An open letter

Its funny, I got the email, and went to social.coop, and got a 404. And thought it was already a fait accompli. But it was just something transient, I presume.

@muninn I'm raising the subject of data export on Riot with @wulee and I'm sure it'll be online shortly, if it's just a toggle.

If it's not a "toggle" I'm happy to help with manual tech ops if necessary as a one-time "clean-up operation" to separate people's account data at a database level (fair warning folks, I'm not a DBA), so we can be nice and GDPR compliant about the shutdown / migration.

I'm wondering if this isn't a language issue, in that American English, "shut down" mostly applies to things like machines and servers. I understood it to mean that the server would be temporarily taken offline, it appears that you meant that we'd stop taking new users for a while. @michelekipiel

At this point with so much damage and mistrust built up both on and off the platform (coupled with a mountain of operational disfunction) not sure there is a better way forward for SC.

If the Membership votes to restructure I offer my support (as Michele outlined) to a diverse leadership group (as needed) to make SC function and serve the need of a diverse set of members.

My hope is that it be a place seen as and genuinely does welcome and value contributions from all its members regardless of their background.

Still believe in the power of user ownership to transform the caustic online world for the sake the planet and our physical and mental health but if care is not given from the very beggining to empower those who have historically been kept out of the decision making process achieving this will be impossible.

Thank you to all of you who have devoted time and energy to bringing SC to life and to those that will continue the endeavor of making it better.

I am glad this conversation has started and I really appreciate the things you've written. While I decided to move away from social coop, I dont know that things need to shut down for useful lessons to be learned. Whatever people choose to do, I want to say while things happened that weren't good, social coop has a lot going for it and I'm pretty sure will emerge for the better. The problems arent insurmountable, although I know when everyone is stressed and theres a lot of conflict it can seem like they are, but they really aren't. Best of luck with it all.

We will do our best to migrate to new servers before the time is up, hopefully no one will loose their handle. But we definitely need to put the instance on hold and stop accepting new members so we can take the time to reorganise.

Thank you very much for your work and your critiques. Thank you for pushing us to be better.

I am seeing something very similar play out in my (soon to be former?) workplace, where being nonwhite, neurodivergent, and queer femme has meant being punished for speaking out, for not knowing my place in an organization where order and comfort are prioritized over justice and change. The "tranquilizing drug of gradualism" (MLK), indeed.

It has made what has unfolded lately particularly poignant and exhausting. I have wanted to have more energy to speak up, to dive in. And not had enough to give, was uncomfortable in speaking out.

With what I sincerely believe is a firm commitment by the membership to rise to this challenge going forward, I want to trust that we can indeed move forward.

These organizational wounds and future scars are real. I know we cannot necessarily make it up to the individuals we drove away or drained out, the relationships broken beyond repair. But. I am personally choosing to remain at social.coop because I want to be a part of this instance emerging as a place truly worth calling a home within the fediverse.

Thank you for this letter, MK. It means a lot to me.
I hope to work beside you and lend what skills and strength I can in order to effect positive change.

I'm new and missing context, but if the co-op hasn't been able to take a firm position against hate speech and abuse, then I can see why a reboot along the lines laid out is necessary. If anyone can fill me in I'd be grateful, although I don't want to cause an unneeded rehashing.

@michelekipiel first of all, thank you. I can see the heart and care that has gone into crafting this letter and I too look forward to the co-operative emerging stronger for having been through this process.

Recognizing that this probably isn't the place to debate the minutiae of your proposed actions, I'm wondering where it would be appropriate to address concerns? There are a lot of proposed actions so I can't imagine having a thread for each of them is feasible, and yet I feel uncomfortable with many of them though I agree wholeheartedly in the spirit behind them.

Thanks for writing this. I think you've put into words the dismay and frustration a lot of us have been feeling.

I wish I had spoken up louder and earlier about things that made me uncomfortable, and advocated more strongly for things I believed but thought were "too radical" for this community. I wish I had done a better job of supporting fellow members who became alienated.

I would like to try again as well.

The Community Working Group has a call scheduled for today at 7:30pm EDT that was originally planned for the purpose of developing the selection process for the Community Working Group Ops Team.

In light of Michele's tentative proposals above, a key question is whether we should continue with trying to get the Ops Team in place in parallel to the re-foundation process, or if it should be put on hold until the "core group of collaborators" is established, and empower them to form the ops team.

