librarypunk - 102 - Mastodon, Bluesky, and Bullshit Part 2 feat Jonny

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Part 2! https://discord.gg/jY4jaNgan   Media mentioned https://jon-e.net/surveillance-graphs/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/17/microsoft-lost-keys-government-hacked/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/on-standards-divisions-collaboration/ https://jon-e.net/infrastructure/#forums--feeds (applicability of AP to publishing) https://mayfirst.coop/en/ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/65/336347/the-vectoralist-class/  https://www.versobooks.com/products/887-capital-is-dead https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710957/chokepoint-capitalism-by-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/ https://piracy.solutions/

When you were talking about using a cryptos signature, though, to verify that posts have not been changed. I'm actually in favor of that because that would bring back the Tumblr edits of other people's posts. And that was like a really good time on Tumblr. When you re-blogs, so it used to be on Tumblr, when you reblogged something, it was more like an email reply. So the person's post you were reblogging and replying to was the text was also editable. So you could go back and edit what they said. Like saying that John Green loves the taste of cock or something. This is why John Green is not on Tumblr.

Yeah. Oh, my God. I love stories of famous people getting like, you know, sick of sick and tired of these damn kids online. That's like... Only Hank Green would go away. Every platform I get on, then his fucking face shows up. I'm like, get the fuck out of here, dude. You Zaboo mafu-looking ass.

I'm sorry. I like cackle like a witch. I mean, it just got it out of me, though. Zim-Boom-Bum-B-Botherfug. I mean, I certainly got to make that phototabot. Yeah. And this is like one of those things like we're like, there's like this. I feel like with all the emergence of like the cryptocurrency and adjacent shit, that just like a lot of really good ideas and cryptography just have this like stain on them now.

or just like, where like, you'll be talking to someone and like, are you interested in cryptography like that or like this? Where it's like you can't quite tell which direction someone's going to go in when they're talking about like what's legitimately an interesting idea. And so like there are currently like a lot of the activity pub messages are signed. But it's just like the infrastructure to actually like treat that like a peer to peer system doesn't doesn't really exist. But like with that's like one of the main design features of the 8. protocol, the thing that Blue Sky is built on top of, is that, like, yeah, having, taking, the overlap with between Blue Sky AT Protocol and, like, the cryptocurrency people is just, like, vague, but overwhelmingly present across, like, a lot of the different sort of beliefs and the beliefs

and technology that get developed there. It's like, it's not gay if the balls don't touch kind of thing. Yes. So, yeah, it's like that, it's like that level of just, like, we don't really talk about that here. like and that kind of thing. Like I was like trying to figure out like where do I read more about like the history of this protocol and like how it was developed and everything like that because it's like and you also listed I saw it in this document like you listed like Noster as another like question mark. I was going to bring that up next. Yeah.

Yeah. That just like that what I love reading about like the history of these things and like one of the best ways to do that is like find the chat room where they were talking about this. And like, you know, that's where a lot of the primary history gets developed because like very old school shit. it still exists as far as these listservs, these publicly archived emailing lists, but more and more that's turning into discords, which is sort of a problem if you're interested in historical archives, but if you can find some of these public discord channels,

there is one private discord channel that was apparently the main space that people were like in doing all the initial organization for AT protocol and Blue Skyon that I can't get access to and I just like really want to. So if anyone has like a dump of that, I would love to receive it. But then after some initial development, they made these public list serves.

And you can read some of like the ideas in there where just like what gets, you know, they have these different channels, like what gets the most conversation, what gets the most like time. And like, yeah,

the cryptocurrency adjacent ideas get like a shitload of discussion. And just like there's a ton of people that are involved in cryptocurrency type things or blockchain type things involved in some of these initial ideation of what this platform could be or what this protocol could be. And don't get me right, there's also like a couple really good people like on there as well. So like there's like this, I forget exactly what their last name is, but this person Golda that shows up.

And it was like was one of these people on this panel that was put together by the like social co-op moderator. That's like always reminding people about just like the ethics of the technology and trying to like pull things back. Like what we're actually trying to do is do a pro-social thing, not just like try and sort of like make some very technologically cool thing that actually like endangers people in a massive way. wouldn't you know it? Designing a social protocol is like one of the major things that's hard about it is that there's people on it. So like we can't forget that. And so but like, yeah, seeing those links is really evident when we started just like getting into like the actual way that that protocol works. And like I don't know if that's that is of interest to y'all.

But just like, yeah, I've been reading like I read the obviously the protocol documentation and experimenting with with blue sky and AT protocol. And just like, yeah, there's some real problems there that like, like, that really are like, we're just waiting for the bomb to blow up kind of situation, where it's like if they're like, we're talking about like the legal liability question for activity pub Fediverse is like a shoe waiting to drop. But like the mass weaponized harassment and abuse that is possible on Blue Sky is like, as soon as Federation opens, if it does, it's going to be real ugly. And like, and it's like to prepare for that, what ideally you would want to do is have like a test

Federation Network, that you actively invite people to come try and break, like, you know, come try and fuck this shit up, do the most horrific thing that you want to. We want to see the problems beforehand so that we can try and remedy them. But they're doing basically the exact opposite where like they have this sandbox federation thing. And if you look at the read me for that, it's pretty comical actually where it's like, this is about learning and having fun. And like, we, if you are being mean or breaking the rules, we will ban you. It's like, oh, like that's a really bad sign. It's just like only well-behaved clients that behave exactly like they're described

as they should, like no adversarial shit that's trying to take advantage of the protocol is going on there. And like it's like a lot of the times when just like trying to engage with the developers. And like one of the things that has, I mean, it's changed recently. But like on Blue Sky, like the devs are very public and present and sort of like it's an interesting choice. But, like, they really don't engage with criticism or don't engage with, like, hey, this is super fucking dangerous. Like, until until shit blows up instead of being, like, proactive and, like, inviting adversarial actors to, like, there are people that do this for a fucking living, like, doing sort of red teaming of these systems and just like, you should probably get some of those around there, too. Yeah. Actually, before we go on, you mentioned AT protocol.

