Should there be a governance organization for the Fediverse?

Evan Prodromou

@jenesuispasgoth I don't understand the point of your scare quotes or smiley emoticon. I think you should decide what it is you want to ask, and ask it directly.

Darius Kazemi

@evan great question. I think: build resources for groups that want to govern (like the IFTAS library does for moderation), build tools for governance (third party and supporting PRs to major software, again kinda like IFTAS here), and advocate as necessary in standards groups for the needs of groups that want to self govern (just like.... okay these parentheticals are getting repetitive)

Dan Morris

@plexus @evan lol! I'm so used to people asking me how stuff works, I just try to answer questions without even knowing who's asking.

I still can't figure out "how" to govern activitypub, but that's just me being slightly less ignorant than a regular user.

Evan Prodromou

@darius So, I get that, but I think it's more likely that we'd see advocacy for particular governance structures. Say, a Federation of University Social Networks, which focuses on the needs of those kinds of instances, and a different Alliance of Cooperative Social Platforms, and so on. Unsupported crystal ball prediction; take it for what it's worth.

Evan Prodromou

@coldfish @plexus Evan also always has more to learn about how ActivityPub and the Fediverse work.

Je ne suis pas goth

@evan sorry if I wasn't clear, there really was no hidden question. I really was wondering if that was just you wondering, or if it was in reaction to something you read or heard wrt the fediverse (something I myself hadn't read or heard).

Evan Prodromou

@jenesuispasgoth I can say that there is a big section on SocialHub about governance. A lot of people were concerned that the Social Web Foundation was an effort to set up a governance organization. Also, Bluesky is governed by a single startup. All these things got me thinking about Fediverse-wide governance. Does that answer your question?

Evan Prodromou

@jenesuispasgoth oh, cool. I didn't have much of an agenda, except that I somewhat disagree with this idea, and I wanted to see some discussion about it.

Brian Johnson

@evan I’m curious- how do shared deny lists get implemented in a manner that prevents abuse? In other words, what prevents an “Elon” from inserting people he doesn’t like into the shared deny list, effectively booting them from the Fediverse?

Evan Prodromou

@BrianJohnson that's a governance issue, right? I mean, how do we make *any* collective decisions without someone hijacking them?

I think some techniques are: start with multilateral decision-making structures, add checks and balances, and have external auditing processes that demand transparency and detect abuse.