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Christine Lemmer-Webber

@aral @evan @w3c @rhiaro @erincandescent @tsyesika @Annbass @lehors I dunno I thought it was pretty rude and unnecessarily stressful.

For the record, we had no real surveillance capitalists in the W3C Social WG because all the big players assumed we were going to fail. We had to justify the group pretty hard because it was nearly all invited experts, a fairly rare thing for a W3C group. I don't know the state of the SocialCG anymore because I no longer participate in it, but that's for other reasons.

But what's the point of jumping into a thread like this with a comment like that? What does it accomplish, other than elevate the author by injecting negativity? There's nothing wrong with negativity used as a tool, but I don't understand why this comment was made here, other than to be vaguely self-promotional by positioning oneself above others.

17 Nov 2022 at 13:40 | Wall-to-wall | Open on octodon.social
18 comments
Aral Balkan

@cwebber My question was about the #W3C, not the Social Working Group.

The point is that if you’re the standards body for surveillance capitalism / Big Web with folks like Google and their ilk leading the show, please do not then also portray yourself as the champion of the little guy.

Or, as a W3C representative honestly answered my question at a conference we were both speaking at in Vienna once, “we are a corporate body, we uphold the interests of our corporate members.”

17 Nov 2022 at 13:46 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Christine Lemmer-Webber

@aral That's all fine and well, and I share criticisms of W3C's funding model historically and how it's lead to challenges in terms of big players having disproportionate input. But why jump in on this thread, which is extremely unrelated, and if anything, is a thread about where extremely the opposite happened? You say your question was about the W3C and not the Social WG, but the Social WG was literally the topic of this thread.

That's what felt vaguely self-promotional, it wasn't taking the space to write out a thoughtfully written critique, it didn't leave a path to improvement, and it wasn't relevant. That account is there. Why jump in on this thread, other than that it's gotten some attention? Especially, again, since it was one of the most opposite situations.

I feel like I've seen this before from you, I'd ask you to improve your behavior here: it feels negatively self-promotional to do this kind of thing. Criticism is all well and good, but what is the aim? How do you hope to improve things?

I also worry about surveillance capitalism. I have dedicated my life to try to undo the harms that system has caused. It's hard to make even the smallest amount of progress sometimes, it feels like. Here's a place where some progress happened.

Why jump in *here*, specifically?

@aral That's all fine and well, and I share criticisms of W3C's funding model historically and how it's lead to challenges in terms of big players having disproportionate input. But why jump in on this thread, which is extremely unrelated, and if anything, is a thread about where extremely the opposite happened? You say your question was about the W3C and not the Social WG, but the Social WG was literally the topic of this thread.

17 Nov 2022 at 13:53 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

@aral Here is an example of a blogpost which I think was a constructive, useful criticism of the W3C's funding structure: web.archive.org/web/2020052912

I refer to this criticism often. It's useful! It's constructive! It's negative in some ways but it's also empathetic.

We're all negative sometimes, but I challenge you to channel where negativity exists and provide a constructive path for the world. It's *so hard* to do anything, to get anything done. Words matter.

@aral Here is an example of a blogpost which I think was a constructive, useful criticism of the W3C's funding structure: web.archive.org/web/2020052912

I refer to this criticism often. It's useful! It's constructive! It's negative in some ways but it's also empathetic.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:01 | Open on octodon.social
Aral Balkan

@cwebber Because I find it both hyprocritical and dangerous for the corporate standards body of surveillance capitalism and the Big Web (the W3C) to be taking credit for and possibly dictating the narrative around the fediverse and other alternatives to what is essentially themselves. Because we should all be careful when those who benefit from the disease peddle the cure. If anything ActivityPub is an exception to the rule that I see as more the work of individuals like you than the W3C.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:02 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Christine Lemmer-Webber

@aral I think the W3C is more complex than that. I know many of the people within it.

But if you're concerned about that, also be concerned about the side effects. I've felt this way about some of the ways I've seen you jump in before and, well, I didn't say anything. Admittedly it took something affecting me personally to do so. That's not great.

I do this kind of thing too sometimes. I'm asking you to understand the effect it had on me, so you can be reflective.

It made me stressed and feel negative. If you think this is an exception that's fine, but nothing about the way you wrote that indicated that. Instead I just felt shitty about my work.

FWIW I think the W3C is a flawed institution with some extremely good, heartfelt people working for it. The truth of the matter is, funding anything in our current economic structure is a maddening, nigh-impossible thing, and the W3C chose some approaches and they have had serious consequences, which I agree.

Negativity is okay, it can be useful and powerful. But please also try to temper it with empathy. It's hard to do anything, to make any progress. Jumping into the few places where progress appears to be occuring and saying things like this... it just makes me want to do nothing.

@aral I think the W3C is more complex than that. I know many of the people within it.