I'm hearing that right. So I need an explanation because I thought we were talking about AP protocol the whole time. So what's AT protocol? AT protocol is blue sky protocol. Like that's the, and like, so there's a concept like not invented here in technology or just like that might be familiar to you all, but like this idea that like we don't use that thing because it wasn't invented here. Like so instead of like building on or adopting or helping out with like shared infrastructure

or something like that, you're just like, fuck it, we're going to reinvent this whole thing. And like AT protocol is a wonderful exercise and not invented here where they like, so activity Pub is a standard, you know, just like it's like not a perfect standard, but it is a W3C developed standard. It has like a working group behind it, whatever, whatever. And it's possible to have worked off of that and like made some changes to have readapted it or whatever. I'm not saying you always have to do that. Like destructive forks, like making a new thing is not always like a bad idea. But like they decided to make new everything. And so like AT protocol is like what runs Blue Sky and just like, like, it's a federation protocol that isn't really a federation protocol

because it's like, it's sort of like, it's, it's, so the way, the analogy that I have, that I think is sort of apt with this is like, it's a federated system in the sense that like Google alerts is a federated system where like you can sign up for feeds, you know, you sign up for like, I want to subscribe to this person, I want to subscribe to this feed, I want to subscribe to this label or whatever. you're able to host your own information, like your host your own website or whatever. But that then has to get crawled by some gigantic aggregator that has like a picture of the whole network. So it has to go through this single point. And then that gets fed out to

these other services that generate your feeds. And then they send it back to your, your little repository that you host. So like Federation is sort of like irrelevant almost in this model where like you have to pay to host your data or like someone does. Like currently, that's just like VC money. But like at some point, someone has to pay to host the data and make it scrappable by this gigantic service that sits in the middle of everything. But like it's not like your server is directly talking to anybody else's. Like that's just not how it works. And so that's like a sharp contrast to the Fediverse style federation where it's like I have account. I'm on a server. Server talks to other server. That server talks to another account. That's like a very sort of flat

network topology. But this one is like deeply dependent on the ability for like, so this actually runs through a lot of the core problems with this protocol. Is that just like, you must be publicly scrappable. Everything that you do must be publicly scrappable in order for it to function. So you have, you, if you try and you can't necessarily block anyone, that's not a real thing that can happen. Because a block is purely cosmetic because of the way that the protocol is designed. Like you can't block the gigantic scraping service called the big graph service. Because if you do, then nobody would be able to see your posts.

And you can't reliably guarantee that, like, my block will propagate through the big graph service and then propagate through the thing that's generating the feed so that, like, some adversarial actor won't be able to see my post. You just can't do that. It's impossible. So, like, say the example that, like, again, I brought up repeatedly with the devs, and it's like, it's not like I'm like a high profile software developer that, like, demands responses. You know, it's like, I'm just another internet slow. But I've tried to ask them a number of times, like, what happens if someone makes like an adversarial big graph service that scrapes everything, ignores all blocks, ignores all deletes, and people use it to target hate and harassment.

And it's basically like, well, we hope that they won't do that. And so, like, that's like, yeah, there aren't really plans in place for dealing with that kind of attack on the network. And so, like, yeah. Yeah. So if I'm imagining this right, I was imagining it as a pinwheel, but there could be multiple middle points to that penwheel. There could be multiple. So the pin in the pin will be the big graph service, but you could have multiple of those, you're saying.

Potentially, it's like the thing that they say in the documentation is like, it's super expensive to run something that can like index the whole network. And so like there might be a couple, like if they're getting to like the scale that they think about. But then they're imagined like there might be some smaller ones that index some partial subset of the network. But then there's this combinatoric problem where like, okay, where, does the, I want to subscribe to some cool algorithmic feed. Where does that get its post from? Does it get

its post from the main graph service or one of these auxiliary graph services? So like if I block this auxiliary graph service, will that then block me from the feed that all of my friends are using? So like how do I even know what is safe for me to block? It's like it becomes this like convoluted nightmare of like actually safety just seems effectively impossible to do on that protocol. And so that's a major issue. Right. So with Mastodon, you can just block a server and be like, this is the Nazi server. Like, it can't interact with us. And there's a whole bunch of problems with the way that works specifically on Macedon as like a Fediverse client. Like there are other Fediverse clients that do

this better and worse. But like with Mastodon specifically, there's a bunch of problems with that currently. But it is possible to do where like you actually can have effective blocking where I actually do block this person or this server and they legitimately cannot. not access my posts. It requires a bit of server tweaking to do, but it's possible to do. That's just impossible in the AT protocol. And what it would require is basically like a fundamental rewrite of some of the core components they have with it where like it would require things to be encrypted in transit, which is just like not how it works currently. It's just like, yeah, the recipe for and like there's, and the thing is there's also a really nice, spicy variety of abuse factors that are with,

that are encoded in there. We're just like, you could develop. up an algorithmic feed that like, you know, gathers all the people you hate into one place so you can more easily harass them. They try and block you. But identity is super cheap too. So you can just make infinity new accounts and there's no real principled way to stop that from happening. You can abuse the labeling system as well. So like this is like that one is going to be a lot of fun. So we were talking earlier about like DMCA like abuse or like that's a lot of fun to deal with in any sort of like reasonably sized internet medium. But like imagine if like anyone can issue a DMCA label and you have to respond to it. And it's like done in this programmatically

public way. So it's like that you get a thousand DMCA complaints stacking up on some server or whatever. And then in order to limit liability, the rest of the server is like, we don't want anything to do with the massive copyright violation server and like automatically block it. But like those are all troll blocks and basically there's trying to get some vulnerable server off the web or whatever. So it becomes this new fancy attack vector that's like really hard to mitigate because like with labeling system like a labeling system like a content labeling system, the whole difficult challenge of designing that is like you can't make it super trivial to avoid a label because then like you can just say I'm going to block the non consensual nudity label for my content and no one can label my content with that and then it no longer functions as like a label. And so like you have to balance this like ability for anyone to issue a label with. fuck, what if people abuse the ability to issue a label? And so, like, it's like, and they just aren't handling that balance at all.

Like, it's just not addressed. But anyway, I mean, the vibes are cool over there for now. I don't know. Like, I haven't been on there in like a week or two, but it's like, for now, all it works, it's like there's a lot of good shitpost thing going on. Yeah, my feet is just trans women being horny at each other. Right, yeah. That's like most of blue sky.

Right. And like, so like the default algorithm. And so the whole idea is like you can get a bunch of different algorithms, you know, whatever, whatever. But like defaults are powerful. And so the default algorithm is this super simple, sort by engagement descending with some exponential time decay. And like, I've taken samples of the network. And like what that ends up doing is doing almost exactly what you would do, just like stuff that's popular.

It goes to the top of the feed. It becomes more popular. And so there's this really, really, really sharp distribution of like interaction on blue sky. where like a very tiny fraction of posts and accounts get like most of the of the interaction. And I, you know, that's sort of this like, that's a contributor that's like, you know, this smaller community feel of it. We're just like, I see people I recognize or whatever. And like, yeah, there is this ongoing discourse.

And it just so happens to be the best kind of ongoing discourse of like trans people being horny. Just like, I hope that persists. And it's like that it doesn't get knocked off by, you know, what you demand. as being another kind of stable discourse, like what happened on Twitter, just being constantly mad at shit and everything like that, you know. Why aren't I getting likes? Yeah. Well, I mean, like, that was better.

Seriously. Like, why am I not getting, and one of the things that was talking about that is you need to have a minimum like threshold to even qualify for the default algorithm and stuff like that. So it's like 12, I think. Something, yeah. For the what's hot classic, I think. Yeah. Which get on what's hot classic.

That's the feed to be on. That's the real one? Yeah. That's the good one. That's the dick feed. That's the dick feed. Premium dicks, 24 hours a day. I had a good tweet for the library punk Twitter, which is because someone was being just absolutely ridiculous about blaming librarians for piracy.

