💾 Archived View for kvothe.one › gemlog › 2020-09-06.gmi captured on 2020-09-24 at 00:47:51. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I find, lately, that I've been spending an awful lot of time on Mastodon, both on my computer and phone and I realize that this is becoming something of a problem. A lot of the same drawbacks for corporate social media have been mirrored on the Fediverse, even though there's no advertising incentive to turn the feed into a Skinner box. I feel like it sits in that uncanny valley between direct interaction and the slow sort of communication that Gemini and e-mail represent.
Things move fast, almost like IRC, but asynchronously and indirectly. Everything is timely, meaning that if you're not paying attention to it constantly, interesting stuff will fall off the bottom. In short, it emulates many of the things I don't like about social media proper. I suppose that's what the developers set out to do, but I'm starting to get the sense that it's based on a design that doesn't respect your time.
Lately, I've also been participating in IRC more, and it feels a bit like popping into the local pub. Conversations are organic, there is a synchronous back-and-forthness to it, and it shares the same sort of social cues as a pub conversation. "Reply guy"-ism isn't so much a thing.
That brings me to another important distinction between the Fediverse and IRC/slow media. Opt-in conversations. The ActivityPub model, on which Mastodon and the Fediverse are based, is that everyone is participating in one, giant, global conversation. Sort of. You see interesting things, or perhaps search for them, and it's on you to pop in and join the conversation. There's no handshaking that happens; you don't pick a topic or subset of participants to talk to. Anybody can talk to anybody.
This is great, if all participants were part of the same hegemony. That is, if people agreed on things in a general sense. However, this isn't the case. The Fediverse has participants with very different political views, for instance. You can find fascists and anarchists all in one place. In this extreme example, it's pretty clear that conversation will likely not end up productive.
On a more fundamental level, there are people whose mere existence is a point of contention. That is, they are part of a minority in some sense, and the hegemony and prevailing culture is oppressive and challenges their existence. Transsexual people, for instance. People of color. Sex-positive people. Asexual people.
And so, with the way that the Fediverse works, there is no "gatekeeping." I mean that in the literal sense, not in the shutting-people-down sense. With IRC, you choose your servers and channels. You have self-selected a subset of people participating in the medium. Thus, people you interact with (barring abuse), will generally talk about the things you want to talk about in the way that you want to talk about them. If you're a minority in any fashion, you may have more intimate conversations without code-switching to fit into the hegemony.
NPR article, "How Code-Switching Explains the World."
Which brings me back to "reply guy" on the Fediverse. Let's say you have two people, A and B, participating in a conversation. A and B know each other, or know that they share some part of their identity. They code-switch to a language befitting their shared community. Now, let's say you add person C into the mix. C, too, is a part of that community and shares the same language and basic understandings of that community. C speaks, A and B recognize that C is a safe person to talk with, and thus A, B, and C all continue the conversation.
Let's add a fourth person, D, in the mix. D is not part of that community. That's actually OK. There's nothing wrong with D as a person, D just doesn't share the language and community of A, B, and C. D is seeking out communication and interaction. After all, that's what a communication protocol is for.
A, B, and C shrink back from the conversation. Perhaps they also say something that makes D feel unwelcome.
What happened?
A, B, and C can no longer assume their shared language is shared, for one.
Perhaps, more importantly, A, B, and C are worried that D is like M, who is a malicious actor. If, for example, A, B, and C are transsexual people, M is a transphobic person. Perhaps M has actually attacked one or all of them. More generally, M may be multiple people. A has had interactions with M(1), M(2), and M(3). B has had interactions with M(4). And so forth and so on.
D, by joining in the conversation, has presented a dilemma to A, B, and C through no direct fault of D.
There are two large possibilities from A, B, and C's perspective, and several smaller ones I won't enumerate:
Neither of these possibilities are beneficial for A, B, and C, at least in the context of this particular conversation. The best case scenario is that D needs to learn about this new language to either be an ally or future participant. Must A, B, and C become D's teacher? Maybe this happens, but it comes at an expense for A, B, and C.
The worst case, of course, is that D is malicious and does things to intentionally and actively harm A, B, and C. This possibility is not merely theoretical. Minority communities are consistently under attack by malicious M actors. D being an M would be no surprise. It has happened before.
Nobody has spelled this situation out for D. A, B, and C have left the conversation. Perhaps to have another one, perhaps just to be afraid for a while.
D has experienced being a "reply guy," and A, B, and C have been reply guy'd. If D is friendly, there are hurt feelings all around.
In a sense, the very design of the Fediverse facilitates these "reply guy" interactions. Because it's wide open, D gets to experience the coded language A, B, and C use as an observer, and may learn something or find the start of a thread of self-directed research. If D is to participate in that community, it is and should be D's responsibility to learn.
I posit that ActivityPub is not the best design for this. It's fine for the hegemony, for all the folks who do not actively fear malicious actors. And it's fine for minorities code-switching to pass as part of the hegemony. That is, of course, a big ask for those minorities. It is emotionally draining to pretend to be something you're not.
This gemlog post turned out a bit longer than I had expected, but I really wanted to share my thoughts on the Fediverse and why I'm taking a break. There are PLENTY of great people and interactions there; I just need to take a step back. I'll be around, both here and on IRC, but I'm taking a break from the Fediverse for now. Thanks for hanging out with me on there if we've ever shared words.
Until next time, be well!
kvothe.