But if you're concerned about that, also be concerned about the side effects. I've felt this way about some of the ways I've seen you jump in before and, well, I didn't say anything. Admittedly it took something affecting me personally to do so. That's not great.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:07 | Open on octodon.social
Aral Balkan

@cwebber You have absolutely no reason to feel shitty about your work. Your work is invaluable and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t for it. I see the fediverse as an essential stopgap. If it didn’t exist, it would make it exponentially more difficult to have a bridge to where I want to go with our small web stuff.

So both thank you for your work and sorry for making you feel bad. That was never my intention.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:14 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Aral Balkan

@cwebber I do take umbrage to framing criticism of corporations (and corporate bodies like the W3C) as “self promotion.” I do not enjoy living in a world saturated with corporate messaging. If corporate bodies enter into this space and use it for public relations then I will challenge them here.

That said, I hope you realise this isn’t about you or the other folks who made ActivityPub. It’s about the corporate entity that is the W3C. We have to be able to differentiate those two things.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:10 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
pera

@aral @cwebber The only controversial thing the W3C did afaik is EME, am I missing something else? While that was *very* bad I also remember how they helped keep the web interoperable, accessible and open in the early 0s, this while other big players like Microsoft tried to dominate the internet by pushing their own proprietary technologies...
There was a time when having a valid standard HTML page was a symbol of resistance against monopolies :p

17 Nov 2022 at 14:56 | Open on mastodon.social
World Wide Web Consortium

@aral Please remember W3C is not some of our Members, but the sum of the work we're doing as a non-profit.

We develop standards the web needs to flourish *for everyone*, since 1994.

This is done by W3C Members, our small staff, the broad international community.

Members large and small bring work to #w3c because our proven standards process promotes fairness, openness, royalty-free, and strong focus across all work on security, privacy, internationalization and web accessibility.

@cwebber

17 Nov 2022 at 20:24 | Open on w3c.social
Rich Felker

@cwebber @aral Maybe because it's effective. That's how activism works. You take the focus when there's an opportunity not politely wait for a time when nobody is listening.

I really do not like this aspect of tone policing activism and thinly veiled threats that people doing activism via the fediverse need to watch what they say or be subjected to moderation.

Speaking truth to power is good, actually.

17 Nov 2022 at 14:18 | Open on hachyderm.io
Aral Balkan

@dalias Indeed and yet I feel I must stress again that I wasn’t speaking to @cwebber (the person, who isn’t even part of a corporate W3C member as far as I know) but to @w3c (a corporate entity that does the bidding of surveillance capitalists like Google).

I could have worded it better so Christine didn’t have cause to think it was about her (and I’ll definitely make sure I do in the future if there is room for ambiguity).

17 Nov 2022 at 14:24 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Aral Balkan

@dalias (Sadly, it is also in the modus operandi of entities like the W3C, Google, etc., to use invited experts for legitimacy and to shield themselves from criticism. “Oh, you‘re criticising us, well you must be criticising this beloved person, then.” No, dear corporation, I‘m criticising the corporate entity and an increasing number of us happen to see through your public relations attempts at leeching legitimacy off of individuals.)

@cwebber @w3c

17 Nov 2022 at 14:27 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Aral Balkan

@dalias @cwebber @w3c (Just edited it to remove the folks that were mentioned in the original post too; hopefully that will help with regard to removing some of that ambiguity).

17 Nov 2022 at 14:42 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Ludovic Courtès

@aral It’s good to be critical of W3C or any similar institution (there’s a lot to be said here), but I think it was the wrong thread to do that; to me, it looked like you were jumping at the very people who designed and standardized what lets us communicate right now. Not great.

17 Nov 2022 at 15:40 | Open on toot.aquilenet.fr
Aral Balkan

@civodul Yeah, that’s my bad. I should have deleted the mentions from the reply. Edited it afterwards to do so. My comment was aimed squarely at the corporate entity that is the W3C.

17 Nov 2022 at 16:39 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Aral Balkan replied to Aral

@civodul (The people who designed/standardised the protocol have every right to pat themselves on the back. The W3C, not so much. And I definitely do not want to see the W3C capturing the narrative around alternatives to the current corporate system when they ARE the current corporate system we’re trying to build alternatives for.)

17 Nov 2022 at 16:49 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Dr. Quadragon ❌

@dalias

> Speaking truth to power is good, actually.

Indeed. Sealioning on a completely unrelated thread comemorating people who made the Fediverse (the thing we ostensibly love and promote) what it is - less so.

No offense, @aral

@cwebber

19 Nov 2022 at 9:08 | Open on mastodon.ml
Aral Balkan

@drq My question was for the corporate entity that is W3C which was patting itself on the back for having gifted us the fediverse.

If you don’t think this is the first move of many in an effort to capture the narrative and shape the protocol going forward in line with the interests of their corporate members like Google and Meta, all I can say is I hope you’re right.

Also, my question remains unanswered: how many of the W3C’s members are surveillance capitalists?

@dalias

19 Nov 2022 at 9:19 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
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