My concern about the latter approach is that it will continue to leave me holding much of the role by default for an indefinite period of time, and I'm feeling urgency around getting a broad, diverse, and sustainable (due to being compensated) team to carry the work going forward. I'm willing to remain in a holding pattern if there is a strong feeling that we need to wait for the re-boot, but I think that, if we develop a process for team formation that is aligned with this proposal, the co-op will be better served by getting this group together ASAP.

To be discussed on the call, but the process that I'm thinking about right now, which might also work for the "core group of collaborators" formation is as follows:
- Elect a small group (~5) who are not interested in serving on the ops team as a "selection committee" that is charged with soliciting applications and assembling the founding team, with a strong diversity requirement (something with the effect of ensuring that the founding ops team must not have a majority of cis white guys).
- "Selection Committee" submits their recommended slate of founding members to the CWG for ratification.
- Upon ratification, Ops Team takes over essential scope of responsibilities for rotating moderation, on-boarding when it is re-opened, etc.

Please, no waiting to make an ops team, just keep the one that took so long to assemble. ><

After some conversations, I've taken a first swing at some rough draft language for a proposal to implement this. Hoping to discuss on the call tonight, but also welcome any feedback here:

This proposal authorizes the creation of a team of [x] social co-op members that will be fully empowered to make unilateral decisions concerning all aspects of social.coop, including modifying or replacing its bylaws, for a six month period. The team is tasked overseeing operations and building out the necessary policies and infrastructure to put the co-op on sound footing in alignment with the Co-op Principles at the time of the expiration of its mandate.

The team shall be selected by an elected “selection committee” consisting of [x] co-op members who do not themselves intend to offer to serve on the “Reboot Team,” and who will be elected via approval voting. The selection committee will solicit candidates for seats on the Team, and will be empower to appoint its members. The selection committee is required to prioritize diversity in selection, and may not select a committee in which any constellation of two or more [is this the right approach? The right #?] of the following identity characteristics is in the majority: race, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality [others?].

I'd also want to include some language on the compensation of the team - we don't have a large amount of resources, but this work is critical and deserves something. 7 members x $25/mo x 6 mo shakes out to $1025, which is a touch less than a quarter of our current reserve. Should we go higher? Should the team be smaller?

The new bylaws, etc. would be approved by the new membership, right?

Totally with you on this one. I believe the mods and the tech team taking care of the instance should be the first to obtain regular compensation for their hard work!

We should always be ready to scrap what we have and regenerate it. Thanks, Michele and others for putting it on the table. It seems to me we could proceed on two fronts at the same time:
1) existing ops teams/moderator/working groups continue in minimal mode -- just keeping the lights on (including moving to new servers) -- while
2) the re-generation committee creates a new interim structure (bylaws, organization, membership, etc.). When the new organization is established -- its members will have to vote on the bylaws, structure, etc., just like in the formation of any democratic organization. As soon as the new organization is established, the old organization ceases to exist.

@michelekipiel Can you elaborate or give some examples of voices being silenced or relativist attitudes towards bigotry? I care very much about using mastodon for social justice rather than against it, so I'm trying to better understand the situation. I've spent a lot of time reading through loomio and the local timeline, and all of the discussion I've seen has been very abstract. What exactly happened?

It would be too long and painful to recap all that happened, please forgive me if I don't feel like doing it now. Sorry!

Do you know anyone who could at least give me part of the story? I've since figured out that other instances are concerned that we haven't upgraded, which I totally understand and support fixing immediately. I do get the sense that's not what you're referring to in your letter though.

I've been literally in the woods for the past several days, so maybe I missed out on some context, but it seems like that as members, we're being asked to completely reboot the organizational structure we've been working on because of a vague "situation" that no one seems to be able to explain. This is not great for building a community.

If we want to be welcoming to marginalized groups, we need to be transparent about how we make decisions. I have the privilege and luxury of being able to spend all day sifting through loomio and the timeline to try to be able to figure out what's going on, and I still can't. If information is that hard to find, there's no hope that less privileged individuals will be able to feel informed and included.

@edwardlplatt social.coop is still up and running. You could probably get (or find) some stories there, but they might be like Rashomon.

I don't think I saw enuf of the details, nor am I shitpost-conventions-literate enuf to do it justice. But I know it was traumatic for the founders, and I do think that rethinking and reorganizing is the right thing to do now.

