💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~stack › whinam › 2022-02-07.sonet.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 03:04:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-04-28)
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Whinam are social animals, and I was very curious about how they communicate over their equivalent of the Internet. Do they have something like Facebook? Of course, they have something much better.
I asked my host, Jorge. Jorge, of course is not his real name, but it sure sounds like it! After some pacing around (Whinam often pace around when thinking), Jorge gave me a briefing on the history of what we humans refer to as 'social networking'. Here is a quick summary.
In the early days (known as 'the dark days'), centralized services were de rigeur, and eventually every horse was forced to join a single dominant social network. It was impossible to have a social life or work without membership, and maintaining status and connections took progressively more and more time. Centralized services experienced frequent outages, data loss, and theft of private information.
Whinam are fiercely private and independent, and the idea of a central entity controlling the flow of information was intolerable. In fact the idea of being dominated in any way is taboo. Earlier I had foolishly inquired if a Whinam had ever given rides to humans, and was kicked in the chest rather hard. Needless to say I never mentioned it again; Jorge, likewise, never spoke of this incident either.
As technology progressed -- and social norms evolved -- centralized services all but disappeared, much like the centralized governments. Individuals regained full control of their social interactions, and actively chose what they wanted to share by 'posting' such information on their own equipment. 'Herd' servers sprouted up to provide services to small groups, for those who did not feel qualified or felt comfortable enough having a friend take care of the technological aspects.
In addition to private point-to-point communications (used in exceptional cases), I gathered that the dominant form was similar to microblogging. Wasn't it very limiting, I inquired? What about bulletin boards, or threaded conversation forums? How did Whinam avoid just having a big jumble of messages?
Jorge explained that everyone would post messages on their own servers (or their herd server). They would always be in control of their messages - no Whinam in their right mind would (or could) ever post data onto another Whinam's feed (Jorge was appalled and even reared up in anger). The messages were entered into each individual's _own_ public feed.
Only one such feed is required for each individual. All media destined to be seen by others is logged in the feed, and encryption ensures that complete strangers don't have access to private data. Access is granted as needed (although some posts may be entirely public).
Unlike human bulletin boards, threads are ephemeral, built by the reader, on the fly as, 'views' or 'filters' on multiple feeds. Each _viewer_ decides who was a part of a particular discussion _for them_, and all messages from chosen participants feeds are included in their particular view. Combined with timestamps, topics, tags, and other metadata, a 'thread' emerges out of chaos, allowing multiple discussions to take place without anyone ever 'posting' anything on any central server.
The feeds, and the views that assemble them, allow any form of social interaction: high-frequency chatting, slower, email-like conversations, group forums, or individual blog-like publishing, or group efforts such as magazines, possibly curated by others.
Whinam love log-structured data, and each individual feed is just that - a timestamped log with entries. It is immutable, and append-only, like most Whinam data objects. References to the items in the feed are kept in a variety of places, and Whinam are careful about posting, with the understanding that everything posted in a public feed may be there forever, guaranteed by cryptographic signatures and timestamps.
An entry may not change, but it may be updated and flagged as outdated (while remaining in-place), or in extreme cases, deleted to avoid permanent exposures of private data. Such events are unusual, and too many deletions may damage one's reputation (and no one likes hitting dead links).
For the appearance of changeable data, an indirection mechanism allows a rerouting to take place without altering the underlying immutable data. Elaborate indices are created automatically in the background to generate views.
In addition, Whinam craft and fine-tune custom filters for each of their views (horsing around with a filter is a common passtime, and many topics are to be found about the best ways of doing so).
The feeds combined with the metadata allow Whinam to create any form of communication they desire - from a high-frequency chat-like exchange to a static blog-like journal - or anything in-between. One could view a single individual's feed in its entirety, a daily group-feed with new random posts, an ongoing discussion on a particular subject, or a highly threaded discussion -- all with the same set of tools.
Jorge stressed that the owner of a feed had full control of what they write, but not how others see it. The viewer is always free to arrange feeds or combine them as they wish. A post in one's feed often becomes a part of some unforeseen discussion - sometimes much later. Such events are welcomed.
Curation is a big part of Whinam social networking. Some members act as aggregators of content creating lists and collections (by reference of course).
Whinam take privacy seriously. I asked Jorge whether crimes such as data theft, hacking, embezzlement are a problem. He did not understand my question, and it took some explaining.
Unlike humans, Whinam do not rely on armed individuals and governments to enforce privacy. Instead, they make sure that privacy simply cannot be violated, using encryption.
In Whinam, the only way someone has access to your data is when such access is granted voluntarily; it is impossible otherwise. Hacking or stealing information (or money) is just not mathematically possible. Neither is impersonation of another individual or obtaining information under false pretenses - cryptography takes care of that, combined with a reputation system.
The only way to violate privacy of another is using true physical violence, and such behaviour is not tolerated.
In addition to individual views and combinators of feeds, curated views are offered by aggregators, providing a pre-packaged view into particular topics, or over wide ranges of topics, much like human magazines. These vary in quality, and high-quality curators are sought after and revered.
Time-constrained 'news' aggregators exist, roughly approximating human news services.
Peer review is a constant fact of life in Whinam feeds (at least in feeds providing facts), and any errors are quickly corrected. No one in their right mind would read a feed from an aggregator without combining it with a few fact-checking feeds in the same view! Any aggregator attempting manipulation is instantly exposed, their feeds ignored and their reputation ruined. That never happens in practice.
The entire feed-space is constantly probed by bots, intelligent actors indexing feeds and combining them in different ways. Some bots simply check for updates in feeds (and efficient mechanisms exist for that), while others create new feeds based on various criteria.
Bots are main consumers of feeds, for reasons of efficiency and privacy.
Because it is largely impossible to tell how one's feed is used, lack of tracking, and a huge presense of bots constantly scouring feeds, no one really know how popular one's feed is, except for anectotal evidence from feedback. Whinam had stopped trying to win 'popularity contests' long ago -- as there is nothing gained from such narcissistic pursuits. Any attempts to 'influence' the audience are instantly revealed by fact-checking feeds.
A horse, I mean a Whinam, is only as good as their reputation. Building a reputation is a long process, and no Whinam will deliberately compromise their reputation -- and why would they?
Strong cryptography assures that no one can pretend to be another, lie, or misappropriate assets. Vouching and introductions are customary, clearly defined to avoid misunderstandings, in situations where math is insufficient for the task at hand.
Whinam look after each other. In the end, the cryptologically-assisted reputation system provides an assurance to transactions and interactions, mostly invisibly as only insane individuals would resort to lying (antisocial behaviour and insanity are one and the same in Whinam) and nearly the entire population has a good reputation.