Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 169

@LWFlouisa so, how does a revolutionary change separate out these essential functions of the cops, courts etc, from their property defence functions? Similarly, how do we devolve power to the most local possible scale, without empowering lynch mobs and witch burnings?

@LWFlouisa anyway, it's become clear to me that aside from their function as defenders of property privileges (or "rights" according to some), the cops also carry out a number of essential social functions. In a post-capitalist, stateless society, somebody would still have to attend road crashes, and if somebody was killed, tell their family before they saw it on the news. This is one example, but I could list many more.

@LWFlouisa I had some fascinating discussions with a friend back in NZ about the role of the state in protecting minorities from conservative majorities. We were both coming from a broadly left-libertarian perspective, but I found it fascinating that she was coming from a more #AnCap starting point and tacking towards a Clintonite liberal position, while I was tacking in almost exactly the opposite direction, due to some bad experiences with what I call "Safer Spaces Policing".

@LWFlouisa @LPS exactly. Or how the EU or UN actually work (in some aspects anyway). Some people are only learning about the concept of #federation in the context of the #fediverse, but as you probably know, it's been a key part of #anarchist theory and practice for centuries. If anyone is keen to learn more about that, here's as good a place to start as any:
http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/peter-kropotkin%E2%80%99s-anarchist-vision-organization

@LWFlouisa @LPS maybe hilltop.club decides to elect admins by majority vote once a year, and elect @Maggie or @Jesus to make decisions on which other instances ought to be blocked. Again, I think it's a strength that each instance can decide what internal decision-making process works for them, and that can change over time, as the user population changes.

@LWFlouisa @LPS those decisions can be made democratically by the users of each instance, like #SocialCoop tried to do. But again, that's up to the population of each instances to decide. If all the users of kingdom.club are happy to let @KingEzekial make all those decisions, that's their lookout.

@LWFlouisa @LPS it's like each instance 'votes' by making its own decision and blocking or not blocking. The aggregate of all those 'votes' determines how much of the fediverse any given instance can federate with. Nobody can stop an instance from existing, or publishing over the #OpenWeb and #ActivityPub. All they can decide is whether or not their instance is listening. #FreeSpeech is respected, but also #FreeAssociation, which necessarily includes a right to disassociate.

@LWFlouisa @LPS Those experiences with Indymedia got me thinking about decentralized open publishing, long before I ever heard of Identi.ca and StatusNet (the projects that gave rise to the #fediverse as we know it today).

@LWFlouisa @LPS I was a co-founder of one of the Indymedia sites in the early 2000s, and nothing created more complicated debates than editorial policy; deciding what to hide or not hide, what to delete, and so on. We didn't want to be censors, but we didn't want fascists squatting our servers with recruitment propaganda either, and that's a pretty extreme and unambiguous example. There were lots of grey areas.

@LWFlouisa @LPS no! That's the beauty of it. Each instance decides what they consider spam. The fedizens of some instances might value types of messages that those of other instances consider to be spam. Each community can make those judgements for themselves. But if all the instances think an instance is full of spammers and block it, it can only spam itself. It's both spam-proof *and* relatively censorship-proof, which is *really* hard to achieve.

@LWFlouisa @LPS on the other hand, if an instance is genuinely toxic, ie full of spammers, trolls, griefers etc, then eventually everyone else will block it, and they can only spam and troll each other. The network will treat it like a short circuit, like damage, and route around it. So the overall segmentation of the network is a consensus that emerges from the case-by-case decisions of each instance admin(s). I think there's something organic and beautiful about that.

@LWFlouisa @LPS as I see it, the difference is that a fediverse instance can only silence or block other instances for their own users. They can't make policy on behalf of the network as a whole, nobody can. Also, since blocks are 2-way, if they go around blocking instances over all sorts of trivial issues, all they do is end up excluding themselves from an ever-larger chunk of the network. Let them run their little "No Homerz" club. who cares?

@LPS one awesome thing about #federation is that it makes it much harder to censor information based on blocking domain names (which is a big part of the how the #GreatFirewall works). To censor everything on the #PeerTube network, the #GreatFirewall has to successfully block every single PT instance. Only one instance of #PeerTube needs to be accessible from China to make a huge range of content from other instances available (assuming that instance has lots of links with others of course).

@LPS that's why I really value folks like @Framasoft and their 'deGoogle-ify the Internet' guide, or the @fsf 's #DefectiveByDesign campaign, or the work done at #FlossManuals . We need more work like this to help mere mortals get started with freedom-respecting software and services, and to educate ourselves and each other on the issues involved.

@fsf brilliant. I've been meaning the write about this. I still might, but I will probably also cover a few of the other "open source but not open source" licenses I've come across, and I'll definitely link to Bradley's work.

@LPS absolutely. I was talking about this on here the other day, in response to a show I listened to from our public broadcaster. I think people in social movements know that loads of free/ open/ libre/ commons technologies are out there, made by people who in many cases share their values and concerns. But where do you start? How do you distinguish the mature, newbie-friendly tools from the alpha experiments and the stuff suitable only for CLI wizards with years of spellcasting skills?

@LPS thank you so much! I was just trying to find a copy, and every other site that is hosting it is blocked by the #GreatFirewall. Ironic, no?

@bob or if I used a CryptPad, I could limit it to being edited by myself. I suppose if it's just me, I could also use just a PrivateBin and change the URL every time I do an edit. Thanks for helping me get my head around this :-)

OK, that makes sense. Thanks @bob . I've been thinking about what to use for quick and dirty text editing (device independent), and then posting either to the fediverse / Loomio, or my blog, depending on the length it ends up being. A pastebin would be good for that. If I want to draft something over a period of time, coming back to it a few times before I publish it, a pad would be more appropriate. Am I understanding correctly?