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Mastoconflict | |
June 02nd, 2018 | |
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Mastodon is having a little tiff right now over the introduction | |
of a new feature: trending hashtags. As the project maintainer | |
puts it, it has been the most requested feature addition for over | |
a year. When it rolled out, though, it was met with widespread | |
criticism and, in many cases, open hostility. The rebuttals back | |
and forth quickly escalated and became personal. Pretty much | |
everyone involved is greatly unhappy, regardless of their position | |
on the issue. | |
Meanwhile, I'm sitting back here thinking to myself, "democracy in | |
action." A collective developed and idea with their voices (the | |
addition of trending hashtags). When that idea was implemented, | |
other collectives disagreed. They weren't aware of its | |
development, they argue. It is unsafe and can be used for evil. It | |
will target groups who are often targets and make Mastodon unsafe | |
or unwelcoming. | |
There's one person in charge of the project. He must be the | |
problem. If it weren't for him, surely the issue would be put to | |
rest. It's as simple as that, because a "pure" democracy will | |
always work things out. This is an example of corruption of the | |
perfect, federated state. | |
Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. The issue isn't having | |
a single leader. The issue is that groups of people have different | |
wants and needs. This is inherent to any sized group of people | |
greater than one. You cannot make them all equally happy. You | |
cannot serve every single use case simultaneously. The utopia of | |
democracy does not exist, just as it does not exist for communism, | |
or socialism, or even monarchy. | |
So what do we do? We use our brains. We make decisions that help | |
as many as we can. We use our morals and make decisions that hurt | |
as few as possible. We don't cross lines that shouldn't be | |
crossed. We listen to the words of the suffering and try to ease | |
that suffering. We say to those with excess, "you have excess. | |
Your priorities are lower than those who need help." | |
This is all but impossible in systems that favor group-think. The | |
power in those systems comes from those who can manipulate the | |
system. Who can speak loudest is often the one with the most | |
money. The wider the spread of power, the more this systematic | |
influence becomes absolute. It can devolve to cult of personality | |
eventually. The key to the recipe is broad reach of voice. | |
What is the countermeasure? Strong-willed leaders who can champion | |
the "right" decisions. What makes those decisions right? The | |
things I listed above. What ensures a leader will execute those | |
decisions and not others? That depends on your system. In | |
government, there's not much, though a constitutional system can | |
help balance it. It's easy to slide into despotism. In social | |
systems like open source projects, the answer is the freedom to | |
move on. The system is open source and the protocol can work with | |
other projects. Mastodon can be forked and formed into something | |
else by others with a different set of principles. If the current | |
leader of the project does not implement policy (in the form of | |
software features) that reflects the needs of the people, that's | |
the easiest path to take. No bloodshed, just moving on and | |
building something new. | |
But back to the question of trending hashtags themselves. Are they | |
a good idea? Probably not, at least in the way they've been | |
implemented so far. There's been a lot of valid points about how | |
bad actors already abuse similar systems in other networks. | |
There's nothing currently in place to prevent that, and the | |
distributed nature of the network makes stopping those attacks | |
even harder than on Twitter. There have been very good ideas to | |
tweak the feature to avoid the abuse. Ultimately it should come | |
down to a cost/benefit analysis. Unfortunately it's more likely to | |
come down to the loudest screamers. But that's democracy. | |