IRC log of social on 2021-01-09

Timestamps are in UTC.

13:44:56 [RRSAgent]
RRSAgent has joined #social
13:44:56 [RRSAgent]
logging to https://www.w3.org/2021/01/09-social-irc
14:03:06 [rhiaro]
Hi all, we're having a Social CG meeting in 1 hour, in jitsi and here, about the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/2021-01-09-socialcg-meeting-fep/1246
14:29:45 [remy]
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14:39:06 [jarofgreen]
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14:48:08 [nightpool[m]]
Just to be clear, https://meet.jit.si/ScatteredConsequencesActRegardless is the jitsi link, correct?
14:51:25 [rhiaro]
nightpool[m]: yep!
14:52:56 [nightpool[m]]
+👌
14:55:36 [rhiaro]
Zakim, start meeting
14:55:36 [Zakim]
RRSAgent, make logs Public
14:55:37 [Zakim]
please title this meeting ("meeting: ..."), rhiaro
14:55:41 [cwebber2]
hello, joining
14:55:43 [cwebber2]
one sec
14:55:46 [rhiaro]
Meeting: Social Web Incubator CG
14:57:48 [cwebber2]
present+
14:57:55 [rhiaro]
present+
14:58:09 [nightpool[m]]
present+
14:58:43 [cjslep[m]]
joining, 1 sec
14:59:07 [cjslep[m]]
present+
14:59:27 [jarofgreen]
present+
14:59:30 [Grishka]
present+
14:59:49 [cwebber2]
present+ bashrc
15:00:39 [nightpool[m]]
I can do scribe!
15:00:53 [rhiaro]
scribe: nightpool[m]
15:00:57 [rhiaro]
chair: cwebber2
15:01:52 [cwebber2]
agenda: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/2021-01-09-socialcg-meeting-fep/1246
15:02:09 [nightpool[m]]
scribenick: nightpool[m]
15:03:27 [cwebber2]
topic: Amy/Rhiaro as co-chair
15:03:47 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): This group currently has 3 cochairs: myself, aaron perecki (sp?) and nightpool
15:05:11 [nightpool[m]]
... you may notice the socialcg has still been struggling with respect to organization, and I talked to amy, and amy has a lot of ideas and is very knowledgeable and involved with the way the W3C is structured
15:05:17 [cwebber2]
PROPOSED: Make rhiaro / Amy Guy co-chair of the SocialCG
15:05:19 [cwebber2]
+1
15:05:31 [rhiaro]
+1 but I'm biased
15:05:39 [paul]
paul has joined #social
15:05:50 [nightpool[m]]
... so I talked to the three other co-chairs, and we all agreed
15:06:03 [nightpool[m]]
+1 !
15:06:47 [jarofgreen]
+1 (but i’m unsure about voting eligability)
15:07:07 [paul]
+1
15:07:11 [Grishka]
+1
15:07:14 [cwebber2]
sandro: +1
15:07:18 [cwebber2]
present+ sandro
15:07:32 [cwebber2]
RESOLVED: Make rhiaro / Amy Guy co-chair of the SocialCG
15:08:12 [nightpool[m]]
Topic: The Fediverse Enhancement Proposal process
15:08:26 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber: we're proceeding with pukkamustard here, CJ, are you okay with representing it?
15:08:47 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep: Yes, I talked to pukkamustard before the meeting and we're okay to go ahead
15:08:48 [rhiaro]
https://git.activitypub.dev/ActivityPubDev/Fediverse-Enhancement-Proposals/src/branch/main/feps/fep-a4ed.md
15:09:40 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep: Going back to APConf last year, we had some BoF sessions where we wanted a lightweight way to discuss improvments to activitypub and communicate in a way that provides for cross-software or cross-developer communication
15:10:27 [nightpool[m]]
... it's really design to be a lightweight way, so i don't know if it could be considered a "standards" process, but the name was inspired by Python's PEP process or the XMPPEP(?) process
15:11:07 [nightpool[m]]
... I'm not very familiar with these processes, but I know there were some concerns raised due to the similarities wrt that process, but we wanted something that was much more lightweight then those processes generally are
15:12:14 [cwebber2]
q+
15:12:36 [nightpool[m]]
... We just set up a Gitea instance at random, and we had one proposal from Claire (mastodon developer), and that seemed to work very well, and it engendered a really robust discussion within the community
15:12:42 [rhiaro]
q+
15:12:48 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber2
15:12:50 [nightpool[m]]
... and we just wanted to open up the floor to feedback from members of the community
15:12:50 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber
15:13:00 [nightpool[m]]
q+ to talk more about the mastodon side of Claire's proposal
15:14:29 [cwebber2]
q?