Oh, I saw that shit. Yeah, you're in the Skullcom shit talk discord. You saw that. So I said, you know, it's great that the great thing about being on blue sky is that the, the relics bootlickers cannot compete with the pure unadulterated stream of cock. Fuck yeah. Fucking A. Just like start playing the international.

Yeah. That's what blue sky is like 24-7. The vibes are good if you get it good. Now the cyber is so big. I'm imagining you have this soundboard like those. old flash style soundboards were just like like a bunch of small pictures of like you know these different sort of sound effects and just like arrayed and like a it's more or less what it looks like yeah oh hell yeah it's got like a picture of sonic no copyright law in the universe is going to stop me yeah i've got

so many drops i have to put images on them and you like cycle them out and stuff yeah but well i can't move them that's the problem if i could if i could sort them by the ones i need at the top but then like you know, if I get a popular one, like I need to be able to find it. And then if I have like 50 of them, it's hard. I mean, you need to like move to Twitch and like do this live stream. We're just like four or five dollar donation. Anyone can trigger

any sound effect and just like turn it into a real. We did a library punk live stream. That's the thing about live streaming that they will never like admit is that like most live streams never get any traction. There's there's someone that's like a streamer in my apartment building.

And I know this because the wall are paper thin and like when you're streaming you definitely have like the voice you know you're not just playing video games you're also not talking to people online you're talking to an audience and like I love this person they're very cute and sweet and I hope that they don't listen to

this show but it's just like they just don't got it you know what I mean like you need to be engaging but I just hear them sort of like they're just playing the video game for like 20 minutes straight or something like that and then they'll say oh damn like did you see that you guys and just like so like yeah the long tail

of streamers that have no audience is like, I love it, they're giving it their all, and I support anyone who wants to make their art happen, but it's like, dang, that's got to be sad to do after a while. Yeah, it's, I mean, and it's already been like kind of industry captured too, whereas

like the biggest streamers now are like run by company. Yeah. So, you know, they get, they have a debut and they're like, yeah. Whoa, well, I didn't know it's a monotauri. Like, like the biggest streamers right now. are kind of like all run by, I want to say V-Showjo is doing all the biggest V-tubers.

And so when they come out with like, if they debut new talent, it's like highly structured. It's like we have five new influencers. They're going to hit monetization in like three days. Their Twitters all launch at the same time. And they have like immediately an audience of like 50,000 people minimum. So it's like, yeah, it's trash. It's just go watch your friends streams because any stream with more than like 100 people is kind of a boring anyway.

because the chat goes too fast. So, yeah. Go watch Kyle, Liber Kyle stream. Go watch Alton's stream from video games are the worst thing on Earth. The most, like, interesting stream I saw in a rip to this stream. It was obviously ephemeral is like that, like, AI Seinfeld stream. I don't know if anybody saw that. I did see a lot of clips from it.

It was hypnotic. It was like, it was something where you're watching it. And like, it seems it's so boring. It seems so boring when you first started just sort of like, it's like it was at first, like, the good classic language models that are like fucked up in a very specific way. Like new language models, I mean, like, I don't want to get into that, but it's like part of what sucks about them is that they're too like believable. Like they're too actually like plausible text most of the time. But like this one we had one of those good old fashioned ones. We're just like, that is close to English grammar, but it is fucked up in a way that's impossible to describe.

No one would ever construct a sentence like this. And so just like after like an hour of being in that stream of just like you becomes this sort of like Greek chorus in the chat of just like everyone just sort of like they did the thing again and just like a thousand people are just like when the microwave would happen just like everyone sort of has to say. And just like seeing that happen at just like 10 million miles an hour just like the chat scrolling by. It felt, you know, it feels like being in a very boring hive mind. Yeah, I remember when the first Twitch place Pokemon happened. And when they beat the game. I was like, I think I was at work and I watched them finish beating the game. It was really fun.

I love stuff like that. Yeah, I watched them, the H-bomber guy, Donkey Kong 64. I did watch that too. And I was watching when he finally beat it at the end. That was pretty fucking sweet. Not going to lie. There was a lot of hours of just trying to be a beaver bother though. That was hard to watch.

He fucking hung up on AOC. so he could go and talk to some guy from a Discord to explain how to beat Beaver Bother. This is great. It was really good. He was like delirious. He didn't know what he was doing. He was just like, I have to beat this game.

Yeah. See, it's like these moments have just like extremely fucked up and unlike. It's like, there's like, this is like what I always think of like just thinking about like, especially just like thinking about like this contrast between like blue sky and like, man, the Vodiverse and stuff. But it's like, the algorithmic curation of content presentation is like, has these beautiful moments where just like everyone showing up for this one random bullshit thing that turns out to be absolutely incredible in an extremely short period of time because of algorithmic amplification is like, that's dope and I love that shit. But then just like, for like that at the same time it's just like, that has a bunch of obvious problems too. We're just like, once the company figures out how to game it, then it's dead.

we're just like, you know, it becomes, it becomes the vector by which it's possible to have a monopoly that controls who is streaming and who has an audience and shit like that. And just like, there's like one of the things that sort of bums me out that like we didn't seem to actually learn. I said, just like one of the major issues with these like social media platforms is exactly the uninspectable algorithm that like you can't look at. And sort of like a lot of people that are like in academia, I get this all the time. People that are sort of just like, that's not my job.

I'm a busy executive and like I've got a lot of things on my plate. And so like I don't want to have to worry about like the ethics or the design of the things that I participate in. And so it's like like fine, valid, like completely normal thing to say. But then to the level of just being like, fine, if some other company wants to make some horrifically abusive algorithm just like mine's my attention all the time. Great. Just let me get to the posts. Like just go. Like whatever.

And so like it's just like how thinking about like I mean and I've like made some prototypes of this and just like made some. made some like different iterations of what what's good look like as have many people but just like the algorithm like making an algorithmic content preservation system that is like good and wholesome and not designed to like weaponize my attention. It's just like one of those things that just like is the major promise of like what could happen if we were to like get off of the platform web altogether and instead of like it turning into some new corporate hell like developing like actually you know, communally run internet systems. One of the goals is like, can we make algorithms work in a way that doesn't suck?

Like, that's the biggest question in my mind. And like crusty, Fediverse people opposed to all sorting of all kinds and stuff like that. We'll, like, oppose that. But it's just like that is also sort of like fading away. People having like absolute opposition to any thing that resembles a sorting algorithm. I do think sometimes about like stuff you could find on like lime wire by just searching the tags that people put on it and there was just really no sorting of files. Yeah.

So you would find, you know, just really random stuff, like things that people created on their own or just like lost media or strange little skits that someone had made on their computer. Right. And I would always search the comedy tag because I would get like a lot of like stand-up. But then you'd also get people doing like their Yoda impression. And they just put it on there and it's like, cool. That's, you see, that's the power of self-publishing is just like,

all the Yoda impressions that we're missing. No, I'm, yeah, serious about that. No, me too. And like, that's like, like, and so a lot of the, what is missing in, in decentralized messaging protocols, social media protocols, et cetera, and stuff like that is like, like, again, like, why I think activity pub is so interesting is because of it, like, link data as an idea, like, and especially, like, when it's in this sort of like, ephemeral social communication context as opposed to, like, formal archive world.

