ok idc im still talking about this because everyone is doing wack tech political philosophy

paul's statement is like intensely interesting and also intensely wrong imo. i was gonna write a blog thing about this yesterday but i thought i was out of steam

imo there are several overlapping concepts at play here (these are stipulated definitions, anachronistic and kinda ideal typic): federation: a group of actors organized under a central authority they comprise confederation: a group of actors comprising a common organization, crucially

with the right to succession. "tech federation": as far as i can tell this is basically interoperability. a common communication method that actors can use to interface with one another.

there are sub-questions here about the internal decision-making procedure of such entities. two forms this can take i think are best explained with reference to the way power is distributed to roles:

representative: a group of actors appoint another actor to present their interests and make decisions on their behalf. delegate: the delegation i'm thinking of is informed by the social anarchist tradition. delegates are strictly mandated and instantly recallable.

i'll let kropotkin explain strict mandates: "the delegate is not authorized to do more than explain to other delegates the considerations that have led his colleagues to their conclusion. Not being able to impose anything, he will seek an understanding and

will return with a simple proposition which his mandatories can accept or refuse". unlike representatives, delegates do not provide their own perspective, but summarize their mandatories' collective perspective to another group of actors.

instant recall is the enforcement mechanism to ensure this happens. if the delegate deviates from the mandatories' desires, they can be recalled and replaced with someone who can summarize their views accurately.

ok wow thats neat alice, what the fuck. well yea idk thats what im thinking bro. literally what is anyone talking about. i glided past the tech federation thing but it has like nothing to do with anything????? i get that it's like the metaphor people use and we're kinda stuck with it, but i agree

with christine that this is like the most absurd, incongruent, misleading set of metaphors in the world. people are not servers. in fact, people run the servers, and there are relations of power within the organizations that run them that are usually like way more important

don't get me wrong like the ability for multiple actors (and actors can be internally organized in any number of ways) to communicate with one another is fucking awesome, and theres a ton of potential here for FOSSy shit that i'm really into

unironically i think arguing with randoms is a public service. to the uninitiated, it's a way to learn the protocol without reading the docs, in a casual context that is interesting (conflict)

please keep being annoying, we need you

v2 fits in 100 lines

performance be damned

it’s scuffed that i can get notifs while signed out so i might temp delete the app since i don’t wanna deactivate again

ok i’m logging out again 👋

dm leaks have confirmed that i am in fact aromantic

this is the realest shit destiny has ever done

excreta

this is an adorable and extremely funny pair of skeets

7x11x13

good clairo

are you saying you got eris pics

i selflessly volunteer

also the tech meaning seems so thin that it’s basically worthless. like it sometimes seems like sprinkling a political flavoring on “interoperable”. in that case atproto is a federatable protocol and bsky is trivially but not meaningfully federated, which is like conceptually fine ig

oh and i should be transparent that something akin to “credible exit” is my primary concern too, because i mostly care about my own records and could ultimately do without anyone else’s. i like that atproto is centered around an ID (and my most pressing concerns are the very real DID issues)

i like the model of extensible lexicons a lot. i like that everything is just json. to be frank, i don’t really give that much of a fuck about the social part, outside of how it interacts with the integrity and accessibility of my records (moderation).

so it’s kinda like yeah i hope y’all sort that relay problem out, whatever. it’s a big issue for social but tbh i don’t know how much Relay1 + Relay2 + RelayN does much to meaningfully resolve what power issues there are.

(which is basically my problem with the multiple micro-tyranny model of “federation”, to bring this full circle)

i have waved my magic wand and this thread has been marked as archived and read-only (in my imagination but not actually). i needed to post it to force me to think about the issue, but i no longer entirely endorse my posts

dw you’re in good company

okay maybe i’m going crazy, i could have sworn you posted a new tab screen that looked like this the other day but now i don’t see it ur media >.< oops

hi eris wanna federate

woah holy shit i didn’t realize that’s what this was…. awesome…

literally thought this was just ancient chrome the other day lmao

maybe it’s semantic but i don’t see how it ever could be. i see this as distinct from “decentralized” (in its various meanings), and i too have hope atproto could achieve that

again tho i don’t see the former as a negative thing. AP is properly federated and is a lovely case study of why it sucks. certain kinds of social anarchists have stumbled into the same pitfall (the context i’m more familiar with)

fwiw this is a somewhat tepid statement, and i’m less familiar with how the metaphor is used in its technical sense. and it certainly isn’t an endorsement of centralization (but this is kind of cheap bc it’s not like i have fleshed out alternative).

criticism need not be constructive, but you probably shouldn’t be a little shit about it if you can help it and are on somewhat good terms with people with whom the criticisms are targeting

certain people need to stop larping tho and jay should change her bio

friend req sent

oh true groceries are heavy now and my bones are hollow

already was so no change

yoo i made it into swag lfg

we need a relationship status record type

mary/cinnamon win hands down sorry