Re: <nettime> Moving Nettime to the Fediverse

[Geoffrey Goodell <goodell@oxonia.net>]

Dear Doma, Felix, and Ted

I am confused by your recurring argument that the problem with Nettime is
fundamentally technical in nature, or indeed that there is a problem with
Nettime at all.  Speaking personally, Nettime works well for me.  I read
interesting commentary from people I respect, with the reassurance that I can
always add my voice to the symphony.

The fact that I do not post more often is mainly testament to the fact that I
am busy with other responsibilities.  I am sure that this is true of others
here as well.  This problem will not suddenly disappear with a shift to a
different choice of underpinning technology.  In fact, it will be exacerbated,
because although I run my own e-mail server, the tools for engaging with the
so-called 'fediverse' are not part of my workflow.  And so, a shift in
technology will inexorably induce a 'shake out' in which people are forced to
either adopt new workflows or face exclusion.  I would have thought that the
moral foundation of Internet ethics would be incompatible with the use of force
in this way.

As far as I know, the argument that 'fediverse' technology, such as that used
by Hometown and Mastodon, is superior to e-mail is weak at best and has never
been articulated to this group.  As far as I know, such technology is in the
hands of a handful of software developers and has not been subject to the same
rigorous standardisation process of the sort that led to the establishment of
e-mail.  I suspect that most people on this list did not use e-mail before
1977, by which point RFC 724 was already published [1].  Of course, this
standard has evolved over the years, in a direction that has benefited the
world and is now used by billions of people.  As far as I know, there has not
yet been a comparable community-based effort to standardise the implementation
of 'fediverse' protocols.  Here, we have precisely the sort of platform-based
tyranny by fiat that the Internet pioneers laboured to bury forever.

Finally, I find the argument that new technology can solve a fundamentally
social problem to be absurd and somewhat hypocritical based on the topic of
discussion on this list.  While I am not convinced that the so-called
'fediverse' is a solution looking for a problem, I am also not convinced that
it will make things better for us.

Perhaps some of the maintainers of the current infrastructure are bored of the
job to which they volunteered, years ago.  In that case, they should step aside
and leave the task of maintaining this list to others.  Surely there are
democratic and less-than-democratic ways to achieve this; let's try something.
Perhaps a call for volunteers might be a start.

But what I can say with certainty is that if you pack up and go somewhere else,
not everyone will follow you, and even fewer people will follow if you neglect
to provide a solid argument for why.  Whether you like it or not, Nettime is
more than a toy project of yours; it provides a valuable service that works.

Let's stick together.

Best wishes --

Geoff

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc724

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 at 11:34:35PM -0100, nettime's mod squad wrote:
> Dear nettimers,
> 
> Nettime was founded at a time when, as quaint as it sounds, email was exciting.
> That's long since gone for those who experienced it, let alone for those who
> didn't. Discussion-oriented mailing lists like this are, in a word, over,
> technically *and* culturally. It's time to think more attentively about whether
> or how nettime can evolve beyond email and its peculiar 'list culture.'
> 
> And it's not just email. The edifices that have displaced and replaced lists
> are on the rocks too. Twitter is widely thought to be going over a cliff as
> Facebook, already graying, sinks under the weight of its "Metaverse." As more
> and more people cast around for alternatives, net.critique has become a bit of
> a thing again.
> 
> We say: let's ditch the mailing list and start moving to the fediverse. Toward
> this end, we've set up an instance < https://tldr.nettime.org > with the
> following bare-bones "about":
> 
> tldr.nettime is an instance for artists, researchers, and activists interested
> in exploring the intersections of technology, culture, and politics.
> 
> It has grown out of nettime-l, one of the longest-running mailing lists on the
> net ??? in particular, on the 'cultural politics of the internet'.
> 
> tldr.nettime is based on Hometown, a fork of Mastodon. It's compatible with the
> wider fediverse, but it also offers two tweaks we hope will help make it
> unusually fruitful:
> 
>    * The character count per message is higher ??? 2000 chars at the moment.
> 
>    * You can choose whether your post is public or visible only on tldr's local
> timeline and only to tldr's members.
> 
> Aside from that, everything is raw by design: it's for those who make the move
> to define what this instance will be and how we can make it useful.
> 
> This is a chance to move beyond nettime's shrinking in-group, so feel free to
> invite others. Our goal is to keep tldr to a size where the local timeline
> remains a useful tool for an actual, not rhetorical, community; how big that is
> remains to be seen.
> 
> In the longer run, we won't maintain two infrastructures, one for email, one
> for the fediverse. At some point we'll close one ??? ideally, which one will be a
> collective decision.
> 
> So, we hope this is the beginning of change in every sense, hopefully including
> some of the imbalances that have plagued the mailing list for many years.
> There's no clear path or process ahead, so this is a free-form, open invitation
> to get involved. As they say: be the change you want to see on nettime.
> 
> See you on the other side
> 
> Doma, Felix & Ted
> 

> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: