Aral Balkan
Every private space is owned by someone. That someone makes and enforces the rules according to their own interests.
You have no right to free speech in private spaces. If the owner of a shopping mall doesn’t like what your t-shirt says, they can have security escort you out.
“Social media” (Silicon Valley and venture capitalists) sold you the lie that shopping malls are parks.
They are not.
If you care about human rights and democracy, build and support parks not shopping malls.
Aral Balkan
@Luis_Fierro Be careful of technology that has adopted the tools (and thus the success criteria of Big Tech). As it scales, it will begin to resemble that which it aims to counter. Mastodon is an excellent and pragmatic stop-gap and I’m very grateful it exists. But if we want a long-term alternative, I believe we need to address the problem from first principles and ensure the right incentives are baked into the topology and protocols of the solution.
Luis_Fierro :lambda2:
@aral Or non-profit, federated, social media (such as Mastodon!).
Aral Balkan
@davew Indeed. And tools even; they don‘t even have to be products in the capitalist sense of the word.
Dave Winer ☕️
We should work together to make products that interop beautifully.
Aral Balkan
@davew Yeah, and product doesn’t have to imply that it’s commercial but, sadly, that’s the usual connotation these days. It can also just mean “that which is produced” :)
Dave Winer ☕️
Absolutely. I call them products because I put the same attention into my free stuff as I did with my commercial products.
Mastodon is a great example. The UI isn’t perfect, but it is really good, shows people who know how to do it put a lot of love into this and didn’t fight over bullshit, they made something nice without locking people in.
Aral Balkan
@alfonsomunozpomer #SmallWeb is about being a person on the web. Your expression of your personhood are the identity(ies) you own and control on the web. It’s the interconnections between these individually-owned and controlled places that make up public space on the Small Web. (So public space is not a place, it is the mesh of relationships between people.)
And yes, indeed, my goal is to see these places be considered as much a human right as housing and healthcare should be.
Alfonso Muñoz-Pomer Fuentes
@aral But #SmallWeb is more like your private garden (following your analogy), right? I guess that a good model would be for these small-web “tenancies” be afforded by the state or some regulated non-profit?
There also been an abuse of the free speech phrase that needs clarifying: it means you can’t be arrested/condemned for your statements, regardless of whether they are made in a private or public space. It never meant you can say whatever you want in a private space.
Aral Balkan
@lightrider No thank you, please go away.
lightrider
@aral I urge everyone who wants #uncensored #freespeech to check out https://memo.cash on the #bch blockchain. You aren't the product, nobody can censor you and the only moderator is you. It's an open protocol on a open immutable public ledger.
Aral Balkan
@bertil_hatt It’s lots of small(er, for now) private places. Unfortunately, it also has incentives baked in from its Big Tech infrastructure/design that favour vertical scale and the enlargement of those spaces (see https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed-or-why-every-toot-is-also-a-potential-denial-of-service-attack/).
It’s a great stop-gap and I’m hugely grateful that it exists. But, longer term, I believe we need a network of places of one… or, in other words, a network of people. That’s the idea behind the Small Web (https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/).
Bertil
@aral Do you think that Mastodon is more like a public park, or many private places where people can see each other? Bans are more frequent here because owners of small instances are more opinionated. Large commercial platforms have wide principles and teams that are expected to enforce them sparingly — they wouldn’t reach the scale needed to be profitable otherwise. Same for a large mall: you rarely get told off, at least if you look like you are spending money.
Aral Balkan
@bertil_hatt Yep :)
Bertil
@aral Ok, so you advocate for something aligned with, but distinct or rather more decentralised than the Fediverse.
Aral Balkan
@admin No. As I see it, public space on the Internet would be interconnection of individually-owned and controlled spaces. That’s the idea behind the Small Web.
SlightlyCyberpunk
@aral Are there truly any public spaces on the Internet though? Is such a thing even possible? Perhaps you could consider some government websites, but that's more like a government office building than a park...public property, but not really a public space.
The lucky few with municipal broadband connections have something like public roads at least to go visit these private spaces, but still no parks. The best we seem to have so far are places like Mastodon, a collection of private spaces with standardized connectivity...a bustling downtown compared to a shopping mall. But that downtown may still be connected by largely private roads...
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