worry about.
Let’s assume for a moment that the Fediverse will soon have some power on the internet. Given that no one seems too aware of this, plus an overall hate against big tech, this is a recipe for disaster.
The Fediverse has to come to terms with the web that it wants to build. And it has to learn to control its own impulses. I just don’t think we are ready for it, yet and still, the whole situation around Reddit looks like a perfect storm for the web2 that will erupt sooner or later. So better speak about these things while we can still influence the outcome.
Some could say that after all, the situation is much like that of Twitter back in the day. But the situation with Reddit could for at least one reason be definitely unique: in the case of Twitter, not many people deny that it was solely be Elon Musk’s fault. The destruction came from the very top. In the case of Reddit, the situation would look more difficult, of course depending on how it will all play out. On one hand, there is the behaviour of spec, which is ignorant but not really surprising and which makes it somewhat like the situation of Twitter – but in many ways also not, because he doesn’t seem too keen to actually change the behaviour of the app’s functionality that much like Musk did with Twitter. His changes to the ecosystem are much more subtle, which doesn’t mean that they are any less impactful.
A crucial thing to keep in mind: violence is, first of all, immoral in mostly any case, and secondly, it also changes the person doing it. People on the Fediverse should be aware of that. It would change us, too, and at least in the way that it might happen again. Some people that would do it, would only be too eager to do the same thing again, they would search for the next thing to destroy. And next thing you know it, the Fediverse is turning on itself, basically dismantling its future.
Instead of destruction, it’s always better to build something new, which is better on its own and not because the old one was destroyed. There is nothing gained by destroying knowledge, by destroying communities. Companies will in any case be a part of the Fediverse. And if we just kick out companies altogether, they will go to another ecosystem that realizes the Fediverse better.
So, the next time, you share a post calling for the destruction of Reddit, think twice and maybe contribute to a Fediverse project instead.
I know this section is more borderline moralistic than usual, but sometimes it’s good to listen to the angsty German. And I’m telling you: universalism is the only option.
Its great the web is crawling slowly towards more enlightenment, but this also comes with new responsibilities. And we must not fuck it up for instant gratification even though we have been trained for so many years to do just that; we need to learn to control ourselves to stay in charge and for building something bigger.
Between blindly believing in the market and wanting to keep it out of the Fediverse completely, there exists another path. That of enlightenment, which we need to follow, because both other paths are so clear to fail.
The question for a set of morals on the social web and the question how to govern these spaces will only become more pressing in the future, and in the near future, regulators will play a role here; but not forever. Let’s take a first look how this could look like in the long run.
The Fediverse above me and the Moral Law within me
It’s obvious that a universal access to the Fediverse still doesn’t solve the problem that people on social media, be it central or decentral, often act without moral. This brings us to another core idea of Kantian thinking: the interconnectedness of objectivity and subjectivity, which leads to applying the idea of making own moral rules based on reason, also in the digital.
Because in the potential that lies in the Fediverse, in the space of rationality of the web that it expands in, we find our own morals just as we do when looking into the infinite potential of the universe, which hasn’t been possible on the web as we know it.
Kant famously wrote: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Kant’s idea that the stars above us introduce us to our own freedom, which in turn give birth to our own morals, can as well be applied to the fediverse: it is potentially huge, when looking into it and realizing its potential, we are for a moment annihilated, because we realize that we will never be fully able to rap our minds around this thing; however, we also realize, that we can either thrive for that knowledge or don’t thrive, and anything in between, and this, according to Kant, is freedom. And if we now apply Kant’s ideas to the internet, as we will see in the following, with the Fediverse, we are for the first time actually able to form moral principles in the digital from our own, rational minds in the sense of Kant.
This capability stems from the fusion of two distinct modes of digital existence: the ability to navigate digital spaces freely and the capacity for discourse and thought within social realms. The Fediverse breaks the barriers between these two modes of action, offering users a complete experience where they can traverse vast digital landscapes while engaging in meaningful interactions.
The Fediverse is completely different from the user experiences of web1 and web2. In traditional centralized platforms, users often operate within predefined structures and limitations imposed by the platform owners. They may have limited agency in controlling their online experiences and interactions. The Fediverse, as a decentralized social networking protocol, represents a departure from this centralized model. It enables users to participate in social networks that are interoperable, distributed, and not controlled by a single entity. This decentralization grants user’s greater autonomy, control over their data, and the ability to engage in communities across different platforms without being tied to a single service provider, empowering users to navigate the digital realm with greater freedom and autonomy.
Furthermore, it’s crucial here that we were already before conscious digital beings as well as able to move and alter the digital space; however, never at the same time. Either we were in the world wide web, where we could move around, but not speak and think, or we were in our limited space on a social media platform, where we could speak and think, but not move around.
The Fediverse now combines the two. When we could before switch between a vast, sprawling earth that we could wander at will, but unable to think and speak, and our own mind, in which we could think and speak with others about those things, but enable to interact with them anymore, the Fediverse now enables us to open our eyes, mind and mouth and look at the starry heavens above, were we see the huge potential space that the internet expands in: the world of reason.
This way, the world wide web and the social web are combined into a single experience, and the world of reason and all of its complex structures and our social structures are bridged. This way, we can explore the world of reason as social beings, and we can explore it together.
While with e-mail and social networks, it was already possible to talk about things on the web; it was never really possible to look at them as conscious, autonomous beings. If, for example, I was on a website to buy dog food and realized that the prices had increased, I had no possibility of telling that to my friends, or even imagining how to convey this to other people on the site itself. The only possibility would have been to copy the link, however, that would have changed nothing on the original site. With the Fediverse and ActivityPub, it’s easy to imagine a dog food website, on which you make comments on each site. But without this possibility, you aren’t really there at all. You are just a conscious ghost without a body. You can interact with the world, but no one will see it.