Everything needs to be, like, rigid and orderly and stuff of that. but like that like that could be that that to me is the thing that people don't pay attention to enough in peer to peer technologies and in federated social media protocols. It's like the ability for us to make new means of describing shit and like making them discoverable and findable with one another. Because it's like usually like what we're so used to is like either everything is search like everything and just like throw it in a big bag of words and just hope that the search algorithm is good enough to be able to find it later. or like, or one, like, single layer, like, homogenous sort of tagging systems, like, you know, hashtags or just, like, being able to, like, put it in categories or whatever. Thinking about, like, what if it was, because what people do all day long is talk about what shit is and, like, how shit relates to other shit.

And so just, like, having some way of, like, actually communicating that in, like, a fluid and flexible way where just, like, I can put my stuff in relationship to all the things around it. And then it's possible to negotiate over the forms of the, of that, of, that categorization over time. And like to make it so, it's not just like what IPFS and BitTorrent are, just like metadata lists, like just flat content graphs. And, well, in the case of IPFS, instead of having something like, yeah, we can organize together. And that organization doesn't have to be like labor. It can just be like what we do already, which is just expressing ourselves in like a way that's just like, hey, mine is sort of like that. Like put this one in the next to that one.

I mean, this is where I'd show my naivete and just like, then like any metadata librarian is just like, oh, you're about to get your shit destroyed by that problem. Probably. But I'm also a metadata anarchist. Okay, cool. We had a whole episode about that. Yeah. All right. Where it was like, what if, what if Kropotkin's on order, but about metadata?

Okay. So, all right, I see I'm in good company. Because it's like, yeah, that trying to articulate that kind of idea. has been just sort of like, I've been looking all over for it, and I found a couple little snippets of little things people have written, but just like, yeah, I'm looking. That's like one of the major things I was trying to do with surveillance graphs is just sort of like, hey, anyone that's like interested in this kind of thing,

like, give me up, like, because... I felt like I ghost wrote that article when I was reading, and I was like, did I write that? Okay, hell yeah. Yeah, no, the metadata anarchy thing started off as a shit post that a professor friend of mine took seriously and invited me to do an entire guest lecture on it in one of their LAS courses. Yeah.

That I got paid to do. I was like, shit, okay. Right. Sure. So I got to teach the kids about Krapakken. That's one of the most noble things you could possibly do. It's just like, yeah, I definitely pepper in the classic literature, just sort of like little hints and snippets of it and just like all the things that you was like, you could check this out, you know, if you wanted to. You could just read.

No, I legit. I just had them read on. I was like, read this. Like, one of the major impressions I've gotten from talking to librarians and specifically metadata librarians is just sort of like, they're so just like worn down from shitty tooling and just like everything sort of sucking that is like, we have these ideas of like what we could do and the work we could do and just like what this could look like if everything didn't just sort of suck and like be so labor intensive and like so mind numbingly bureaucratic

and everything like that. And it's just like, like, I feel, I feel that so hard, just like broken infrastructure is just like, I mean, like, you know, say it's like you, if you work in IT and just like building systems for people and stuff like that, like, have you run into like government infrastructure or do like government infrastructure work just like in that field at all? Not really. I'm sure you're aware of the horror stories of like the DMV computing system and shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I have, I've been through a couple of libraries and I have, I have seen some shit that it's like, why would you possibly do it that way? But yeah.

Yeah. And like all, like problems that are hard to solve, it's like, it's nobody's fault. It's not like you can point to a person and being like, you fucked it up, like you did it bad and we're going to do it good now. It's like, no, you have to unbuild the whole university if you want to actually make it work right. Yeah. Well, and that's, I think a lot about that in terms of, I'm really. not sure if you're familiar with active directory. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, which like every active directory instance I have ever touched has been fucked in some way. Yeah. And it's like I can't, like I would like one day to actually see what a good actually working as working with poets around it. Sure. Active directory looks like just because I've seen it fucked in three different, very specific ways. Yeah. And it's one of those structures that just, it. it migrates so fast.

And it's so hard to stay on top of. And yeah, I could probably actually go on about that for hours. But yeah, particularly like active directory and pretty much every Microsoft house relies on it. Yep. So like, yeah.

It's hard to understand like how much that affects like working conditions for everybody. Like that it's like not just IT people, but like everybody. And like that. I had to turn off a single sign on for one of our, of softwares because the active directory could not send the right information. Yeah. It was like, I don't know, you want an IP address for this user?

That's just the look. You want to like not tie this to anyone's email. You want to like just get the wrong fucking information. It's like, we're just turning it off. Yep. Like this has been like something that I've struggled with like in like I'm part of one now two academic unions in my life and just like like working conditions. Also include like computers and stuff like that.

We're just like, there's like a longstanding, you know, just like unions love being like organizing by the people for the people just like we are doing hand to hand going talking to the people. And like computer stuff is like extra. That's like it's like irrelevant or whatever. Like we have some Google spreadsheets or whatever. But like, yeah, that's like not important. That's not like actually union business. But like both in terms of like labor issues, like thinking about like IT problems as a labor issue or just like there was someone that just like we were at this union meeting and just like someone was talking about just like. like how they have to ask IT for super user permission every time they want to run it.

And they can't install Adobe Acrobat and have had a ticket open for like six weeks to install Adobe Acrobat. And they literally can't open a PDF in the meantime. And so it's like you're an academic worker and you can't open a PDF. You cannot do your job. Like this is like a grievable problem with like appropriate workplace, you know, implementation. And like, and like then thinking about just like also the operation of the union, we're just like, we want to focus on the very, like, again, legitimately so, the very human problem of organizing, just like being able to, like, directly interface with people. And so we don't want to necessarily

focus on our computing stuff. But then as a result, like, every meeting is just like, okay, who has access to this doc again? And like, like, where in the spreadsheet are we? And just like all of these like infrastructural issues that just like hobble the union's ability to do that human level organizing. It's just like, like, like, I don't want to come across as like a techno-utopian that just like computers are the only problem and solving the computer solves everything. But it's just like like that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying that just like they are a massive labor issue for in a bunch of different ways and just like we do need to sort of reckon with that without abandoning the good old fashioned union hog like hold a hold a pint of beer and hold

hands while you're singing, you know, solidarity forever. Like let's not forget that part in trying to make things digital. But yeah. I think it's no coincidence that, A lot of times when library budgets are cut or don't increase, that the first things to go is normally like a downsizing or removal or outsourcing of IT and or technical services. And then it turns out everything else is way more expensive because you need to like, you know, work around that deficit. And users find ways.

Oh, yeah. Like never underestimate the creativity of a user who needs something and doesn't want to ask IT for it. Hell yeah. Like, that's your first mistake. Like, yeah. So I'm 100% with you on that one. Right.

