- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Warren: "Here’s how we can break up Big Tech"
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 8, 2019

March 8, 2019

*Here’s how we can break up Big Tech* /Elizabeth Warren/ Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn’t exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world. It’s a great story — but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets. In the 1990s, Microsoft — the tech giant of its time — was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government’s antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge. The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive — which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren’t we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing? Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation. [...] continua qui: https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da3…

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Re: [nexa] Fw: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta
by Diego Giorio March 8, 2019

March 8, 2019

Trovi tutto aquesto link: https://e-privacy.winstonsmith.org/ e-privacy XXV — Nuove tecnologie di controllo<https://e-privacy.winstonsmith.org/> È aperto il Call for Participation di e-privacy 2019 spring edition. Il Progetto Winston Smith e l’Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights sono lieti di invitarti come relatore all’edizione primaverile di e-privacy, che si terrà a Torino il 6 e 7 giugno 2019 (sì, proprio giovedì e venerdì, una piccola variazione rispetto alle oramai abituali giornate di venerdì e ... e-privacy.winstonsmith.org A presto D. ________________________________ From: Aldo Pedico <a.pedico(a)teleion.it> Sent: Friday, March 8, 2019 11:30 AM To: Diego Giorio Subject: R: [nexa] Fw: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta Ciao Diego, mi invii i dettagli dell’evento? Grazie Aldo Da: nexa [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di Diego Giorio Inviato: venerdì 8 marzo 2019 10:39 A: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Oggetto: [nexa] Fw: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta Buongorno a tutti Ricordo che fra qualche giorno scadrà il cfp di e-privacy, che stavolta si svolgerà a Torino. Mi raccomando agli amici nexiani: partecipiamo numerosi, visto che l'evento arriva nella nostra città! Saluti e buon WE a tutti D. ________________________________ From: Winston Smith <segreteria(a)winstonsmith.info<mailto:segreteria@winstonsmith.info>> Sent: Thursday, March 7, 2019 9:31 PM To: Diego Giorio Subject: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta WINSTON SMITH<http://pws.winstonsmith.org> | CENTRO HERMES<http://hermescenter.org> [http://lists.xed.it/media/images/b0a262b9ddfc2b863a4c3b08051ffe34.png] 6 e 7 giugno 2019 Aula Ciminiera del Politecnico di Torino Corso Castelfidardo 39 10129 Torino «Nuove tecnologie di controllo» Il social scoring oltre ogni immaginabile profilazione e-privacy XXV [Biblioteca Salaborsa] Parleremo di nuove tecnologie di controllo, ovvero di come il nascente sistema di social scoring vada oltre ogni pensabile profilazione. Durante la precedente edizione di e-privacy l'attenzione del pubblico si è particolarmente accesa quando si è discusso non semplicemente di cookie ma di altri metodi di profilazione indiretti ed infinitamente più potenti; a molti è sembrato sorprendente quante informazioni si possano ricavare - anche senza usare cookie - mediante il semplice accesso ad una pagina di un sito. In effetti, se su Facebook si mette "mi piace" alla foto di un tenero gattino, l'informazione tracciata non è solamente il fatto che piacciono i gattini, ma che in quel momento