Werd I/O

I’m soliciting prompts for discussion. This piece is a part of that series.

Erlend Sogge Heggen asks:

There’s legitimate reason to be worried about Meta’s P92 project being part of a EEE play against the fediverse.

How might the fediverse community counteract this, perhaps with its own EEE strategy?

We know Meta will attempt an EEE play, but what if we play the reverse UNO card and EE(E) them instead?

Embrace: Carefully federate in a minimum-viable fashion that doesn’t overrun the existing #fediverse.

Extend: Make #NomadicIdentity a reality, so accounts can be moved effortlessly.

Extinguish: In case of misconduct, defederate and provide mass-migration assistance.

First, some quick definitions!

P92 is the codename for Meta / Facebook’s new app that will support the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon and its cousins. Users will be able to log in with their Instagram credentials, and one can potentially (but not definitely) imagine it being folded into the mainline Instagram app.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was a phrase coined internally inside Microsoft to describe its strategy with respect to the web. The idea was that the company would embrace open protocols, extend them with its own proprietary extensions, and then use its control over those extensions to extinguish competition. In particular, its plan was to do this with HTML in order to cement Internet Explorer as the web browser.

Finally, the fediverse, of course, is the community of small, independently-owned, largely non-profit social networks that interoperate using shared protocols, on which Mastodon is the largest platform.

There is legitimate concern that a company like Meta might attempt to control the fediverse. This is particularly true if they are allowed to create a uni-polar world: one where Meta is the only large company embracing these standards. In that world, Meta can throw hundreds of millions of users at the protocol, and it will instantly become its largest user.

I think it’s helpful to look at how Microsoft’s EEE strategy failed. There were arguably two main factors: antitrust risk and competition.

The Department of Justice sued Microsoft for monopolistic business practices, ultimately leading to a settlement where Microsoft capitulated to changing some of its approach in return for the DOJ dropping its desire to break up the company. It’s not clear to me that this kind of case would or could take place with respect to Meta extinguishing the fediverse; while I’m not a lawyer, I think the argument would probably be that many other social networks are available.

The other thing that hurt Microsoft’s dominance was Firefox. It was a good browser backed by a good community, but that wasn’t the deciding factor; Firefox gained market share because Google pushed it at every possible opportunity. Because Internet Explorer’s dominance was a business risk to Google, and because Firefox was built by a non-profit that was non-competitive with Google’s business, it made financial sense to try and break Microsoft’s stranglehold. Mozilla’s model was stronger than its predecessor Netscape’s had been: whereas Netscape needed to sell licenses, Mozilla’s deal with Google meant it made money every time someone used Firefox to search for something on the web. There was almost no friction to its growth strategy.

This activity led to a resurgence in a healthy ecosystem of standards-based web browsers for years — until Google decided to re-use the technique it had used on Firefox to push its own web browser. Even then, Chrome is a far better standards player than Internet Explorer ever was.

There won’t be hard evidence that Meta is adopting ActivityPub until we see its app in the wild. But if it is, that likely means that it sees the protocol as at least worth experimenting with, and maybe even as a potential threat. That’s a sign of great progress, and everyone involved in building the fediverse should feel good about it.

If Meta wants to own the fediverse, this isn’t a battle that will be primarily won with features or technology. Easy-to-use platforms, nomadic identity that easily lets you move your presence from one provider to another, and assistance will all be essential, but they’ll be table stakes. (If Meta is working on the platform today, it’s probably also too late for truly nomadic identity to make a difference.) To really stand a chance, the fediverse will need the kind of marketing and go-to-market support that Firefox enjoyed back in the day. Which may mean support from another large player that considers Meta’s ownership of the standard to be an existential risk.

It’s hard to see who that might be. Twitter is now the incompetence wing of the incompetence party. It’s highly unlikely that networks like Pinterest care. Microsoft’s platforms are tightly bound to its ecosystem, with access control at their core; I don’t see LinkedIn joining the fediverse any time soon. Google has fallen on its face every time it’s tried to build a social network, and runs YouTube as a separate entity that strongly benefits from closed ads. Salesforce might consider it a risk, as it provides social tools for businesses, which are easier to build and sell on an open social networking standard. Some of these entities might consider the fediverse to be worth exploring — but there’s no clear technology backer. Cloudflare actually did provide its own Mastodon-compatible platform that runs on its CDN, but it hasn’t seen anything like wide use. Medium has embraced Mastodon but has not deeply built support into its existing platform.