15:14:35 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber: I like it, it definitely doesn't have the full stnadardization process that say a w3c standard would, but it's not intended to, and I like how it provides for a way of creating new ideas that we can then take into a new WG charter or something similar
15:14:37 [cwebber2]
ack rhiaro
15:14:42 [nightpool[m]]
s/stnadardization/standardization
15:15:15 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): I agree, I read through it earlier, and I thought it was very good. It's lightweight, easy to read.
15:15:36 [nightpool[m]]
... one way we can connect it to the CG is when things come down to the final stage, they can be published as a community group report
15:16:08 [cwebber2]
https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/
15:16:10 [nightpool[m]]
... that way it gets a w3 URL and it makes it much easier to transition it into a W3 WG spec down the line if we want to
15:16:43 [nightpool[m]]
... Although we may want to make that optional, in case people don't want to join the CG
15:17:02 [cwebber2]
q?
15:17:18 [cwebber2]
ack nightpool[m]
15:17:18 [Zakim]
nightpool[m], you wanted to talk more about the mastodon side of Claire's proposal
15:17:43 [cwebber2]
nightpool[m]: I wanted to give a bit more reflection of my experience of the process when I helped Claire go through it with the follower collection syncing proposal
15:18:09 [sandro]
sandro has joined #social
15:18:28 [Grishka]
btw if you need a second implementation of that FEP, I might try implementing it in Smithereen
15:18:52 [cjslep[m]]
q+
15:18:59 [cwebber2]
nightpool[m]: my understanding is we still haven't merged that code for a few reasons, one is open questions on our side, but to our side it feels like we haven't gone through the process. from that perspective I think we were hoping for more consensus than we got from the process, where it seems like it's more to reflect the processes of what one application is doing, which is valuable but maybe not what we're looking for in this
15:18:59 [cwebber2]
specific case
15:19:12 [rhiaro]
https://git.activitypub.dev/ActivityPubDev/Fediverse-Enhancement-Proposals/src/branch/main/feps/fep-a4ed.md nightpool[m]
15:20:16 [cwebber2]
nightpool[m]: I guess the only other thing I have is... it's good for people to get their implementations in front of us so we can find more spaces of commonality... on the other hand if we rubber stamp everything that comes through as a lightweight process if we'll come to a point where everything does slightly different things in slightly different ways which might make it harder to converge on a future spec. not sure there's a good
15:20:16 [cwebber2]
way to avoid that either
15:20:19 [cwebber2]
q?
15:20:26 [cwebber2]
ack cjslep[m]
15:21:00 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep: I definitely agree with nightpool, and I understand how the FEP process can be disappointing in that regard
15:21:14 [nightpool[m]]
... because it wasn't designed to give that kind of feedback
15:21:34 [nightpool[m]]
... it was designed so you can push your things out and let you communicate about it without necessarily coming to a consensus
15:21:37 [rhiaro]
+1 cjslep
15:21:56 [cwebber2]
q?
15:21:59 [nightpool[m]]
... and the CG could look at a wide range of FEPs when starting a potential standardization proccess
15:22:01 [cwebber2]
q+
15:22:08 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber2
15:22:11 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber
15:22:28 [nightpool[m]]
... I don't have any good solutions either but i think it was intentional for it to be that way
15:23:01 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber: It strikes me that a lightweight process is useful even if it's not a full process
15:23:08 [nightpool[m]]
... because a lot of things are happening, and we don't even have them documented
15:23:19 [nightpool[m]]
... and that's a much worse solution then when lots of things are happening and we do have them documented
15:24:04 [nightpool[m]]
... To another end, I think this ties in to something else that we were talking aobut with the SocialCG. Now that we're using Jitsi, which supports video calls
15:24:51 [nightpool[m]]
... We've had problems with doing things regularly, and not having enough things to work on on a rigorous schedule, and not having enough meetings to cover the topics when not doing a rigorous schedule.
