Social.coop
I deleted my account on the Mastodon instance social.coop yesterday. I still don’t fully understand what went down, but here’s some details from my perspective that I can point to in case people ask.
Social.coop is/was an experiment in democratic, co-operative social networking that I joined in May 2017. I paid $3/month as a member and return got to participate not only in the social network but help make decisions in their Loomio group.
It was great until recently. As with all groups that don’t have strong leadership, there was a lot of discussion and debate about what seemed like fairly minor things. One critical failure was the time it took to get a code of conduct in place and a policy about when social.coop would block other instances.
There must have been some back story that I’m not aware of, but on Wednesday 29th August I ‘tooted’ that I’d weigh in on Loomio when people stopped arguing. In retrospect, should have posted that directly on Loomio rather than Mastodon. I also posted a few points that I thought were salient, including that I felt that the term ‘nazi’ was a form of shorthand and not specific enough for a policy.
That wasn’t a helpful thing have said and I have apologised for my ignorance.
On Thursday 30th some other Mastodon instances cited my toot as policy of social.coop and, without an explanation (other than “just no”) silenced/blocked the entire social.coop instance.
I was willing to stick around and ride things out as there’s always bumps in the road with democratic experiments. However, people on social.coop started leaving, including key members who provide hosting for the instance. It was clear things weren’t going anywhere.
So, I decided to delete my social.coop account. It’s a real shame, and I’m very sorry that I inadvertently upset people and caused so much drama. Suffice to say I’ve learned a lot from the experience.
Simon Grant 8:45 am on September 2, 2018 Permalink |
Yes, it has been quite a learning experience, hasn’t it! For everyone who was part of that learning experience, I’d like to see if we can do some peer group learning, as I sense that we can learn a lot more through discussion than we can by ourselves alone.
Doug Belshaw 9:40 am on September 2, 2018 Permalink |
Possibly, but that sounds like more endless discussion… 😉
Greg McVerry 12:11 pm on September 2, 2018 Permalink |
Yes, I have come to believe that a decentralized approach to the web is better than a federated one. I quit scholar.social because I was a “cross-poster” and they force anyone publishing from their own domain to be “unlisted.” My application to social.coop was never approved.
Instead be your own fed.
A good ole blog roll that we share among friends and a chat group is all I need.
Doug Belshaw 3:16 pm on September 2, 2018 Permalink |
Thanks Greg. The problem with the ‘everyone has their own server’ model is that we’ve already tried that, and it failed. We’re now at a place where capitalist social media has made things so ways to use that we can’t provide an alternative that is difficult to set up.
Matt Noyes 6:43 pm on September 10, 2018 Permalink |
You left too soon. Keep an eye out for work being done in various areas to regenerate the co-op and consider re-engaging if the balance tilts toward hope.
Doug Belshaw 8:05 pm on September 10, 2018 Permalink |
Thanks Matt. I miss that timeline and wish social.coop every success. Sadly, no one did anything but DM support. It wasn’t enough.
jwmh 8:25 am on September 11, 2018 Permalink |
ask for a facilitator & trainer in nonviolent operating principles w 25+ years of experience (not me! but a teacher in the SF bay area whom i deeply respect & appreciate)
http://efficientcollaboration.org/
http://efficientcollaboration.org/results/
http://efficientcollaboration.org/wp-content/uploads/MinnesotaCaseStudy.pdf
mike hales 9:00 am on September 11, 2018 Permalink |
Greg – Until it’s a package, like any other app, there’s no way folks like me will host a server. I’ve not seen a command line for 25 years, or ever booted Terminal on my Macs, and have no desire to. My (not very well informed) hopes are with fully P2P Holochain, and open apps architecture, or maybe some Scuttlebuttish protocol (maybe even a wireless web?). But that’s some way up the pipeline (?) as an alternative to the everyday internet and platformed apps. Thank goodness for non-capitalist platforms like Loomio. Agnostic platforms like WordPress. Hosting coops. Etc. We’ll get by?
Best wishes Doug. Hopefully we each get better at spotting our own ignorance before it pitches us into what turn out to be war zones A long haul though?