I just listened to Greater Than Code 084, which was a super interesting episode with @CoralineAda and @aurynn regarding inherent problems with federation as a model of communication, the basic point of which (as I understood it) was, open world systems such as the #fediverse have inherent problems that come from the lack of centralized identity and "free speech at all costs". It's a great ep. and I suggest people listen to it.

The main question it raised, for me, is: how do we navigate a world were we know that a) discoverability of community is critical, and b) that open world systems like USENET or the fediverse inherently allow enable abuse of certain kinds in a way that's very difficult to counter.

How do we build a global network of communication that doesn't have those flaws and yet doesn't shut people out of communities they need to find?

How, in concrete terms, do we build a space in which trans people and women and people of color don't face harassment AND in which questioning and self-closeted youth can stumble into queer spaces? How do we solve the onboarding problem without centralizing power?

Facebook has great onboarding; Facebook does not have the problem of "free speech at all costs". Facebook also does not let me use it because I'm trans.

How do we solve the problem of servers going away? How do we solve the problem of onboarding new _admins_? How do we solve the problem of blocklists and keeping illegal content off of servers _completely_?

The podcast argues that "these [...] aren't things we've ever thought about"; that "nobody ever asks, why are [FOSS projects] using Slack [and not IRC]"?

I would argue that, no, we have thought about it. The solution is community.

Centralization isn't and can't be a solution for more than a short time.

The episode makes the start of a great point about e-mail, but doesn't reach the end. "E-mail finally got good [...] in 2005, when Gmail came out. [...] Now, if you run your own mail server, the big servers [...] will drop your messages", because if you're running your own server, "you're sending trash, and they're right."

No! They're not.

We cannot centralize; we know this already. We cannot federate like this; the podcast here makes a very good case for "weakly federated" spaces (e.g. clusters of servers of order 10).

This solves a lot of the distribution of work and distribution of abuse problems, if done right, but not the discoverability problems - not just discovering people but discovering communities.

And I think the answer is that we need to reconceptualize.

Identity can be solved in the small scale with encryption plus trust. We need better tools for this.

Discoverability can be solved in the small scale by mailing lists and word of mouth and "firehoses" plus trust.

Responsibility can be solved by trust in the community in the small scale by trust.

Identity, responsibility, and discoverability can be solved in the large scale only by centralization.