And like, so it's like part of like what like again just like thinking about. Because to me like these are all like related concepts like just like thinking about just like federated internet services and just like revitalizing sort of like a broader labor movement and people just like thinking about organizing people and making people feel powerful to organize the infrastructure of their life. their digital reality being one of those spheres of their life. And like, I just think that the worst thing about like open source technology is like exactly the year of Linux on the desktop meme of like sort of like that like a lot of like open source technology people just like design for themselves and design for other people like them. And so it's just sort of like there's all this like beautiful technology that could exist that like

completely inaccessible to anyone outside this like people in this very, very niche and like controlled culture. So it's just like, I think, I mean, like, you were saying just like, like, I think that was, Jay, that was you that was saying that just like people on Macedon just talk about Macedon and stuff like that. And just like, yeah, yeah, that like, why don't people come here? Like, you know, just very tone deaf things like, like, what's even hard about this? There's nothing that's hard about this. And like, um, just completely missing the point that just like, yeah, well, you didn't even ask anyone that wasn't like you, like, or even like slightly different than you. And like, and so just like, I see these two things in

conflict, but just like there's this immense promise in like actually taking seriously we could make technology for everybody that like is is accessible and like working towards that goal and inviting them in through like a social system rather than inviting them in through code is like a really interesting way of doing that. But at the same time like you do need to shake off that massive legacy of how these things are designed and like the expertise that's expected to like get started using them, let alone hosting an instance. But it's just like, So it's just sort of like, that's one of those things where like the admin of hackers town, it's like just said this like thing that just like lives in my mind forever.

It's just like, I will not defend the shortcomings of the Fedaverse, but I will defend its promise where just like I just feel like it's something that just like, we do need to shake off a couple of these ancient skeletons, but just like this general idea of like, can we make actually empowering technologies that make, make it possible for people to do some of the things that like are currently only possible do on the platform web. Posting being one of them. But then you think about dot-to-dot, whatever else I use Google Docs, photos, et cetera for. Posting is like the roses and bread and roses.

You need to be able to ship posts, right? You know? Yeah. I mean, it's like everyone is just sort of like this like broken, broken fire extinguisher, constantly leaking posts. And where do they go? Like if there's going. Yeah, like I saw this amazing tweet today that just brought a smile to my face. That was RIP Dracula. You would loved going down a water slide flat on your back arms crossed over your chest. Yeah. I need that in my life. You know, that's, that's my roses, you know.

This is why I haven't left Tumblr. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's easy to dismiss social media. Like, oh, it's just posting or something like that. But it's like, that's like, really important, actually. Like that. People like to communicate and connect with each other.

What a fucking concept. Weird. Yeah. Holy shit. Holy shit. Yeah. And people like to be silly little guys. Yeah.

Like one of my like goals in what I plan to do in the next couple of years is just like convincing scientists and academics are just like, okay, what if like the shitpost could live next to the academic papers and there's sort of like a fluid boundary between these things? Like that people, it wouldn't be this rare event to have like a joke in the paper or something like that. It's like that like I literally gave a lecture based off of a shitpost that I did. Yeah. Like, it is possible, my friends. A better world is out there. Yeah. And like, then I, I've been, I like, you know, sort of lurk in these places where the graybeards hang out and stuff like that sometimes. And just like, they're utter fear of losing the seriousness and the sanctity of research and stuff like that. It's just like, it's so palpable that they're just like, all these people just want to post preprints and eat hot chip and lie. That's all they want. You know, it's like fools.

I mean, all I do is eat hot chippin. Yeah, well, that's what we all is like, and that's missing. I don't know what planet they live on, but yeah, they don't for some reason. It's just like, you're in a different reality than me, and what I want to do is be able to communicate with people in a bunch of different modalities and like at different registers and like be different people. Like I think one of the most important things about social media and then this like maybe like utopian vision of a federated, you know,

social platform or whatever is like this breaking down of boundaries of modalities. Like being able to be in there, being able to operate and recognize specific modalities when you need them is really important. But like, like I say this about like library Twitter. Like library Twitter is infamous for like we don't have a boundary between personal and professional on library Twitter or we didn't like when people were still on there. It was like people would network like at or during or after conferences. People would collaborate. People would talk about like discourse, but then people would also like post their straps or like post pictures with their cat or like, you know, shitpost or like whatever. Like there was this like treating these people who were like experts in your field as people just like you. And I feel like that helps a lot because we get like in any time in you're in academia, people get put in these pedestals and they're untouchable. And so are their ideas. But when people are just like. like you, it's like, oh, well, I can contribute to this too, and I can interact with this too. And this

person's a person just like me, who in probably three years is going to go reread their paper and be like, oh, what a fucking idiot. Am I? Because that's what I do. So I imagine other people must do that too. Hopefully. There are some people that have no shame and just never think they're wrong about shit. That does exist. Yeah. But yeah. But, you know, like, I feel like that's important is to be able like see people as people and sort of, I just love anything that sort of forces barriers to be porous. Right. And this is like, so there's this general fatalism when people talk about like digital mediums about just like, it is like this forever. And so therefore I will not engage with this thing. Or just like that like these things don't come from a place. They don't have like

a dynamics to them. That just like it's not like this for a particular reason. And it's possible to change. So it's like people are always, you know, boring and stuffy on Macedon. It's just sort of like, that is true sometimes for now. And it's just like, that like, it's like one of those things where it's like, there are pockets that, I mean, again, just like, I'm not here to say that like it is not true. Or just like, there's definitely a overwhelming quantity of crustiness and shit like that that exists on the Fediverse. There's like no getting around that. But it's like, that's not like intrinsic to the space.

It's not like there's someone, someone wrote some piece of clothes somewhere. It's like, fun is banned, actually. Set that to false. And so, like, that, like, it's possible to, like, make social spaces and just, like, make things, like, operate in a particular way. I mean, too, with some limitations, and obviously I'm not, like, also trying to downplay the importance of these, like, sort of embedded cultures. Like, that is why they exist as cultures. But, like, like, except for, like, LinkedIn, we're just, like, they, I actually can't make an account there. You can't, you can't have fun on that platform.

It's banned, actually quite literally. So, like, so there's some exceptions to this, like, you can make spaces be how you want. them to be. And so like that's like what we're trying to do in like one of the servers that I'm like administering right now is just like this neuromatch.com social server where just like that's what we wanted to do is just sort of like yeah neuroscientists come here but and like you can talk about work but also like what if we learned about like cooperative governance systems at the same time and what if we also sort of like we're able to mix modalities and registers of our communication and like that just like if this instance we could experiment with a medium we're just like

can we actually make something that serves our communicative needs? Like, can we make something where we have the ephemeral micro blogging style stuff alongside archival grade documents using the same type of format? Like, can we do that? And that vision, that idea of like, this is something we're actively experimenting with. There is no such thing as quote unquote mastodon that works in one way. Like we have our own fork of this, our own version of this. And we're constantly trying to like experiment with it and make it work in a particular way.