Perhaps media companies, who generally live and die on the size of their audiences, and have often been beholden to the large social networks, might find themselves interested in embracing a social networking federation where they have more say and control. The rise of the fediverse certainly is a de-risking of their business models. But I don’t think they see it yet; nor do I think they consider it their place to pick a winner. (Nor should it be, really, in practice.)

Perhaps there can be another kind of backer: an entity that sees the existential thread centralized control of social media poses to democracy itself. We’ve already seen how, left unchecked, centralized companies like Facebook incite genocides and throw elections. The fediverse can be an antidote to these trends — if we see it as a set of collaborating communities rather than simply the technology alone. The erosion of democracy, like monopolistic abuse of power, are human problems with human solutions rather than technological ones. Foundations and philanthropists may choose to provide this level of support, if they continue to see Meta as a threat to democracy.

Building features will not protect the fediverse from being extinguished, although they may provide a useful baseline. It’s going to take a whole different level of strategy, relationship-building, deal-making, and movement-building. I believe the fediverse is capable of doing this, as long as it doesn’t mistake building software for making true progress.

Via Jeremy Keith, Future-First Design Thinking:

Incorporating non-human personas into the design thinking process would allow us to embody the essential elements that constitute our environment, such as air, trees, water, and land. These personas can serve as tangible reminders of the interconnectedness between our design decisions and the health of our environment, a living entity that deserves our protection and consideration.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t trust it.

My bias: personas are harmful. A persona is an amalgam — a fictional person, really — that is supposed to be drawn from extensive user research. The problem is, the process of drawing up a persona always requires a degree of subjective invention, regardless of the amount of research that went into it. It is always a reflection of the biases on the team.

In contrast, POV statements that describe a single person who has been interviewed, in combination with direct transcripts and photographs, allow you to use a non-invented example to build your product — and, at least theoretically, go back and use that person as your referee for product decisions as you continue to build. While condensing a person’s interviews into a POV does require some invention, it isn’t a statistical exercise. You can always go back and ask.

It’s very difficult to do this with a tree. By its nature, then, all you can do is invent — and potentially excuse all kinds of activity because your fictional tree persona approves (or, more likely, has blind spots).

All of this said, I do think it’s vital to include future-facing sustainability in design thinking frameworks. (Design thinking is prone to colonial thinking, so considering distributed equity is vital too.) My proposal was to add sustainability to the desirability, viability, feasibility lenses; it’s not necessarily right, but it’s something to consider.

I’m soliciting prompts for discussion. This piece is a part of that series.

An anonymous reader asks:

‌Do the good guys need to stoop to the tactics of the bad guys in order to avoid losing, or is there still value in holding oneself to certain standards?

First: who are the good guys and the bad guys? Can you be sure that’s true? One of my all-time favorite comedy sketches is Mitchell and Webb’s “are we the baddies?” skit. (The writers room for That Michell and Webb Look included Succession creator Jesse Armstrong and Oscar winner Olivia Colman. It’s well worth checking out if you’re new to it.)

I don’t think it’s worth getting into a discussion about objective good or objective bad, or the shades of morality in between. I’m not a moral philosopher and will not do that topic justice. But I can tell you who I think needs to be supported and who needs to be hindered in the current moment in order to create the world I’d like to see. Hopefully that’s a good enough analog.

My values are that equality is a virtue, and that everybody should be able to live a good life, regardless of their background or context. Fundamentally, nobody is more valuable than anybody else. That means I’m in favor of social programs like welfare and universal healthcare; I’m pro-choice; I’m heavily against the death penalty; I believe strongly that there are serious structural inequities in society that must be redressed; I value cosmopolitan spaces, immigration, multiculturalism, and inclusion. I think an abundance of guns and a militaristic foreign policy are tools of dominance and intimidation that must be relegated to the past. I was and am in favor of covid lockdowns and restrictions.

You might not agree with me on some of these things. That’s completely fine! One of the core tenets of democracy is that we can have opposing views and debate them — and that there’s open access to the reporting and data we need to make informed decisions.

From this, you can probably discern the ideas that I think are harmful or “bad”. Monoculturalism; impeded debate; social hierarchy / structural inequity; fascism; violence; anti-intellectualism; nationalism; dominance. The people who would ban books from libraries, eradicate open journalism, impose their worldview and ambitions through force.

Some of the tactics used by proponents of these ideas are abhorrent to the point where “stooping to their level” would make a movement indistinguishable from them. Voter suppression is one; storming the Capitol is another; book banning a third; tricking asylum seekers into flying to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt is obviously a fourth.