And now stepping out of this, looking in the vastness of objectivity and realizing one’s own freedom in the digital, is also the birth of morality in the digital world since Kant believed that autonomy arises from individuals freely following moral principles that they themselves have rationalized, rather than being dictated by someone else.
All of this also means that people will need to apply digital skills to navigate this space on their own. Because if they cannot create their own ground of space in the Fediverse, they cannot use their Fediverse Access to look into the starry heavens of the Fediverse. The skills to build one’s own Fediverse server are therefore crucial to becoming mature agents in the web of tomorrow. To understand better what this means and also as an introduction to the digital skills required for this, I created “the Ether”, a philosophical thought experiment, in which we imagine a world, in which the concepts of computer science have become natural law. This way, they can be learned similar to a magic system in Harry Potter. I described the concept in the following post, which also includes an exemplary H.P.-fanfiction that applies the ideas in a story: https://fungiverse.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/the-ether-1.2-1.pdf and https://fungiverse.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/avadas-curse-en-2.pdf, and the German original: https://fungiverse.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/avadas-curse-2.pdf (all three are open-source).
It’s the same as with the web2 apps: we separate the idea from the thing itself, and by this make it a matter of public debate, how far the actual thing differentiates from this idea. This way, we make it independent from actual programming languages (which in an abstract sense, don’t change that much anymore) and from the programming community in general, and this way, it becomes something static, that can be publicly debated upon and thrived for.
At one point, programming and data scientist skills will become a part of pop culture anyways just as it has been with engineering in the form of science fiction already. However, now is the time to turbo-charge this development.
It’s not like everybody needs to be able to program, but there should at least be a known path to reach these things. If a kid is interested in fantasy with complex magic system, maybe encourage them to acquire more digital skills. This way, it could also serve as a new heuristic here to spot people equipped to become computer/data scientists.
With these three things: a shift of the digital world view, a universal right to Fediverse access and a bridge to the skills that are required to reach the degree of maturity to become able to set one’s own moral rules in the digital, people should be able to make use of the Fediverse for overcoming their own digital immaturity and make the web again something, in which we can place our hopes for the future.
Conclusion
Our current view on the digital is very limited; by broadening it into the Fediverse, we are faced with new problems, but also new ways to liberate ourselves. But for this to be possible, there also needs to be a change of the state of mind. It’s not only a technical problem that can be solved by getting everyone internet access and developing the Fediverse. After Kant, the starry sky only gives you a sense of freedom, if you have sufficiently measured it and are conscious of the possibility, at least to a basic degree, to do that with your consciousness, even if never fully. Then the look turns from fear and awe to an unbearable realization of insatiable possibility, which Kant calls freedom. In other words, the Fediverse offers us for the first time, to look into the starry heavens of the digital world and become moral, digital beings, but only if we have the knowledge that it exists and that we can discover it with our minds.
Therefore, Fediverse access should be considered a universal right. But to acquire it, additionally to an access to internet, skills are required to make actual use of the theoretical possibility of signing up to a Fediverse service and realizing and making use of its full potential for becoming a moral, digital being. This document tries to be a first step towards this, which of course can be expanded by other people, who have a deeper knowledge of Kant and philosophy in general.
However, if it would be considered a good case, it could solve some of the dilemmas faced in digital spaces by the public and the individual today. Because then, it’s not necessarily so, that they need to be controlled by an outer authority; it is therefore not necessary that they at some point all come under the rule of national states, but it can stay in the hands of the public and becoming its own governing space when having acquired a certain level of “vernunft” (reason). This will give the public more power against the state and the market and could lead to overcoming the hyperpolitics of our current times and hopefully equip both society and individuals to face the challenges that we are currently facing and that of the twenty-first century in general.
In Kant’s sense, we aren’t yet human, but only thrive for becoming so. Maybe the Fediverse can bring us closer to that. And one thing is certain: While of course the most important thing is to build the thing itself, there will be no big Fediverse without a Copernican revolution on the web. This is also a clash of ideas: we have just left the digital dark age, and we need to push for the crack of light that we see in the distance, or it will close up eventually. The tools are all there, in our minds, we just have to make use of them.
“If it is now asked, “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” As matters now stand, a great deal is still lacking in order for men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues. But we do have clear indications that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction and that the obstacles to general enlightenment – to their release from their self-imposed immaturity — are gradually diminishing. In this regard, this age is the age of enlightenment …”
At the end of last year, the Verge made a 2024-outlook with a big post on the future of social media, which was basically a pitch for the Fediverse. And it’s focus had been on: money. The narrative went something like the following: before the WWW, there was AOL, which decline eventually lead to a huge boost of innovation (and of course money), and now, the same thing is happening again. It’s a perfectly reasonable story, however, except for Meta’s big promises (and some smaller companies more or less successful endeavours), not much has happened on this front, yet.
Why? Because this time, it’s different.
Why is it that businesses aren’t yet flocking to the Fediverse? Why is it that except for some nerdy blogs and techie websites, its still basically invisible in the public debate?
Well, because there isn’t much money in it, yet and probably, this won’t change much in the near future. Think of it like this: how would you make money out of a newly created Fediverse server? Well, first of all you would need to get people on it. Either by building trust or by having some great features. Then, you would either start charging money for it, show ads or sell the data of your users. However, changes are high that people will then leave your server for a different one, where they get everything for free. Additionally, it’s not like in web1, where you visit a website to buy dog food and afterwards never visit it again; in social networks, you want to spend some time there. Getting people to join your network is hard enough, keeping them there and charging money for that even more.
