@darius There's some things I wish I knew how to change the thinking of the Mastodon community on.

But, this said

Maybe programmer people need to figure out a clearer division in their heads on the difference between experimenting with software and experimenting on people

@darius I feel like "fuck off" is a valid result of an experiment, and they should be open to that

@darius what? I have like four fediverse software experiments going at the moment, it is SO MUCH EASIER than working with traditional social networks!

(two small ones are on my page, then I've got a couple different shell script powered bots on this instance, and two more projects in early stages)

@darius @lmorchard It so often feels like a lack of understanding about the community here.

It’s hard for people to understand how this social network is inherently different than what we have had before.

@darius This reminds me of that Alan Ginsberg poem: I saw the best minds of my generation go to California to fixate on doing more surveillance capitalism, to put ads in front of people while the state alternately burns and floods around them, starving, hysterical, naked...

@darius it’s wild how many people thing social software is only the category of “social media” these big extractive orgs have made it into

@darius yeah, unfortunately for them weird ideas aren't taught in [ new hot tech ] bootcamps. They're innate.

@darius

This Wondermark comic immediately came to mind.

@darius 👍👍

For anyone else reading this who went: "Nice -- where is this experimental software @darius has been building?" One big one is Hometown, a wonderful and thoughtful Mastodon fork, but the others are listed here: http://tinysubversions.com/projects/

@darius how can I start out? Where do I go first?

@darius

Great post. Example of this would be instructive:

""I will try out some dressed-up surveillance capitalism"

@darius Great point. I think the problem is "dressed-up surveillance capitalism" is so much of what the tech industry is doing these days! Folks have a hard time imagining other motivations or ways of building products.

@darius @anildash Darius are you suggesting that my new mastodon fork where I require people to put in their SSN and then I steal their identities to buy myself European villas isn’t going to be a wildly popular

@darius Wasn't someone posting about creating an experimental instance that runs on Haskell earlier today?

(to demonstrate how correct you are)

@darius I ran across this post by @timbray last night, which was a good reminder to THINK CAREFULLY about what we're doing and to not forget that there are actual humans here (with all the attached rights and regulations).

I'm an excited software developer interested in building some stuff around here, but I will be treading carefully and be prepared to push back on stuff that might not be well thought-out.

(@tomhannen - see this also about the lack of robust search)

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/30/Mastodon-Privacy-and-Search

@darius take no issue with your general point, but wondering if there are cohort of developers that have so internalized the mechanics of surveillance capitalism w.r.t what software is for that they can’t really get out of that box. That seems like a real problem for our shared futures.

@darius "all I was trying to do is exploit for personal gain, what?"

@darius
There was one time where I was villain of the day over @guppegroups.

It spiraled pretty quick to the point where a lot of what was being said wasn't remotely true, but in storm I did find that I'd made a mistake in coding that prevented deleted posts form being handled correctly and a mistake in judgement over post visibility, so I corrected both of those and then it was fine.

Of course it helped that Guppe is a consent-based, reactive service