Update EssayDraft.md

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Author: extratone

EssayDraft.md

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 # Non-Commercial, Open Source, and Federated Social Platforms as Effective Community Alternatives
 
-## Comparing the design philosophies, business ethics[[DB1\]](#_msocom_1) , and aggregative behavior of commercial and non-commercial, federated social media services.
+## Comparing the design philosophies, business ethics[[DB1\]](#_msocom_1) , and aggregative behavior of commercial and non-commercial, federated Social Media services.
 
-This essay seeks to examine the breadth of donor-funded, open source, federated social networks as *technical* alternatives to commercial online environments like Facebook and Twitter as measured by their users’ overall satisfaction with them as means of social interactivity over time. Following recent debates and confusion regarding the ethics in the practices of the organizations which built them and the extent of their complicity in the radical cultural consequences of digital communication surrounding the United States’ Presidential Election in 2016, it proposes that greater rhetorical and legislative attention be invested in the tangible, documented[[DB1\]](#_msocom_1) [[DB2\]](#_msocom_2) design decisions across their products’ history as the most crucial, relevant, and effective means of understanding the whole context[[DB3\]](#_msocom_3) , within which it will define *open source software development* and *federated networking* in contrast to the guarded industry establishment which the dominant services have transitioned from *disrupting* by design to entirely exemplifying thus far in the century. After examining conspicuous alterations and inexplicably silent feature additions and subtractions across the whole of social network development, as well as their eventual result’s reflections on the conscious satisfaction of individual Social Media users, it will conclude by profiling a select few communities thriving on donation-funded, collaboratively-maintained, and/or decentralized platforms as superior foundations upon which citizens of the web might rebuild their own traumatized and fragmented networks when they are ready to begin again[[DB4\]](#_msocom_4) .
+This essay seeks to examine the breadth of donor-funded, open source, federated social networks as *technical* alternatives to commercial online environments like Facebook and Twitter as measured by their users’ overall satisfaction with them as means of social interactivity over time. Following recent debates and confusion regarding the ethics in the practices of the organizations which built them and the extent of their complicity in the radical cultural consequences of digital communication surrounding the United States’ Presidential Election in 2016, it proposes that greater rhetorical and legislative attention be invested in the tangible, documented[[DB2\]](#_msocom_2) [[DB3\]](#_msocom_3) design decisions across their products’ history as the most crucial, relevant, and effective means of understanding the whole context[[DB4\]](#_msocom_4) , within which it will define *open source software development* and *federated networking* in contrast to the guarded industry establishment which the dominant services have transitioned from *disrupting* by design to entirely exemplifying thus far in the century. After examining conspicuous alterations and inexplicably silent feature additions and subtractions across the whole of social network development, as well as their eventual result’s reflections on the conscious satisfaction of individual Social Media users, it will conclude by profiling a select few communities thriving on donation-funded, collaboratively-maintained, and/or decentralized platforms as superior foundations upon which citizens of the web might rebuild their own traumatized and fragmented networks when they are ready to begin again[[DB5\]](#_msocom_5) .
 
