## What is a Community? We don't have to accept solutions presented by the people who caused the problems. We can first scrutinize the dichotomy in which the problem is framed. On the web, the *Protocols, Not Platforms* dichotomy frames our problems as a matter of inadequate technology. *If only we had used the "correct" technology, we might've avoided the rise of Meta*. But, it's not the underpinnings of a tech-stack that gave us the plundering platform era of the last decade. And it's not a protocol that will liberate us from the techno-oligarchs. _Communities, Not Markets_ is about finding opportunities to participate in digital spaces that avoid the trappings of a market-based social media platform. It's about gradually reducing the amount of attention we afford to Meta, by participating in, and creating, community-based social media. The new social web is about people, not protocols, if we want it to be. The World Wide Web isn't broken, in that a deficiency of technology isn't what got us here. If we start blaming technology for these problems, then we naturally look towards technology for solutions. *[The Purpose of a System is What it Does](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does).* The web is working just fine for the small number of corporations who control the comings and goings of our digital lives. The *problem* is that the web and the internet were handed to the Fortune 500 in the mid-90s by American politicians. The goal is to take it back. -- Communities are subversive: (refrasing of the same sentence) 1) The small digital community is an act of defiance. It exists in a time when perpetual growth and relentless extractions are the only pursuits. 2) Alt: In a hyper-extractive web, where growth is the only pursuit, the small digital community is an act of defiance. Its subversive. Its punk. -- “Communities Not Markets” works best when we tear down technical barriers, and don't allow perfect to be the enemy of the good. That necessarily means that some communities should be scrappy off-label implementations. Get creative! Especially if you're not technically inclined. Don't be afraid to use the systems already at your fingertips. I endearingly call these communities “The Janky Web.” -- There are no prerequisite technical specifications to form a community other than the absence of adtech. Decentralized, centralized, it doesn't matter. “Communities, Not Markets” is about finding opportunities to create shared digital spaces that help reduce the amount of collective attention we allot to big tech. Number go *down* ## The problem(s)—algorithms & adtech *It is possible to centralize within a decentralized system* In its pursuit of endless growth, by way of unregulated markets, lobbying, and corruption, the ad-tech giants have become the gatekeepers of the internet, and watchers of our digital lives. These companies have generated an unprecedented amount of power and have since started behaving like digital Empires. This power was accumulated, not because of the walled gardens they govern, but because of the dismantling of anti-trust laws, and a corrupt Congress who have vested financial interests in these companies' monopolies. Under any other technology stack, these companies would have become similar digital empires. So decentralizing a single layer in the stack (the protocol), does nothing to disseminate their power and authority over our lives. -- <!-- People seems to like this passage on Mastodon. Maybe use it in the beginning--> The problem with the world wide web is there are far too many markets, and far too few communities. Markets have monopolized our time and have turned our attention into wealthy empires. It's not because platforms were built on the wrong protocol. We don't beat the techno-oligarchs with a decentralized system. The World Wide Web *is a decentralized system*. We beat them by building more communities. ## What is a market? A markets is a vessel for extracting value for a small syndicate of beneficiaries (ie venture capitalists). How a company brands their tech stack is less relevant. If an extractive force exists, it's a market. You can simply call it "ad-tech" and you'd be correct. But that term lacks all the fun analogies of spaces where people dwell. The market's only objective is extraction through growth. ### Market algorithms influence our behavior in the stream Since markets need value to extract, they need a governing system to ensure that the right kinds of content is discovered. This is the algorithm's role. Algorithms are the invisible hands of the market. Algorithms influence the way people create content and frames social media as a way to make money. Every post is a sales pitch. Attention is currency. These platforms are quite literally open air markets, not communities. -- Where people spend their time influences their behaviors, but there is no such thing as a Threads user or a Mastodon user. There are people whose behaviors are motivated by the incentives of their digital surroundings. Markets pit each other against us. Markets cause digital nationalism. ## Decentralized social media is not a revolution The open social web is not a revolution, because decentralized social media is not a dissemination of power and influence. Instead, what next-gen social media networks like BlueSky offer is a redistribution of accountability while maintaining the centralized power structures of the platform era. You can't get in trouble for leaking private data if privacy no longer exists. The term decentralization, as mentioned in tech-savvy circles, carries a historical connotation of building something new from the ash. It hints at a redistribution of power and equity without ever having to deal in actual revolution. Real revolution means breaking