This is the original text of a talk I wrote for the Tallinn Digital Summit 2024, which was built around the theme of Securing the Digital Tomorrow.
Recently got into the topic of data ownership on a conversation with Carey Lening which helped catalyze a few ideas I’ve been kicking around for a while.
In short, data ownership requires layer fungibility.
I’ll elaborate below.
While discussing BlueSky’s custom feeds and composable moderation with a friend, he wondered:
I will need to ponder whether it is viable at scale for millions of users to put in the effort to customize their feeds in a thoughtful way […]
They don’t have to - they only need one person they trust (or are willing to take at face value for a test) to create a feed, or to add a feed to a starter pack.
But more importantly, I realized, any customization someone can do, thoughtful or not, is an improvement. It introduces some delta on the perspective, even while they are within a group, instead of putting them into the monoculture dictated by which news items are more clickbaity and likely to bring ad revenue.
It is the same way with genetics: even small mutations can help diversify the perspective gene pool.
BlueSky is launching a federation developer sandbox. What does that mean?
Backlash Technology is a term coined by Peter Watts - it’s tech for which one of the key properties is a prominently displayed middle finger at something else. Think Signal and Telegram adoption spikes whenever WhatsApp screws something up, or crypto as a reaction to the financial system (particularly in places plagued with hyperinflation).
I got reminded of the term by a discussion regarding Bluesky vis-a-vis Mastodon, the Fediverse, and ActivityPub. It seems that something being Backlash Tech can also provide a certain stickiness, since it a lot of the reactions could be summed up as “I’ve already lashed back, what else does this add?”
Here’s the link, if you are curious. The conversation is biased towards skepticism - expected, given the participants and where it’s taking place - but there are some good points in there.