Re: very specific project proposal Re: What does Elon Musk say about free software?

[Yasuaki Kudo]

> Is there some kind of hours-long technical glitch or am I now
> being silently censored from the libreplanet-discuss mailing list?

Not sure😅 , it seems a little delayed, nevertheless:

Although I really don't understand mastodon, your comment:
>> AHA!  That can be assembled out of Mastodon with few or no
>> changes -- mostly just by using it wisely. 

is close to what I am thinking.

It is neither the lack of money, time, whatever else. We can manage these if we 
are creative enough - what is lacking is the understanding this is mostly in 
our minds - if we so decide, we can make drastic changes.

I am a little inspired to 'hype up' something like the Digital Wild West.  The 
world is probably ripe for a radical overhaul to empower the people and 
dismantle the unaccountable 'powers' that be, and the starting point will be 
probably digital.  Just like all manufacturing businesses and even science now 
use computer simulations as the primary tool of development, our new economy 
will be bootstrapped with computers first, where ideas emerge and flow freely 
among the people who are all equals to each other.

This way, we don't have to quit our jobs or do anything radical and risky, and 
safely craft the new world from the comfort (or discomfort 😅) of where we are 
now.

Free Software, open protocols and all the rest can be at the core of this 
endeavor and twitter 'replacement' or something much better will be a worthy 
project 😄

-Yasu


> On May 2, 2022, at 14:11, Thomas Lord <lord@basiscraft.com> wrote:
> 
> Is there some kind of hours-long technical glitch or am I now
> being silently censored from the libreplanet-discuss mailing list?
> 
> -t
> 
> 
>> On 2022-05-01 15:23, Thomas Lord wrote:
>> You sparked what I think is a really good idea in my head.
>> Of course, I can't judge if it really is a really good idea. :-)
>> I think/guess many people discover that twitter is a fun
>> and informative way to track some subject of interest.
>> Four examples:
>>  - follow all your favorite Hollywood celebrities
>>  - follow all your favorite news outlets / journalists
>>  - subscribe to a list that is cultivated to carry the
>>    tweets of credible climate scientists and related
>>    climate advocates and experts
>>  - subscribe to a list of people actively making and
>>    posting about making music
>> Conversely, celebrities, climate scientists and activists,
>> etc. are all seeking to reach large, interested audiences.
>> AHA!  That can be assembled out of Mastodon with few or no
>> changes -- mostly just by using it wisely.  As someone said,
>> the UI might benefit from some loving enhancement and documentation.
>> Here, broadly, would be the technical infrastructure:
>> Set up instances dedicated to the "celebrities" in one field
>> of interest.  It is good to make these redundant and distributed.
>> For example:
>>   + a Mastodon instance that solely hosts or mirrors
>>     credible climate scientists and activists etc.
>>   + more than one instance, generally mirrors, generally
>>     each member with accounts on several of them, to
>>     a avoid central points of censorship or other bad
>>     policies
>> Do the same for other areas of interest (e.g. celebrities).
>> Promote like made to people who it would be nice to sign up
>> for accounts there.   Make it easy for them to bridge their
>> accounts with Twitter
>> Simultaneously set up "participating spectator" instances that
>> make it very easy for any user to get an account, and follow
>> everyone on one or more subject area twitter.  Like, one click
>> and you follow everyone on the climate expert Mastodon network.
>> One click and you follow all the Hollywood accounts.  Or
>> users can cherry pick in the usual way from those services - make
>> it easy for them to find individual accounts there they might want.
>> Make as much of it free as possible.  Also let people divide up
>> operating costs for instances that need revenue, including hosting
>> costs, administration labor costs, and customer support labor costs.
>> (Don't go for outrageous wages, please.)
>> If done right, it should be far, far less noisy than the average
>> twitter timeline!
>> Here is an example of things that might make sense socially, in
>> how people use it.  Suppose one or several climate scientists
>> want to "take questions" from followers.  Make sure it is easy
>> for them to use some account to post an "AMA" (ask me anything)
>> and let people respond to the AMA.  Make it easy to screen and
>> select questions asked because otherwise... you know.  And make
>> it easy for them to create a clear timeline of questions asked
>> and answers offered by one or more of the participating experts.
>> That'd be information rich, low-distraction, naturally inclined
>> to be more civil and friendly twitter.
>> Also, the whole system would "scale down" to smaller local interest
>> groups that, even though they aren't celebrities, can set up
>> those hub instances for their local interest.
>> People can already do most of this hand, but an organized
>> effort, including recruitment of experts, and spending on promoting
>> the system, would be the kind of thing the FSF ought to be
>> rushing to do.
>> -t
>>> On 2022-04-30 16:23, Yasuaki Kudo wrote:
>>> I think Free Software licenses are great and the rest is just pure
>>> competition of merits.
>>> We can reduce the activity to just being better than proprietary.
>>> For this, we need to be really creative.  Just Replacing twitter with
>>> something else is one simple idea but certainly just a beginning of
>>> our brainstorming.
>>> - Email is a dominant protocol but there are many service providers.
>>> Can we do something similar for public messaging?   I have this
>>> mastodon thing and I have been a computer programmer for 30 years but
>>> I still can't figure out how it works at all.   The whole thing is
>>> very cryptic.  What's wrong here?
>>> - It seems that certain public do want censorship according to their
>>> taste - how do we enable this?   This is a kind of feature that favors
>>> Free Software version because when it comes to any control or
>>> empowerment, the owners of proprietary systems insist they and only
>>> they have a leg up.
>>> - Advertisements are very annoying.  Free Software versions can remove them?
>>> - Can we create a 'crowd development' systems development model
>>> designed to work with thousands of software designers, specification
>>> writers, programmers and so on.
>>> - Free Software movement seems quite weak on getting involved with the
>>> much larger community of the general public.  Can we do better?
>>> etc.
>>> Oh man, this gets me very excited!
>>> Monopoly systems becoming obsoleted by new paradigms are very normal
>>> around the computer circle - can Democratic Software movement do the
>>> same against the incumbent oligarchical systems? 😄
>>> -Yasu
>>>> On Apr 30, 2022, at 20:46, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>>>> * Thomas Lord <lord@basiscraft.com> [2022-04-29 17:49]:
>>>>> This is an opportunity to greatly expand the number
>>>>> of people who use free software, and to help them
>>>>> learn why it - and why resisting untrustworthy
>>>>> websites - is valuable.  Thus, it is the FSF's reason
>>>>> for existence, writ large.
>>>>> I think they will make excuses and stay sleepy at the
>>>>> wheel, so to speak.
>>>> I know that FSF has full hands of work.
>>>> You are free to contribute to it, or otherwise contribute to the cause
>>>> by your own initiatives.
>>>> Jean
>>>> Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
>>>> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
>>>> In support of Richard M. Stallman
>>>> https://stallmansupport.org/