free from the power structures that oppress us. And that's what we need—real revolution; not a marketing gimmick. It was *after* the French Revolution, that French libertarians went to work decentralizing the power structures held by the monarchy. In the 1820s, the term "décentralisation" was popularized in both Frech and American lexicons as a result of these efforts. Concepts of federation and democratization also have strong ties to the era. So when techno-libertarians offer *decentralized social media* as the atonement for the sins of Web 2.0, we reasonably assume a redistribution of power away from the platform oligarchs, and towards the people has, or will soon occur. Decentralizing anything before that occurs does us no good. But, of course, no digital revolution has occurred. We have yet to topple a single power structure. It would be like if Marie Antoinette said “let them eat cake,” and then the French Libertarians went straight to work on a plan to redistribute all the baguettes. Those efforts don't make sense without someone’s metaphorical head on a platter first. The act of decentralizing systems while our kings still wear their crowns can only mean the monarchy will adapt and, if necessary, offer small concessions. They will still maintain their power over us. Put another way, how can we have this brave new social web with all the same old people? Decentralized social media, as interpreted by Bluesky Inc. is a dissemination of accountability away from the corporation and towards the user. It is also, paradoxically, the *centralization* of the most valuable speck of gold left in surveillance capitalism, the last piece of the ad tech puzzle— the social graph. What Bluesky hopes to achieve will eliminate any hope that we, Internet citizens will ever gain control over our data. The fact that tech influencers are claiming the opposite leads me to believe that they are aware of the implications of a unified social graph. Bluesky owner and CEO Jay Graber deviated efrom Dorsey's vision, implementing *some* central moderation, and *some* privacy, enough that Dorsey left the project. But the core philosophy remains— redistributed accountability over personal data and the moderation of its users, minus what we actually need— self determination over the manner in which our data is collected, sold, and ultimately leveraged against us by corporate and political powers. In the years after Cambridge Analytica, techno-libertarians have worked hard to reframe the social media problem toward a matter of free speech and away from user privacy rights. No one piece of propaganda has made such an impact as Mike Masnick's Protocols Not Platforms. It's *the* techno-libertarian manifesto of the twenty first century. Can you imagine the outcry if, right after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, a social media network launched with an open firehouse of our social graph? All of our comments, likes, shares, friends, and foes (blocks) available in an open firehose API for anyone with a bucket to scoop? The same aggregated user data that Steve Bannon used to create psychological profiles on users to feed them disinformation. Eight years ago, we'd be marching in the streets against that social media company. Today, not a single news outlet, pundit, or tech influencer seems to remember how close Facebook got to toppling our democracy. Bluesky's firehouse is just Facebook's Social Graph wrapped in the language of revolution. To be sure, the decentralized social media concept, popularized by thinktanks and open web evangelists, is a response to our general and growing distain for corporations like Meta, that prove profits come before even the baseline wellbeing of its users. Popular federated platforms like Mastodon has not shied away from contrasting itself from Meta. But the decentralized concepts described in manifestos like Protocols, Not Platforms by Mike Masnick, or the expression of those concepts by corporations like BlueSky, won’t liberate us from the oligarchs of 2.0. Like all solutions embraced by those who wield power, the open social web is concession disguised as revolution. Centralization vs Decentralization is a false dichotomy. It’s a way to frame our problems towards a solution that maintains the same ol’ power structures of social media. It's wholesale propaganda shoveled into the web by the same people who told us Web 2.0 would change the world for the better. So before we rush into the implementation of the solution, perhaps we should examine whether the problem was correctly identified. And we should scrutinize those who decided for us which problems are worth solving and which they can leave on the cutting room floor. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal we learned that our behavioral data accumulated on social media are the building blocks for creating exposing psychological profiles. And those profiles can, and have been, weaponized against us. If past dealings are the best predictor of future behavior, then our digital footprints are more than fossils. In the aggregate, they are oracles. Our history of likes, shares, and posts In effect, decentralized social media is little more than a decentralization of saftey and accountability, while preserving the centralization of power and profits. It is not our obligation to blindly accept the terms and conditions of Web 3.0. It is the burden of contemporary social media corporations to demonstrate its new business models represent meaningful change. And in that respect, those companies have failed. By "liberating” our behavioral data from behind the walled gardens of social media behemoths, and into Personal Data Servers crawlable by anyone, it is accountability they've decentralized, not power. ## The social graph In