And not everyone is a programmer, but like we operate and make a governance system that allows us to distribute labor so that just like we can make, you know, decisions about how things should work. And then we have a team that's capable of, you know, implementing that and a team is capable of doing the moderation, just like able to actually make like a functional social system. So like, that's just like that is the, I would call it utopian in the sense that it's like, it exists, like we're doing it. But it's like, but like, yeah, the larger vision is just one of those things that just like

takes a long time to like percolate into being into, you know, people seeing it as possible or desirable in the first place. I want to go back to something you mentioned and also something sent me a link to, which was you talked about writing the shippost to the paper, and you have a piece in the infrastructure piece that you wrote

that you sent me, which is the forums and feeds. And so could you talk a little bit about, so people understand, I think this would be a good way to explain like activity pub or activity streams as like a link data language. So when you're talking about arguing back and

in an academic paper, how does activity pub and activity streams language help that happen? Yeah. So like the question here is like largely about interfaces, right? So like the means by which we interact with with some underlying protocol. And so like what activity pub is is just like a bunch of JSON objects. So JSOM and like the way that like in the interchange format for JavaScript on the internet that like have a particular structure to them. So activities dreams is like an ontology. It's a vocabulary that says these are the types of things that can exist. So there's like a note, there's an article, there's different sort of objects, like types

of objects. And they have different properties. So they have, you know, they have an author or a creator or a date and just like these set of specific names. And then also what's interesting about like making ontologies in this way is that you can use them to structure actions as well. So like, as part of the activity streams vocabulary, there's like create action, which is just like itself like a JavaScript object. I mean, it is just so I don't have anyone in RDF world yell at me.

It is like translatable to RDF. Like that's the whole point of it, but JavaScript is just an interface to RDF. But like, so there's like this circumscribed sort of set of actions and objects that can exist. And that's like what a linked data ontology is. And what makes link data ontology interesting, as opposed to just being an ontology of any kind, is that it's possible to import other terms, use terms from other vocabularies, mix and match these things together. So like, activity streams is one vocabulary, and it's used within activity pub. But in principle, it's possible to also say, all right, I am doing a create action for this completely separate kind of document.

You know, this is not something that's like mentioned in activity pub or activities. streams. And like, okay, so now I'm importing this ontology that describes this different new kind of document, this, or it can be like calendar event, whatever kind of object or thing that you want to think about on the internet existing. And like, that's sort of the idea of using link data in like a, in like a federated context. And to some degree, that's just like an attempt at making the general dream of link data real. It's like, but the problem is that doesn't, it doesn't quite work that way. Like instead of making, so there's this, yeah, instead of like, making something that like generally handles the possibility of linked data. It's like we made

clients like Massadon that are sort of like shoehorned in the activity pub interface on the back end. And so it doesn't quite do what you expect out of like something that like takes full advantage of the activity of the link data part of activity pub. But like there's no reason that we can't make it work actually that way. And like it's a really interesting and sort of like promising way of doing that. We're just like if you, most of what we're familiar with as documents and like general computer artifacts are some sort of protocol or standard. Like a word document is like a zip file full of XML that has a particular format. And so what word is is an interface to that format. It's like a means of giving you a bunch of handles and hooks to be able to manipulate the underlying

XML. And like another technology I think is like actually super interesting in this regard as like because it's such a shallow mapping in a good way. These like Jupiter notebooks, these Python notebooks where it's like you have different cells. Yeah. And as a

they're this underrated idea and like it's one of these things that I think could have a lot more interesting use cases but they were just like you have cells and they have a type and that type indicates how they're supposed to be processed so they can be marked down like document style or they can be code or ever. And so like the notebook is like an interface to this underlying JSON document. And so it's sort of trivial. It's sort of trivial to imagine like what if we extended these

interfaces to actually be direct JSON LD editors and used activity pub as like a means of exchange of these like more generalized link data objects. And there are some people that are working on this kind of idea as there always are. But like the that when you start doing that you start running into the need to be able to create a new ontology pretty flexibly and share that and then it becomes pretty clear that like actually what we need is peer to peer technology and so it's like both the Fedaverse and link data beg to be made peer to peer to peer and I just feel like the Fediverse is just a very it's like a staging ground it's sort of like get people used to the idea of we can run our own infrastructure we can make it do the things that we want it to do

And from there you can like, okay, we practice that. We practice working as a group, hopefully, like, you know, got used to this whole notion of sort of cooperative members, and then just like, so the next stage we can do is like, now let's take this to the next level of doing like truly flexible decentralized peer-to-peer type of communication. And yeah, like the, I stick around in academia for a couple of reasons. Like one of one funding, like you got to get paid to do stuff. And like academia is a very useful system for that in the sense that just like I don't have to make money for somebody. in my current job.

And so, like, can focus on making stuff that is designed to make it harder to make money in this way. But it's, like, two, it's a really rich problem space. There's, like, a bunch of really complicated shit that needs to happen. That's, like, very technically demanding.

And so it's a good practice space. And so, like, thinking about and using academic communication that does scale and span between lots of different registers, modalities, and needs and stuff like that, as, like, a way of making generalizable technologies that can then be used by anyone,

that can be sort of like fluidly applied to your needs in the particular circumstance. So like the stuff I'm working on is like I'm working with my lab and my work with my department, but also like trying to work with my union at the same time. And just like these can be sort of like linked and, you know, you know, cross applicable technologies. Because, you know, every group is different. Every organizing context is different. Like, you know, if you're an activist organizing context, you need security is a non-negotiable feature of that. but like academics maybe don't need security all that much.

And so it's just like, but like, so every context is different, but like a lot of the problems sort of overlap in this way and just like that like there, yeah, I could go on, but like that is sort of the idea is that just like this is like, if we start just like taking the notion of we just need an interface to a very flexible means of communication seriously and like we can make it possible to translate between these different kinds of things and then have like a common interchange protocol for them, It gets very close to what the original vision of the web was in the first place, which is I can exchange whatever the fuck I want in whatever structured way I want to between people.

You know, that like it's just like quite literally the original vision behind the semantic web at like that, you know, some of the original internet architects saw as being like, okay, the web is cool, but it has these basic issues. And one of them is that just like there's no good way to like organize shit on it. And so like that's like, you know, a 21st, 25 year old idea at this point, but it's like still super relevant. Things that heal themselves, that sort of thing. Yeah.

