Convener: Johanna B (@JohannaB@cosocial.ca, @JohannaB@wandering.shop, @JohannaB@gander.social, @johannab.ca)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Scott Jenson (@scottjenson@social.coop)
• Mark Corbett Wilson (@mcorbettwilson.mastodon.social)
• @sylvie@gabriel.havfruefestning.com
• Lars Lipinski (@lars_li@fosstodon.org)
• James Marshall (@jamesmarshall@sfba.social)
• Damon (@damonoutlaw.xyz)

Website: https://www.cigionline.org/digital-policy-hub/ - example of external governance initiatives that have possibly large implications for Open Social web spaces, as they seek to govern what they don’t understand - and we cannot defend ourselves if we also do not understand it.

Notes

• More questions than answers, but that is good!

• Goal of this session:

  • Scratch note: Formulating the tough questions on Governance that we need to answer.
  • Refined: In establishing, moderating and supporting Fediverse communities, what questions need to be answered to help the community establish their values/ground rules, and go forward with stable moderation/management/governance - as we/they define it?

• Big first question: WHAT IS GOVERNANCE???

• What is Johanna trying to even get at?

• Digital platforms have usurped physical, and meta-physical/relational “third spaces” since start of (before?) COVID

  • in turn, I perceive that the top-down authority-structure of those platforms has polluted attempts to reconnect in collaborative and consent-driven ways, digitally or physically.
  • And then on community-centred nodes, problems arise when users expect to find the same model imposed, but they do not.
    • e.g., users find ways to “demand” that their moderators “take care of” a problem as they perceive it, but it’s not defined as to how it’s a problem.
    • Infighting, instability, and exodus (from instance or fediverse entirely) can result.

• “People didn’t know that they want ..”

• I want a faster horse.

• There’s a broad problem space and DO says “embrace it” but maybe you work on the pockets

• ‘How do we build the governance we need?’

• Lots of discussion around the tension between ‘governance’ and the “technical playground” where everyone is playing.

• It’s MUCH harder to have good governance in a space full of abuse.

• This is why there is so much discussion of lower level features in this space.

• “how members continuously refine the common value sets”

Johanna’s takeaway, retrospectively:

• The identification that the system I am trying to examine is not one particular model for “governance” but one level more abstract, developing the model

• I’m seeking ways to engage the community (a governance problem itself?) in developing their codes and values and rules

• “Framework” is the right word - I want to map out the exercise for a server/service, a team, a moderator to work through in establishing the governance tools that will serve their nodal purposes allowing safe interaction with the broader network (safe for them, safe for others)

• I’m motivated by the concern that comes from seeing highly structured, bureacratic, governments legislating and enforcing from “outside” based on the assumption that “the fediverse” is to be treated as equivalent to a big-tech corporate silo, and a complete absence of governance structure locally is a large vulnerability. The trivial/obvious example is having no rules against illegal content means the instance is complicit in what bad actors may drag them into.