And while some of them may accept a basic form of payment (let it be their data, their attention or an actual fee), monetization for providers will be much harder than in a walled garden, because basically there will always be someone who does the same but for a cheaper prize. When in the old world, the user was themselves a good, necessarily owned by the service to which they were inseparably bound to, they are now free to choose and are thereby their own means of production: their own social capital, which they can move around at will.
This means that actually, businesses will have a hard job getting money out of the whole thing.
The thing that does however lie in the Fediverse is the potential for social capital. Actually, huge amounts of that. The Fediverse will enable people to connect on the web itself to a degree that was unseen before.
However, companies aren’t necessarily great at generating social capital, and that only, if they can squeeze profit out of it effectively, which isn’t that easy in the open system that the Fediverse is.
This can be seen more as a good or more as a bad thing; however, it will probably shape the further development of the Fediverse and should probably be kept in mind: the Fediverse will probably not be overrun by businesses any time soon. So, collectives will have time to form on the Fediverse. However, it also means that they will have to do it. They have to move into the window of opportunity, before it is closed again by companies like Meta, who will eventually again turn everything into a walled garden once they have to increase their profit.
The Open Science Network could be exactly the thing needed here for three reasons:
It shows the huge potential of social capital in the Fediverse and gives it a concrete practical use case. It makes immediately sense to people and is something that one can show to people how the Fediverse actually works and why it’s important, apart from decentrality and that it isn’t owned by Elon Musk.
It combines social capital with a common resource everybody wants to have access to and that becomes more valuable, the more people are connected to it: knowledge.
Twitter and other services and concepts of the web became big exactly through this: with the help of the science community. First came the nerds, then the scientists, then the gamers and Harry Potter fans, then the normies.
The Open Science Network could be the “IT”-project, the Fediverse has so long waited for. It’s a positive project, people understand it immediately, and it’s also a cool project for the open-source community to contribute to.
However, if that’s the case, it would most likely result in a significant power shift within the Fediverse. Up until now there are three big players in the Fediverse and its environment: Threads, BlueSky and the Fediverse itself. For simplicity, we will look at them here as more or less different collectives. The most obvious observation is that they are fierce rivals of one another, as for example the bridge between Fedi and BlueSky showed, the hostility by some parts of the Mastodon community towards Threads, or the deafening silence between Threads and BlueSky.
However, the entering of an open science collective could create a new situation: since knowledge gets more valuable the more people are connected to it, a common resource is created, which creates a completely new situation. Instead of fighting over social capital of different users, they would suddenly try to get the favours of the open science collective.
This would put the open science collective in a very comfortable position and force the other collectives at least to not pull the plug on federating with the others, at least not permanently. In any case, it would give the development of and the project of the Fediverse as a whole, a big boost most likely.
At the same time, it should be kept in mind that making something like the open science collective happen in the first place will most likely not be done by companies (because they don’t even want to), but by the open-source and science community themselves.
When the creation of the WWW let people create their own town squares, markets and fairs on the internet, now, the Fediverse let’s them create their own towns and universities around it. But because not many people are there yet, the landscape is huge and there is much of free-of-charge-places, it’s hard to charge money for something.
Nilay Patel: “The fediverse might happen. I think it’s exciting. Do you think that all of this space is going to create new sunlight reaching ground and new things will happen? […] Hank Green: “I do. What I worry about is that there’s not a ton of random money sitting around.”
Imagine an internet where the entire Harry Potter fandom seamlessly merges into one interconnected network, akin to a vast social platform tailored for Potterheads, Potterfans and everyone else at the same time. This is the vision the Fediverse could bring to life, where all fansites, from forums to fanfiction archives, unite in one digital haven. Here, subscribers can immerse themselves in the wizarding world, connecting with fellow fans worldwide, all within a decentralized and customizable environment, driving collaboration as well as innovation in the fandom.
As the Fediverse is still in its infancy, every fan has the power to shape its evolution, contributing to a community-driven platform that embodies the spirit of collaboration and creativity. But let’s take a first look at how the future of the H.P. fandom could look like in the Fediverse.
1. Decentralize the experience, make room for innovation
At the heart of the Fediverse lies its decentralized structure, offering users unprecedented freedom and control over their online experience. The Harry Potter fandom could benefit immensely from this setup, with fansites morphing into interconnected servers where fans can curate their own immersive experiences. Whether you’re delving into fan theories, engaging in roleplaying adventures, or discussing the moral complexities of your favorite characters, the Fediverse empowers fans to shape their fandom journey according to their interests.
This means huge potential for growth and innovation, as basically everyone can connect themselves to the existing network and start building their own fansite!
2. Diverse Fansite Landscape
In the Fediverse, diversity flourishes. Fansites dedicated to all aspects of the wizarding world can coexist within one network, allowing fans to explore niche interests and subcultures with ease. From spellbinding fan art galleries to in-depth literary analyses, the Fediverse offers a kaleidoscope of fan-created content, ensuring that everyone can find their place in the digital wizarding world.
3. Personalized Fan Experience
Because there is a huge landscape of decentralized servers, you can chose the experience you want – whether it is a slower algorithm, a focus on Quidditch or role playing – you have the choice.
4. Global Community Building
The Fediverse transcends geographical boundaries, connecting fans from every corner of the globe, fostering community-driven development in the digital world.
5. Empowering Fan Collaboration
In the Fediverse, collaboration is key. Fans can come together to co-create fanfiction, organize virtual events, and collaborate on fan art projects, unleashing their creativity within the magical universe of Harry Potter. As the Fediverse continues to evolve, every fan has the opportunity to contribute to its growth and development, shaping the future of the Harry Potter fandom for generations to come.