15:25:03 [Grishka]
"here are groups in Smithereen, here's how they work…. oops they don't" :D
15:25:14 [cwebber2]
q?
15:25:34 [nightpool[m]]
... We've talked about doing a more "show-and-tell" sort of process, where people come and present on what they're working on, and maybe it would be good to couple that with a FEP, so people come and present their projects and what they're working on
15:25:39 [nightpool[m]]
... alongside an FEP
15:26:11 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): It might be useful to have a proposal at this time, let me type something out
15:26:43 [rhiaro]
present+ humanetech
15:27:23 [cwebber2]
DRAFT PROPOSED: The SocialCG should support the FEP (Fediverse Enhancement Proposal) process as a way of documenting extensions to the fediverse and encourage bringing FEP proposals for discussion to the SocialCG.
15:27:25 [rhiaro]
nightpool[m]: mastodon did in the end merge the follower sync proposal
15:28:23 [cjslep[m]]
q+
15:28:30 [cwebber2]
ack cjslep[m]
15:28:49 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): There are a couple of things not captured here, including governance for the FEP process, as well as "graduation" or anything that comes after the FEP process
15:28:56 [nightpool[m]]
... not sure whether we should be adding anything on top of that
15:29:02 [rhiaro]
q+
15:29:07 [cwebber2]
ack rhiaro
15:29:34 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep: Wanted to highlight here that we currently have an "editor" role in the FEP process, which is curerntly me, pukkamustard (IRC), and lain_soykaf (IRC)
15:29:55 [cwebber2]
PROPOSED: The SocialCG should support the FEP (Fediverse Enhancement Proposal) process as a way of documenting extensions to the fediverse and encourage bringing FEP proposals for discussion to the SocialCG.
15:29:57 [cwebber2]
+1
15:30:03 [rhiaro]
+1
15:30:07 [Grishka]
+1
15:30:08 [paul]
+1
15:30:26 [cjslep[m]]
qq: am i allowed to vote?
15:30:31 [sandro]
+1
15:30:54 [cjslep[m]]
+1
15:31:03 [nightpool[m]]
+1 if we also widen the group of editors or change that process in some way to make it more clear what editors are doing
15:31:22 [rhiaro]
rhiaro: it is good for socialcg to support the FEP process and encouarge overlap. We can think about governance and CG report graduation separately
15:31:32 [cwebber2]
RESOLVED: The SocialCG should support the FEP (Fediverse Enhancement Proposal) process as a way of documenting extensions to the fediverse and encourage bringing FEP proposals for discussion to the SocialCG.
15:32:42 [cwebber2]
topic: Structure of W3C Social CG and official site
15:33:00 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): woo! 2 proposals!
15:33:05 [cwebber2]
https://activitypub.rocks/news/overdue-site-updates.html
15:33:17 [nightpool[m]]
... Let's see if there's anything else on the waitlist we can knock out easily
15:33:27 [Grishka]
rhiaro: I had a similar problem, some email providers don't accept those emails for some reason
15:33:34 [Grishka]
had this with APConf as well
15:33:36 [cwebber2]
topic: The not existing official Test Suite and making the inofficial an official
15:34:29 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): I think we've made good progress on the activitypub.rocks page this week, it's been updated with things people have been requesting and points to test.activityrocks.dev, which is cjslep's test suite instead of the broken test.activitypub.rocks
15:34:29 [nightpool[m]]
... round of applause to cjslep for making sure the fediverse has a working test suite!
15:34:31 [rhiaro]
q+ to talk about upcoming meeting schedule
15:34:51 [cwebber2]
topic: Upcoming meeting schedule
15:34:53 [cwebber2]
ack rhiaro
15:34:53 [Zakim]
rhiaro, you wanted to talk about upcoming meeting schedule
15:35:17 [rhiaro]
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/upcoming-socialcg-meetings/1257/5
15:35:19 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): I took the waitlist and turned it into a meeting schedule
15:35:51 [humanetech]
humanetech has joined #social
15:36:08 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): I just arbitrarily assigned them days and times, alternating fridays and saturdays, so people can see if they can make the times for topics they're interested in
15:37:19 [cwebber2]
q?
15:37:39 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): We've been alternating between Friday's and Saturday's to accommodate people who can't come due to work or due to the weekend, we can continue doing that for now and move topics around to accommodate people's availability.