l'utente è sveglio, sta navigando, è in un certo luogo ed ha intorno determinati altri smartphone, usa un certo browser, in una certa lingua, con certi font. Non sono informazioni secondarie: sono stati segnalati casi di persone che si sono viste rifiutare un prestito dalla banca solo perché sul computer avevano font normalmente usati dai casinò on-line e venivano quindi ritenute a rischio. La profilazione, finora, è sempre stata presentata soprattutto come un sistema per offrirci prodotti e servizi in linea con i nostri gusti e con le necessità del momento; con i nuovi sviluppi, questa sta diventando la parte meno significativa e meno inquietante dell'utilizzo dei dati di navigazione, mentre, in parallelo, si stanno diffondendo tecnologie che analizzano i nostri comportamenti anche al di fuori dell’attività on-line. La profilazione, come anche il caso di Cambridge Analytica ha dimostrato, è diventata ormai un metodo di controllo sociale attivo, diffuso ed individualizzato. Il governo cinese sta sponsorizzando la creazione di un sistema che, attraverso app ed altri strumenti di controllo, calcola un social scoring, al fine di premiare i cittadini virtuosi con sconti, libero accesso a pubblici servizi, facilitazioni di viaggio e simili, mentre i cittadini meno ligi non possono viaggiare sui treni ad alta velocità, sono penalizzati nell'acceso ai pubblici servizi, oppure li pagano in misura maggiore. Tra qualche luce e molte ombre, queste tecnologie aprono la possibilità di un controllo sociale su larga scala, che permette ad uno Stato di definire cos'è un comportamento "corretto" per i suoi cittadini e di controllare costantemente che tutti si conformino ad esso. Altre nazioni, ad esempio il Venezuela, stanno studiando la possibilità di implementare sistemi analoghi, ma in tutto il mondo già oggi sono largamente utilizzati algoritmi pubblici che analizzano i nostri dati per concedere mutui, assegnare appalti, assumere impiegati ed in generale per prendere decisioni che impattano sensibilmente sulla vita dei singoli, e come conseguenza sulla società in generale. Oltretutto l'opacità di questi metodi è totale; chi si vede rifiutare un posto di lavoro o un prestito, normalmente non è in grado di conoscere le ragioni alla base della decisione, i parametri che gli algoritmi usano per calcolarla, i valori "desiderabili" di questi parametri e la provenienza dei dati che sono stati utilizzati per la decisione. Il convegno Sin dal 2002 ad e-privacy si sono confrontate le tematiche di un mondo sempre più digitale ed interconnesso, nel quale le possibilità di comunicazione ed accesso alla conoscenza crescono continuamente, come pure crescono le possibilità di tecnocontrollo degli individui sin nei più intimi dettagli. L’approccio è interdisciplinare; dagli specialisti in informatica ai legali che si occupano di nuove tecnologie, dagli psicologi agli educatori, dagli operatori privati a quanti operano nel settore pubblico ed istituzionale. Le proposte d'intervento Il comitato organizzatore valuterà proposte in ambito tecnologico, legale, istituzionale e giurisprudenziale, delle scienze sociali, della filosofia, dell'informatica e dell'attivismo digitale, della privacy, della non-discriminazione, della sorveglianza e dei diritti civili digitali. Verranno prese in considerazione anche proposte su temi diversi da quello dell'edizione, purché di interesse e di attualità. Presenta ora la tua proposta cliccando qui<https://e-privacy.winstonsmith.org/e-privacy-XXV-proposta.html> Scade il 15 Marzo Scrivi a Winston Smith<mailto:segreteria@winstonsmith.org> | Unsubscribe<https://lists.xed.it/email/unsubscribe/5c818dd46ea00> Progetto winston smith HERMES CENTER FOR TRANSPARENCY AND DIGITAL HUMAN RIGHTS