 ## Introduction
 
-If we accept Electronic Mail as the absolute genesis of what we call “Social Media,” the term becomes inextricably linked with the history of the World Wide Web as a whole. (Edosomwan) The technical protocol we know as Email is by nature “decentralized,” “distributed,” *and* “federated” as the terms are used in this essay because it is technically unbeholden to any single transmission or client service – commercial or not – and it allows users to participate with any server installation they choose, up to and including personal email servers installed in one’s home. (Lee) In this essay, “decentralized social networks,” “distributed social platforms,” and “federated social networking” fall together under the category of “open web technologies,” which are by definition non-proprietary. (Open Web Foundation) This essay proceeds under the notable assumption that The Web as a whole “was, at its core and in its design, a democratizing technology,” and that its potential to be more “open” will remain limitless as long as its fundamental structure is at all recognizable as The Web[[DB5\]](#_msocom_5) . (Bell and Owen, The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism) In fact, using the adjectives “decentralized” and “distributed” in front of any web-native technologies could be considered oxymoronic, as The Web’s existence as an entity comprised of many interconnecting interconnections without any requisite central spaces or governing bodies remains technically unmolested, despite the encroaching would-be for-profit adjudicators Google and Facebook. (While the abrupt and total disappearance of either or both company’s total online proprietorship would be a massive event, the remainder of The Web would continue to function[[DB6\]](#_msocom_6) .)
+If we accept Electronic Mail as the absolute genesis of what we call “Social Media,” the term becomes inextricably linked with the history of the World Wide Web as a whole. (Edosomwan) The technical protocol we know as Email is by nature “decentralized,” “distributed,” *and* “federated” as the terms are used in this essay because it is technically unbeholden to any single transmission or client service – commercial or not – and it allows users to participate with any server installation they choose, up to and including personal email servers installed in one’s home. (Lee) In this essay, “decentralized social networks,” “distributed social platforms,” and “federated social networking” fall together under the category of “open web technologies,” which are by definition non-proprietary. (Open Web Foundation) This essay proceeds under the notable assumption that The Web as a whole “was, at its core and in its design, a democratizing technology,” and that its potential to be more “open” will remain limitless as long as its fundamental structure is at all recognizable as The Web[[DB6\]](#_msocom_6) . (Bell and Owen, The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism) In fact, using the adjectives “decentralized” and “distributed” in front of any web-native technologies could be considered oxymoronic, as The Web’s existence as an entity comprised of many interconnecting interconnections without any requisite central spaces or governing bodies remains technically unmolested, despite the encroaching would-be for-profit adjudicators Google and Facebook. (While the abrupt and total disappearance of either or both company’s total online proprietorship would be a massive event, the remainder of The Web would continue to function[[DB7\]](#_msocom_7) .)
 
 Email is undoubtedly a form of social *networking*, though it was the addition of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) – a parallel technology – that manifested what many scholars have offered as the first published media for the sake of socializing online. (Wildman and Obar) Four key pillars of Social Media services in their *current* form were arrived upon within an editorial issue introduction for *Telecommunications Policy*:
 
-1. The software powering Social Media services are definitive “Web 2.0” properties, as platforms “for creating and publishing content, and also [places] where content can be ‘continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion.’”
+\1.   The software powering Social Media services are definitive “Web 2.0” properties, as platforms “for creating and publishing content, and also [places] where content can be ‘continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion.’”
 
-2. Social Media services are primarily driven by *User*-Generated Content.
+\2.   Social Media services are primarily driven by *User*-Generated Content.
 
-3. Social Media services include a directorial functionality which enables users to create “profiles” to represent themselves.
+\3.   Social Media services include a directorial functionality which enables users to create “profiles” to represent themselves.
 
-4. Social Media services “facilitate the development of social networks” by the interconnection of user profiles as units.
+\4.   Social Media services “facilitate the development of social networks” by the interconnection of user profiles as units.
 
 In 1996, Poet, Grateful Dead ghostwriter, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow published a manifesto entitled *A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace* which proves an insightful abstract into the most romanticized, principled, and abstractly ideological thought of that period surrounding The Web’s future. (Barlow)
 
 Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live. We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
 
