I really feel like I’m on to something here with “Services are a mistake”.
Like there's a huge truth, a light that's shining on how we've been thinking about building network technologies.
@aurynn I think this is sounding like the difference between top-down (services) and bottom-up (community).
@aurynn I'm not sure I follow the line of reasoning. They're not neutral, because the status quo isn't neutral, I follow that, but how does that lead to them being inherently a mistake? Doesn't the service almost need to come first before a community can develop on top of/within it? Like, some mastodon instances are services, not communities, but isn't the mastodon platform itself, as an architecture, also a service?
@ada the core line of thinking I'm having here is that, because they're not neutral, setting up something to be a "service" is actively harmful to marginalised groups, and any community that might develop on top of that service is always at risk due to the inability of the service to protect them
@ada or, more succinctly, a service can only be hostile to the existence of a community
@aurynn So, does mastodon and the greater fediverse no count as a service in this context? Are you looking only at specific instantiated instances, rather than the technology platform itself when you define a service?
@ada I'm thinking about individual instances here, not the fediverse as a whole.
@aurynn Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by "protect"?
In meatspace, both police and the mob offer "protection services".
@atomicpoet Support communities that are not the status quo
@aurynn @atomicpoet services are going to go after broader market share so the amount of harassment they are willing to accept will always be more than what a community would accept. They won't care if users fall thru the cracks as long as they create enough new users to replace them.
@mcneely @atomicpoet that is part of the core point I'm driving at here, that services are actively harmful to the existence of communities
Services are naturally hostile to communities, because services cannot protect communities.