15:37:57 [sandro]
agenda+ the incoming wave
15:38:16 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): Since we've already gotten through the stuff on our agenda for the week, is there anything else we should work on for the rest of the meeting?
15:38:52 [cwebber2]
topic: the incoming wave
15:38:53 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): Neither, I'd prefer to do a "any other business" section to open the floor to anything else that we haven't planned to address
15:39:05 [nightpool[m]]
q+ for the Policy group thing
15:39:40 [nightpool[m]]
sandro (IRC): If I understand correctly, over the last 2 days all major platforms have banned Trump and possibly some amount of his followers (possibly around 500k accounts removed?)
15:39:47 [cwebber2]
q+
15:40:15 [nightpool[m]]
q+ to talk to gab
15:40:25 [nightpool[m]]
... They were thinking of moving to Parler, although it's banned from the app store and we don't know much about if they're going to be able to stay there, with it removed from the app store
15:41:02 [nightpool[m]]
... so I think the fediverse at some point is going to need to deal with them maybe coming here, and figuring with what comes next
15:41:13 [nightpool[m]]
.. and there's some opportunity here for us, with expertise, to help the world manage that problem
15:41:58 [cwebber2]
https://conf.tube/videos/watch/a5d5675e-3ccb-488b-8759-1dc0420e395f
15:42:05 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): Sandro, you might not be privy to what's happened to gab over the last year, are you?
15:42:24 [nightpool[m]]
... They left the fediverse, and said f*%! activitypub, basically.
15:43:01 [cwebber2]
ack nightpool[m]
15:43:01 [Zakim]
nightpool[m], you wanted to discuss the Policy group thing and to talk to gab
15:43:03 [nightpool[m]]
... I linked a video where that explains kind of what happened, where they made a big deal about leaving the fediverse
15:43:27 [rhiaro]
nightpool[m]: the gab thing.. I was doing some research into this. they are still running a fork of mastodon, though they have rewritten the frontend
15:43:32 [rhiaro]
... and ripped out all of the federation
15:43:40 [rhiaro]
... and added features that have no federated equivalent
15:43:51 [rhiaro]
... that's not to say all of the alt right troll are gone from the fediverse
15:44:13 [rhiaro]
... some big names still run instances
15:44:28 [rhiaro]
... the vast majority moved off with gab. Still yet to see what's goign to happen there
15:44:45 [rhiaro]
... the fediverse itself is pretty good at circulating block requests but it doesn't say they could still develop their own alt right fediverse by connecting together
15:44:53 [rhiaro]
... is there something we can do about that? what is the next step?
15:45:07 [rhiaro]
... right now gab is gone and they are advocating to other alt right friends that not to use activitypub
15:45:23 [rhiaro]
sandro: it's great symbolically that they dont' want to use mastodon code because mastodon isn't their kind of people
15:45:46 [cjslep[m]]
q+
15:45:47 [rhiaro]
... they can't just use gab cos they ripped otu federation so that will slow them down. but nothing there that stops them from using AP or some other codebase for making a facist fediverse
15:45:50 [cwebber2]
q?
15:46:09 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber
15:46:13 [rhiaro]
cwebber2: I have been a vocal skeptic that the allow/deny list approach is going to work long term
15:46:17 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): As a note, I have been a vocal skeptic that the allow/denylist approach will work long term
15:46:21 [rhiaro]
... what surprised me over the last year is how well it did manage to work to at least disuade gab
15:46:24 [cwebber2]
ack cjslep[m]
15:46:37 [nightpool[m]]
... but I think what surprised me over the last year was how well it did work to dissuade gab
15:47:29 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep: One thing I saw consistently from voices on the fediverse, including playvicious.social, was calls for improvement for tooling for handling these kind of cases
15:47:57 [nightpool[m]]
... one thing I think may help personally is having more interoperability with moderated actions, possibly arrived at with a FEP like process
15:48:04 [cwebber2]
q?
15:48:13 [cwebber2]
q+
15:48:19 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber
15:48:55 [nightpool[m]]
sandro (IRC): Yeah, I've been on the "we need better moderator" tooling thread for a long time, but i'm realizing it might not have a lot of benefits here when you're talking about 8 million people
15:49:04 [nightpool[m]]
.. and maybe there's something we can do with software licensing.
15:50:25 [Grishka]
privacy settings!
