Re: <nettime> Moving Nettime to the Fediverse

[Petter Ericson <pettter@accum.se>]

Hi list,

Point of order: The fediverse runs on the ActivityPub protocol, which is
specified and standardized in a W3C Recoomendation, which, while not ideal, and
not covering the server-to-client end of things, still is a good effort, and at
least as thorough and well-defined as the initial e-mail RFCs. Standardisation
and avoiding platform lock-in is very important to a lot of people on the
fediverse. 

That being said, having hung around on the fediverse since the _previous_
standard (OStatus), I agree fully that nettime would in no real way benefit
from moving away from being a mailing list. The mediums are quite different,
and as you note, there would be a certain amount of friction in moving,
which would necessarily mean people dropping out of the community. Not ideal.

Also, I am not sure that you'll necessarily find a hugely different clientele
on the fediverse compared to people who'd sign up for a mailing list. I'm in
both categories, obviously, and I would say that the fediverse userbase skews
elder millennial in general - folks who grew up on the early/pre-platform
internet. I also agree on all the points about solving fundamentally social
problems with technological means. 

Further, my experience from the fediverse is that people are going to post all
sorts of things to their account, generally, which means that the local
timeline is going to either quickly become relatively unfocused from the
nettime topics, or you're going to have to moderate users comparatively
heavily. You will also miss out on the focused conversations and common
repository of knowledge that can be found in the mailing list archive.

Alltogether, as a new subscriber to the list and a longtime fediverse resident,
I'm not a fan.

All the best,

/P
-- 
Petter Ericson (pettter@accum.se)
@pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se

On 30 november, 2022 - Geoffrey Goodell wrote:

> 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
> > 
> 
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