12-01-2020, 12:19 AM
Part of Async.pre's mission is to create a new "communication tool" (aka, forum-like-ish-esque) that preserves privacy, motivates good communication practices, is resistant against takeover and shutdown, and is "secure" in general.
@frankbraun is dreaming of a forum software that "can also run in the terminal of an OpenBSD laptop".
I'll start with a few random thoughts of how that might look like, in the hopes that other's contribute ideas and at some point we might even implement it.
# The state of communication tools:
Roughly there are five kinds of community communication systems today:
- Social media. Which has an unchecked audience (too big and too unknown) and that relies on using platforms that are outside of the community's actual control.
- Instant messenger tools. Great of chatting, horror for long term discussions where newcomers should have a way to read themselves in and there's a persistent body of previous posts in a structured interface. Hard for long posts. Too fast.
- Web/BBS forums. The software quality simply sucks, and none of them allows end2end encryption within groups (or even p2p). We went through a dozen different software products that were horrific each and every one of them. Hosting the least bad one still makes me wake up with nightmares.
- Threaded messaging (email and the likes): Does not cater towards structured, persistent corpi of messages but is at best a collection of threats. There's no common visual identity.
- IRC: No retention, no longer posts possible, too fast.
They also fall in two dominant client categories: Either only web-based or only app-based.
# The Changes of user behavior
In "the olden days" people would join a community like a BBS, forum, mailing list, IRC channel and spend enough meaningful time there to actually be in the loop. This simply doesn't happen anymore. We use mobile devices much more than stationary ones when it comes to non-work communication and computing. And we split our attention over dozens of places and platforms. Online communities are largely dying - especially for people who have more than one topic of interest. The fragmentation of time spent simply prevents people from investing what is necessary to create real online relationships. At best, we find singular friends online, but we don't "become part" anymore. I think this is potentially keeping every potential community from ever becoming deep and big enough to have any significant impact anymore - both personally and on a "society scale". We're swamped by so many voices that we can only focus on very few that already have proven meaningful. Leaders (in attention retention) are now becoming thought leaders.
This is both dangerous and a waste of our cooperative powers. We need actual online communities where new people can integrate and learn, but also participate and CONTRIBUTE. For that, we cannot assume that people invest their attention in a self-driven way but instead have to beg for attention like all other comms tech these days (notifications).
Furthermore the speed of the post-response cycle today is incredibly high. Social media and messengers are essentially synchronous. Add a big audience and they often do not allow in depths discussion over long periods of time anymore. This just reinforces the issue of attention-sharing. But everybody is used to it today, and potentially needs it even due to dopamine addiction. Breaking this can't be simply asking for change of user behavior but realistically requires support by the technology used. Slow down everything, and notify only when required to keep base attention alive.
# The idea of Async
Forums are places where long-form posts are long-term retained so they can become the common substrate for a community. This implies that the post-response cycle can be much slower, and potentially even artificially
slowed down. This much slower interaction also helps with integrating privacy-preserving functionality: Post-events on the network layer can be widely separated from posts visibly appearing in the forum. Combined with some basic encryption this already enables much more private (and therefor open?) communication.
Furthermore, dropping all the dark-UI stuff that essentially makes people into addicts would be a nice feature. Less images, less animation, less endless scrolls, less gestures/swiping/scrolling. Focus on efficient use instead
of high engagement. Slim everything down, focus on simple taps (or keyboard shortcuts). Don't invite memes. Have minimum post-lengths. Limit metadata. Limit interaction and distraction (likes/dislikes, stars, hearts, emojis).
Only ask for attention to maintain minimum engagement instead of maximizing presence: Allow people to subscribe to topics/categories/forums. Let them choose how often they want to be notified (per N posts, per N hours, only after N hours of not logging in, etc). Notifications contain necessary information for user decision and lead to subscribed content immediately. Allow quick temporary muting of notifications.
Separate forum-operators from content-responsibility: Whoever hosts the technical infrastructure does not have to have insight into all content. This also limits the impact of security events. End2end encryption of groups/topics/threats in the forum. The backend only has to enforce access rights - not know contents.
Allow the sharing of files, without creating a visual enticement. No thumbnails and previews. Do not support the inclusion of remote content (URLs automatically fetched, embedded videos etc). Instead, upload the content and turn it into the community's property and shared memory.
Give people a choice to use interfaces that suit them. The same backend can serve all of mobile app UI, web UI, and text UI (+whatever might come). WebUI is necessary for easy onboarding, App UI might be the choice of some, text UI is clearly the preferred choice of some of the founders here (@frankbraun, but also me).
Make sure that content does not disappear easily. Every community member should be able to easily retain an offline version of the complete forum. And potentially restart hosting it when the original host goes down. Or fork it and start a new community. Forums are community memory and as such potentially incredibly valuable. Don't risk that value to chance.
Now, these were just my most pressing thoughts on the topic and I hope for commentary and improvement. While re-reading it, I can't shed the feeling that it's a monastic like perspective. Long term, long post, community memory, preservation, focus, "purity", offline capability, slowness. Makes me think of Anthem by NS, or the Old Kartheuser, or the monastaries in Meteora or the St Katherines in the Sinai. I'm getting old....