15:50:33 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): I would disagree with going down the software licensing route, but I think that if there's something we can do here to make sure users who don't want to be exposed to these type of things aren't exposed to them, i think that's a big goal here
15:50:40 [Grishka]
q+
15:51:11 [nightpool[m]]
... because historically, we've had private nazi forums for as long as we've had the internet, and a lot of this organizing has happened literally behind closed doors
15:51:34 [nightpool[m]]
... and a lot of the storming the capital planning happened in closed fora
15:51:41 [cwebber2]
ack Grishka
15:51:54 [nightpool[m]]
... so I think we need to acknowledge our limits and scope this to what we're practically able to achieve.
15:52:16 [nightpool[m]]
... since we cannot prevent other people from using protocols to communicate
15:52:17 [cwebber2]
s/a lot of the storming the capital planning happened in closed fora/a lot of the storming the capital planning happened on open forums/
15:52:47 [nightpool[m]]
Grishka (IRC): privacy settings on Interaction is something that can help solve this
15:52:59 [cwebber2]
q?
15:53:09 [nightpool[m]]
... for example, if you set up "only ___ can reply to my post" or "I only see notifications from people I follow"
15:53:18 [cwebber2]
https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub/blob/master/README.org
15:53:20 [nightpool[m]]
... you can protect yourself from some of these types of content
15:53:49 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): I will note that OCapPub addresses some of these interaction concerns, but it's not tested or implemented yet
15:54:08 [rhiaro]
(and on the other side of this: something something filter bubbles are bad)
15:54:14 [nightpool[m]]
... I suggest we spread some of these discussions out over the next several meetings, since I don't think we have a solution here but this conversation isn't going away
15:54:20 [sandro]
q+
15:54:35 [rhiaro]
present+ trwnh
15:54:56 [Grishka]
services like Facebook do the opposite btw — they make it nigh impossible to guard yourself from content outside of your circles
15:54:57 [nightpool[m]]
... I don't think it's going away in the following way: this organizing happened in public, and it's already leading to calls for banning end-to-end encryption
15:55:22 [cwebber2]
ack sandro
15:55:36 [cwebber2]
q?
15:55:46 [rhiaro]
Topic: Policy Group
15:56:15 [rhiaro]
nightpool[m]: I've been following the forum discussions about the policy group but did not get a great sense for what it's role was or the kind of goal of the committee
15:56:17 [cwebber2]
q+
15:56:27 [cwebber2]
ack cwebber
15:56:52 [rhiaro]
I've put that on the meeting schedule for next Friday too
15:57:48 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): we've had a few informal socialcg meetings about it, as well as a few meetings with policy groups from the EU about it
15:58:21 [Grishka]
Facebook would do to AP what Gmail did to SMTP
15:58:32 [Grishka]
*if* Facebook chooses AP
15:58:49 [nightpool[m]]
... And discussions about the proposed EU interoperability law, which doesn't say much yet except for the word "gatekeepers" repeated over and over throughout the document
15:59:30 [nightpool[m]]
... and the concern was around organizations adopting the protocol and then closing it off, like we saw with Google and Facebook and XMPP
16:00:16 [nightpool[m]]
... and then we moved to discussions about how legislatures aren't aware that non-centralized approaches exist
16:01:09 [nightpool[m]]
... and how to make sure that the legislation doesn't harm decentralized approaches and make sure that regulators are aware that these alternatives exist
16:01:16 [cwebber2]
q?