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BBC News - Uber 'not criminally liable' for self-driving death
by Diego Latella March 8, 2019

March 8, 2019

q.e.d. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47468391 <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47468391> DL Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat

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Fw: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta
by Diego Giorio March 8, 2019

March 8, 2019

Buongorno a tutti Ricordo che fra qualche giorno scadrà il cfp di e-privacy, che stavolta si svolgerà a Torino. Mi raccomando agli amici nexiani: partecipiamo numerosi, visto che l'evento arriva nella nostra città! Saluti e buon WE a tutti D. ________________________________ From: Winston Smith <segreteria(a)winstonsmith.info> Sent: Thursday, March 7, 2019 9:31 PM To: Diego Giorio Subject: e-privacy: ancora qualche giorno per mandare la tua proposta WINSTON SMITH<http://pws.winstonsmith.org> | CENTRO HERMES<http://hermescenter.org> [http://lists.xed.it/media/images/b0a262b9ddfc2b863a4c3b08051ffe34.png] 6 e 7 giugno 2019 Aula Ciminiera del Politecnico di Torino Corso Castelfidardo 39 10129 Torino «Nuove tecnologie di controllo» Il social scoring oltre ogni immaginabile profilazione e-privacy XXV [Biblioteca Salaborsa] Parleremo di nuove tecnologie di controllo, ovvero di come il nascente sistema di social scoring vada oltre ogni pensabile profilazione. Durante la precedente edizione di e-privacy l'attenzione del pubblico si è particolarmente accesa quando si è discusso non semplicemente di cookie ma di altri metodi di profilazione indiretti ed infinitamente più potenti; a molti è sembrato sorprendente quante informazioni si possano ricavare - anche senza usare cookie - mediante il semplice accesso ad una pagina di un sito. In effetti, se su Facebook si mette "mi piace" alla foto di un tenero gattino, l'informazione tracciata non è solamente il fatto che piacciono i gattini, ma che in quel momento l'utente è sveglio, sta navigando, è in un certo luogo ed ha intorno determinati altri smartphone, usa un certo browser, in una certa lingua, con certi font. Non sono informazioni secondarie: sono stati segnalati casi di persone che si sono viste rifiutare un prestito dalla banca solo perché sul computer avevano font normalmente usati dai casinò on-line e venivano quindi ritenute a rischio. La profilazione, finora, è sempre stata presentata soprattutto come un sistema per offrirci prodotti e servizi in linea con i nostri gusti e con le necessità del momento; con i nuovi sviluppi, questa sta diventando la parte meno significativa e meno inquietante dell'utilizzo dei dati di navigazione, mentre, in parallelo, si stanno diffondendo tecnologie che analizzano i nostri comportamenti anche al di fuori dell’attività on-line. La profilazione, come anche il caso di Cambridge Analytica ha dimostrato, è diventata ormai un metodo di controllo sociale attivo, diffuso ed individualizzato. Il governo cinese sta sponsorizzando la creazione di un sistema che, attraverso app ed altri strumenti di controllo, calcola un social scoring, al fine di premiare i cittadini virtuosi con sconti, libero accesso a pubblici servizi, facilitazioni di viaggio e simili, mentre i cittadini meno ligi non possono viaggiare sui treni ad alta velocità, sono penalizzati nell'acceso ai pubblici servizi, oppure li pagano in misura maggiore. Tra qualche luce e molte ombre, queste tecnologie aprono la possibilità di un controllo sociale su larga scala, che permette ad uno Stato di definire cos'è un comportamento "corretto" per i suoi cittadini e di controllare costantemente che tutti si conformino ad esso. Altre nazioni, ad esempio il Venezuela, stanno studiando la possibilità di implementare sistemi analoghi, ma in tutto il mondo già oggi sono largamente utilizzati algoritmi pubblici che analizzano i nostri dati per concedere mutui, assegnare appalti, assumere impiegati ed in generale per prendere decisioni che impattano sensibilmente sulla vita dei singoli, e come conseguenza sulla società in generale. Oltretutto l'opacità di questi metodi è totale; chi si vede rifiutare un posto di lavoro o un prestito, normalmente non è in grado di conoscere le ragioni alla base della decisione, i parametri che gli algoritmi usano per calcolarla, i valori "desiderabili" di questi parametri e la provenienza dei dati che sono stati utilizzati per la decisione. Il convegno Sin dal 2002 ad e-privacy si sono confrontate le tematiche di un mondo sempre più digitale ed interconnesso, nel quale le possibilità di comunicazione ed accesso alla conoscenza crescono continuamente, come pure crescono le possibilità di tecnocontrollo degli individui sin nei più intimi dettagli. L’approccio è interdisciplinare; dagli specialisti in informatica ai legali che si occupano di nuove tecnologie, dagli psicologi agli educatori, dagli operatori privati a quanti operano nel settore pubblico ed istituzionale. Le proposte d'intervento Il comitato organizzatore valuterà proposte in ambito tecnologico, legale, istituzionale e giurisprudenziale, delle scienze sociali, della filosofia, dell'informatica e dell'attivismo digitale, della privacy, della non-discriminazione, della sorveglianza e dei diritti civili digitali. Verranno prese in considerazione anche proposte su temi diversi da quello dell'edizione, purché di interesse e di attualità. Presenta ora la tua proposta cliccando qui<https://e-privacy.winstonsmith.org/e-privacy-XXV-proposta.html> Scade il 15 Marzo Scrivi a Winston Smith<mailto:segreteria@winstonsmith.org> | Unsubscribe<https://lists.xed.it/email/unsubscribe/5c818dd46ea00> Progetto winston smith HERMES CENTER FOR TRANSPARENCY AND DIGITAL HUMAN RIGHTS

