Martin Ruskov @mapto@social.cleverlibre.org

The social media world is filled with people just pulling ideas out of their asses and hoping it all works out.

Folks who have been around the block a few times in a governance role have started amassing a body of lore. Case studies, observations they made in the trenches.

At the very least, availing oneself of what they have to share is a good first step.

But if we were to take this seriously as engineering, well, that suggests a few things, doesn't it?

It suggest we get a little bit more sciency about this. It suggests we start imposing a little bit of rigor.

🧵

A lot of people, especially on the Fediverse, wind up being governance parties precisely because they don't want to be disempowered anymore. They want to be the people who make decisions about how to solve social problems on their social media platform of choice, and Mastodon/etc makes that much easier than trying to get a job with Twitter's Trust and Safety team.

So it's worth remembering if you are a governance party on the Fediverse, that's great for you, you're all empowered by that arrangement – but your end users are still end users. They get search if you choose to give them search. They still rely on your sitting in judgment of the reports they file on other users to take action on bad actors on their instance. They still experience themselves as largely just as disempowered as they were on Twitter. They have a choice of what lord's fields to till, but they're still peasants.

🧵

The established users, who are still within their own social bubbles, have an experience that feels to them like, "OMG, where did all these jerks come from? The people responsible for running this place should do something to fix it – things were fine here the other day, they need to just make things like they used to be. How hard could it be?" They are only aware of the problems that they encounter personally, or are reported to them socially by other users or through news media coverage of their platform.

But the parties responsible for governance get the fire hose turned on them: they get to hear ALL the complaints. They get an eagle's eye view of the breadth and diversity and extent of problems.

Where individual users see one problem, and don't think it's particularly difficult to solve, the governance parties see a huge number of problems, all at once, such that even if they were easy to solve, it would still be overwhelming just from numbers.

🧵

These results are indicative of a deeply troubled society – a fundamentally unhealthy social and political culture. This is a national emergency, and a healthy polity would mobilize all available resources of the state and civil society in an all-out effort to reverse those trends. 8/

Cutting-edge UK underground from Keysound with Scotti Dee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6xdwMwr6kU
#youtube_rinsefm #rinsefm #rinse_fm #rinse #rinse_youtube #rinse_mix #rinse_uk #rinse_tv #rinse_radio #rinse_playlist #rinse_london #rinse_label #grime #uk_garage #hip_hop #dubstep #drum_and_bass #house #music #wiley #dizzie_rascal #kano #skepta #live #jammer #DDouble_E #Grime_Musical_Genre #the_grime_show #grime_show #Rinse_FM_Radio_Station #freestyle #kool_fm #koolfm #jungle

Woozy with Ema invites Rinse France resident Beatrice M for a guest mix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xogXcwuzNaU
#youtube_rinsefm #rinsefm #rinse_fm #rinse #rinse_youtube #rinse_mix #rinse_uk #rinse_tv #rinse_radio #rinse_playlist #rinse_london #rinse_label #grime #uk_garage #hip_hop #dubstep #drum_and_bass #house #music #wiley #dizzie_rascal #kano #skepta #live #jammer #DDouble_E #Grime_Musical_Genre #the_grime_show #grime_show #Rinse_FM_Radio_Station #freestyle #kool_fm #koolfm #jungle

"Bylines exist for a reason: they give credit where it's due, and just as importantly, they let readers hold writers accountable." 💯 Props to Maggie Harrison and colleagues at Futurism for documenting this:

https://futurism.com/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is leaving X, blaming it for "destroying our democracies" — coming after major advertisers exited following owner Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

https://t.co/yM12pd6xxV

The rate of civilian deaths in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war is outpacing those of other conflict zones in the 21st century. https://t.co/zypC2V2Vcc