Wonderful! I love this thoughtful post, thank you @petros@lemmy.ml.

I will follow-up from the perpective of SocialHub, the grassroots community where we are collectively working to realize visions like these, and define the open standards on which we can build. Everyone is most welcome to join us in the quest, as we can really use all the help we can get 🤗

1. Assumptions

1.1. Communication, social activity

At SocialHub we adopted #SocialNetworkingReimagined as a rallying cry. What does that mean? It means simply: Supporting by tech that what exists in the real world. It is the social fabric that exists here that is relevant, and should inspire our tech designs. The goal should be adding value to humanity, our daily lives. The tech itself, however, provides merely an abstraction, an approximation of what we want to achieve. And we must beware what abstractions we build.

This insight is key, and it is what makes Fediverse very different than traditional social media. The latter were build as ‘tech to entertain us’, to lure us online, keep us there, and productize to maximize revenue streams (via Ads, we all know this) for shareholders. Nothing of the above is in it, and the word “social” is just a deception.

1.2. Decentralized, heterogenous communities

I fully agree, and personally feel that the concept of Community as it exists in the real world, is one of the most important things to model correctly in the interoperable fabric of the Fediverse. Community is everywhere! Community is also essential: at community-scale things work better. Remove community (which is not really possible in reality) and throw everything on a big heap, and stuff breaks down. Witness traditional social media platforms. One might simply say: Community works.

1.3. Participation, rights, equality

Exactly. The same provisions with regards to humanity and human rights that exist in the real world, apply online. Including the ongoing efforts and fight to improve those for each and every individual. Note that here is a true opportunity for tech to add value, as it can provide additional means (channels) for people to exercise their humanity and rights that do not exist offline. People who are oppressed / repressed, otherwise restricted in their freedoms.

2. Layers

2.1. Modeling (social) communication patterns

The protocols on which fedi is built - Linked Data, ActivityStreams, ActivityPub - lend themselves very well to model real-world systems (domains). Of course we are talking about highly complex systems of which reality is built. In that light the term “Pattern” is very appropriate. Patterns are abstractions that can be used in specific Contexts. There’s no one true model, it doesn’t exist. There are infinite variances. We can capture useful, context-specific models in Pattern Libraries, and by standardizing on them we can ensure interoperability in a Fediverse that ever grows.

On SocialHub I am promoting the concept of Domain Driven Design (DDD) as a means to find workable domain models and patterns. Also in Moving from silo-first to task-oriented federated app design I encourage people not to think in terms of Applications, but in what real-world process and domains they are bringing to the Fediverse, and to consider how they tie in with what already exists.

In terms of Community and DDD I am promoting the idea of “Community has no Boundary”, which is actually a fundamental paradigm as you also conclude above. Standardizing on a common abstraction for this concept therefore has applicabilty beyond fediverse.

Once we start thinking in domains, we have handholds to analyze them, break them down in constituent parts and build on top of them, like building blocks. For instance we might see that each community has a form of Governance, be it an informal group of friends, or a very complex structure like an urban/rural community (e.g. town or city), or a virtual one (e.g. the Fediverse itself). Governance then is another domain, that can stand on top of Community and be further broken down, have context-specific patterns defined.

2.2. “Community intranet”, infrastructure perspective

I consider this as (“just”) another domain to be analysed and elaborated as described above. And it is also a complex one. What parts of it are valuable to incorporate in the Fediverse itself, or stand on their own, either with help of automation or not? An example for brainstorm is Federated Moderation, but there are many others.

Right now things are still relatively ‘easy’, as our current Fediverse is for the most part a Microblogging medium. You spin up your own instance, determine blocklist/allowlist, configure some settings, and you are good to go. That changes as we tap into fedi’s potential and move towards the more task-oriented, multi-domain interoperability fabric. Then the simple model no longer scales.

2.3. “NetCommons”

I am all for exploring, and’d say: let’s bring it on, and I invite everyone to follow up on SocialHub forum and in this Lemmy brainstorming space. We need to start broad discussion on these topics, and find people willing to ideate and contribute to further elaboration.

Discussion only goes so far, and they must be followed-up with concrete projects. Part of our forum discussions is how to organize that efficiently. See also Organizing for SocialHub community empowerment.

2.4. Platform cooperatives

I had a very long (4hr) discussion with my friend Mat (@m3me), about this subject and all of the above. When it comes to cooperatives it is turtles all the way down as well. This is only logical, as cooperatives are communities too. What we think is needed is the binding fabric of all the good initiatives that are exist there in this world. A communication and collaboration medium that is the force to bring all of them together, make them visible (and discoverable in the first place). And benefiting from each other’s work, instead of reinventing wheels over and over again.

Am very happy to see more and more people explore the possibilities here, and encouraged about the growing strength of the (platform) cooperatives as a counterweight to hypercapitalism.

3. Viability

I’d say this entire idea is very comprehensive and ideally suited to scaffold minimal viable solutions from, which can be extended further as fediverse evolves.

But much of what we achieve hinges on the ways in which we manage to collaborate collectively. While the grassroots (you might also say anarchistic) nature of our decentralized approach works in our favour and is something to protect and foster, it is also working in ways that fragment our efforts and - by not reusing the work of others - makes it increasingly harder to achieve these goals.

I wrote the Analogy of Spiral Island the depict the way I see Fediverse evolution work best: all of collecting plastic bottles, turning trash into treasure, to build our floating base. The foundation on which we stand. When doing all this together, balancing the load, we can build archipelago’s that can withstand the rough seas of Bad Tech, and growing hurricanes of hypercapitalism.

With enough land area thus created, we’ll change the climate 🤗