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BBC - Huawei: The story of a controversial company
by Luigi Scorca March 6, 2019

March 6, 2019

Vi segnalo questo articolo della BBC (In inglese) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Huawei "In 2006, Beijing pledged $200m to build the headquarters. Completed in 2012, everything was custom-built by the Chinese - including a state-of-the-art computer system. [..] But in January 2018, French newspaper Le Monde Afrique dropped a bombshell. It reported that the AU’s computer system had been compromised. The newspaper, citing multiple sources, said that for five years, between the hours of midnight and 0200, data from the AU’s servers was transferred more than 8,000km away - to servers in Shanghai." Luigi -- Luigi Scorca Mob: +39 347 85 22 221 Mail: luigi.scorca(a)gmail.com

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Can we make artificial intelligence ethical?
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 6, 2019

March 6, 2019

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/2019/01/23/can-we-make-arti… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Artificial intelligence nowhere near the real thing, says German AI chief
by Enrico Nardelli March 6, 2019

March 6, 2019

Wolfgang Wahlster, the computer scientist who has just ended a 20 year stint as CEO of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, that greatly underestimates the distance between AI and its human counterpart. We’re years away from a game changer in the field, he believes. “I always warn people, one should be a bit careful with what they claim. Every day you work on AI, you see the big gap between human intelligence and AI,” https://sciencebusiness.net/news/artificial-intelligence-nowhere-near-real-… -- EN ===================================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Dipartimento di Matematica - Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it home page: http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/blog/enardelli/ http://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ ===================================================================== --

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UK’s cash system ‘on the verge of collapse’, report finds | Money | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo March 6, 2019

March 6, 2019

Chi paga l'infrastruttura del contante residuo in una cashless economy? <https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/mar/06/uk-cash-system-on-the-verge-o…> More than 8 million UK adults would struggle to cope in a cashless society, according to a major report which claims that the country’s “cash infrastructure” is in danger of collapsing. With Britons increasingly turning to digital payments, and bank branches and ATMs closing, the Access to Cash Review said companies and organisations providing “essential” services should be required to ensure that consumers can continue to pay by cash. The review is funded by cash machine network Link, but is independent from it, and is chaired by the former head of the Financial Ombudsman Service Natalie Ceeney, with other members including Richard Lloyd, the former executive director of consumer group Which?. Ceeney said that “17% of the UK population – over 8 million adults – would struggle to cope in a cashless society”. Debit cards last year officially overtook notes and coins as the most popular form of payment in the UK for the first time, and the review’s report predicted that cash could fall to just 10% of all payments within the next 15 years. It also called on the government, regulators and banks to “act now or risk leaving millions behind”. A spokesman for the review claimed the UK’s cash system was “on the verge of collapse”. [...]

