@evan
from what i understand, some have raised concerns that certain FEPs wont be able to be merged into SocialCG because of the CLA/some creators wanting to be anonymous. How are you planning on handling that?

Will we end up with two fediverses? One that is defined by whatever SocialCG cooks up, and another that is based on all the different FEPs?

@valorzard

There are a million Fediverses. ActivityPub is already big and diverse with many different extensions and applications.

Nobody has to push their ActivityPub profiles or extensions to the WG if they don't want. Anyone can make extensions to ActivityPub under whatever license they want.

The onus is on extension creators to make their work compatible on the wire with ActivityPub core.

Nobody who works on ActivityPub core wants to break well-defined extensions on the Fediverse.

@valorzard I recommend some good patterns:

- Use fallbacks.
- Support multiple profiles -- people are doing great with draft-cavage-12 and RFC 9421, for instance.
- Think about how your software will interact with software written by someone who never read your FEP. Will it fail gracefully, fallback to default behaviour, or crash and leak private data?
- Be compatible with the spec, and not just compatible with Mastodon.

@valorzard personally, I think a very tight core, with a clear extensibility mechanism and lot of extensions for different applications, is the right model for the Fediverse.

@evan do you think that the portable objects/content signing/PDS stuff can be an extension, or is it so much of a difference it needs to be added to the spec

@valorzard I haven't reviewed those FEPs well, but you should ask the authors, not me.

@evan Do you have a link to the process description for submitting something like an FEP under the SocialCG CLA?

@benpate @smallcircles @strypey @EUCommission @nlnet

Here's another writeup that names a related phenomenon, "technology paternalism"
https://www.kosmaconnect.net/interactionblog/technologypaternalism

(1/?)

I don't disagree with anything you say here @bengo, but I do want to sound a note of caution.

I've been involved in co-design processes for building a new kind of app from scratch (eg Loomio), or (re)designing a website from first principles. I've learned the hard way that although the scaffolding provided by UX design can be "paternalism", a thoughtful design can make the difference between usable and unusable, for most people.

@benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet

@strypey @benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet

Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply co-design is overly paternalistic. I meant to imply professional philanthropy, standards work, open source, governance, and devtools/security software sales often is, for better or worse.

Paternalism in general isn't always a problem, but as with all things, there can be too much of it.

Things become overly paternalistic by unfairly exploiting structural privilege at the expense of everyone else.

(2/2)

One might say that choosing defaults on behalf of those who will use the app is paternalistic. But a lack of options is even even more paternalistic, and where interfaces have options, there *must* be defaults. Since default determine people's first impressions, and in most cases are never changed, thoughtful choices about defaults *matter*.

@bengo
> Things become overly paternalistic by unfairly exploiting structural privilege at the expense of everyone else

Right. So we could name the problem more accurately as power inequality, or corporatism, or somesuch. I don't want to get too hung up on terminology, but I can't help thinking "paternalism" is an unhelpful word here. It reminds me of the attitudes of Command Line Warriors who think providing graphical interfaces is "paternalism".

@benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet

@strypey @benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet you could name a problem that, of course. But I was naming one of many kinds of paternalism, so you can’t name all kinds of paternalism that without invisibilizing other kinds of paternalism and for what? I hear that you don’t find it helpful yet. Take it or leave it. I only share stuff I’m myself looking for all kinds of takes on. So thank you for that.

@bengo
> I only share stuff I’m myself looking for all kinds of takes on

Same, absolutely, and don't get me wrong, I'll read the article and give it some serious thought. At which point any takes I share will likely be much more in context ; )

@benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet

@strypey @benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet providing GUI is not paternalism but it can and has at times been done in a paternalistic way, at least according to some. It’s ok and normal folks don’t always agree where the line is.

@steve we've got this staging process:

CG/WG Proposal Stages

Discussion of potential CG and WG charters

charters (swicg.github.io)

I think the big step would be, I think this FEP is relevant to this task force's work, I want to submit it as a proposal, etc.

@bengo
> providing GUI is not paternalism

Clearly that's a matter of opinion : P

> [GUI] has at times been done in a paternalistic way ... normal folks don’t always agree where the line is

There's a strong parallel here to public health messaging. Should it be verbose and let people make up our own minds? Or should it be skewed towards whatever nudges people to do what the majority of doctors currently endorse?

@benpate @smallcircles @EUCommission @nlnet

@bengo @strypey @benpate @EUCommission @nlnet

Thanks, Ben. Highly interesting article, that I should really bring to social coding note-taking forum as subject for closer study.

The article mentions "dark patterns" which years ago I suggested to IETF the more inclusive term "deception patterns" for. From there "deceptive design" became a known term. But deception implies intent. Though I don't know if I would adopt the word paternalism in SX methodology, even as anti-pattern name, it is related to a deep insight that drives SX applied research..

Namely the observation that we, humankind, *severely* underestimate what it means to be "social" online. Bit like: "After the telephone, with the internet we now have an extra line to connect remotely via text".

While what we're actually doing and with tech people firmly in the lead, is building completely societies, and with hardly ANY rules at that. It's the Wild West.

And furthermore that we're mostly fully myopic to how all this works.

@bengo @strypey @benpate @EUCommission @nlnet

Online is an extension to our life offline, thus we're building OUR society as a Wild West now. And it shows.

SX adopts the concept of a peopleverse to imagine the seemless integration of online and offline worlds, on the basis of unobtrusive, humane and harmonious technology that serves people in their daily needs and day-to-day activities. It is merely a concept, to help direct thinking.

The intrinsic values of Humanity and Freedom are building blocks and toolkit of SX. And philosophical underpinning is required, to help offer people to make a mindset shift. SX, I sometimes say "adds the missing social layers to the techstack", but SX's call to "Reimagine social" is much more than that.

The way we build tech and 'dump' it in society is UTTERLY weird, and unresponsible. And all-pervasive. The norm.

Introducing the mindset shift, constitutes a wicked problem. One that SX focuses on solving, using itself as the approach. Self servicing.

RE: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116433817412456814

@bengo @strypey @benpate @EUCommission @nlnet

In the blog post I'm writing now the Paradox of Emergence is introduced. The huge problem in tackling wicked problems is to make clear the role of the individual in it, how they contribute in making it worse or better. And also makes it incredibly hard to motivate people to come along on the adventure quest towards the solution.

Because the holistic solution is the "Golden Dragon" that sits entirely in emergent space, as Potential only, until many people collectively give it wings, and it materializes.

How can you convince people to Invest in a magic dragon that doesn't exist yet? Take Climate Change. Wicked problem, yet the solution is simple, and starts like:

"If we all did our part, gave our 2 cent, then.."

The paradox is that you people don't see the value of their investment based on the promised vision of the outcome. While in hindsight, after the wicked problem was solved it is often painfully obvious, simple solution.