-From our retrospective, the bravado in Barlow’s declarations addressed specifically to “Governments of the Industrial World” presents an important contrast on which to reflect. Current events surrounding regulation of the tech industry reflect a general desire for *more* government intervention from both mainstream political parties in the United States. As I write, an appearance by the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee has just concluded, during which both fielded questions from senators of both mainstream parties, largely regarding “censorship” on their platforms performed by the companies themselves. (Paul) It is beyond the scope of this essay to address the particulars of this issue, so we are going to continue under the assumption that privately-owned social platforms have the constitutional right to censor, manipulate, or otherwise editorialize User-Generated Content (UGC) as­ they see fit[[DB7\]](#_msocom_7) , but it will outline specific advantages in regards to “The Censorship Issue” offered by current Federated Social platforms. The reality of Barlow’s fears in 2020: even if the United States government had intentions to regulate speech on The Web, it has consistently demonstrated an inability to comprehend the meaning of such action, much less an ability to enforce legislation within the realm of online speech.
+From our retrospective, the bravado in Barlow’s declarations addressed specifically to “Governments of the Industrial World” presents an important contrast on which to reflect. Current events surrounding regulation of the tech industry reflect a general desire for *more* government intervention from both mainstream political parties in the United States. As I write, an appearance by the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee has just concluded, during which both fielded questions from senators of both mainstream parties, largely regarding “censorship” on their platforms performed by the companies themselves. (Paul) It is beyond the scope of this essay to address the particulars of this issue, so we are going to continue under the assumption that privately-owned social platforms have the constitutional right to censor, manipulate, or otherwise editorialize User-Generated Content (UGC) as­ they see fit[[DB8\]](#_msocom_8) , but it will outline specific advantages in regards to “The Censorship Issue” offered by current Federated Social platforms. The reality of Barlow’s fears in 2020: even if the United States government had intentions to regulate speech on The Web, it has consistently demonstrated an inability to comprehend the meaning of such action, much less an ability to enforce legislation within the realm of online speech.
 
-This essay cites heavily from meta-media publications like the *Columbia Journalism Review* and Harvard’s *Nieman Lab*, as well as from several individual articles oriented around the subject of social media’s impact on the way news is consumed, skewing its bias toward the media industry in many ways. I pursued this direction in order to make what I believe to be an original suggestion: Federated Social Platforms are ideal solutions to this issue, too, largely because of their widespread omission of any non-linear (algorithmic) content prioritization in timelines. Much like Twitter’s original design, content on services like Mastodon and Diaspora appears in a purely-chronological “Timeline,” which – if still present – is now a highly-obscured option in mainstream proprietary networks[[DB8\]](#_msocom_8) . (Romano) 
+This essay cites heavily from meta-media publications like the *Columbia Journalism Review* and Harvard’s *Nieman Lab*, as well as from several individual articles oriented around the subject of social media’s impact on the way news is consumed, skewing its bias toward the media industry in many ways. I pursued this direction in order to make what I believe to be an original suggestion: Federated Social Platforms are ideal solutions to this issue, too, largely because of their widespread omission of any non-linear (algorithmic) content prioritization in timelines. Much like Twitter’s original design, content on services like Mastodon and Diaspora appears in a purely-chronological “Timeline,” which – if still present – is now a highly-obscured option in mainstream proprietary networks[[DB9\]](#_msocom_9) . (Romano) Inevitably, it discusses recent efforts by Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to reform aggregative processes within their functions as news-sharing services as it cites the research critics have referenced in response.
+
+## Origins[[DB10\]](#_msocom_10) 
+
+While user-maintained Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) like Usenet and Fidonet established Open Web forums in the 1980s, a proprietary parallel called CompuServe migrated from its original implementation as a “business-oriented mainframe computer communication solution” to the public domain. (Shah) As of Fall 1994, CompuServe charged $8.95 per month ($15.94, adjusted for inflation) for “unlimited use of its standard services,” which included “news, sports, weather, travel, reference libraries, stock quotes, games and limited electronic mail,” and between $4.80 and $22.80 per *hour* ($8.55 to $40.61, adjusted for inflation) for use of its “’extended’ services,” including a variety of discussion forums established by topic. (Lewis) In the 1990s, it would be joined by competing internet service providers Prodigy and America Online
+
+As Bulletin Board Systems were built atop Email, Twitter was built atop SMS (text messaging.)
 