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Alyssa Rosenzweig – The Federation Fallacy
by Alberto Cammozzo March 6, 2019

March 6, 2019

<https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html> The Federation Fallacy 3 Mar 2019 Throughout the free software community, an unbridled aura of justified mistrust fills the air: mistrust of large corporations, mistrust of governments, and of course, mistrust of proprietary software. Each mistrust is connected by a critical thread: centralisation. Thus, permeating the community are calls for decentralisation. To attack the information silos, corporate conglomerates, and governmental surveillance, decentralisation calls for individuals to host servers for their own computing, rather than defaulting on the servers of those rich in data. In the decentralised dream, every user hosts their own server. Every toddler and grandmother is required to become their own system administrator. This dream is an accessibility nightmare, for if advanced technical skills are the price to privacy, all but the technocratic elite are walled off from freedom. Federation is a compromise. Rather than everyone hosting their own systems, ideally every technically able person would host a system for themselves and for their friends, and everyone’s systems could connect. If I’m technically able, I can host an “instance” not only for myself but also my loved ones around me. In theory, through federation my friends and family could take back their computing from the conglomerates, by trusting me and ceding power to me to cover the burden of their system administration. What a dream. Federated systems are all around us. The classic example is e-mail. I host my own email server, so I have the privilege of managing my own email address. According to the ideas of decentralisation, for an e-mail user to be fully free, they should host their own e-mail server. But do you host your own mail server? Do your friends? Does your grandmother? Setting up a mail server often is time-consuming, ad hoc, and brittle; despite technical literacy and the hours I poured in, I continue to have problems with my e-mail delivery. Of course, e-mail is technically federated, but for pragmatic reasons, most people’s personal e-mail is controlled by a centralised service like Google Gmail. Is Google a small individual you know personally? There’s no surprise large companies administer most e-mail accounts; it is the expected consequence of economies of scale. Due to the overhead of running a mail server, it makes economic sense to centralise. Decentralisation, while certainly possible, is impractical for email; accordingly, there are considerable privacy and censorship risks for many e-mail users, submitting to the rules of a massive service provider. But maybe, due to its configuration complexity, e-mail could be an outlier. What about the federated chat protocol, XMPP? Well? How many people do you know who run their own XMPP server? The protocol family claims over one billion users; you may unwittingly be one of them. But almost every one of those users is connecting not to the federated, open paradise, but rather to a walled garden. Of course, a few users connect to their personal server via a free software client, but most connect to Facebook’s walled garden, via Facebook’s app: WhatsApp. Yes, internally the ever-popular, ever-proprietary WhatsApp was once a federated protocol. Inside WhatsApp is XMPP, but WhatsApp users are isolated from non-WhatsApp users. Likewise, users preferring free software for practical or ideological reasons are isolated from their friends on WhatsApp. Federation was baked into the genes of this protocol, but while the original “freedom-preserving” chat system claims a few technically advanced adherents, the freedom of the masses was unfortunately lost to corporate interests. Chat protocols aside, arguably the web itself is a classic, if overlooked, example of a federated system. The web, as a collection of interlinked websites backed by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, contains the two essential features of a federated, decentralised system. Every author is their own publisher with their own web server, decentralising the web. Similarly, authors are encouraged to link their pages to other pages on other parts of the Internet, hosted by other authors, and in exchange, other pages tend to link to them, creating an interconnected – federated? – system. The fabric of the Internet itself follows the decentralised technical structure. Yet the web is no friend of freedom. The overwhelming majority of web traffic is to commercial silos without users’ best interests at heart. It is certainly possible, if complicated, to host a web server oneself. But practically, the English-speaking web is undeniably centralised around Silicon Valley enterprises, the same enterprises that pose considerable threats to user freedom without the possibility of informed consent. Decentralisation specifically seeks to push back against these Internet masters, yet these centralised giants are operating within the technical framework of a decentralised system. Admittedly, the web is nebulous as an example of federation. What do we make of Mastodon, a freedom-respecting federated alternative to Twitter, whose network of servers hosted by diverse individuals and organizations is lovingly known as the “fediverse”? Mastodon is perhaps the most promising example of a federated system staying true to its grassroots ideals, so far lacking the tell-tale signs of large-scale corporate tampering. If any federated system can work, let it be Mastodon. But let’s look at the data first. In comparison to some other federated systems, a comprehensive list of federated Mastodon instances (servers) is available for browsing online at instances.social. Some non-Mastodon microblogging services are mixed in, as they federate with Mastodon, knitting together the larger “fediverse”. Nevertheless, some simple scripting allows the machine-readable list to be downloaded and processed. Analysing the data, after filtering out instances with no users, we see there are 3070 listed instances. So far, sounds good – that is 3070x more theoretically independent instances than Twitter. Looking at user count, we see there are just under two-million user accounts registered. In other words, there is an average of 642 users per instance. Already the federation fantasy is feeling shaky. How could one system administrator maintain close friendships with over six-hundred people? How could so many people trust a single administrator with their private status updates and direct messages? It seems improbable, if not impossible. With the amount of time required to maintain intimacy with 640 people, there would be no time left in a day to maintain a large Mastodon instance! But what’s really striking about the data is the distribution of users across the instances. In the federation fantasy, given 3,070 instances, we hope that 50% of the user base is spread across 1,535 instances, and the other 50% across the other 1535 instances. That is, in fantasy land, every instance would host an equal number of users (642). In reality, guess how many instances encompass half of the user base. Maybe 1,000? Alright, there are some big instances in there, so perhaps 100? Well, there are a lot of really tiny instances mixed in, so possibly only 20? The answer? Three. Just three instances encompass 50.8% of users. The most popular instance in the Mastodon universe sports over a half a million users. The runner up is mastodon.social, the flagship instance run by the developer, clocking in at just over three-hundred thousand. These two instances alone encompass 41.2% of users. It is true that many Mastodon users have multiple accounts spread out across different instances, so it may be more reliable to check by a metric like number of status updates. Unfortunately, results there are similar: half of reported status updates correspond to a mere five instances. Overall, Mastodon certainly encourages people to use its technical ability to host their own instances for themselves, their friends, and their shared interest groups. True, federation technically allows all 3,070 instances to connect to each other, subject to the policies of each instance owner. But practically, what have we achieved when the typical Mastodon user has an account on one of just three instances? If we define its success by decentralisation, unfortunately – unsurprisingly – Mastodon has failed. Unless you use an obscure micro instance, what good is decentralisation anyway? Mastodon users per instance Visually, the above graph shows user count on the Y-axis, where the X-axis corresponds to the instance popularity ranking. So, the most popular instance is the left-most point, the second most popular instance is a hair to the right of it, and all the way on the right is the tiniest instance. In total, the plot shows the distribution of users on (primarily Mastodon) instances In the federated ideal, where all instances are created equal, the graph should be a horizontal line showing each instance with 642 people. Of course, due to substantial inequality between instance size, we expect to see a power distribution, with a spike on the left that quickly falls and tapers out. Power laws govern much of the real world; many phenomena behave according to this unequal distribution. But look at that graph. Calling this distribution a power law would be generous to say the least. There is a massive spike corresponding to just a few instances, and the rest of the graph is nearly invisible to the naked eye, so tiny and so overshadowed by just a few giants. Frankly, this distribution is closer to the Dirac delta function than a power law. Ultimately, there are two types of production-quality networked systems: those designed for centralisation, and those designed for federation. But from the tales of e-mail, XMPP, the web, and Mastodon, it is clear that federation does not mean decentralisation. Each federated system analyzed above only became production-quality and accessible to the masses at the immense cost of centralisation. Each service retains the theoretical ability to federate with tiny self-hosted servers, but the vast majority of users are de facto concentrated about a few major servers. E-mail concentrated on Google, XMPP concentrated on Facebook, the web concentrated on Silicon Valley, and Mastodon concentrated onto a few flagship instances. Indeed, it seems all networked systems tend towards centralisation as the natural consequence of growth. Some systems, both legitimate and illegitimate, are intentionally designed for centralisation. Other systems, like those in the Mastodon universe, are specifically designed