16:02:27 [rhiaro]
q+
16:02:37 [cwebber2]
nightpool[m]: that makes a lot of sense... I guess I'm wondering from the technical land of what this group is good at and has an expertise in, what's the best way for us to approach it that's not necessarily presenting ourselves as a policy or political body which I don't think we have the setup or expertise or chops to be. but I think there's a lot of good goals here and we should do our best to make sure that we're providing the
16:02:37 [cwebber2]
technical options while deferring to other voices in the fediverse who may be better set up to provide the political options
16:02:47 [cwebber2]
q+
16:02:51 [cwebber2]
ack rhiaro
16:03:42 [cwebber2]
rhiaro: I agree nightpool with what you said. I haven't been super closely following the recent policy stuff, but what I think would be good would be to have people who are very well qualified and active in brussels etc to report back here (and we had some of those here)
16:04:39 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): I would like to note as Amy mentioned that we did have some of those people here, and that was the goal as of the place we left it last time, and that most of the people in the Policy group are connected to these kind of issues, and
16:04:51 [nightpool[m]]
... it's a different composition then the people who show up to this group
16:05:11 [rhiaro]
RRSAgent, please draft minutes
16:05:11 [RRSAgent]
I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/01/09-social-minutes.html rhiaro
16:05:15 [rhiaro]
RRSAgent make logs public
16:05:20 [rhiaro]
RRSAgent, make minutes public
16:05:20 [RRSAgent]
I'm logging. I don't understand 'make minutes public', rhiaro. Try /msg RRSAgent help
16:05:28 [rhiaro]
Zakim, make minutes public
16:05:28 [Zakim]
I don't understand 'make minutes public', rhiaro
16:05:31 [nightpool[m]]
cwebber2 (IRC): and that will be the topic of our meeting next time! next Friday
16:05:33 [rhiaro]
RRSAgent, make logs public
16:05:36 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro (IRC)++
16:05:46 [nightpool[m]]
cjslep++
16:05:46 [Loqi]
cjslep has 1 karma over the last year
16:05:55 [nightpool[m]]
rhiaro++
16:05:56 [Loqi]
rhiaro has 3 karma in this channel over the last year (6 in all channels)
16:06:23 [rhiaro]
Zakim, end meeting
16:06:23 [Zakim]
As of this point the attendees have been 👌, cwebber, rhiaro, nightpool[m], cjslep[m], jarofgreen, Grishka, bashrc, sandro, humanetech, trwnh
16:06:25 [Zakim]
RRSAgent, please draft minutes
16:06:25 [RRSAgent]
I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/01/09-social-minutes.html Zakim
16:06:28 [Zakim]
I am happy to have been of service, rhiaro; please remember to excuse RRSAgent. Goodbye
16:06:32 [Zakim]
Zakim has left #social
16:07:02 [nightpool[m]]
haha, I can't believe it picked up my emoji reaction as a present + !
16:08:21 [Grishka]
I like how two bots talk to each other
16:09:31 [cjslep[m]]
rhiaro (IRC): RE the gitea instance emails: I know the emails are prone to being marked as spam since gitea is just using basic sendmail to issue the emails. I'm not a wizard at email configuration. :( I can manually mark your account as activated if you'd like, however this means that you still probably wouldn't receive the notification emails that the instance sends.
16:10:39 [cwebber2]
wow the meeting logs recently got much fancier https://www.w3.org/2021/01/09-social-minutes.html
16:10:45 [rhiaro]
thanks cjslep[m] ... hmm.. I don't have any spam filtering on the server side of my email afaik and it's not going into junk on the client side.. I'll dig in a bit more though in case I missed something
16:10:58 [rhiaro]
yeah cwebber2! I was asking in sysreq earlier how we get the fancy new css, but it seems we've switched over automagically :D
16:11:06 [cwebber2]
:D
16:11:25 [cjslep[m]]
With your permission, I can also manually send a test email to your account, rhiaro (IRC).
16:11:42 [rhiaro]
cjslep[m]: yes, go for it
16:12:23 [rhiaro]
my emails go through dreamhost, they might have some very light spam filtering, going to look now
16:12:45 [cjslep[m]]
I have issued the test email.
16:13:35 [humanetech]
cjslep[m]: you might also configure a different more reputable mail provider, maybe?
16:14:16 [cjslep[m]]
I will add it to my list of things to do. :)
16:14:25 [nightpool[m]]
wow I'm really impressed by that CSS! I took a look at the scribe code last year when I was figuring out the bot ropes and it was so incredibly complicated
16:14:48 [rhiaro]
cjslep[m]: what is the domain the email is coming from? I'll explicitly add it to an allow list on the server side. Though I don't see anything on server side that is filtering anything out at the moment
16:15:06 [cjslep[m]]
git.activitypub.dev
16:16:32 [cjslep[m]]
Or that server's IP.
16:18:03 [humanetech]
ps. if the wave *does* come with, say, 20m users, even moderated away to a separate space, then it is 4m against 20m.. bye bye fedi-as-we-know-it: a public image problem arises.
