Also: @kissane.bsky.social wrote some great stuff about Mastodon protocol/platform on her blog (!!!) which was a good reminder of how "open" is not the same as "inclusive."

https://erinkissane.com/blue-skies-over-mastodon

I'm pessimistic about our ability to create protocols that will address the needs of online community though.

And I think the world has already moved on from typing messages at one another in a public-ish space.

Collectively, we calibrated to a level of email spam filters that was "good enough," that kept our Inboxes mostly okay, and now we take care of the rest.

SMS is experiencing a similar problem with spam. The protocols/platforms are going to have to get better, but they'll never be perfect.

Waiting for the bartender to pull the bat out from under the table is a platform mentality; you get to be passive and let the benevolent sky wizard handle the bad guys.

But in my email Inbox, I'm the bartender. I pull the bat out whenever I want.

Everyone wants Bluesky to kick the racist Nazis out of the bar.

But ultimately, the way a community stays safe is with tools that allow them to kick the Nazis out themselves. "We keep us safe" applies to online spaces as well.

I think that like a lot of good & valuable things (see also: journalism), healthy open online communities are ultimately incompatible with capitalism.

They take a lot of work to build & maintain, and usually need the community to contribute some part of that work to feel "healthy"

But it's been a long fucking time since folks grappled with social protocols in a meaningful way. Usenet was already dying when I first started coding HTML websites 25 years ago.

Meanwhile, most of us are using protocols every day of our lives (email, SMS), but we use them in a way that's private, like 1-to-1 or 1-to-A Few Close Friends.

We take their features (like block) for granted. And we've accepted the fact that they are never 100% clean/safe. (Phishing, spam, etc)

Once your platform scales, you experience the content moderation learning curve and everything sucks so much.

www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-...

In a platform world, the sky wizards of moderation are never able to please everyone.

At a small scale – a Discord server or a sub-reddit for example – this doesn't really matter, because small communities are usually homogenous in the ways that matter.

Good protocols include tools that empower users to feel safe, keep themselves safe, create a space that feels safe. This can feel like "work" but it also puts communities in control.

Good platforms, on the other hand, do the safety work for users with a combo of human & engineering effort.

Thinking a lot today about Protocols vs Platforms.

Not optimistic about the fact that there's a deeply entrenched platform mindset out here in a world that needs to burn platforms to the ground.

Cannot fucking wait for every icon on my iPhone to be a derivative of the Windows 95 desktop wallpaper I am so stoked.

Yeah but which one is named Doug?

Stop falling for the bait, dweebs.

I log in here like twice a week and every time there's a new random person who's mad I don't like the app icon and it reminds me that this place is just like the old place because people love to be mad about shit on the internet and tell people why they're wrong.

Truly a strange feeling to have grown up with the internet being your refuge and cherished resource only to have it become utter shit and realize that maybe you don't need it and in fact can't use it the way you used to anymore

I keep wondering if the icon is bad on purpose? Like is it trying to be bad to be good? Or is it just bad?

I hate being like this.

Really struggling with how bad the Bluesky app icon is.

What breed is Samson? He's so handsome!