I cannot figure out what Bonfire is . - The homepage has a bunch of "Bonfire is...", but they don't tell me much about how Bonfire achieves any of those goals like to be a "commons". - There's a codebase and documentation, but it comes in six different "flavours" , although I can only really differentiate between two. - Most of the FAQs just say "wip". - It proudly states that there are no ads, no tracking, etc, but…
Slow software for a burning world
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
To reiterate what the earlier poster asked "what is it"? Are these 6 fully completed, polished, and ready to use applications? Are they ideas for applications? Are they PoC?
Best go ask their community engagement manager and head of product. I'm sure they'll guide you along.
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's meaningless -- just legal boilerplate. However legal or meaningless, it's their official stated position. And they did lose close to 20 billion in total before turning a meagre profit. > so they always hedge by including explicit doom & gloom scenarios in the legal paperwork. Ah yes, "we may never turn a profit that's why we are a sustainable long-term serious company and you should definitely buy our stock"…
Yes, that's absolutely what they write. They will always be explicit that they could be wrong in disastrous ways and they are not misleading you into thinking otherwise. Every public corp's "official stated position" on future profitability is, from a legal perspective, the same: No promises. We might fail because of (long list of endogenous and exogenous reasons) . Past performance is no guarantee of future results.…
In modern business profitability never enters the equation.
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#84These sites are easy to figure out. Go to Main Page Scroll down to go to the "Code of Conduct" Search on "Reverse" Read "Our community prioritises marginalised people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. Moderators reserve the right not to act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia.’ or critiques of racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressiv…
Here's a salient little exercise for you: if you had to "steelman" this position, this prioritising of "marginalised peoples safety" and (optional) deprioritising of moderating "reverse-isms", how would you do it? Try to make a case for this position you take such umbrage with
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Popper coined the "paradox of tolerance"—that, in order to remain tolerant, a society cannot tolerate everything; in particular, it cannot show tolerance toward those who are intolerant, as their normalization inevitably leads to the demise of toleration in the public sphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance We all have to be prepared to bite our tongues in order to make the world worth living in, b…
Isn't the reference and context backwards here? As in, the "you should read Popper" comment was in response to somebody saying they though opting out of moderation/censorship was not good. I think Popper would broadly agree with this, and say that moderating out racism, transphobia etc is essential for good discourse. This is all unfounded obviously, since Popper didn't ever use or write about social media.
The CoC provides a justification for this decision—which, to elaborate on its rather simple framing, is that offensive rhetoric directed at minorities is qualitatively different from its inverse because it can incite racial violence and control the Overton window.* ebisoka doesn't consider this a worthy reason for the site's policies to admit to a biased moderation policy, but it's a deliberate nuance in the design that isn't captured in a simple description of the paradox of tolerance. (It's not an entirely problem-free policy, but the moderators aren't being instructed to ignore all abuse directed at majoritarians, just to be selective in what they tolerate. Antipathy is not quite the same as intolerance.)
Note also that ebisoka began the post with "these sites are easy to figure out," which suggests there is a multiplicity of sites like Bonfire that can be summarized (and therefore dismissed) purely on the basis of their Codes of Conduct. It's a fishing expedition for instances of affirmative action.
ebisoka put a lot of work into ensuring that post would slip by the radar for the average reader, but it's basically the same pattern of euphemisms that is guiding the Right's current crusade against DEI.
* Some strings attached. 1) Not as true in pluralistic societies or societies with near-equal splits; mostly a problem when the dominant group is vastly larger than the others. Hence other commenters remarking that this is a West-centric policy. 2) At the extreme end of the spectrum are places like South Africa and Zimbabwe, where the lingering populations of lower-class white people are subject to the double-whammy of lack of representation or advocacy in society and government, plus being the targets of resentment over colonialism.
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#86Refreshing reading. I hope we soon move to an era where this kind of initiative is the starting point. (In opposition to the make quick money model)
P2P everything, then. To scale up to a billion+ users of [whatever], it's easier if every user controls their own data (and some of 'nearby' users) on their own devices. Logically you'd need P2P between those billion+ users to make that network as a whole work. BUT: figuring out how to do that well, is hard. Doing that in centralized manner (centralized database, users are clients only, etc) is easier. And gives maxi…
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
docs seem pretty straightforward: - Ember - social networking toolkit - Social - fb/activitypub feed like - Community - fb groups (wonder if they have voting based admin) - Open Science - a peer review app? - Coordination - ticket/kanban/w/e productivity software - Cooperation - fb marketplace?
To reiterate what the earlier poster asked "what is it"? Are these 6 fully completed, polished, and ready to use applications? Are they ideas for applications? Are they PoC?
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's absolutely what they write. They will always be explicit that they could be wrong in disastrous ways and they are not misleading you into thinking otherwise. Every public corp's "official stated position" on future profitability is, from a legal perspective, the same: No promises. We might fail because of (long list of endogenous and exogenous reasons) . Past performance is no guarantee of future results.…
There's a difference between "we have never been profitable and don't expect to be" and, say, Google's "we became profitable, and though there are factors that can negatively affect our profitability, here's a path we believe is most profitable". In modern business profitability never enters the equation.
They mean absolutely nothing about what management expects for the future of the company. They are just legal boilerplate that is always included.
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a federated social networking toolkit to customise and host your own online space and control your experience at the most granular level. Bonfire social is built on it. https://bonfire.cafe is a Bonfire social instance. Looks very Mastodon. Here are some other apps built on Bonfire: https://bonfirenetworks.org/apps/
What is "it" though? It's hard to figure out from any of the About page, Design, or the README [1, 2, 3]. Only when getting to the Architecture [4] section much later in the docs, it starts mentioning ActivityPub, but still no useful description of the project - "an unusual piece of software" is the only provided bit. Is it a framework, a new protocol, a network? Looks like the former - an application to write Activi…
Re: Slow software for a burning world
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sigh. There is no such thing as reverse-isms. For example discrimination based on race is racism, objectively. Creating a reverse-ism out of that subjectively singles out a particular identity to champion. An effective code of conduct would not mention such subjectivity in any form.
Reverse isms are just a more specific type of an ism - instead of being wielded by a privilege group against the historically marginalized, it’s the reverse. I do agree that it’s unkind to treat those two isms differently, or to condone one while tolerating the other - but pretending that there’s not such thing as the ‘reverse’ case seems silly, when it’s so easy to define and easy to IRL.