http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2022/11/27/homebrew-social-networking/ Views on software from Bryan Cantrill's deck chair * Home * About Subscribe to the Blog Feed (RSS) The Observation Deck [Search ] [Find] Homebrew social networking One of the most persistent cycles in the history of computing is the oscillation between centralization and decentralization. This cycle becomes entrenched because each has distinct advantages and disadvantages: centralized solutions often yield better economies of scale, allowing for higher quality artifacts -- but they can also easily become stifled, reluctant to innovate for fear of disrupting the good thing they have going for themselves. Decentralized ones, by contrast, can be a mess but they democratize innovation, where a "worse" solution by some metric is in fact vastly preferred because it is much better by another metric (e.g., cost or convenience). With the collapse of Twitter, we are seeing this oscillation in spectacular fashion in a new domain: social networking. In our Oxide and Friends discussion with Kris Nova, Nova made the observation that the decentralization of the Fediverse allows for people to experiment with different ways of doing things by running their own instance -- "the control and freedom to build your own community" -- and that she particularly loved the influx of folks with large scale internet experience into the much smaller scale of running a Mastodon instance. This observation was a bit of an aha moment for me, because it made me realize the stunning resemblance that Mastodon bears to a much earlier revolution: the homebrew computing movement of the late 1970s. Homebrew computing -- as epitomized by the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley -- consisted of hobbyists designing and assembling their own computers. But like Nova and her fellow Hachydermians, these hobbyists were in fact experienced engineers; their "homebrew" was just them building for themselves, for fun. Yes, homebrew computing was fragmented and incoherent; the participants at the time were not possibly thinking that the machines that they developed would form the basis (for better and for ill!) for all future computing. But by the late 1970s, the time for radical decentralization of compute had indisputably arrived -- and its spirit would burn so bright that it would endure long after the homebrew became commercial, as viscerally expressed in Apple's iconic 1984 Superbowl ad. So it is now with social networking, where centralization is frankly long past its "Disrupt By" date. The progression here now seems painfully clear in hindsight: advertising-based models demand engagement -- and algorithms will naturally observe that when we are enraged, we stay engaged. If follows that when algorithms are promoting content that enrages us, the social network will -- either implicitly or explicitly -- select for those that are most divisive. Not only has this has encouraged us all to be more divisive (viz. "hot take" entering the lexicon), it has embraced people who are divisive to their core, elevating them to heights that frankly would have been impossible without centralized social networking. The net effect of all of this is that while we may find this engaging, we certainly don't find it to be enjoyable: I (like many, I suspect) have resented the attention of mine that it has held -- like an extraordinarily bad reality TV program that I can't stop myself from bingewatching. So while it is tempting for us to look at the destruction of Twitter as a catalyzing event, in truth I think it's merely an accelerant: the model has been broken for a long time, it's just now being speedrun to the logical extreme. (I would also add that GenZ may have already figured this out -- and that my own kids view the destruction of Twitter the way I might view a collapse of LinkedIn: with ironic detachment and some sense of disbelief that anyone could really care that much.) What does homebrew decentralized social networking mean in practice? As he has so many times before, Tim Bray has an excellent piece on this. Part of what makes decentralized social networking so appealing is that there is no algorithm deciding engagement. Rather, the stuff that's promoted -- boosted, in Mastodon's parlance -- comes purely from folks that you follow. That is, you only see a strict timeline. The effects of this are both surprising and refreshing. I have said that it's harder for things to go viral on Mastodon, but my own experience is in fact more nuanced: things can go viral because boosting is a lighter operation that retweeting -- and when they do go, they seem to go further and longer. Take, for example, Tim's post on his blog entry: as I write this, that has 295 favorites and 595 boosts. Tim has 7.1K followers on Mastodon; you would never see numbers like that on Twitter, where likes will essentially always dwarf retweets. All of this points to an even larger decentralization: that of the social networks themselves. In the last few years, some began looking at the ratio of their followers to the number that they follow, seeking to maximize it as a show of social dominance. If it needs to be said, there is a really easy way to do this: just unfollow everyone! This act feels innocent (if juvenile), but it is in fact deeply isolating: it is opting to be fed exclusively by the algorithm, losing any tether to genuine social connection. It is perhaps unsurprising that the people that I saw do this rapidly descended into dark, bizarre thinking, where they saw the world as increasingly conspiratorial and contentious. Being stingy with follows also nullifies one of the important values of social networking: hearing entirely new voices. Speaking for myself personally, this was especially important after #MeToo in 2017 and George Floyd in 2020, when new people that I followed elevated yet more voices that needed to be heard, leading to more new follows -- and more new voices in a virtuous cycle. In decentralized social networking, this virtue is elevated, if by default: there is no algorithm, so if you insist on following no one, you will see... nothing. (As my mother was fond of saying when I found an empty mailbox as a kid: "If you want to receive a letter, you need to send a letter!") There is something beautiful in this, and I would like to believe that a world in which people need to simply follow more people -- to listen more! -- will foster more temperance and less divisiveness. (And perhaps even the occasional apology?) All of this brings us back to another point that Nova made: "any large change has been uncomfortable and unexpected." This was true of the homebrew computing movement where, important as these machines historically were, they were not easy to use! We can expect some discomfort in our future, but we can also expect fruitful experimentation -- and surely some important interactions that centralized social networking never would have allowed! Finally, a programming note: Adam and I were early adopters of Twitter Spaces, turning it into our Oxide and Friends podcast. We, like Tim, are leaving, and will be moving to Discord. Fittingly, for our first Discord recording tomorrow (Monday November 28th, 5p Pacific), we will be joined by Tim to get his perspective; join us! Posted on November 27, 2022 at 2:10 pm by bmc * Permalink In: Uncategorized Leave a Reply [ ] Name, required [ ] Email (will not be published), required [ ] Website, if present [ ] [Submit Reply] Cancel reply << Previous post * Posts + Homebrew social networking + Twitter, when the wall came down + Twitter Spaces, a few weeks in + Compensation as a reflection of values + Rust after the honeymoon + The singular urgency of Ava DuVernay's 13th + The soul of a new computer company + Ex-Joyeur + Reflecting on The Soul of a New Machine + A EULA in FOSS clothing? + Open source confronts its midlife crisis + Assessing software engineering candidates + Should KubeCon be double-blind? + The relative performance of C and Rust + Falling in love with Rust + Talks I have given, conversations I have had + The sudden death and eternal life of Solaris + Reflections on Systems We Love + Submitting to Systems We Love + Systems We Love + Hacked by a bug? + dtrace.conf(16) wrap-up + Unikernels are unfit for production + Bringing clarity to containers + Requests for discussion + Software: Immaculate, fetid and grimy + The foundation of cloud-native computing + Triton: Docker and the "best of all worlds" + SmartDataCenter and the merits of being opinionated + Predicteria 2015 + 2014 in review: Docker rising + SmartDataCenter and Manta are now open source + Broadening node.js contributions + From VP of Engineering to CTO + agghist, aggzoom and aggpack + Happy 10th Birthday, DTrace! + Serving up disaster porn with Manta + Manta: From revelation to product + A systems software double-header: Surge and GOTO + Post-revolutionary open source + DTrace in the zone + Debugging node.js memory leaks + Standing up SmartDataCenter + KVM on illumos + In defense of intrapreneurialism + When magic collides + Log/linear quantizations in DTrace + The DIRT on JSConf.eu and Surge + A physician's son + DTrace, node.js and the Robinson Projection + The liberation of OpenSolaris + The node.js demographic + OpenSolaris and the power to fork + Hello Joyent! + Good-bye, Sun + Turning the corner + John Birrell + Queue, CACM, and the rebirth of the ACM + Moore's Outlaws + Eulogy for a benchmark + The Hunter becomes the Hunted + Catching disk latency in the act + On Modalities and Misadventures + Fishworks: Now it can be told + Concurrency's Shysters + Happy 5th Birthday, DTrace! + DTrace and the Palisades Interstate Parkway + Revisiting the Intel 432 + DTrace on Linux + A Tribute to Jim Gray + dtrace.conf(08) + Announcing dtrace.conf + Boom/bust cycles + On Dreaming in Code + DTrace on QNX! + DTrace, Leopard, and the business of open source + DTrace on ONTAP? + DTrace at Google + Caught on camera + On the beauty in Beautiful Code + Beautiful Code + DTrace on the Scoble Show + Alexander Morgan Gaffikin Cantrill + DTrace at Joyent + The inculcation of systems thinking + Ian Murdock joins Sun! + DTrace on Rails, reprise + DTrace on AIX? + DTrace on Mac OS X! + DTrace on FreeBSD, update + DTrace on Rails + DTrace for Linux + Welcome to ZFS! + Your Debian fell into my OpenSolaris! + Man, myth, legend + TR35 + DTrace and Ruby + DTrace on FreeBSD? + Ubuntu and DTrace break bread + DTrace and PHP, demonstrated + DTrace and PHP + Party in our room + DTrace at OSCON + Using DTrace to debug NTP + DTrace Safety + Using DTrace to understand GNOME + DTrace at JavaOne + Still more blog sifting... + Yet more blog sifting... + More blog sifting + DTrace and OpenSolaris at BayLISA + Sifting through the blogs... + OpenSolaris Sewer Tour + DTrace and Python + Your Java fell into my DTrace! + On Reverse Engineering + DTrace is not a security risk! + DTrace Tips, Tricks and Gotchas + Solaris 10 Revealed + The Economics of Software, redux + Only 17 DTracing days left! + From Russia, with love? + UNIX, circa 1984 + Jack on Solaris 10 + Solaris 10 Launch + DTrace update + Tobin Cormac Gaffikin Cantrill + The Economics of Software + DTrace on LKML + Demo'ing DTrace + Demo Perils + The DTrace integration + DTrace vs. DProbes/LTT + Whither systems research? + Ron Popeil? + Whither USENIX? 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