@frankbraun is dreaming of a forum software that "can also run in the terminal of an OpenBSD laptop".
I'll start with a few random thoughts of how that might look like, in the hopes that other's contribute ideas and at some point we might even implement it.
# The state of communication tools:
Roughly there are five kinds of community communication systems today:
- Social media. Which has an unchecked audience (too big and too unknown) and that relies on using platforms that are outside of the community's actual control.
- Instant messenger tools. Great of chatting, horror for long term discussions where newcomers should have a way to read themselves in and there's a persistent body of previous posts in a structured interface. Hard for long posts. Too fast.
- Web/BBS forums. The software quality simply sucks, and none of them allows end2end encryption within groups (or even p2p). We went through a dozen different software products that were horrific each and every one of them. Hosting the least bad one still makes me wake up with nightmares.
- Threaded messaging (email and the likes): Does not cater towards structured, persistent corpi of messages but is at best a collection of threats. There's no common visual identity.
- IRC: No retention, no longer posts possible, too fast.
They also fall in two dominant client categories: Either only web-based or only app-based.
# The Changes of user behavior
In "the olden days" people would join a community like a BBS, forum, mailing list, IRC channel and spend enough meaningful time there to actually be in the loop. This simply doesn't happen anymore. We use mobile devices much more than stationary ones when it comes to non-work communication and computing. And we split our attention over dozens of places and platforms. Online communities are largely dying - especially for people who have more than one topic of interest. The fragmentation of time spent simply prevents people from investing what is necessary to create real online relationships. At best, we find singular friends online, but we don't "become part" anymore. I think this is potentially keeping every potential community from ever becoming deep and big enough to have any significant impact anymore - both personally and on a "society scale". We're swamped by so many voices that we can only focus on very few that already have proven meaningful. Leaders (in attention retention) are now becoming thought leaders.
This is both dangerous and a waste of our cooperative powers. We need actual online communities where new people can integrate and learn, but also participate and CONTRIBUTE. For that, we cannot assume that people invest their attention in a self-driven way but instead have to beg for attention like all other comms tech these days (notifications).
Furthermore the speed of the post-response cycle today is incredibly high. Social media and messengers are essentially synchronous. Add a big audience and they often do not allow in depths discussion over long periods of time anymore. This just reinforces the issue of attention-sharing. But everybody is used to it today, and potentially needs it even due to dopamine addiction. Breaking this can't be simply asking for change of user behavior but realistically requires support by the technology used. Slow down everything, and notify only when required to keep base attention alive.
# The idea of Async
Forums are places where long-form posts are long-term retained so they can become the common substrate for a community. This implies that the post-response cycle can be much slower, and potentially even artificially
slowed down. This much slower interaction also helps with integrating privacy-preserving functionality: Post-events on the network layer can be widely separated from posts visibly appearing in the forum. Combined with some basic encryption this already enables much more private (and therefor open?) communication.
Furthermore, dropping all the dark-UI stuff that essentially makes people into addicts would be a nice feature. Less images, less animation, less endless scrolls, less gestures/swiping/scrolling. Focus on efficient use instead
of high engagement. Slim everything down, focus on simple taps (or keyboard shortcuts). Don't invite memes. Have minimum post-lengths. Limit metadata. Limit interaction and distraction (likes/dislikes, stars, hearts, emojis).
Only ask for attention to maintain minimum engagement instead of maximizing presence: Allow people to subscribe to topics/categories/forums. Let them choose how often they want to be notified (per N posts, per N hours, only after N hours of not logging in, etc). Notifications contain necessary information for user decision and lead to subscribed content immediately. Allow quick temporary muting of notifications.
Separate forum-operators from content-responsibility: Whoever hosts the technical infrastructure does not have to have insight into all content. This also limits the impact of security events. End2end encryption of groups/topics/threats in the forum. The backend only has to enforce access rights - not know contents.
Allow the sharing of files, without creating a visual enticement. No thumbnails and previews. Do not support the inclusion of remote content (URLs automatically fetched, embedded videos etc). Instead, upload the content and turn it into the community's property and shared memory.
Give people a choice to use interfaces that suit them. The same backend can serve all of mobile app UI, web UI, and text UI (+whatever might come). WebUI is necessary for easy onboarding, App UI might be the choice of some, text UI is clearly the preferred choice of some of the founders here (@frankbraun, but also me).
Make sure that content does not disappear easily. Every community member should be able to easily retain an offline version of the complete forum. And potentially restart hosting it when the original host goes down. Or fork it and start a new community. Forums are community memory and as such potentially incredibly valuable. Don't risk that value to chance.
Now, these were just my most pressing thoughts on the topic and I hope for commentary and improvement. While re-reading it, I can't shed the feeling that it's a monastic like perspective. Long term, long post, community memory, preservation, focus, "purity", offline capability, slowness. Makes me think of Anthem by NS, or the Old Kartheuser, or the monastaries in Meteora or the St Katherines in the Sinai. I'm getting old....