I just attended a very inspiring #FnF23 session convened by @erikkemp on the topic of Fediverse governance. People from many countries, backgrounds and groups were present.
In my opinion, it's too early for creating governing bodies, and I'm not sure we will ever need them. What I find useful is covenants that instances can sign. E.g. digitalcourage.social signed the well-known Mastodon covenant <https://joinmastodon.org/covenant> as well as the #fedimins covenant <https://fedimins.net/en/covenant/> which is still a work in progress.
#Fediverse #governance #fediverseGovernance #covenant #mastoAdmin #FreedomNotFear
@chris I personally find E2EE very desirable in social networks, but different platforms have made design decisions that are favorable or hostile to it, based on their design philosophies.
#Fediverse , for example, in focusing on instances instead of users as being primary is not very compatible with E2EE.
And that runs right up against the above post about governance.
If the platform’s philosophy is one about promoting the governance of users, that’s going to run up against these issues of privacy and encryption, just as happens in world governments all the time.
So there’s a tradeoff to be had, distributed privacy vs centralized governance.
I find E2EE desirable in social networks, but an awful lot of people prefer governing instances.
@chris the protocol underlying the Fediverse, ActivityPub, is centered around instances as part of its core design.
It’s like how the protocol for the web, http, is centered around web servers.
So a person can’t build a system without instances and engage with fediverse. It’s incompatible. Every message in the system would begin with, “So, what instance do we talk to to reach you?”
This is why alternatives like BlueSky and Nostr are in different worlds: their underlying protocols work in incompatible ways.
At that point it comes down to what you mean by “Fediverse”, then.
When many people use that word they mean specifically projects using ActivityPub.
So what do you mean by that word?
"what you mean by βFediverseβ "
Ha, like I said, I asked what YOU meant by it. A TON of people use the term to mean something different, and that’s OK so long as we can figure out what different people mean by the word.
But still, in your reply I see a lot of what the word, to you, ISN’T but I still don’t see what to you it IS.
To you it isn’t just Mastodon or AP, but what IS it?
"This is why alternatives like BlueSky and Nostr are in different worlds"
OK but you properly know that this worlds have allready bridges ... and that they may come even closer together...
ActivityPub is not the only protocol of the Fedi and even AP is a moving target... it gets improved on and on.. so things are not that settled as you write
do you know fedi projects with nomadic ID ?