theory, decentralizing the protocol layer of the social media technology stack, would allow users to roam the social web freely, popping in an out of different platforms, carrying with them their posts, followers, and their entire digital footprint. This newfound freedom is supposed to force social media companies to compete with each other. If you can pick up and leave Platform X for Platform Y at the touch of a button, while keeping your digital backpack, Platform X, in theory, would work to make its platform a safe and enjoyable experience, lest they lose users. There are a few major flaws with this theory. First, what's to compel Platform X and Platform Y to adopt a decentralized protocol, thus allowing their users to leave its platform? There would need to be a major incentive for adoption, otherwise, for public traded companies in particular, the change would be a miscarriage of fiduciary responsibility. In other words, no CEO of a publicly traded company is going to freely adopt something that would make it easier for their users to leave. Again, unless, there was a bigger incentive. More on that in a moment. Second, decentralizing the protocol layer does nothing to prevent either platform from centralizing another layer in the stack. Like, say, the infrastructure layer. What's the use of a decentralized protocol if one company controls the infrastructure in which each node operates on? Finally, the expectation of decentralized social media is our gained ability to roam the social web freely, with some form of Personal Information Identity (PII) tied to us. To accomplish this "nomad ID," some form of centralization must occur. Either your ID stays with you, or a centralized authority. This ID would necessarily include everything about you, your personal information, your activities on all website, friends, followers, blocks, comments, shares. The more corporations to participate in this decentralized system, the more personal data goes into that backpack. Say, your healthcare provider participates in the social web. All your healthcare information from that provider is thrown in your digital backpack. This is the incentive for corporations to participate—a centralized social graph they can dip into. ## We already have decentalization We already have decentralized systems. We should enforce them. We already have a decentralized network in which these companies operate. It's called the World Wide Web. The Internet, too, is a decentralized network of computers around the world that should have made it impossible for corporations to "own." Decentralization can be a useful tool for taking back the Internet from corporations and placing it back in the hands of the people. But by itself it is, at best, an incomplete strategy, and at worst, can be a stepping stone for the next iteration of the corporatized web. (Email) This document assumes an audience of all technical skill levels, from novice to expert to not ever in my professional wheelhouse. In *Communities, Not Markets*, I argue that the ideals of Technocracy are **not** how we win back the internet from corporations. I challenge the false dichotomy of the Techno-libertarian and billionaire-approved manifesto *Protocols, Not Platforms*. And, finally, I explore the possibilities of introducing community-first digital spaces, and highlight the differences between communities, and the prominent form of digital spaces, markets. ## Technocracy is not the answer You’re probably not a technocrat, but you unwittingly amplify technocratic ideals. Technocracy is the belief that society should be run by elite technical experts who use technology to solve our social and political problems. Technocrats often throw about vague notions of meritocracy. Places where the best ideas win. They call it the market place of ideas. You and I are not invited to the market place of ideas. Ideas spark and decisions execute in the end-to-end encrypted enclaves of the elite. The problem with a truly open and unregulated market place of ideas is consensus tends to form. We call it "hive mind" or echo chambers, and in some instances those terms are warranted. But what's the point of sharing ideas if not for consensus? Who benefits from a never ending debate on basic human rights? ### Techno-libertarian dichotomies of the broken web theory *None of these are correct lol :)* To many, the internet is broken. There are no shortage of people creating the dichotomies to explain why the internet feels broken, and the solutions to fix it. There is no ideology more active in the pursuit to fix what feels broken about the world wide web than techno-libertarianism. In *Protocols, Not Platforms*, Mike Masnick submits that it's Free Speech vs Safety. In *Big Fedi, Small Fedi*, Evan Prodromou suggests its big community mindset vs small community mindset. In *Techo-optimism*, by Marc Andreessen it's Free Markets vs. Regulated Markets. While each manifesto doesn't completely agree with each other, and each have a varying level of influence, all share a common techno-libertarian worldview that markets, not communities, will save the internet. From *Internet For The People*: > The Internet is broken because the internet is a business. While the issues are various and complex, they are inextricable from the fact that the internet is owned by private firms and is run for profit. > And Internet owned by smaller, more entrepreneurial , more regulated firms, will still be an Internet run for profit. And an internet run for profit is an Internet that can't guarantee people the things they need to lead self determined lives. It's an internet where people can't participate in the decisions that affect them. It's an internet in which the rewards flow to the few and the risks are born by the many. In other