Those values are actually in the statistical minority: in America, in Britain, around the world. Undemocratic tactics are required to keep those people in power.

But here’s one tactic that I do think we can do better at. Fascists have always been great marketers, and explicitly used marketing tactics; Edward Bernays influenced the propaganda Goebbels produced for the Nazis, for example. “Make America Great Again,” though recycled from Reagan, complete with its recognizable Nazi-red hats, has proven itself to be an enduring brand (albeit one that turns my stomach). More importantly, they’ve made promises about what they will give to their base.

Progressives have not done as great a job at marketing themselves - in any arena. Lately, we haven’t so much painted a picture of how the world could be as pointed at the bad stuff and said, “at least we’re not that.” I believe Joe Biden was mostly elected by not being Donald Trump. New social networks gain popularity by not being Twitter. At-least-we’re-not-that isn’t actually a terrible tactic right now, given how bad that really is, but it can’t last forever, and it’s quite a long way from hope and change.

There needs to be a simple message about how regular peoples’ lives will improve in a progressive world. Bill Clinton, who was not progressive by most measures, was right when he said “it’s the economy, stupid” — the message isn’t about how the world will be fairer, but for each voter must be about how the world will be better for them. That story needs to be told, simply, but with all the skill that anyone can muster. Because it really is a better world.

Thinking one’s values are ideological better does not absolve a movement from having to address, directly, how it will make the world better for every person. When that work is really done, it will be a stronger message. For one thing, hopefully, unlike the opposition’s, it will actually be true.

Inspired by Manton’s list of countries and states he’s been to, I thought I’d come up with my own.

I’ve lived in five:

• The Netherlands 🇳🇱
• England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
• Austria 🇦🇹
• Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
• The United States 🇺🇸

In addition to those, I’ve been to (excluding those “I’ve technically been to here but I really haven’t” airport layover visits):

• Albania 🇦🇱
• Belgium 🇧🇪
• Canada 🇨🇦
• Denmark 🇩🇰
• France 🇫🇷
• Germany 🇩🇪
• Greece 🇬🇷
• Italy 🇮🇹
• Liechtenstein 🇱🇮
• Luxembourg 🇱🇺
• Mexico 🇲🇽
• Russia 🇷🇺
• Spain 🇪🇸
• Switzerland 🇨🇭
• Vatican City 🇻🇦
• Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
• Yugoslavia, when it was Yugoslavia 🇧🇦🇭🇷🇲🇰🇲🇪🇷🇸🇸🇮

There are some serious and obvious omissions on this list. I’ve never been outside of Europe and North America! And even in Europe, I’ve never been to Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, Norway … and so on. There are so many places on my bucket list — not least Indonesia, where so many of my family comes from. One day, I would also like to explore my roots in Ukraine; I hope it’ll be safe to do so.

I’ve driven across the US three times, so I’ve been to markedly more US states and the District of Columbia. In fact, every state aside from Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and South Dakota. I’ll have to correct those soon.

I’m soliciting prompts for discussion. This piece is a part of that series.

Michael Kriegh asks:

‌Do you think AI is an evolutionary trend for intelligence in the universe? If so, what do you imagine that trend will look like in 50 years? 100 years? If not, why not?

There’s a body of work surrounding the potential of truly artificial / alternative intelligence on human development. You can read about some of that on Michael’s site. However, I’m going to take another, simpler approach to answering this question.

Most, if not all, of the software we call AI is not intelligence at all. They can’t think, or reason, or discern. They’re pattern-matchers. Arthur C Clarke’s third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; any set of sufficiently advanced heuristics is indistinguishable from intelligence. Just as technology is not magic, software is not intelligence. It’s a tool.

Still, this doesn’t mean it can’t have an evolutionary impact on intelligence. It’s worth considering how new tools have affected the evolution of intelligence in the past.

For example, stone tools:

The development of sophisticated stone tools, including sturdy cutting and sawing edges, is considered a key moment in human evolution, as it set the stage for better nutrition and advanced social behaviours, such as the division of labour and group hunting.

These behaviors, according to the cited study, evolved alongside language, as both required more complex thought. Language enabled coordination; tools enabled nutrition and the development of better and better equipment that eventually allowed humans to travel around the globe. In turn, we adapted for the new environments we found ourselves in.

It’s possible that modern AI tools could have a similar impact on evolution, but I’d argue that this is only because computers as a whole will. Large Language Models and their cousins are incremental applications of existing technology rather than something wholly new.

