this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Worries about Matrix.org elections (lionir.ca)
submitted 5 months ago by Lionir@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org
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[–] tiago@beehaw.org 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Out of 19 people elected, 6 mentioned moderation and/or trust & safety in their platform goals. 4 people mentioned ecosystem diversity. The remaining people mentioned a variety of goals.

When I saw these results, I was was confused why some listed no pronouns at all. When I inquired about it, I was told that it was optional.

Your concern about cisnormativity is totally valid, but I see little correlation with the mod tools? What improvements could be done on the technical side?

ETA: thanks for sharing.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

well the statistic you show does make it clear that little people expressed interest in moderation and/or trust & safety.

As for how I relate cisnormativity and the demographics of the board, I feel that people who may have no experience with harassment may not prioritize the construction of moderation tools.

On the technical side, I've expanded here in another comment here.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Not declaring pronouns doesn't mean you're cis. Could just be enby* and accepting of all pronouns

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've seen a lot of people specify (any) or a combination in those cases but it is theoretically true, yes. (I don't think that's true here though)

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So "My Name [any/any]"?

I've always wondered how to do that without offending folks

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, either that or [any]. I don't know why people would be offended.

Also, did you mean enby? I just realised you said nimby (not in my back yard) which is not quite the same thing lol

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 3 points 5 months ago

Lol brain fart. But also get off my lawn /s

[–] remington@beehaw.org 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am just, slightly, concerned about this. If the Matrix protocol shits the bed entirely, then I'll be happy to wait for the next wave of innovators to solve this.

That may sound dismissive to some, but I've already lived through things like this happening.

Over thirty years I've seen so many tremendous leaps in telecommunications. I'm not too worried.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 5 points 5 months ago

Look how hard it is to make folks switch from discord to matrix. All that fracturisation is exhausting.

[–] minnix@lemux.minnix.dev 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious as to how you would improve the mod tools Lionir. I have found mod/admin tools and especially Mjolnir to be quite good.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've personally heard that Mjolnir works not great when it comes to admin things but the biggest problem that I'm aware is that Mjolnir does not really solve the problem for individuals with their rooms and spaces to moderate. I believe Draupnir (https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir) is trying to help with this particular flaw with Mjolnir.

One of the other things in terms of T&S is that it is my understanding that the team is too small and the tooling to handle the reports of abuse on matrix.org are not good enough.

As for mod tools more concretely, I think that people who are admins of rooms or spaces should have the following abilities:

  • Clearer moderation roles
  • More interaction between permissions in rooms and spaces
  • Filters for slurs
  • Blocking homeservers (in case of abuse)
  • Reports that actually go to them

It should be noted that I'm not very familiar with the tools on matrix as I largely have little trust in my ability to moderate there.

[–] minnix@lemux.minnix.dev 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like you are more concerned with the matrix.org homeserver than matrix itself. Matrix.org homeserver will eventually go away for personal use, this is the plan for the future. Matrix has always kept this homeserver open as proof of concept, but has not planned to keep it open forever as the goal is the widespread adoption of the protocol and for people and orgs to host their own servers and build tools using matrix.

The bullet points you listed are all currently able to be realized on any self-hosted homeserver.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like you are more concerned with the matrix.org homeserver than matrix itself.

No. The foundation also has massive influence in how the clients and protocol develop. These tools that I'm talking about are not built-in for matrix, they're largely exclusive to instance admins through mjolnir or require the usage of bots. This is not a good state of affairs.

Matrix.org homeserver will eventually go away for personal use, this is the plan for the future.

I don't believe this is true. I've never read such a thing.

The bullet points you listed are all currently able to be realized on any self-hosted homeserver.

Not every room or space will be hosted by someone self-hosting their server. I find it kind of appalling that this would be the solution. It's certainly not what I've heard from people working on projects around moderation.

[–] minnix@lemux.minnix.dev 3 points 5 months ago

Not every room or space will be hosted by someone self-hosting their server. I find it kind of appalling that this would be the solution. It’s certainly not what I’ve heard from people working on projects around moderation.

This is somewhat the goal, but without the hyperbole. Homeservers will be hosted by individuals or orgs, but will contain many rooms and spaces each. In 2020 there were over 20,000 homeservers. That number has without a doubt grown exponentially. The concept is the same with Mastodon. If you are worried about moderation on the matrix.org homeserver there are many lists of public homeservers across the web. Many people research homeservers to see if they are a good fit for them just as they do Mastodon instances.

This blog post gives a good idea of where matrix is heading. Notice their mission of decentralization.

Since agglomeration around a single instance is against the goals of Matrix and its Foundation, users need to have a way out and incentives to move.

We are committed both to making Matrix more accessible, and to doing the work to decenter the Matrix.org homeserver.

Matrix.org is meant to be an entry point, not a stopping point. As to your concern regarding built-in tools, matrix is just a spec, an open source federated communication protocol based on HTTP. The community builds tools. Matrix is not discord. In fact it is in opposition to the discord philosophy of centralization, data mining, advertising, and AI training.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Did anyone express interest in making the platform more secure? The fact that so much data can be sent without e2ee (and some data can't at all be e2ee) is a big blocker for a lot of users looking for an actually secure messenger for their org

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago

I know there are MSCs to make sure more data is e2ee like reactions.

As for anyone putting that in their platform pitch, it seems the closest was the representative of Gematik, the German Health service though most platform pitches are rather vague in details. You can read all of the candidates (do note that not all candidates were elected so do double check) https://matrix.org/governing-board/elections/2024/

[–] rah@feddit.uk 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

governance is important to not have a space filled with awful people

Snigger They think there are people who aren't awful.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I can't tell what you're trying to say honestly.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 5 points 5 months ago

Misanthropy.

[–] rah@feddit.uk 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't surprise me.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do you care to elaborate?

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

"People bad."