words it's the internet as we know it today. It's not big fedi verse small fedi, it's not protocols or platforms, it's not even open vs closed. It's communities verse markets. And Meta is in the Fediverse because Mastodon is showing the world that Communities are a viable replacement for markets. And that's a threat to its business and to the future of their version of the web. ### Protocols, Not Platforms What *Protocols, Not Platforms* does is effectively converts communities into for profit boomtowns; extracting the parts of communities that are beneficial to corporations (free labor) and discarding the parts that are detrimental (community ownership). -- This idea of a hands off moderation business model is not new nor innovative. It is just wrapped in different paper. This idea goes all the way back to eBay to the early days of Reddick. This is the steady hand of the California doctrine. Libertarian tech Bros have long for the days of publishing a platform, and watching the checks come in. -- The big issue with Protocols Not Platforms is that it ignores the biggest problems for users, in favor of fixing problems for the platforms that got us into this mess in the first place. Mike frames the problem as free speech but that's not the problem most users want to fix. Most people aren't paying in bed wishing they could contact their cousin but can't because he's on Facebook and you're on Twitter. That's not a problem. Lock-in is a problem but a decentralized cannot fix that because the primary incentive for for-profit social media is to extract the maximum amount of money from its users. They will, as they've always done, find new ways to lock people into their networks. One way is to own the railroad tracks. So why move mountains for this issue? Because this is a problem for the platforms oligarchs. Three companies [control 86.6% of the email market](https://www.litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-april-2021). They use security as a way to maintain their dominance. Is that what we want for social media? ### Bluesky Bluesky's protocol is open in the same way that Carrabba's kitchen is open. You can mostly see what's going on, but you can't walk in and make yourself a pasta primavera.  ## Its hard to know who is a true believer of the open web Openness and Privacy are terms weaponized by corporations. When a transformative technology emerges in the marketplace, and a single company becomes too dominant in that market, the opposing strategy is often an appeal to openness. There are plenty of legitimate open technology movements that have transformed our society for the better. The World Wide Web beating AOL, for example. But just as often, we discover that under the openness rhetoric and revolutionary language lies a common marketing gimmick. Anyone can preach the gospel of the open web. But it's hard to separate the false prophets from the true believers. People who claim it's impossible for Bluesky to make a power grab suffer from a lack of imagination. Give away a little control now, and in return you may receive mass adoption of your technology. That doesn't mean openness doesn't have merit on its own. Tim Berners-Lee I believe is a true open web evangelist who gave us a true power shifting gift with the World Wide Web. It's just that, in the church of the open web, it's sometimes hard to distinguish the false profits from the true believers. To make things more complicated, perhaps acquiring power and money from an open web strategy leads to an inevitable character arc that turns well-meaning people into cartoon villains. At the church of the open web, it's difficult to tell the false revolutionaries from the true believers. In the hangover of the platform era, we've been told that walled gardens are to blame for the current state of the web. With email, we've seen how security fear mongering can consolidate power to a handful of service providers. Social media companies have notoriously done everything in their power to all but eliminate the hyperlink. Not to protect its users, as they say, but to keep us on the platform for as long as possible. Openness is a term big tech corporations use when its executives feel like they're being left out of something made by and for the public good. So, they make a bunch of faux grassroots organizations, and fill it with genuinely good people who care. They did it back in 1996 when Corporations closed APNET. And they're doing it again in 2024. But of course, the 30 years in between, no one called for "openness" when corporations stole our paid-in-full movies and music from our accounts. Or when Facebook got away with ever having to show a single ad Cambridge Analytica ran on its platform. They never called for openness when Google was caught manipulating search results to benefit them. Openness is also code for "treaty." It's the concession offered when an emerging technology has no so-called moat. Meaning, no one company has a chance as claiming it for its own proprietary gain. So, these companies send out a signal for a truths. If no one company can take it all, then we'll make sure we divvy up the tech amongst the largest players. Because a percentage of the pie is better than no pie at all. ## The Telecommunications Act of 1996 The argument was that allowing cable companies to provide telecommunication services and telecommunication companies to provide cable services, it would create a more competitive market, which would be good for consumers. But only two years after the telecommunications act was passed, competition *decreased* through mergers. Service providers then began to bundle phone, internet, and cable with steep punitive costs for canceling. Fast forward 25 years later and we still only have a handful of cable and internet providers to choose from. And while they lost telephone to bundle, and to a lesser extent cable, these companies still dominate the market because they own the infrastructure. And what was a standard telephone, internet, cable package two decades ago, could be a storage, computing, and safety bundle tomorrow. ## Other Possible Sections ### The California Doctrine ### The telecommunications act of 1996 --- ## Good passages that need a home ### Misc. - The Silicon Valley doctrine is public grit, private profit. - Defend and Extend <!