And like a bunch of people are sort of like coming back around and being like, re-digging up the old semantic web history and it's popping up in all these unexpected places. And like link data being in activity pub and Macedon is like, holy shit, there's a huge long continuity of history of just like the way that we want the internet to work, filtering through to this technology where it's almost invisible. It's, you'd have to like dig really hard to find. that historic link, but like it's there and super present and just like one of these things

and just like being aware of it and being able to like, I'm walking in this sort of history and just like gives you a lot of like hope, A, that like there are other people that feel the same thing, same thing or similar things. And then be like a lot of lessons about how not to do it. That is also like sort of equally important. Yeah. I was definitely thinking about what that would look what that system would look like where people are talking back and forth about a paper from like a postal paper and I could easily imagine like an interface but the thing is like commercializing that space is almost impossible with the way that the current system is right this is why we're stuck sending PDFs over the web through a publisher that we buy our own work back from and we're doing

all this in the name of peer review which is insane because we also do peer review for free so it's it's like the only thing we're really doing it for is the is the belief in peer review and it's and copy editing copy editing is labor and it's expensive and it's a big problem but like it's a solvable problem with just a little bit of investment and some copy editors like yeah it's all you need to do is just hire some copy editors like it's really your university could have a couple yeah hire them for you revitalize university presses you know that sort of thing right so like a lot of this is like largely about just what if we had a sensible distribution of labor, like, you know, which is like a concept. Yeah.

Where like it wasn't just totally beholden to whatever fucking platform you could subscribe to, but just like we just were able to make collective decisions about just like, okay, we need a server that remembers our public posts. And so can we organize that together? Just like use some university resources, whatever to host it. And like just like that like that's like what a lot of these ideas come down to is that just like the labor needs to be reallocated and redistributed. in a way that just works for people instead of profit. So it's like not, I know that's not a novel idea,

but like it just, that's what it all is. Yeah. So to wrap up, I wanted to get to like an action-oriented question because we're going to have to skip a little bit of stuff that I want to talk about, but there's just so much to talk about. You were writing a lot in surveillance graphs about the sort of the enclosure of the web, which was something we brought up last time with Leon, you know, is at the end of the open web.

And I think we've had a lot of like cool ideas of what could look cool, but, or what could work, what could work cool, what could be open, what could be decentralized, but we're still seeing like everything turned back into a console, partly because of cloud infrastructure, um, because like everything has to go through that central point in the cloud and everything breaks if it's not working. But like what, I guess what can people get interested in or do to resist these surveillance graphs that you talk about? Like, oh, damn. It's like an organizing question, right? Yeah. What can you do to...

So it's just like, I think a lot of it is initially a belief question. And like, part of that belief question is believing that it's important to do that, like that it's important to avoid mass surveillance as being the basic operation of society. Because it's like, it's sort of hard for me to picture, but like there are actually a lot, a huge number of people that are just like, this is good actually that like we have all of these companies surveilling our every move because then they're able to like, you know, recommend me the right restaurant when I ask my assistant, like my Google assistant, like, where should I go to eat? Like it's just sort of like that people really do like in some respects. Like, you know, I cat's it for my neighbor who is like a lovely person, but it's like has an Amazon Alexa that like runs her whole home.

And like I can't I couldn't turn the fucking lights on without talking to this machine. And so it's just sort of like, but it's like that's convenience. That's like the ultimate like, you know, that's like that ideology of convenience. And so just like, you have to sort of like when thinking about it is like I think a lot of it is like unbuilding ideologies and belief systems and value systems. We're just like you can't just go about saying let's make a new technology. Let's even make a new social organization if like there's if you're still like stuck in the old systems of valuation. Like it's good to value performance and uptime at all costs. And it's good to be able to access anything like as if it's a giant store of content.

And, you know, like, if you keep all of those same valuation, like, criteria of there's, like, what is good to do and what is good to make and what are the goals of what we're trying to do, then you, yeah, you're going to end up with another fucking cloud. Like, it's just sort of like, there's a reason that it exists. And it's because of like this whole set of value criteria that's basically making, turning the internet into a digital market for content. And so, like, yeah, that's part of that is just like, I don't have a good answer about how to change a lot of people's minds. And I think that, like, a good example of that is just like, what does the alternative look like? And if it looks good and feels good to be a part of then, just like, that's a good way of sort of getting people to reconsider some of the more underlying causes of these things.

And so, like, it, like, makes me sad when, when, when people go and they try Macedon by going to Massadon.com, and just like, what the fuck is this? And, like, that's a totally normal reaction to just being on Massadon. dot social. It's like, there's either nothing or there's everything. Like, I have that, those are the two things I can see here. And it's just sort of like, because the actual beauty and, like, sort of just like, it's also true that just like it's really cognitively demanding to like think about all this like

different servers and stuff like that but that's also the beautiful part like being in smaller groups of people like being like this is actually really nice for me to like be around people that I know and I trust and like we sort of work together to do shit together and like that's a very different vision of the web than than what you're used to just like I go to Google Docs and I hit subscribe and I pay my 10 bucks a month and I can store 100 gigabytes there so like no I like no people and like we co-organize this thing together and just like this is like this group May 1st is like a really rad group in this respect that just like they're like activists trying to build this kind of like cooperatively owned digital infrastructure at like multiple scales as well. And so like I think that that's part of it is like that's what the promising thing to me is where just like you don't convince people that surveillance is bad or even like it's really hard to even see how the operation of surveillance works. So like large language. models are a surveillance technology period that like but like what the fuck does that mean like that's like it's hard to like they're just like they're not spying on me i just you know type in the thing and it makes

a sentence what the fuck is that that's not surveillance and just like just but then just like seeing how that's tied into a the much talked about copyright you know theft of all the content in the web but that's just one part of how it's a surveillance technology the other is part of that is like the way that it's used to be built into these all these different services that can then combine all of your data from all of these different sources and then launder it back to you with some just like pleasant sounding assistant text or something like that. It's an enabling technology for a new kind of surveillance system. And again, people think that's a good thing. I want to have all of my appointments linked in and together. So it's like Microsoft gives this absolutely

horrifying example when they introduced Microsoft AI 365 or whatever in March, which is like, you're a new language model attached to your outlook and your, your email and everything like that, we'll be able to automate all the boring shit. And what's funny is the first thing, the first example they give a boring shit is writing a speech for your daughter's graduation. Like that's just like,

holy fuck what a grim reality these people are projecting. And so it's just like, it's very, they're just like giving these great examples of like, the AI knows that your daughter is, plays volleyball and won the state championship because it went it through and read her tag. texts and looked at her appointments and knows that she was very happy about in this moment after this volleyball championship. And so therefore we're going to generate this and she was very good

at volleyball sentence or something like that. So it's like the payoff of all their surveillance is underwhelming to say the least. But like that's not the product. The product is what the, what the companies can then sell to the investors saying like we have this really cool new way to target your ads in this really fine-grained way. And so like, so like, It's like when people ask about just like, we have the competing models of the future of like, do we want to have the AI that can sort of turn through all the unstructured content of the web and whatever and sort of like synthesize some new beautiful crystal of information? And that's like where a lot of really well-meaning people that I like and respect end up.

It's just sort of like what we need is the information is a cluster fuck. It is disorganized, impossible to make sense of. And so what we need is something that can sort of just like in an automated way, crawl through this things and fix it for us. Another alternative future is just like, what if we actually had the systems to make sense of shit ourselves? That just like if it was in the first place something, it was actually possible to communicate and organize shit in like a coordinated way. So like what a lot of the surveillance technology relies on is a background of broken infrastructure where we can't do basic things online. And so resisting surveillance, this like surveillance society is not just a matter of end-to-end encrypted technologies, like the things you usually think of when you think of privacy. But it's also filling and plugging the gaps that they exploit to make us dependent on these types of platforms.