I also think it’s important to not be carried away by the hype driven by AI companies themselves. Bloomberg earlier this year:

Now, a sea of companies are adding “AI” to their taglines and pitch decks, seeking to bask in the reflected glow of the hype cycle. For example, one startup that offers tools to zhuzh up PowerPoints said in a press release that it will incorporate AI so users can skip the writer’s block and build compelling presentations. (It made no mention of AI in a press release describing the product earlier in the year.) Another release touted the value of AI in a campaign to promote shoes.

Perhaps it’s best not to read too much into the marketing. This is a phase change for the tech industry, but I don’t think it’s one for human civilization.

I think it’s important to understand that what’s happening today in social media is not because decentralization’s time has come: it’s because Twitter’s time has gone.

The core need being expressed by millions of users isn’t “get me a decentralized protocol that nobody owns where I can have my choice of algorithms and apps”. It’s “get me a platform that works consistently, with less abuse”. Sometimes it’s also appended with, “where I can build a following for me / my brand / my employer and measure my progress.”

Now, of course, as product people, we can build that with decentralized tech, which will in turn yield benefits later on as an ecosystem grows around it. And third-party app developers probably do want the assurances of an open platform. But most people do not have a nuanced view on how social media is built or how it should be governed. They know what they want for themselves.

“We’ve built the infrastructure for nuanced moderation” is not an adequate answer to people who are suffering, or who are prone to suffer, abuse. “We are making sure you have a safe space to be social” is the only answer for them. If those measures happen to work as part of a nuanced decentralized protocol, great. But either way, it’s got to happen, and it’s got to be at least as good as it would be on any other social network.

Many of us have been wanting decentralized social networking for a long time — I’ve been a part of these conversations for around twenty years. It’s tempting to feel like people finally get it. But that’s a trap and a mistake. As always, quite rightly, most people want something that works for them. If decentralized tech gets them there better than the alternative (and I think it can!) then there’s a wonderful route forward for everyone. But decentralization is not the goal. The goal is always a human experience for people who do not and should not care how the sausage gets made.

I’m soliciting prompts for discussion. This piece is a part of that series.

An anonymous reader asks:

‌Why do emails in jail cost 50 cents each?

Since around 2016, US inmates in 43 state prison systems and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have been able to send electronic messages of a sort. Recipients must be whitelisted and all messages are screened. The upper-bound cost is around 50 cents; the average is now around 30 cents. In Connecticut, they’re free.

To be clear, while these messages are electronic, they’re not email, and are not sent via email protocols. The messages themselves have character limits and don’t support attachments; they also typically don’t support the Unicode character sets that would allow many non-English languages to be used. Inmates are often charged per minute to use the tablets that allow them to send and receive mail to begin with. Data about the messages and their recipients is mined and shared with the prison authority.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is an unregulated industry. The proceeds of these fees are shared with the prisons. The tablets themselves are often made freely available to prisons, because each service on them makes their supplier money. Because the revenue is split with the prisons, most prison systems are not going to complain about the unfair pricing policies.

One of the most popular providers, JPay, is largely a prison financial services company that was fined under the Consumer Financial Protection Act for gouging its customers. You may recall a John Oliver piece on prison labor that included a mention of its 45% transfer fees some years ago. Some prisons were contractually obligated to phase out in-person visits, meaning that video calls and these electronic messages were the only way many inmates could contact their families, sending them into debt in the process.

Debt is an important component of this exploitation. The real underlying reason for these high costs is a combination of collusion between prison authorities and the private providers, and a lack of concern for prisoners and their families. Financial debt has a negative impact on re-entry outcomes, as well as family well-being and mental health. Or to put it another way, it keeps people in the prison system, where they can be exploited for labor to the tune of $11bn worth of goods and services a year. With this amount of money on the line, it’s in nobody’s interest to create equitable conditions for prisoners.

Elsewhere in the world, prisons are experimenting with internet access in prisons without this exploitative profit motive. In parts of Australia, Germany, the Philippines, and elsewhere, access with varying degrees of supervision is allowed. This corresponds to a different attitude to incarceration: one that centers around rehabilitation and preventing re-entry rather than imprisonment for profit. Given the wildly disproportionate degree to which people of color are incarcerated in the United States, it’s not too hard to determine the underlying cause of this difference in attitudes.

The problem has more to do with a societal approach; the corruption of individual prison systems and service providers is an outcome of this rather than the cause. In America, rather than people who often need help, the incarcerated are resources to be exploited, at the center of a system that keeps almost two million people behind bars. And that’s why we charge them to message their loved ones.