In conclusion, the Fediverse holds the potential to revolutionize the Harry Potter fandom by uniting fansites into one interconnected network, offering a personalized fan experience, and empowering fan collaboration and creativity from fans worldwide. As we stand at the dawn of this new digital era, the future of the Harry Potter fandom in the Fediverse is ripe with promise and potential, awaiting the magic that fans will bring to its ever-expanding universe.
There will come a point when things happening on the web will become more important than what happens outside of it. And maybe, we are already past that, finding ourselves tumbling towards disaster … many of the current political discussions and conflicts come from the internet. I think people still greatly underestimate how much influence the internet by now has.
In my last post, I described large collectives that will emerge with the rise of the Fediverse. However, I have to correct myself: they were always already there, they just now are getting more and more important.
The big digital collectives could be something like the following:
Christians/Traditionalists/Conservatives (currently Evangelicals most notably)
Potter Heads
Gamers
All of these collectives have their own trades as well as own forms of teaching their members digital skills that are needed in their collective; the Gamers for example through Game Programming, the Pop-Queen-fans are more apt at promoting their own gods on social media, while open-source enthusiasts provide much material for programming themselves.
Probably, no one of these collectives is going to disappear, they will most likely stay. The important thing for the internet community will be, to make sure, they don’t radicalise. Because each one of them has its own radical impulses. Most of the time, this means declaring their principles natural law and try enforcing them on all other collectives.
And our current problem is, that too many of them are beginning to radicalize inside the walled gardens that make most of the internet today.
The Problem: The Different Reigns of the Web and the long Consumerist Reign in the 20s
If these collectives existed since the beginning of the web, of course they also played a major role in its rise and there were more and less powerful in all the time the web has been around.
As we all know, during the early 2000s, the Harry Potter collective had a major reign. After that, during the 10s and late 10s, other collectives threw them off its throne and we lived through the reign of the consumer, gaming, eco-queer and the pop collective. Now, it seems like the right is striking back in the form of Trumpism, bitcoin bros and the gaming-communities’ bad impulses.
But maybe, if the nerd-collective manages to bolster up the Harry Potter-Collective again and collaborates with the other collectives that are still interested in liberal democracy, they might be able to hold back against the backlash from the right. And the only way for this, leads through the Fediverse, which only they can provide. But they will need to control their own impulses and let other collectives thrive within their own space.
But to understand that we need to take a closer look at the history of the web through the lenses of these collectives.
The nerds were the original settlers of the web, and they never forgave for being kicked out of it, though eventually, they had to ally with the consumer collective.
Apart from the nerds, there were also the scientists. They were kicked out of the equation first. I don’t want to blame anyone, but the consumer-collective at some point took over. And at a later point, another big collective appeared, that basically completely took over the position that the science collective once held: the H.P. collective, giving a positive outlook on how the internet should look and most importantly: feel like. Like being in a magic world, were clicks are like spells.
Through this power-shift thanks to the consumer collective, the science-collective was replaced by the H.P. collective and future optimism ran rampant, it could almost be felt in the air. But the coalition came at a price: the consumer collective had become too powerful and not nearly had enough.
The thing is: as long as a collective stays democratic, it should have a right to exist on the social digital landscape. But in the last decade, the evangelical/Christian collective, who didn’t want to join this coalition, felt excluded from this. That’s why now, when they have the chance, they try to get as much space on the web as possible, not knowing that soon with the Fediverse, there will be plenty of space for everyone.
My strategy would be to show them this dream and remind them that their allies, for example people like Musk, hate tradition and traditional hierarchies, they want to dismantle and disrupt them, while they want to conserve them, actually don’t really fit in with their values.
I’m not a conservative by any means, but these people still need their space to grow on the web, if they keep certain basic rules, even if some things of them are weird. But just trying to exclude them from the whole thing won’t work either and for most of these conservative communities, the web really did reck havoc in some of them. They are just not prepared for unlimited access to pornography for example. They, too, need their save spaces, as ridiculous as it sounds, because they are denying them for queer people, but maybe, hopefully, at some point, they will accept them as well? Nothing against a moderate, secularized Christian collective on the web, right? In the Fediverse, this could be possible, in the social media of walled gardens, not so much.
Currently, we see heavy fighting between consumer, eco-queer, gaming and the H.P. collective, because the consumer-collective pushed too hard and eroded too many institutional and societal connections. But they are not coming out of their conundrum and their close interrelation with the consumer-collective without the nerd-collective, which is still angry because it was kicked out of the alliance a while back.
All the while, another contender is aiming for the pole-position, who wants to exploit the bickering of the ruling collectives: the crypto-Musk collective seems to join forces with the evangelical-Trumpism collective.
The remaining non-radical forces factions (yes, again with the consumer-collective) should unite to divide the two, which actually don’t even have that much in common, push through to the Fediverse and ensure a peaceful living for all of them:
Currently, the democratic forces are losing the cultural fight. But the left itself has collaborated way too long with the consumer-collective, which radicalized itself on it and now, they feel bad for it and are in turn even more radical, turning on themselves, while the nerd-collective hides away in the Fediverse with a smug face of the self-assurance that it had always been the right thing not to invest in the web anymore, because it is going to shit now anyways, when all they do is to show their own cowardice and woundedness for giving the web over to the consumer’s collective in the first place (or letting it been done by the H.P., then science-collective) and laughing their head off together with the Marxist collective in the back seats of a truck headed for disaster.
