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

BUT ALSO GUESS WHAT - i don't even like agree with christine because she was making a totally separate point ???? and like yea its a concern but SHES DOING THE METAPHOR THING I HATE AHHHHHH WHATS GOING ON

this whole thing is literally such a clusterfuck. i have political philosophy autism and people keep saying things and i keep trying to make sense of them when actually i think its just a complete waste of time and it's all jumbled nonsense and im gonna have a breakdown

bc its hard to tell when im just like genuinely retarded and missing something (all things technical) vs. when the tech-bros are tech-broing my comfort character

i do think that if we're using the metaphors, the relationship between ActivityPub instances could fairly be called confederated. i literally do not see any universe in which atproto is a federated republic blawg.

there are no representative mechanisms whatsoever. like with the concepts i laid out above, the social arrangement of power almost doesn't arise??? because we're talking about the linkages of servers to other servers, and kinda proxying the human ownership of those servers as power holders.

but this is literally just confused and worthlessly messy. i do not see a meaningful, useful way in which the arrangement of networks can be described without parasitically referencing human relations, but the reference to human relations is actually entirely ignored.

i think it is entirely a worthwhile endeavor to theorize about how the tech we interact with is structured, but these loose metaphors suck fucking ass and i wish computer scientists of all people would be more discrete with their engagement

to demonstrate my point, like you can also just call all protocols federated because erm actually a bunch of servers (separate actors) utilize a standardized communication method, and so they are operating under its authority

BUT THATS STUPID. AND TOTALLY WORTHLESS. like then ig the follow-up is like ok sure after we establish federated vs non-federated (what would a non-federated protocol look like? it probably exists i just can't think of how), then we can talk about "centralization". so like who owns the computers

talking to each other. if they're all owned by one actor (remember, actors can be organizations of people, like bsky pbc), then they're centralized, and the degree to which there are many actors means it's decentralized. and again this is coherent but i actually don't think it tells you anything

REMOTELY MEANINGFUL. it's nowhere near sufficient to get at the type of things FOSSy fucks like. and maybe its like ok fine thats our bare minimum, and they're really just defining two attributes they dislike and saying any of the cool kids can't have that shit.

but... bro.... there's no shot you're just sit down all satisfied after serving that absolutely worthless, vacuous drivel. i asked you what your ethics are and you said that you hate murder. ???? cool ig???? i mean i know that people have strong strong preferences with how networks are designed,

it's totally fair that you don't wanna fall on the sword for dummies, and you're defi not obligated to. ig im also just more scared if people like you stop saying things, especially around devs, that things could go down a really bad path. someone has to be the asshole or this place is fucked

and i also wouldn't under-estimate the impact you have on lurkers. people that are stupid and vocal and likely to remain that way but there are also lot of people that won't say anything and

will use your comments as a jumping off point. maybe that's too idealistic (and very selfish) but thats kinda my personality so its valuable to me to have someone like u around

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