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Ok, I thought about it for a while & it still frustrates me that FOSS communities oft motion at underlying philosophy where--should they succeed--it would be extremely leftist results & highly disruptive of status quo (good). But they basically refuse to think about that! (bad).
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Maybe someone has already written about this? Like, software is divided up into ultra capitalists like Gates and Jobs vs philosophic radicals who position software as the key to fundamentally disrupting status quo, and they basically operate the same and that's weird right?
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Like... I dunno, it sorta *matters* if you're going around being like 'software should be about making money' while you take a salary from top tier surveillance capitalists? We all have to live in a society etc...
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But it makes sense to think about how to make these spaces welcoming for the type of people needed to actually be revolutionary... who can't afford to hold the same principles as you... right?
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What got me thinking on this is like... we're maybe ~2 months in to people switching from Mastodon & I'm already seeing instance admins looking burned out . You can't revolutionize the world with software if you are burned out and t/f ... we need better ways to *make a living*.
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The point of like.... mutual aid for example.... is that it is *reciprocal* but we expect people to just *give* open source software and maintenance, moderation and admin work for.... uhhhh "revolutionary vibes" I guess?
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Graeber's opening criticism sits well here: "in our society, there seems to be a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it." That's *not a good thing*.
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This feels like... a really obvious criticism? I'm sure I'm not breaking new ground here. Have people written about this? Suggested solutions? Offered longform criticism? Links please.
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Like if the turn to Mastodon becomes "a handful of people get to moderate 1% of Twitter users for no pay" that's... gonna fail. I mean... even if it doesn't fail... philosophically shouldn't it?
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Mastodon isn't really built or intended to "replace" Twitter of course. But it is intended to *disrupt* Twitter in a very specific neo-liberal-SV-capitalist way and if it was successful in its current form and everyone was happy that would be a wild shift in the status quo...
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Perfect success for Mastodon in its current format would mean literally erasing a lot of money. Market cap is silly, but still, >$41 B is Twitter's Q1 market cap. That's a lot of value Mastodon proposes to at least supplant a decent amount of w/free software and free maintenance.
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Seems revolutionary to me! But if you want to have that revolution you have to embrace that this philosophy comes with other principles besides Building Software and includes (depends on!) people who need to eat. And capitalism isn't going to fall to FOSS tomorrow.
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Crypt*c*rrency is /truly fked/ philosophically speaking and in terms of human & environmental impact, but at least it is *coherent*. Greed is a particularly efficient philosophy in it is a circle. Does anti-capitalist side of software have a way to complete the circle? ...
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Thinking about this upfront would prob have very different software results? Launching w/Patreon integrations or a model like Pinboard? It is pretty notable to me there are Fed versions of a lot of social platforms... but not Patreon. Arguably... Patreon needs Federation most!
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Maybe building a safe non-surveillance federated ad platform to really help maintainers make running an instance their living, or at least a thing to help make a living? Blanked "no ads" positioning from that community seems to miss an opportunity to support each other.
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Just feels really fked that running an instance, even a solo one, is almost certainly out of the reach of most people for financial reasons, even though they would likely be really good at it and those are voices we need in our space?
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Obviously, Twitter isn't better, but surely this is worth thinking about a little harder than these communities seem to be doing right now.
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I dunno friends, I'm just really tired of watching people burn out in real time and Mastodon doesn't seem to be helping.
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Also now that there are hundreds of high quality engineers fired from these social networks all competing for jobs, and likely having the lowest salary leverage in decades, things sure ain't going to get better in terms of watching burn out happening in the software space.
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I love making software and writing code and making weird little hobby websites too... but the moment you're maintaining or running these things for other people it's clear that we need better principles in play.
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"The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger. [...]
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...[O]n the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them." - Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs"
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PS: There's prob some good hook in here to how early Silicon Valley companies always promoted themselves as ways to get extremely rich while also "connecting the world" or "changing the world" or "fixing the world" but that's a whole other thread.
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PPS: In case it isn't entirely clear here - I don't care about the money part of this, I care about the people. It sux that we need money to take care of the people, but that's reality. Chronotope/1587515003132952576
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