Sure! And I'm sorry in advance for the book, I'm literally around here studying this thing for this reason.

So it might help to understand Soviet as a pre Bolshevik term more resembling 'council' than a unitary block like a nation.

In the fediverse this is instances, they stand up, enroll users and give them voices. And if you graph a lot of the ethos it's 1:1 from the ground up. For instance, you might say your posts here, once contributed are owned by everyone. You might also notice those with knowledge about the platform are maybe operating as a vanguard, you pick top or bottom (users and posts, or instances and software).

Historically part of the problem with distributed systems of independent operating electors is how they're vulnerable either to local tribalism, warlordism, and a need for some degree of functional central control of core ethos.

The pile of 'free market' people mad at the phone company evolved into the modern Internet without a model, just chaos and genius. If the next wave is reactionary communists, we're looking at something very different, but I'm not convinced it won't mutate.

if this is communism the platform: I'm genuinely curious what crowd sourced central planning offers. The people who have studied that system, and it's problems, are the ones in who have started the project. And they started with 'to each for each' as it's core principle, but it's easy to fork any foss project.

Part of what you learn when you start to read lefty philosophy is that they are (by volume and diversity), their own biggest critics. So there is going to be a plethora of times where we figure out of this is going to go pear shaped, and a ton of good or bad lessons that could come out of the canon.

So in reverse order:

The fediverse to me will always be an expanding niche, I don't think the network effect social growth works without cash. If your looking to measure by quality of dialogue instead of growth I think this presents the best option. There's plenty of economic benefit beyond ad sales from good discourse.

Instead you're looking a million AOL install disk moments until ubiquity, if it doesn't fall apart first.

Instances shutting down is actually markedly like the way famine, war or anything else beyond my control as your average user would have pushed us to other reps. You can pick up and move, but how much of your stuff? Open question. Long term it should be feasible for your own instance to fire up, fetch messages and close again, so in theory you could keep all of it.

Now hardest: scale and cost, which I'd really contend are the same problem. If you look at how such systems are introduced you find advocates for vanguard, reps, workers tribunals and nothing quite ever sticks without some lingering problems. And the reality is the web of our modern universe isn't going to independently operate with anything.

I don't think anything but a charitable model gets it off the ground, the same way I don't think the Internet is a thing without the crazy good folks running BBS boards. But it should be institutional as broadly as possible if you want long term success and trust in platform.

I think perhaps you may be confusing nobody to assert ownership of the bits, with the supposition that there is no cost on delivery.

Then they'll certainly have a lot more centralized control in mind than I would. But I've been too too many punk concerts and heard poser, and seen too many misplaced lobs of entryism to dismiss anyone behind a pejorative. Especially while the free speech instances are running the same software right along with beehaw.

And more importantly some people can be smart at one thing and dumb elsewhere, just look at Ben Carson.

I think you misunderstood socialism if centralized control was what you took from it. The are both centralized and decentralized varieties, the operation is in common good (or purpose). Most of the organizing principles at a microlevel you can find in non profits, co-ops etc, none of which demand any market conditions at all. Governments maintaining socialist claims often muck this up.

The phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is definitely in line with the philosophy at play. There's not a lot of profit motive to be found. It didn't even have to be divorced from self interest since we all want a better platform.

I can respect a view that software is not politics, but the intentions to it are certainly wrapped in expression. Here the primary controllers were corporations of your bits and they are put sociocratically back in your hands like it or not.

But importantly you can't take your ball and go home. What you contribute here lives in a zillion caches.

Edit: 'r'

Inter-instance relations are ABSOLUTELY political in their own right.

For example db0 was/is working on some kind of add on to lemmy that would automatically defederate certain servers based on certain factors and a circle of trust or something (better explanation here https://dbzer0.com/blog/overseer-a-fediverse-chain-of-trust/ )

Anyway many of us admins were concerned about who controlled that system, how it could be abused, etc. it got pretty well, political, in the admin group chat.

In any situation where there's a power dynamic- it is political. Software maintainers absolutely have some degree of power.