Bridging Protocols

[mattyg]

It occurs to me that twitter and mewsfeed are both deeply individualized architectures, and our Participation Protocols ideas (#62, #63, #64) will only encourage greater individualization and social isolation (i.e I only interact with people I want to in ways I want to).

I would like to imagine possible "bridging" mechanics: ways to facilitate individuals from different social contexts interacting together in co-determined ways that are mutually valuable

Ideas

• counter-signing Mews: multiple agents could create a yarn with participation protocols and inviting others from different social contexts to share this yarn together

Resources

• https://bridging.systems/

[bierlingm]

It occurs to me that twitter and mewsfeed are both deeply individualized architectures, and our Participation Protocols ideas (#62, #63, #64) will only encourage greater individualization and social isolation (i.e I only interact with people I want to in ways I want to).

I'm not quite convinced that they'd encourage greater individualization and social isolation. Part of the point of the protocols is to give people the ability to define/specify a way that others are asked to interact with them regardless of whether they share the same values, beliefs, or tribal affiliations. This way, people who aren't in their circle but see their content can show up to the discussion and get explicit understanding of "terms of cooperation". If they then can't even respect those terms, it's clear they're not there to cooperate and thus have no place in the conversation.

(i.e I only interact with people I want to in ways I want to)

Do you feel the issue with this is that it doesn't allow for exposure to novelty or types of interaction unspecified in advance?

I would like to imagine possible "bridging" mechanics: ways to facilitate individuals from different social contexts interacting together in co-determined ways that are mutually valuable

I like this and would like to support this too!

How are you thinking about social contexts here? How would we know/define one, in order to then facilitate the bridging across two or more of them?

counter-signing Mews: multiple agents could create a yarn with participation protocols and inviting others from different social contexts to share this yarn together

I like the idea of counter-signing mews. Do you mean by that a kind of "signing on" feature, like a more extreme version of a like that elevates the particular mew in some way? Or as something where the UI essentially shows the mew as having multiple "speakers"?

I could see Yarns then becoming structures that could have "signees" or participants, which would be visible when I click on the Yarn as displayed on some specific individual person's profile.

[mattyg]

I'm not quite convinced that they'd encourage greater individualization and social isolation. Part of the point of the protocols is to give people the ability to define/specify a way that others are asked to interact with them regardless of whether they share the same values, beliefs, or tribal affiliations. This way, people who aren't in their circle but see their content can show up to the discussion and get explicit understanding of "terms of cooperation". If they then can't even respect those terms, it's clear they're not there to cooperate and thus have no place in the conversation.

Yeah that's a very good point. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you feel the issue with this is that it doesn't allow for exposure to novelty or types of interaction unspecified in advance?

Hmm. Yeah I guess so. I think there's just a tension between being comfortable in predicable interactions, and being uncomfortable in unfamiliar interactions. We need some of both for healthy growth. In the active inference model of the brain this is the tension between "adjusting the sensory inputs you experience so they fit your internal model of the world", versus "adjusting your internal model of the world so it fits the sensory inputs you experience".

How are you thinking about social contexts here? How would we know/define one, in order to then facilitate the bridging across two or more of them?

I'm not sure. Maybe the clearest one is follower / followee clusters. You could intentionally expose yourself to people far outside your follower network. It might be also be interesting to integrate Trust Graphs for that.

I like the idea of counter-signing mews. Do you mean by that a kind of "signing on" feature, like a more extreme version of a like that elevates the particular mew in some way? Or as something where the UI essentially shows the mew as having multiple "speakers"?

I was imagining it as a Mew with multiple speakers.

I could see Yarns then becoming structures that could have "signees" or participants, which would be visible when I click on the Yarn as displayed on some specific individual person's profile.

Yeah, I'm thinking about it in the context of participation protocols. Maybe multiple people could co-sign a Yarn as a shared discussion space with a commonly-agreed participation protocol. Say for a public debate or something.

[bierlingm]

Hmm. Yeah I guess so. I think there's just a tension between being comfortable in predicable interactions, and being uncomfortable in unfamiliar interactions. We need some of both for healthy growth. In the active inference model of the brain this is the tension between "adjusting the sensory inputs you experience so they fit your internal model of the world", versus "adjusting your internal model of the world so it fits the sensory inputs you experience".

Great point. So I think we can satisfy this by making discovery a well supported activity as well as making participation protocols on Mews optional.

I'm not sure. Maybe the clearest one is follower / followee clusters. You could intentionally expose yourself to people far outside your follower network. It might be also be interesting to integrate Trust Graphs for that.

Yes, I think Trustgraph is the right tool to explore that direction in a sophisticated way.

I was imagining it as a Mew with multiple speakers.

I like that a lot...

Yeah, I'm thinking about it in the context of participation protocols. Maybe multiple people could co-sign a Yarn as a shared discussion space with a commonly-agreed participation protocol. Say for a public debate or something.

I love this. Topic-centered, rule-governed conversation spaces emergent from individual interest.