-- Was this a concept i had? Defend the community, then extend it? A rebuke of openness? --> ## Don't worry about deleting social media today Don't worry about deleting all your social media. That's not what we're doing today, or ever, if that's not a part of your plan. Today, we are just being conscious of the social media tools we use, and asking ourselves if they can be swapped for something else. ### Railroad analogy <!-- If i use this i need to rewrite. There probably should be some explanation for decentralized social media Perhaps go into the history about how railroads became a monopoly? I bet theres good stuff in there to compare to. Like, what if forcing everyone to use the same rail roads helped one company gain a monopoly? Need to research.--> If platforms (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) are trains, protocols are the railroad tracks. In our current system, each train owns its tracks and therefore the routes that train travels. Going from Pittsburgh to Witchita? Well, you need to take the Facebook train because they own the route. That may be fine for some, but Bob is a smoker, and the Facebook train only offers non-smokings carts. Twitter offers smoking, but doesn't go to Witchita. You see the problem? Decentralization insists that all trains share standardized tracks, and that passengers should be free to ride the train of their choosing to get to their destination. --- ## Source links, quotes & such ### Links [Mastodon is in desperate need of a rebrand and a repositioning in the minds of the general public](https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/115806120211378582) [The reason Mastodon and Threads are incompatible...](https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/112197613650671616) [Top 100 Bluesky users](https://vqv.app) [How decentralized is Bluesky really?](https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/#f) [Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization](https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/#f) [What do Americans want in a social media platform? | YouGov](https://today.yougov.com/technology/articles/45581-what-do-americans-want-social-media-platform) [Five Geek Social Fallacies](https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/) [An internet of many autonomous communities](https://blackskyweb.xyz/an-internet-of-many-autonomous-communities/) [ “No One’s Coming to Save Us. Why Communities Must Build Their Own Internet” -Rudy Fraser, Blacksky](https://youtu.be/Pjzfc8UCjAk) ### Quotes Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Says She Won’t ‘Enshittify the Network With Ads: https://archive.ph/2024.02.09-194906/https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-wont-enshittify-ads/ > Are you thinking about advertisements at all? > > There will always be free options, and we can't enshittify the network with ads. This is where federation comes in. The fact that anyone can self-host and anyone can build on the software means that we'll never be able to degrade the user experience in a way where people want to leave. What is Decentralization? by Sarah Jamie Lewis: https://fieldnotes.resistant.tech/what-is-decentralization/ > Decentralization is the degree to which an entity within the system can resist coercion and still function as part of the system. What is Federation? by Join Mastodon\ https://docs.joinmastodon.org > Federation is a form of decentralization. Instead of a single central service that all people use, there are multiple services, that any number of people can use. What do Americans want in a social media platform? | YouGov https://today.yougov.com/technology/articles/45581-what-do-americans-want-social-media-platform > Here is what Americans are most likely to want in social media: > > Platforms present content chronologically, displaying posts in the order they were published, with the newest posts appearing first. > Platforms Verify users' identity, with users given the option to use their real name or a pseudonym. > Human moderators verify the accounts of notable people, organizations, and businesses that meet certain criteria. > User information either is always private (only visible to approved users) or is private by default (with the option to make it public). > Human moderators identify and remove content that violates a platform's terms of service. Users also have the option to report such content for removal. > For revenue, companies rely on advertising and e-commerce rather than subscriptions and sales of user data to other parties. > Users have a dedicated space to explore new content and are being provided with personalized recommendations, trending content, and the ability to follow topics via hashtags. > Users have the option to comment on, react to, and share content, as well as the capabilities to join groups and send private messages to other users. ### Possible Titles 1. Communities and Markets: The Myth of Decentralized Social Media  2. Communities, Not Markets: Why we get a say about the new social web 3. BlueSky could win the social web war. That's not a good thing. 4. Communities, Not Markets: A Beginners Guide to the New Social Web 5. Communities, Not Markets: If you don't build it, they will.