to avoid centralisation, but even these succumb to the centralised black hole as their user bases grow towards the event horizon. Consequently, it is not enough to build systems that “can” federate: all four case studies above can federate but de facto stay centralised. Nor is it enough to “save ourselves”, self-hosting our own decentralised digital islands, while ignoring the reality of the masses. We cannot close our eyes and rest, content with freedom in our personal bubble, ignoring the reality of our non-technical friends and family who do not enjoy the same luxuries of privacy and free speech. We cannot ignore their struggles after resolving our own, justifying our behaviour to ourselves given that there is no technical obstacle to their digital freedom “if only” they abandoned their convenience and dedicated themselves to learning system administration and software debugging. With or without decentralised free software, within the technocracy our non-technical loved ones are barred from liberty over their own lives. Decentralisation is certainly better than dependence on centralised corporate conglomerates, but for whom? A society free for the few is a society in chains. Nevertheless, as we mourn the centralised fates of these promising systems and yearn to improve the future, we must understand that centralisation is inevitable. For those of us immersed in the decentralised dream, this fact is uncomfortable to face, but until we do, we will never move on to build systems that are truly free. The fact is, as networked systems designers our choice is rarely “concentrated power or dispersed power?”, but rather “where will power centralise?” If we quixotically opt to cede power over our creations via decentralisation, inevitably someone else will fill the power gap. Alas, naive decentralisation is an experiment in anarchy. Anarchy, whether real or cyber, is a zone where life is “nasty, brutish, and short”; there is no guarantee of true freedom. In any anarchy, soon the power hungry will fill in the void. Remember, history teaches these new despots often establish totalitarian regimes no better than those originally overturned. Did microblogging suffer a parallel fate? If the explosion of Mastodon dethroned Twitter, it did so at the cost of establishing a new instance as the new king. For freedom’s sake, face the facts: federation is dead. But there is hope. In political history, the birth of free nations typically contains three stages: dictatorship, briefly overthrown to anarchy, reformed to democracy. Democracy balances the will of the people with the efficiency of centralisation. Democratic freedom is incompatible with an oligarchic authority, accumulating power imposing their will on others. But neither is democracy a free-for-all; some degree of centralisation is acceptable and even useful for protecting liberty, provided it’s centralised around a legitimate, democratic institution. So it is in cyberspace. As the Internet blossomed into chains, the lucrative, exploitative practices of the Silicon Valley giants created digital totalitarianism, a system offering profits for the few at the expense of freedom of the many: information dictatorship. The decentralisation movement understands this oppression as a consequence of unjust organized power, and platforms like Mastodon are successfully overthrowing this information dictatorship, in its absence creating information anarchy. While the story does not end with anarchy, it need not end with a return to the status quo or to the aristocracy of the technical elite. No, in the power vacuum left by the victory of decentralisation lies the opportunity to create something new, something beautiful, something promising true digital freedom for everyone. After the fall of the information dictatorship, balancing in our fingertips is the precious opportunity to create information democracy. Like its real world counterpart, information democracy is partially centralised for efficiency but encourages community participation for legitimacy. This primarily centralised democratic model is the only realistic option, evident from the structure of free nations in the real world. Yes, there is centralisation required, but we cannot continue to paint centralisation as the virtual bogeyman. Spreading fear is a natural knee jerk reaction to the illegitimate corporatocracy, but we cannot succumb to fear. Whether physical or virtual, centralisation is not evil; it is merely morally neutral. That said, when we ultimately do centralise, we must ensure that the central organization belongs to us, the users, not to special interests. On this point, both corporate and decentralised services alike fail. Yes, corporate interests are oligarchies, bowing to money, but so too is the decentralised technocracy, bowing to arcane technical know-how. In a truly democratic digital space, participation must be accessible to everyone, not just those with money or expertise. If my grandmother cannot participate in the administration of the technology she uses, her best interests may not be adequately represented by the technology. Whether she is beholden to a corporation or to a system administrator, that is not digital freedom. These features distinguish information democracy from its predecessors, creating a system not only more practical but also freer than the federated anarchy. In any democracy, centralised