Instead, we can prevent the reign of the Musk-Crypto-Trumpism collective and instead push through to the Fediverse, were no rule by anyone is needed in the first place and everybody can have their own space. But for this to be possible, the queer collective will need to be a bit less radical themselves, because they too have becoming very protective, denying the H.P. to join the democratic part of the collectives.
And we will also need to consumer-collective to join. Because of anything, we want to prevent a trump-consumerism-musk-collective, which would be truly hell and end in a truly dystopian version of the web.
Hopefully, by pushing this whole conflict into the Fediverse, we are still able to solve it to prevent worse, although I’m not anymore so sure about this happening in time …
We should anyways remind ourselves that whichever parts of the collectives map we don’t like – they will not disappear, and we need to learn to tolerate them and only act actively out on them, if they radicalize themselves too much. On the contrary: I would argue that each of the collectives have specific use; I for example was introduced to programming on the web through the gaming collective, to its communities through Harry Potter and to collaborating and actively shaping this space through the open-source and Fediverse-community; and I think most people on the web have a history on multiple of these collectives, while probably feeling closer to some than to others.
To summarize: we take the whole battle somewhere else: the Fediverse. There, the democratic forces of the web can re-order themselves and take a strong stand against trumpist and musk-collectives, which have a much worse standing in this environment (at least if their goal is to divide the rest of the web).
The future of the web depends on it.
The Goal: On Uniting the Web
If this is what the so-called cultural war actually looks like:
Why are the democratic forces loosing? Well, because they can’t get over their quarrelling and just unite.
Of course, the nerd-collectives want to protect the new land that they discovered and not lose it like last time, but to same the web and democracy as a whole, they may need to voluntarily open it up to others to stop greater bad from happening even though they may still want some kind to do it right: they have no choice but to urge them to join.
And suddenly, the situation looks a whole lot of different:
And now who is winning the cultural war?
Another Obstacle, or: The Promised Land
(Disclaimer: Of course, migrating into the Fediverse is something different and in no way literary comparable to the actual colonialization of America with their history of colonialism and slavery)
Many has already been written about the joining of the Fediverse by Threads and what can be said for sure, is that there is a big nervousness about it. And one of the biggest (if not the biggest) reason for this is not that Threads might exploit its power. That’s basically a given. But that the arrival of Threads will mean big change. Many new citizens will come into the Fediverse, and they will be much different from the ones that are there currently and probably, the Fediverse will look afterwards much different than today. In other words: the arrival of Threads means first of all: change.
There is no guarantee that these people will show respect to the Fediverse or it’s implicit rules. On the contrary, it can almost be expected that they don’t care for them. Many of them won’t even know that they are on the Fediverse and will expect the same that from walled garden social media.
And: many of the ones that want to actually build and shape it, will be quite radical. Like it has always been: the first travels are those that seek adventure and leave behind something, they come with very high hopes and often enough, these hopes are not met. Nevertheless, the Fediverse should try to build a place, in which all collectives can thrive, if they hold themselves to some basic rules thus ensuring cooperation or at least a basic sense of coexistence.
So: expect for the next big surge of the Fediverse the Fanatics, looking for their promised Land
Somewhat like with America, the first settlers were puritans, narrow and brutal in their views. And like that, it’s also on the web. But it makes sense: they are looking for the promised land. And it doesn’t mean that one day, they can’t be the shoulders on which the west rests.
If the promises are true, the Fediverse will soon be a sprawling ecosystem, meaning money and hopes (https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub) – just like the new land in its time. This will of course also attract fortune and adventure seekers; and those looking for something like their own promised land, like the settlers of America of their time. And these are also often enough fanatics of some sort or the other. Nevertheless, they will be crucial when building the Fediverse and its future. Therefore, we need to think about which people we want to attract and maybe even court first.
This means for the different collectives, the first people to come will be the following:
Pop-queens: swifties, etc.
Marxists: Marxist-leninists
Nerds: ethical hackers, anarchists, die-hard-Linux-enthusiasts etc.
Eco-Queers: radical activists
Christians: evangelicals
Consumers: ?
Musk-Fanboys: Crypto-Bros
Gamers: Streamers
Harry Potter: Potter Heads
And if they are coming, even if it might feel wrong to think that way, we do need to think in which state these collectives currently are and which of them we should invite to join the Fediverse and promote it in their collectives and which are currently in not a good state, and we should try to keep away from the Fediverse for now. In my opinion, the Christian/traditional collective and the crypto collective are not in a good state currently.
It can be said in general that, because they are settlers, the first members of the collectives that will come will be rather radical, outcasts, having nothing to lose, meaning they will push the collectives in the Fediverse to their radical edges, straining their principles or overstepping them, meaning it will at the beginning even harder to keep them together and uphold principles of liberality and cooperation. First there will probably be chaos. Who comes into the Fediverse to help build it, usually wants something out of it: some dream to come true. To reach some kind of promised land, straining the room the Fediverse gives.
But as already seen on the Fediverse, this seems to be manageable: the Fediverse may actually be the place in which the collectives might breathe again and find their stance again to fight the un-democratic forces in its own middle. Maybe it actually has enough room to give all of these dreams enough space that they might just seem possible, while always keeping them from becoming reality by checks from the other collectives.
In a sense, this is also re-assuring: it doesn’t really change that much. Everything already exists on the web, it will just soon even more come to the light and hopefully, we manage to pull it back onto a healthier course.
What we definitely need to prevent is the world tumbling into a world war because they don’t understand the power of their own technology, like it was in World War 1, and which is considered by many (though I don’t completely agree on this) to be the root catastrophe of the twentieth century. Why not learn from history and just don’t do it this time and instead unite and talk? After all, we all have the right to strive for happiness, whatever that might look like, as long as it stays under the hood of liberal democracy.