16:19:59 [rhiaro]
humanetech: yep.. sandro ^
16:20:33 [humanetech]
in that light even public discussion might trigger ideas with the wrong ppl
17:05:04 [Loqi]
[@elidourado] ↩️ Better protocols than RSS exist specifically for social data https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ (https://twitter.com/_/status/1347952401102331906)
17:51:01 [Grishka]
actually, I don't think it's really a big issue
17:51:30 [Grishka]
mere existence of bad actors IS a big issue on centralized services because those have recommendations
17:52:06 [Grishka]
and the very purpose of those it to forcefully expose you to content that you didn't consent to be exposed to
17:53:10 [Grishka]
on fediverse, you can't just randomly see posts outside of your network — you gotta specifically browse those profiles, or they have to actively interact with you by e.g. mentioning you or replying to you
17:54:45 [Grishka]
and privacy settings I was talking about would give the users control they need to essentially preemptively block those they don't want to see
18:02:38 [dmitriz]
dmitriz has joined #social
18:09:30 [nightpool[m]]
grishka: I think part of what humanetech was talking about was that even if the fediverse users aren't impacted, the public perception of the fediverse would change dramatically if we get a flood of nazi users
18:15:14 [Grishka]
of course it's as important as ever, PR-wise, to emphasize that there is no single entity running the whole thing and it should be thought of as many interconnected communities
18:19:30 [humanetech]
Yes, I meant the PR / public opinion aspect. Like fedi being the big bad dark web, very easily depicted as such by other parties, and easy too as it sticks in the minds of ppl who hadn't heard of it before.
18:21:50 [humanetech]
Growing in numbers, Fediverse name recognition and such, 'branding' of the fedi is very important in that regard, imho. Most of the grassroots growth so far came from tech circles, but more is needed to become prepared for the masses.
18:22:08 [humanetech]
Same with EU Policy thing..
18:22:50 [humanetech]
*iif* a big tech platform were to adopt AP we need to be able to handle the influx.
18:22:51 [Grishka]
the explanation that I found works best is "like email but social media"
18:23:31 [Grishka]
because email is a federated system and it's familiar to literally anyone who has ever used the internet
18:25:14 [humanetech]
Yes, but you also mentioned the problem here. That in the mind of most ppl email means Gmail, or maybe Hotmail or whatever. And mail from your small-time mail server ends up in Spam box at the Gmail end.
18:25:53 [Grishka]
you then proceed to explain that each server is independently owned and operated, and has its own rules it's moderated in accordance with, and if you don't agree with existing servers, you can always make your own
18:26:42 [Grishka]
spam will inevitably be a problem in the fediverse as it grows, it's just that it's now possible to deal with it manually
18:27:03 [Grishka]
this is the kind of tradeoff you get when you make the whole system open to anyone
18:28:05 [humanetech]
Agree. But this explanation is already sorta technical. Your grandma or teen daughter doesn't care about this. I referred to the spam in the way that your small mailserver is less effective in being 'part of the whole'. It it the big shots that have taken over.
18:28:25 [Grishka]
it's either centralized and you have to solve captchas, upload IDs and do other kinds of humiliating procedures when you're suspected as being a spammer, or it's decentralized and you have to filter the spam on the receiving end
18:29:27 [humanetech]
Also agree. I guess it is more a question when Fedi is ready to handle these scenario's. Are we mature enough at this moment to do so?
18:29:40 [Grishka]
humanetech: are you suggesting that there will be centralization like there was with email?
18:29:50 [humanetech]
I am full in on decentralized web.
18:30:17 [humanetech]
There might be. Might play out a bit differently than with email.
18:30:18 [Grishka]
uh, Smithereen doesn't implement any sort of blocking as of right now… :D
18:30:34 [Grishka]
not even individual account blocking
18:31:11 [humanetech]
Do you intend to add that still?
18:31:38 [Grishka]
(are there proper message replies on IRC and it's just that my client sucks?)
18:31:54 [Grishka]
of course I do, it's an important feature to make it actually usable
18:32:14 [humanetech]
Ah, just asking. Maybe it was intentional :D
18:32:40 [humanetech]
Suppose FB was forced to be interoperable and they embraced AP for that..
18:32:46 [humanetech]
What would they do?
18:32:58 [nightpool[m]]
for which?
18:33:15 [Grishka]
they'd introduce a lot of vocabulary I presume
18:33:28 [Grishka]
like the exact sort of thing I'm doing right now
18:33:40 [humanetech]
Yes, and maybe they would also break up their centralized server in tons of virtual instances.
