Convener: Jon Pincus (@jdp23@neuromatch.social, @jdp23.thenexus.today, @thenexusofprivacy.net@infosec.social, @thenexusofprivacy.net)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Anca (@anca@allpeep.social,, @anca@mastodon.xyz)
• Evan Prodromou (@evanprodromou@socialwebfoundation.org)
• Michelle Hughes (@MichelleHughes@a2mi.social)
• Mayel (@mayel@bonfire.cafe)
• narF …. (@narF@mstdn.ca)
• @travisfw@fosstodon.org

Websites:

• https://thenexusofprivacy.net/if-not-now-when/ (from March) summarizes the project
• Slides: https://thenexusofprivacy.net/data/fediforum-1008.pdf

Goals

• Share learnings to date – and get feedback.
• Lay groundwork for kicking off working groups on key short-term projects.
• Find out about similar projects and people with aligned interests, potential partners, barriers to progress.

Key points

• “Pluriverse” model https://www.theengineroom.org/library/new-report-exploring-a-transition-to-alternative-social-media-platforms-for-social-justice-organizations-in-the-majority-world/
• Right now, fedi’s not a great solution for internal discussions (no Facebook group equivalent, no encryption) and there aren’t enough people here to reach a broad audience., So what are the areas that are good matches for today’s functionality? e.g. developing resources in fedi and then sharing them on centralized social networks
• Lack of an easy-to-use Facebook group equivalent (including moderation) keeps coming up. There’s a SWICG working group on this, and different projects have some relevant functionality … are there ways to make progress?
• “Positive deviance” approach: look at where things being successful (and what the current functionality is a good match for). e.g. with mutual aid, trans communities are leveraging fedi effectively; so is Gaza Verified. How to generalize?
• Short-term areas of focus: accessibility, keyword filtering (input from anti-genocide activists), “substrate” (how to have discussions and share resources across fedi and the atmosphere)

Notes

• Communities of practice looking at doing mutual aid on fedi? a lot happeningi in rotterdam, people are open for digital approaches. attempts have been made in the past, momentum hasn’t really build. e.g. food-sharing group, who to do it? In Rotterdam, a Signal group that posts pics of trash (or new fuirniture) that needs to be picked up, but it’s closed – how to make public.
• My (Michelle’s) opinions: Activists need groups and events like what Facebook had. Which I think Mobilizon is doing. But you also need to be able to consume this in your same feed that you use for general social interaction, or you forget to go to your separate “Activism” server.
  • (narF) +1! Even me, I forget to check Mobilizon.
• How to look t different levels of privacy or security – e.g. Facebook groups like Buy Nohthing, great, but wouldn’t want to use FB for protesting ICE
• For some reason, a lot of the types of activist groups I used to see on Facebook have moved over to Instagram, where they post images of fliers. You have to just happen to see them when they pop up on your feed, there’s no way to aggregate it into ical files or read your calendar off the website or anything.
• https://www.theengineroom.org/library/new-report-exploring-a-transition-to-alternative-social-media-platforms-for-social-justice-organizations-in-the-majority-world/
• Mutual Aid: Bonfire working with https://mutualaidnetwork.org/ – tool libraries, managing waste: knowing what resources are available in the network, recording what the needs are, being able to match those. Doing long-term work over years, better access to food and resources … same needs when there’s a mutual aid network that pops up after a disaster; those situations are a matter of urgency, they grab the tools that are available – Google spreedsheets. Lists of contacts, stuff people are offering (resources) and needs. Manual work, curating matches. Communities for longer-term work have time to invest in these tools.
• A lot of groups don’t yet feel the need to move from Insta and FB groujps. Bonfire found that scientific community was much more ready.than activists – even with networks we’ve worked with in the past that should be mroe aligned with the values, still not the pressure because they’re getting the results they need from commercials social networks
• In activist ciricles, at lkeast two platforms; one internal (private, maybe transparent, hard convos). Typically happening on discourd, signal, etc. Then there’s public call for participationg – march etc. That happens on different platforms. We don’t currently have a good alterantive for either – no FB group equivalent, not enough people here for broad stuff. Is there stuff that doesn’t fall into either of those categories
• Most groups have a few techie people but they don’t want to have to run complex structure. Where’s the infrastructure?

From chat:

• To be more specific, all of the mutual aid related prototypes and projects we’ve been involved in were use https://www.valueflo.ws which is a vocabulary like ActivityStreams but for these kind of needs (rabbit hole alert!)
• For several use cases the fediverse could be super helpful. Part of the fediverse is public, and can be used to share with guests. A fedierated calendar can be used internally for people with an account for people to create events, and then shared outside. Can spread the same content on other networks. Same for inventory and offers/needs. Having a library, the work can be done in fedi and shared with other mediums.
• Groups is what everybody’s been telling us has been missing on the fediverse. A lot happens at the local level, as it should, fedi today where people follow people isn’t suited for that. - need to join group for community and town and connect.
• There is a task force in the socialcg for building Facebook-like private groups. https://swicg.github.io/groups/
• Jon: Group-level moderation is very important for groups. This is something Facebook’s groups do well.
• Value of making people approach topics and aspects of tech empowerment while harvesting existing communities of practice – adding new layer to existing communities – is most effective and compelling. One example: Julian Assange’s quote “encryption for the people, transparency for the power”. In Rotterdam the only way to find a home is friends of friends … can’t solve at protocol level, it’s political. Because of crisis, lots of fake contracts. Only well-tailored platforms can address this – mainstream platforms aren’t good enough. Need to leverage cases where common social media falls short. Won’t do it with the masses, will do it with people who need it.
• Noting that it’s not just about private groups:
  • Open (anyone can follow, join or participate)
  • Public but invite-only (anyone can follow, but you must be invited or request-to-join to participate)
  • Private (members and activities are only shown to members)
  • and many more in between
• Also need to think about moderation for group - e.g. name other mods and admins, something thta FB groups do very well, Discord to an extent.
• How to make progress on groups. Resources problem! It’s a building block for many other things, eg. events. How to get everybody at the table? Also a UI issue, don’t want all the messages in one feed, want to be able to switch between them - Discord does those okay, Mastodon you have to do it maually with lists, which is super annoying!
• Mutual Aid: trans and queer community mutual aid is fairly well supported, a lot of people feel comfortable making a public appeal for a variety of reasons. Another one is around Gaza – e.g. GazaVerified. Distill what’s working and generalize (another example of positive deviance)
• Q: Could some of the work of group federation be cribbed from what the Threadiverse does?
  • A: possibly, and mobilizon and peertube which have some kind of groups
• Having end-to-end-encryption will be important for private groups. yes!
• Youth is moving to more closed systems – e.g. Discord. Fedi can combine the two.
• Start with building a tool for pairwise communications? Is there a simple entrypoint to a fedi product that looks like this? Germ networks is looking at this.
• Mutual aid often relies on close relationship,
• Something people are thinking about (e.g. Matrix): – there’s a swicg working group on this and a draft proposal (although not yet a lot of uptake) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messaging_Layer_Security