The silver lining in all of this is that most of the collectives are already here: Christian, Marxists, Harry Potter Fans, Crypto bros, and it works fine enough. At the same time, the Fediverse is still little, but to unite the web and overcome these boundaries that divide us, it needs to grow.
But for that, we need to untangle the whole unfortunate situation of the quarrelling collectives in walled gardens and get them in the Fediverse somehow.
A Possible Solution: A Union with the H.P. Collective (the Queer-Potter-Nerd-Coalition)
I think we can agree that the current situation isn’t exactly great:
It simply doesn’t work like that. It leaves us divided and produces more and more conflicts, which have their effect in the real world as well. The Fediverse is the only thing that can save this from escalating. Now some people will say that some of these collectives we don’t want on the Fediverse. But if someone should be for plurality, it should be those in the Fediverse (as long as they hold themselves to certain principles of course)! But how to get this whole thing started?
Not that it will be very easy to pull the collectives out of their walled garden misery. Many sure still want to stay. The pop queens for example just like the consumers will surely not be interested in building their own place on the web. They want everything already setup nice and clean. And while the gamers probably have the second-best builders (after all, they are already starting to build their own Metaverse on Roblox and Minecraft) they currently have their own problem with toxicity.
So far, the coalition with the queer collective has proven to be very beneficial for both sides, but it won’t be enough: we still need an important ingrediency, maybe the most important of it all: stories and a collective with a fable for them. And in the best case, it would also be willing to help building the Fediverse. The Potter collective has lots of artists, they are the masters of fanfiction, as well as builders and have also deep roots in the queer collective (even though culturally, they are currently someway at odds).
Instead, if we take a look at the people that are already on Threads and that will soon join the Fediverse. Let’s face it: most of them only know walled gardens. They simply won’t get the Fediverse for a long time. The potter heads on the other hand, were always there when the web made a new shift, and they have definitely emancipated themselves from Rowling. And even if some of them aren’t: discuss it with them. The Fediverse is big enough for this. Let’s show the world what the Fediverse is capable of in terms of overcoming borders and in terms of plurality while still fighting for our values. And with their stories and sheer cultural impact, they could give the whole thing some kind of momentum.
In this sense, I think the intolerance of the queer collective stems from the experience that they had on the web in the last decades: that of abuse and harassment in online spaces because of a lack of moderation in spaces operated by the consumer collectives, like for example on Tumblr and big walled garden social media. And because of that, they are now very protective of whom they want to ally with. But this could proof to be ineffective. I think when building a new web that should not be dominated by the consumer collective, we should get all the help that we can get. If we instead try to create the perfect save space, we will only further radicalize. Let’s not kid ourselves that only Christians can develop totalitarian, sect-like structures if pushing for too much safety.
In summary: Potters are alright, and more than that: they could be very good allies in their skills and in their spirit. So yes, I think the best collective to seek out would be the Potter Heads, because they are the ones that could be actually interested in building their own place on the web, as well as having the right conviction to hold against the bad parts of the web. Because they did it before: they build their forums, their own websites, they will be a driving force of the Fediverse anyways, the question is whether we will greet them or try to fight them. If we could win them as our allies, we could really create a shift on the web and it also makes sense: the evangelicals used to burn Harry Potter books. Harry Potter used to be avant-garde! Let’s not forget that.
This could already be enough to shift the tide on the web towards democracy: maybe consumerism, Swifties and Gamers will move over and we can divide evangelicals/trumpists and crypto bros!
I think, it is quite promising:
The Nerds would have the tech
The Queers would have the moral conviction for moderation and building save communities
The Potters would have the stories and cultural heritage to fill it with life
For the rest of the web: we are actually more united than we think; in this sense: Nerds, Queer Folks and Potter Heads Unite! The Swifties, Gamers and Consumers will follow on foot!
Instead of hiding away in our shelters, hoping that somehow, it will all turn out all right, we should do what we do best: building. For example a Harry Potter/Hogwarts instance on Lemmy and Mastodon. We should actively aim for a better position on the web of the future and by this, being able to shape its development instead of just reacting to it.
TL;DR: The web is entering a new era, in which communities can move independently through the digital landscape. Parallels with the book “Dawn of Everything” by Graeber and Wengrow suggest that the Fediverse could enable the exploration of alternative social structures, just like it was in early human history. The coexistence of diverse collectives within the wide landscapes of the Fediverse could be a factual step to a more varied future of society.
In the non-fiction book “The Dawn of Everything”, David Graeber and David Wengrow manage at the same time to dismantle the legend of humanities steady growth as a linear process, as well as that of an original ideal state of equality, which makes the book genuily progressive. And the Fediverse could be just the thing to enable this progress of again opening up societies to a bigger variety of forms.
As explained in my last post, the web is currently beginning to open up again to innovation, but instead of technological, it will primarily be of societal nature this time. And because communities will be the prominent entity of this time, similar to the result of the dot com era, the powerful digital structures that will emerge from this time will also be communities; very big communities or: collectives that will have a great impact not only on the web, but on the world and humanity as a whole.
If we zoom in on opening up of living styles in the history of humanity, which has already been going on for quite some time, for example, we see an opening up of living styles beyond the christian nuclear family and new societal institutions due to globalisation and the rise of liberal democracy into what some call “the global village”:
We are already in this process of opening up but have, one could easily think, come to a point where it doesn’t seem to work anymore, because different communities clash in fights and it even seems that at this point impossible that these different societal groups will be able to live peacefully in the same society. At the same time, a development that is similar (although of course not the same) currently unfolds on the web.