 ------
 
 
 
- [[DB1\]](#_msoanchor_1)If I were to spend significant time dwelling on *any* legal or otherwise mob actions as means of progress toward understanding, it must be for *understanding*, alone. That is to say, *"justice"* has nothing to do with it.
+ [[DB1\]](#_msoanchor_1)Actually, no - this essay will *not* be handling ethical/ideological/political thinking (beyond a focus on *alt* intellectual property, perhaps.) It is actually worth explicitly expressing this design in the essay, itself, for the sake of framing its simple necessity. From the driest, least-ideological perspective, commercial social media services are *technically* inferior to their decentralized, open source counterparts *if we measure the overall performance of such a service by the satisfaction of its users* rather than the respective business' ability to generate revenue.
+
+
 
+ [[DB2\]](#_msoanchor_2)If I were to spend significant time dwelling on *any* legal or otherwise mob actions as means of progress toward understanding, it must be for *understanding*, alone. That is to say, *"justice"* has nothing to do with it.
 
 
- [[DB2\]](#_msoanchor_2)Given that Facebook, specifically, has become the most powerful influence on the human intellect in its history as a species and yet also remains one of the least-transparent technology companies in existence in terms of publicly-available documentation, surely the American Justice system would not be taboo in at least *considering* making an exemption of the IP laws that allow them to remain obscured and doing so with the public's ear.
+
+ [[DB3\]](#_msoanchor_3)Given that Facebook, specifically, has become the most powerful influence on the human intellect in its history as a species and yet also remains one of the least-transparent technology companies in existence in terms of publicly-available documentation, surely the American Justice system would not be taboo in at least *considering* making an exemption of the IP laws that allow them to remain obscured and doing so with the public's ear.
 
 
 
 If a single company had managed to buy *one third* of *all dry land on Earth*, only to leave it ravaged round-the-clock by tremendous wild fires, would we not feel justified in ignoring the ancient parchment barring us from *searching company land without a warrant* to at least take a look around for what was starting them?
 
 
 
- [[DB3\]](#_msoanchor_3)Another important tool in understanding the context would be to emphasize the parallels between the sort of innovation these companies were doing in their very beginning - as *disruptors* - with the superior innonvation coming now from young, creative developers - as *disruptors* - but in an actually-admirable way instead of an easy-to-make-fun-of one.
+ [[DB4\]](#_msoanchor_4)Another important tool in understanding the context would be to emphasize the parallels between the sort of innovation these companies were doing in their very beginning - as *disruptors* - with the superior innonvation coming now from young, creative developers - as *disruptors* - but in an actually-admirable way instead of an easy-to-make-fun-of one.
 
 
 
 *You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself (and your hundreds of thousands of employees) out-coded by a single, strange young German man.*
 
 
 
- [[DB4\]](#_msoanchor_4)Obviously, we're going to implicitly suggest that Web 2.0/commercialized social media is far beyond repair and needs to be purged.
+ [[DB5\]](#_msoanchor_5)Obviously, we're going to implicitly suggest that Web 2.0/commercialized social media is far beyond repair and needs to be purged.
+
+
+
+ [[DB6\]](#_msoanchor_6)This definitely needs a reword.
 
 
 
- [[DB5\]](#_msoanchor_5)This definitely needs a reword.
+ [[DB7\]](#_msoanchor_7)Potential topic addendum: Amazon Web Services. 
 
 
 
- [[DB6\]](#_msoanchor_6)Potential topic addendum: Amazon Web Services. 
+ [[DB8\]](#_msoanchor_8)This probably requires review.
 
 
 
- [[DB7\]](#_msoanchor_7)This probably requires review.
+ [[DB9\]](#_msoanchor_9)Address this in detail in the body of the essay, including an explanation of Twitter’s Lists feature.
 
 
 
- [[DB8\]](#_msoanchor_8)Address this in detail in the body of the essay, including an explanation of Twitter’s Lists feature.
+ [[DB10\]](#_msoanchor_10)Alternative title: “Genesis”