@edwardlplatt I can understand that finding a linear timeline of what has happened would be hard to locate.

Here's @fabianhjr's synopsis from social.coop
https://social.coop/@fabianhjr/100652542340297032

That being said, as @bobhaugen has alluded to, re-hashing things that have already happened don't feel productive at this point. I think folks continue to be happy to engage in explaining/clarifying any concerns pertaining to the open letter and why the next steps are being proposed. If you feel like knowing certain details is critical to understanding the current situation, you can DM me on social.coop and I am happy to try to fill you in to the best of my ability.

@edwardlplatt this was my summary: https://social.coop/@protean/100628213425368248

@michelekipiel Thank you for taking the lead on this to make it clear, to people both inside and outside, the values of social.coop. Most of the time, I can barely keep up with what is happening on social.coop. And this week was a bit of a whirlwind. I think I managed to piece together what happened recently to create our current crisis (although I still managed to miss the vote on the CoC). My only contribution is fiscal, and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. However, I do want to say I fully support these reboot efforts even if it were to mean asking somebody like myself, who has trouble actively participating, to leave in order to make room for people who can better participate to achieve the goals you articulate above.

support your proposal

Part of the problem is "people with overwhelmingly progressive views" is meaningless, the idea that progressives are not capable of making assumptions based on inherent biases is just not borne out by reality. In fact, it is a great example of a positive bias towards themselves and other people like them. "They can't surely mean us, we're progressives!" One of the effects is demanding minority populations keep explaining to people in majority groups why obvious bigotry is obvious bigotry, ultimately it drives people away from participating which becomes a process of gradual homogeonization of the group. It also gets you labelled aggressive and hostile if you get bored explaining the same things over and over again to different people all asking, in some cases demanding, you spend your time and energy rehearsing the same converations endlessly. Its why you will never see me engaging in conversations about the meaning of gender or whether or not transgender people's gender is valid. Which was the thrust of one of the conversations that got us here.

Is anyone able to summarise what has actually happened? and/ or link to a summary/ example or something? I'm at a loss and to what exactly has prompted this open letter @michelekipiel ? (perhaps because I've not actually logged into social.coop for a while)

Unfortunately members who have been following/engaging in real time have been reticent to attempt a recap due to the emotional drain from frantic pace of how things have devolved/evolved, not wanting to be caught in the cross fire of what may seem as either minimizing or sensationalizing, while also doing justice to context.

My sincere hope is that the SC Loomio governance space quiets for at least through the weekend to allow the membership to decompress and reflect ahead of finding the common ground needed to move forward.

Feel free to hit me up directly any time and I'll provide what info I have, albeit from one limited perspective.

I think next week will start seeing more accounts start coming out.

So, a considerable number of people have asked for an explanation of what is going on, and nothing comprehensive has ever been provided any place I can see. I understand that producing such an overview is emotional labor and also work labor. But the fact that the majority of people seem to still have no idea what is actually going on juuust might be playing a role in the failure of the first Regeneration Team proposal.

I understand that it will be difficult to write or tell a story of what happened. And I think it will be contentious: people will not agree. But I still think it needs to be done, otherwise nobody knows what problem needs to be solved.
Might be best to see if some people who will disagree would at least agree to write or tell their own story and then put them all in the same document or other presentation.
And then see if all of them can get together on the same resolution? Or not?

It's been a ride, thank you all for the friendships and the good times.
Here's a little letter.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PGG5u19RG6f-jfP17rim5MD-zCXz5nG-5KF_51f5B94/edit?usp=sharing

I'll be around in the fediverse at:
@h@sunbeam.city

Cheers.

Well, I read that, but I'm still none the wiser as to what actually happened. And I'd bet that remains true for the vast majority of social.coop users - indeed, I'd bet most users aren't even aware that something has happened, let alone what that something is!

It's a bit of a shame people here who have been in the midst of it all are unwilling to shed some light on this. The goodbye letter from @h above mentions the need for "radical transparency" and yet remains completely opaque about what has actually happened that prompted the letter. Oh well.

As a new-ish member that is trying to get more involved in social.coop, and willing to participate and help out, I'm finding it really hard to inform myself and figure out if/what help is needed.

That said, after spending way too much time reading this thread and following a bunch of links, the best summary I've been able to find is this toot:
"""
TL;DR someone was arguing against muting of instances but did so alongsides antagonizing a marginalized member.