Let me try to explain the process with an analogy that shouldn’t (obviously) be taken literary but works very good as a metaphor here; that is, to view the evolution of the web and how it could look like in a petri dish:
Now, let’s add some energy to it:
What happens is that live is created, in this case, the first website, which people can visit.
Now, if we add some more energy to it, we get more websites for more people to visit:
At some point, an open-source community will develop around the whole thing on which other sites can build on to build even bigger websites:
This eventually leads to big players dominating the web, while the open-source foundation grows:
Now, the growth of these big bubbles is limited, while the open-source community grows and at some point, becomes alive itself and so gives the ground for smaller, but interconnected social media servers, resulting in the social web:
Communities can now travel across the complete web, which gradually dismantles and re-orders the landscape of the web:
While before, users and their communities were limited to specific sites, now they can move across the web.
At a certain point, these communities will stabilize into what one could call “collectives” … resulting in the “Collective Web”, which is dominated not anymore by platforms or communities but collectives.
As an overview, the following graphic comes up:
And especially the second two stages (social and collective web) are interesting now, because they could give the process of humanities’ trying out of new forms of society a new ground to fully unfold.
In a sense, it’s only logical: the opening up of living styles at some point also would need to be represented in the digital world and, would need a huge amount of room to occur. The web of platforms and walled gardens cannot be the place for that, Twitter never nearly lived up to its standard of becoming the digital representation of that global village. The Fediverse on the other hand, in which it develops, could give the necessary room for this to happen. So, while in the analogue world we are already in the middle of it, on the web, we are at the beginning of this.
But for that, this opening up needs to happen. Otherwise, we drift off towards authoritarianism. And of course, this is also a thing that could happen.
Now, at the beginning of the dot com era, all the companies that would later be the big players in the Web 2.0 where already there: a marketplace, a place to meet other people, a search engine, a place to sell your stuff, etc. All the big companies that we nowadays almost simultaneously associate with the term “web”, they were all already there – so if we ask ourselves: what could be the collectives of the Collective Web? Could we think about which they could be when we look at the societal structures on the early Fediverse? Because maybe, structures like these will in a decade be one of these big collectives.
So now, one could already think about how these collectives will look like, although they will also probably merge with the communities of current social media, so it’s probably too early to tell and that’s why it’s not what we will do here. Instead of making overly hypothetical guesses at what the actual collectives will look like (if they will occur at all; which again, is not given), we will try again to look at the broader picture and apply the hopeful rise of the social/collective web on the conclusions of Graeber and Wengrow’s non-fiction book “Dawn of Everything”.
Coming now finally to David Graeber and ‘s “Dawn of Everything”, the possibilities of the Fediverse aligns with the authors’ observed exploration of alternative social structures throughout human history. Graeber and Wengrow challenge conventional narratives about the inevitability of hierarchical institutions and emphasize the existence of diverse and egalitarian forms of organization in early human history. And by that, they pose the question: if it was possible back then, why shouldn’t it be possible now?
Just as they advocate for a re-examination of societal structures, the Fediverse presents a platform that poses as an alternative to centralized social media. It echoes the authors’ call to question established norms and embrace alternative ways of organizing human interaction. In the spirit of “Dawn of Everything,” the Fediverse becomes a digital counterpart, a decentralized space where individuals can shape their communities and express their values without succumbing to the limitations imposed by walled gardens.
Moreover, the Fediverse mirrors the authors’ exploration of coexistence and diversity in human societies throughout history. Just as Graeber and Wengrow argue for the acknowledgment of various social arrangements, the Fediverse facilitates the coexistence of diverse lifestyles and ideas. It becomes a digital space where people can connect based on shared interests and values, fostering a sense of community that transcends the atomization of society and hyper-individualism discussed for example by Anton Jäger in his book “Hyperpolitik”.
In essence, the Fediverse aligns with the spirit of “Dawn of Everything” by offering a contemporary example of decentralized, diverse, and non-hierarchical social interaction. It provides a digital landscape rather than a closed space, where individuals can reclaim agency over their online presence.
How would this look like in practice?
Well, you would have a multitude of different collectives to join, usually, you will also be born into a collective. Of course, inter-collective relationships will also be possible.
Collectives have different traits, living styles and styles to organize themselves. Some organize themselves with the help of AI and extensive data collection, others don’t like surveillance and make use of open collective knowledge, while again others will try to implement non-hierarchical styles of governing.
The major point is here, that the Fediverse is big enough to give all of these collectives enough room to unfold (given that they stick to the ground rules of liberal democracy) and in this, not only let us overcome the political ground fights that we are fighting currently, solve conflicts much more effectively and to a certain degree, unite the forces of liberal democracy; but on top of that, let’s us enter a new stage of humanity, in which different societal concepts and ideologies could be actually implemented in (hopefully relatively) peaceful coexistence with one another. And this way, concepts of communities, forms of society and governing, that until now were only being able to try and discuss in theory, can actually tried out in practice; and this way, new forms will also prove themselves to work and can be applied on scale, which does not necessarily mean that it will make our lives more enjoyable, exciting or overall liveable; but it will give us a much better potential to achieve just that.
Thanks for reading. Most of what I write on this blog is heavily based on hypothesis, so feedback and discussion of it is always welcome. FYI: I got some of these ideas from the podcast “Die sogenannte Gegenwart” by zeit.de, especially the following episode, which I can really recommend: https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2022-12/mastodon-twitter-nutzer-feuilleton-podcast
Currently, people on the Fediverse seem to try to turn it into a fortress for the post-Biden era. What about a different approach: why don’t we try to save the status quo and then think about how to change it so we won’t need that fortress in the first place?