So like they can't spy on like all of my calendar appointments if it's feasible for me to have a private calendar. Like it's like you just have to like fight surveillance in this way by like presenting a plausible alternative. to the, like, McKenzie work develops this idea in several of her books of, like, the vectoralist class that just like, like, this one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years is, it's like, it's like capital is dead, is this something worse? And so just like being sort of like, it's this rereading of Marx and sort of being like, well, we get sort of stuck in the Marxist orthodoxy. And so like, what if we did what Marx did, we just sort of just like reread it, playfully refit it to our times and something. And what we, what you get when you start doing that is just like,

actually there's like a new mode of capitalist production that involves ownership and control of vectors of information. And like it's actually very different than like industrial capitalism. And like that one of the means, like once you start thinking about things in that way, just like thinking about the flow of information, the control of vectors of information, then like the strategy starts to look very different. We're just like we just need to actually like that's what decentralization is actually like it's in some ways about is like breaking up these choke points. And so this is like another like like a Cori Doctoro idea of just being sort of like the choke point capitalism.

It's just like we're going to do an episode on it. Sweet. Yeah. So like it's like that's like that book is like it was exactly the right book that was needed at the moment. Just sort of like like a lot of ideas and stuff and believe and just like so that people had been writing about and thinking about. But it was like Corey Doctor is just like a wonderful writer and like a really like is excellent at communicating these ideas and sort of putting them into some thing that you can. grasp without needing to unpack the whole universe and also just like remarkably good at like navigating platforms and not getting trapped in by like you know need for algorithmic fame but still

using them to this effective and anyway I just like I don't know a whole lot about them as a person but just like I like the way that they are as far as like how they're their role in this like information liberation problem so like there's like you know like I don't want to keep you on the line forever but just like that's basically the Like when I think about just like, how do you resist surveillance capitalism is just sort of like, you need to do all of these things at once. You need to do the social organizing that like leads to the ability to change people of beliefs. Instead of just like writing a book about shit, you need to actually get people working together and practically like, that's how you practically change minds. And then like at the same time expanding the scope of what it means to resist the this from a technological lens by just like also thinking about just like we need to rebuild like the basic, the basic elements of digital reality in such a way we're just like surveillance is impossible or at least.

desirable. And a lot of that has to do with being able to fucking organize information. That is like, we're talking about just like metadata anarchism and stuff like that. It's like being able to organize information in a world where informational capitalism is sort of the dominant mode of production is like extremely politically important. But it's nerd shit, you know? It's like how do you get that across to like the hardcore Marxist Leninists thinking about factories as if it's like, you know, 1900 still? and like that's the primary.

It's like, and I'm not discounting, like, I'm not trying to discount the importance of like trade unions and industrial unions. Like that's still super critical too. It still exists. There are factories and there are people doing like traditional industrial labor. Like that I'm not saying it doesn't exist. But it's like that now happens against the backdrop of like what are, what Nike is is a logistics and information company that is able to like manipulate

information and again, like logistical information in order to coordinate all of that factory labor. Like it's sort of like like yeah, dot dot fill in template notion of gig economy here. Like that's just like that's what it is. Like that like and so like it yeah, getting the hardcore leftist to take seriously the the notion of like information liberation as like a critical part of the project. That's one of the reasons why I love hanging out on the Fedaverse is because like that's sort of like a given. Like that's like one of the few spaces online. We're just like yeah, we definitely don't need to explain that. We're all on the same page. So like, like every other person, there's like

the crusty old web people and then the other major, uh, major population in the Fedaverse is just sort of like, the trans anarchist cat girl that like runs half the internet. Like that's yeah. And we love them. Yes. I'm a bad dog.

Justin, where do you get these drops? That was from preserving worlds. Oh, okay. I just didn't want to get rid of it because it's so useful. Okay. Yeah. I think that covers it for today. Yeah.

Did you have anything, Johnny, you wanted to plug? I mean, I'm so terrible at this. This is like my, when I organize shit and do I do work, I'm always, I love being in the background and sort of like, you know, planting seeds and like, you know, giving little hints and trying to move people in little ways. And I don't, I'm not that good at like, here's my shit. Come check out my shit. But like, I don't know. You're doing great. Like, I'm in the process of actually getting that off the road.

So still unlaunched, but keep your eyes out for when the Institute of Pirate Technology starts releasing some projects that should be happening near the end of the year. Hell yeah. I'm just going to put the Piracy Solutions website in the notes, even if it's just a joke. That will be where a lot of it is. It's one of the best domains I've ever bought or rented, whatever. But yeah, that'll be where a lot of that shit is organized, even if I have to put it. in more palatable name, palitably named domains as well at the same time. Piracy.zone. Piracy.hacy.hiracy.hiracy.gay. Paracy.gay. Paracy.gay. I mean, the people that

run... Ours is library punk.org. Okay. So you do know the... Getting the domain is like puts you as part of the family and like, are you on the website, the dot gay domain website? Are we? Oh, you've got to. They have a whole section of that's like artists that use dot gay. And so you've got to get on the website if you're not. Oh, hey.orgay. I don't remember exactly what it is, but. Dot gay. He's a domain that represents you.

I had to go to like shady backwater hosting service to get dot gay because Google doesn't sell it. Right. Yeah, it's controlled by like actually a pretty good group of people. But oh, fuck, I'm using Chrome. So I have all of the, the Chrome is my investigating surveillance technology. browser and so like I have all of the AI suggestions and shit turned on. And so like I just looked up dot gay domain and I have a huge generative AI description of it and I'm just like I'm not going to read that shit.

We're not on there. Yeah, so you got to get on there. A friend of mine is and I'm pretty sure you just ask like it's a badge of honor. There's only like five podcasts listed. If this is the right one that I'm looking for. Yeah, that's that's it. Yeah. Under like featured sites.

Yeah. There's only like five. Yeah. Coture Queers. techthoughts.gay. Techthoughts.gay. Jailmama.gay. Okay. Yeah.

I think that covers everything. It's been lovely chatting with y'all. Thank you for staying long. I mean, as like I've been listening to more of these episodes, I want to stick around and check these things out because, I mean, I, especially knowing that we just like got like, you know, similarly minded metadata anarchists in the, in the crowd and just like also people that have to fucking deal with university IT and related.

Like, this is sort of just like, y'all, like, you know, like, Like, pluck several of the heartstrings that are the most taught in me. And so, like, anyway, it's been good chatting and, like, good get to meet y'all. Absolutely. You should come back. All right. Yeah, no, I was, like, reading your article, and I was just, like, texting my friend being, like, this fucking fire, like, the whole time. I mean, it goes both ways.

So, like, I mean, I'm going to look y'all of and see some of the stuff that you've been working on, too. So it's, like, I'm curious. You got me curious. And good night.