power is wielded to protect freedom, but in decentralised anarchy, no power is wielded at all. Anarchy fantasizes that freedom protects itself; inevitably, life in anarchy is life in chains, for any freedom gained is temporary as the system collapses under the tragedy of the commons and the paradox of tolerance. Granted, information democracy is not a perfect system; in a virtual world composed primarily of information oligarchies, it is natural to be wary of its potential to stray from its ideals. Nevertheless, the few flaws of information democracy directly mirror the flaws of physical democracy; most objections to information democracy were raised centuries ago during the spread of real-world democracies. Indeed, democracy is not perfect, but it is the only just system we have. Fear cannot blind us, painting perfect as the enemy of good. However flawed, democracy is the only option for a free world. Without further ado, if proprietary services are dictatorships and decentralised services oligarchic anarchies, imagine democratic microblogging: a flagship instance with a clear set of liberal rules, reached by mutual consensus in the community. When necessary, these rules are enforced by an elected moderation team voted in by the community, though generally bureaucracy should be minimized. The platform is entirely free software, so anyone technical can contribute via code. The server exposes a public API, allowing third-party clients to flourish without encumbering progress on the “official” client. Similarly, although the service is primarily centralised, the servers may permit federation if relevant. Ideally, when sensitive data like private messages is involved, communications are end-to-end encrypted and possibly even peer-to-peer, minimizing the centralised server’s power. Sound good? These criteria are non-exhaustive but illustrate the potential for information democracy. More importantly, sound familiar? Many of these ideals are already embodied by Mastodon. Mastodon may not have lived up to its federated fantasy, and judging it by its own meter stick of decentralisation, it failed. But judging it by the standards of an information democracy, regardless of its inadvertent centralisation, Mastodon is a success story. True, Mastodon is de facto centralised, but despite the size of the largest instances, it retains the ability to federate with other Mastodon instances. Further, Mastodon is able to federate with other free software friendly networks via a pair of common protocols, creating the familial fabric of the “fediverse”. Centralization and federation can certainly co-exist in harmony to improve efficiency while retaining user choice. Nevertheless, the most successful information democracy is orders of magnitude larger than Mastodon. A centralised site with a documented set of rules reached by community consensus, hosted by a non-profit funded by donations from the user base itself. A community governed by administrators elected by participants in the community. A site whose source code is licensed as free software, allowing specialized adaptations to flourish, complementing rather than harming the main instance. A site that embraces free culture to ensure its fruits are accessible to all of humanity in perpetuity. Wikipedia. The Wikipedia projects embody the ideals of information democracy. Yes, Wikipedia is centralised; indeed, its software does not directly federate with other smaller wikis, many of which mirror Wikipedia articles – and that’s okay. Wikipedia derives its user freedom not from decentralisation, but from participatory democracy structures. Anyone can edit; with some exceptions to keep logistics manageable, a new user’s first edit is valued as much an administrator’s one-millionth. Typically, conflicts are resolved not from a top-down dictatorship, despite the centralisation, but rather from bottom-up consensus seeking. Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy, but it nevertheless operates as an information democracy, no experimentation needed. To protect the digital freedom of everyone, not just the wealthy or the technically inclined, we need information democracy. To see the future of Internet liberty for the few, look not to Silicon Valley, for overwhelming commercial interests can never adequately protect the user. To see the future of liberty for the many, look not to the obscurity of XMPP, for arcane technical voodoo can never be wielded by those who need it most. To see the free future, look to Wikipedia. Whether online or in the real world, rejecting dictatorships is not enough for freedom. We must endorse democracy. Thank you to April, Connor, Florrie, and Natalia for soundboarding and reading early drafts. This page is licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0. Spread free culture!

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Will Robots Change Human Relationships? - The Atlantic
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 5, 2019

March 5, 2019

TECHNOLOGY How AI Will Rewire Us For better and for worse, robots will alter humans’ capacity for altruism, love, and friendship. NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS APRIL 2019 ISSUE https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/robots-human-relations… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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