Main Goal: Save liberal Democracy
Five sub-goals of that:
Unite, protect and strengthen the discourse among democratic forces (create an opposition to Twitter; prevent split of democratic forces; instead unite democratic forces, overcome trench warfare, show Trumpists how actual discussions look like; division of the left might be softended through this; also make unusual allies for example with neocons, traditional conservatives or yes, J.K. Rowling; the more democratic forces are in the boat, the better, the rest is solved by federation)
Ignite the American Dream for the Dot Social Era: Show people a way in the Future
Ignite in People the Vision for a prosperous Future (the dot social era/boom, new frontier of the web, etc.)
Give People the Vision for a better Future (increase in social capital; better discourse; for a certain time continuos digital dominance of US thanks to Threads, basically things staying as they were a few decades ago; freedom of lifestyle; more social connections; building of protected digital communities)
The Fediverse should gain relevance in the public discourse of traditional media; this will happen at the latest when Threads joins Mastodon; but we should be ready before that: there should already be Podcasts, Blogs, Books, etc. so that everyone can quickly get up to speed with its concepts and vision
Rebuild social connections and structures (old and new): Foster the development of social capital. Without social capital, people cannot dream of the future and succumb to depression; also, social movements can better form and operate
Diverse and new forms of Communities: Foster diverse sets of life-styles through the Fediverse
Norman Fucking Rockwell: also here make unusual allies for example with traditional conservative institutions like religious ones, which will also be interested in creating saver or more protected online spaces
Counter Populism like on January 6: Foster Liberal Values & Institutions (help democratic institutions in the Fediverse, etc.)
Make the Fediverse Big, Fast: for all of that, the Fediverse needs to become big and as many people need to join it as possible (regardless of Meta’s Threads or the other parts); as many as possible communities on the web should be tried to get in the Fediverse (fandoms especially Harry Potter, democratic bitcoin enthusiasts, privacy advocates, open-source and linux communities, etc.)
This could be applied to any country really but it applies of course to the US this year in specifc. And always remember: if things really go down to shit, we may need to unpack Rockwell again anyways, or worse – so why not try a little structure once again before its thrust over us. First save the system, then reform it.
I think it would be very realistic to assume that already in 2024, the first global humanistic-christian collectives will develop on the Fediverse, Taylor Swift will give her first concert in the Fediverse, J.K. Rowling and Harari will join, just as eco-queer-collectives, atheist-humanistic-collectives and some bitcoin bros. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than now.
A single, abusive entity or a group of abusive entities in the Fediverse has gained more than 51 percent of influence
They start EEE
Other instances either react by defederating, but because they only have 49 percent, due to network effects, they get extinct; or they chose to still federate, which will extinct them also because of EEE
Now, measuring influence in the Fediverse is inherently challenging, given its abstract nature. The extent of influence is tied to societal capital invested in the Fediverse, including legal and economic factors. The potential influence is also constrained by the number of users, although this is limited and may increase predictably over time. Societal factors, such as the impact of institutions like the European Union, contribute to the overall influence landscape. Despite these variables, it’s crucial to acknowledge that influence in the Fediverse remains something fundamentally limited at a certain point in time and that this limit and its hypothetical value, are strictly correlating to the size of human population.
Back to the actual threat scenario: some may recognize this, because it is basically the social equivalent to the 51% attack of crypto currencies as pointed out by @carrotcypher@reddit.com. And, as already said, of course, social influence is a different thing than actually owing parts of a crypto currency, it is hard to measure, but as the same with crypto currencies, it is fixed at a certain amount of time. I want to add to this, that, while I’m not against technical ideas per se, I want to point out that I’m opposed the societal utopias and promises of crypto kids. I believe in public institutions, our societies should be built on trust; for me, a trust-less society is a dystopia. Actually, I hope that the Fediverse will help us to rebuild institutions, which enable people to trust each other again.
However, we are nowhere near this, because currently, the Fediverse is not resilient enough for the described 51% attack. In fact, Mastodon itself would have enough influence to pull a 51% attack, but it is very unlikely to do so given the creator’s behaviour in the past. But while that’s a very lucky thing to have, the issue is that we depend on the owner of Mastodon to not sell the company to a billionaire. And while currently, the influence is heavily owned by Mastodon, if Threads gains the 1 billion users that they are going for, they may already have the amount of power to pull a 51% attack and perform EEE on the Fediverse.
Some will now ask: why can’t this attack be easily prevented with the Fedipact (fedi-instances that plan to permanently block Threads and exclude it from the Fediverse)? Well, because, at least according to some, the Fediverse will soon enter a new stage, that of full-on commercialization (https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub). This will be at the latest when Threads starts federating with Mastodon and there is just no possibility that no instance will federate with Threads and companies jumping on that train as well. So it is hardly anything stopping this development and “keeping Threads little”. It will not stay little. It will become bigger and bigger and increase its influence. Either the “free” Fediverse can try to influence this or stay out of it but also cast away responsibility and watch while the Fediverse enshittificaits.
Overall, the good news here is: as long as the “free” Fediverse gains influence at the same rate Meta is gaining influence so that it never gets over the 51 percent of influence, we will be fine. On the other hand, it could become hard to manage to do just that. So, to counter-act this attack scenario, I drafted a first strategy called “Embrace, Extend, Enforce (ƎƎƎ)” in this post: https://fungiverse.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/embrace-extend-enforce-a-practical-strategy-against-potentially-abusive-instances-like-metas-threads/ Hopefully, it will be extended and applied in the future to make the Fediverse truly proof to abusive entities.
Fungiverse Tales 