18:33:52 [humanetech]
And too they would take the lead in protocol development
18:33:58 [Grishka]
and btw I'm going to write a FEP about collections that anyone can add objects to
18:34:19 [Grishka]
that's an important construct and I'm surprised it's not part of the AP spec
18:34:20 [humanetech]
That's cool.
18:34:41 [Grishka]
it's useful for many things that aren't microblogging
18:34:51 [Grishka]
walls are this, photo albums are this
18:35:04 [humanetech]
Yeah, I'd like to see different domains being added. Lots of them..
18:35:29 [Grishka]
especially photo albums in groups, where many people can upload photos to one album
18:36:38 [humanetech]
I'd like to see groups span multiple instance (or instance-independant)
18:36:49 [Grishka]
what do you mean?
18:37:26 [Grishka]
the groups I'm making are VK-style, in that you join them (from any instance obviously) and then see various updates in them in your feed
18:37:42 [humanetech]
Maybe this is already possible. Dunno. But if you have a community, it is not bound to the instance where it was created.
18:38:03 [Grishka]
can't imagine how this could work
18:38:16 [humanetech]
Probably can't atm.
18:38:36 [Grishka]
AP objects have identifiers, and those are URLs, and the domain of the URL, by definition, is the server that has an absolute authority over that object
18:39:05 [Grishka]
so there has to be one server that hosts the group
18:39:07 [nightpool[m]]
Matrix does a similar thing with how it sets up rooms, but to me it seems a little wrong-headed.... you're going to almost always want to know which instance is "authoritative" for any given group
18:40:15 [humanetech]
Yeah, for Matrix I am also curious. I set some stuff up on matrix.org but want to move to feneas.org now.
18:40:17 [Grishka]
so for Smithereen, as groups can't exist by themselves, the group is hosted on the same server as its creator
18:40:30 [Grishka]
as in, groups aren't accounts in their own right
18:40:58 [nightpool[m]]
part of the open-world model AP operates under is that, unlike IRC, things are namespaced and have an authority associated with them. so if groups were "portable" between servers, it would be kind of a step back in that regard
18:41:40 [humanetech]
The URI thing is in current spec, but might be extend in later versions. How would it work in P2P AP for instance?
18:42:08 [humanetech]
Where e.g. my mobile phone is my personal actor.
18:42:21 [humanetech]
Can't host a group.
18:42:35 [nightpool[m]]
in a theoretical P2P ap, it would be a URI with a different authority scheme, for example something like TOR's public key onion router host names instead of DNS
18:42:41 [Grishka]
there's no such thing as P2P AP
18:43:04 [humanetech]
No, but there's talk about it for the future..
18:43:31 [humanetech]
Would be great if there was a mixed federated + p2p model.
18:43:35 [Grishka]
but yes, you can obviously run AP in an overlay network, I think Mastodon actually supports running through TOR
18:44:35 [nightpool[m]]
yes, although i'm just using that as a example of a non-dns based authority scheme
18:45:02 [Grishka]
the problem with p2p is the user experience — the setup is usually somewhat intimidating, and it can't run in a web browser, you need a client
18:45:56 [humanetech]
pukkamustard I believe intends to research p2p. Was part of openEngiadina future research, but now moved to https://dream.public.cat/ (I think)
18:45:58 [Grishka]
if you remove the requirement of TLS, you could, in principle, run AP without domains, using just IP addresses
18:46:26 [Grishka]
so that's already one possibility
18:46:29 [humanetech]
And cj is thinking of implementing a gossiping facility in Go
18:47:05 [Grishka]
and speaking of p2p stuff, I want global search that actually works
18:47:33 [humanetech]
very important.
18:50:58 [humanetech]
humanetech has left #social
18:56:32 [Grishka]
my basic idea is to use a DHT, this would work for looking up actors by various keys, like centralized account IDs, because that's what hash tables do, distributed or not
18:56:58 [Grishka]
the bigger problem, though, that I know no solution to, is storing lists to which everyone could append
18:57:20 [Grishka]
those, obviously, would be extremely useful for things like hashtags
18:58:26 [Grishka]
nevertheless, the DHT idea solves the dreaded "I signed up for a fediverse account, now what" problem
18:59:20 [Grishka]
because you would then connect your centralized accounts, or import GDPR exports, or something else, to find the people you already know, wherever they are