That member stone to leave and complaint, rightfully, about the burocratization and reluctance to take action on abusive instances.

Someone here, while all this was happening said that "Nazi is a catch all term" and we were suspended by some instances for not taking action. The user apologized and deleted the toot.
"""
(source: https://social.coop/@fabianhjr/100652542340297032)

There is also a thread with slightly longer discussion that seems to agree with the summary toot above:
https://social.coop/@protean/100628213425368248

And finally, this is a blog post from the user that made the infamous "nazi is a catch-all term" toot, telling his story and apologizing: http://discours.es/2018/social-coop/

looks like social.coop is back up and running. How did that happen?

It's been up the whole time for the most part.

Hmmm. Been down for for at least two days, checked several times each day. Now up again. Might easily have been me...

It was a bit unstable for a few days after the upgrade, maybe you were unlucky enough to sample it when it was down each time.

THanks

I've been trying to work myself up to writing an account of What Went Down but honestly find it extremely demoralizing/intimidating. It also started a long time ago—a few members have left and obviously some have been put off and not joined. But two precipitating incidents were:

• 1 member bringing up the tiresome "free speech" thing in a Loomio thread about silencing problematic instances and not recognizing another member's example of some straightforward transphobic hate speech as such
• at least 1 instance silencing social.coop over another member's toot that (charitably read) nitpicked the use of "Nazis" as an example of groups to explicitly exclude in our policy

Basically a case of members publicly Not Getting It that gives the impression of the instance in general Not Getting It. It is not enough to be willing to learn; a lot of people only want to join/interact with an instance of people who genuinely do Get It.

There were other simultaneous aspects:
- The straw poll for creating a steering committee, which some members objected to strongly, seeing it as a potential failure of the direct-democratic principle, and therefore a red line
- Our problems upgrading quickly to a recent version of Mastodon with the moderation features other site admins were requesting, resulted in blocks (or threats of blocks) from them
- The acrimonious atmosphere, assorted resignations, and hasty accusations of "not getting it" or "dragging feet" making some members feel unwelcome and/or unwilling to engage
- The enormously significant resignation of Mayel and his request to vacate his server space within a month (I infer this was partly because of the straw poll, but I suspect all the above contributed, and he had been trying to step away for some time.)

On "not getting it." Some of our members have experience in cooperatives, and some in intersectional feminist activism, but it seems that very few have experience in both. While the two are largely compatible, the language and assumptions of those communities can be quite different.

For me it started when I saw posts that seemed to come from a different SNS culture, more combative, judgmental, polemical. Lots of use of ALL CAPS to make points. Not having been a Twitter user, it may be unfair of me to see this as typical of twitter. In any case, I had to learn lots of new terms for bad behaviour (edgelord, for example).
At the same time, one person with whom I had some dialogue, trying to understand what seemed to me to be a belligerent mode of communication, seemed to assume SC was a traditionally run instance, with admins who ran everything and needed to be held accountable, and members not responsible for admin, operations, governance, etc.
So our delay in adopting a CoC (which was actually in the process of approval and ahead of the schedule we set for ourselves) was not seen charitably as a weakness of a highly collaborative and inclusive process with multiple revisions, but as careless disregard and failure to protect members.
The other major condition that favored a blow-up was our delay in making specific proposals for equity and inclusion in operations -- something that a few of us had discussed, drafted, and set aside temporarily in order to focus on Ops Teams and the CoC.
(Note: I do not like the practice of attributing actions and views to "people" or "some people" -- it can be wildly misleading, but I don't want to put people on the spot. Ask me if you want reference to specific toots.)

This is Doug Belshaws post about the controversy surrounding him:

http://discours.es/2018/social-coop/

Many of these letters and messages are too long, and appear to me as a lot of first-world, white-people navel-gazing. They make it hard for people to get involved and are not really productive. It's a quiet "Tyranny of Structurelessness."

If we are a community and a cooperative, we have a responsibility towards others' time to be clear and to the point. I'm grateful to those who work hard at that and come up with viable solutions. Many of us work and organize AFK and are not online to follow all discussions.

After reading this whole thread, I still have no idea what all this drama is about.

I don't mean to say that the hurt is illegitimate (far from it), but just that it would be good to know what this is all about.

@nev, who is busy with IRL political stuff right now, is compiling a record of the various issues that led to the sense of crisis from which we are emerging.

Thanks so much for the response! Looking forward to that work then, will be great to read to get a better idea.