Will the Fediverse Fragment?

We are two passionate fedizens with a strong research interest in the question: 'Howto sustainably grow the fediverse network'. Relevant related works are 'Towards networks of consent' by Christine Lemmer Webber, 'Governing the Commons' by Elinor Ostrom, 'Identity and Personhood in Digital Democracy' by Bryan Ford, 'Sense of Coherence' by Aaron Antonovsky, and 'Will the Internet Fragment' by Milton Mueller. Our current working assumptions are: the Fediverse will keep growing in waves - thus, it makes sense to anticipate that sooner or later moderation regimes will come in conflict with each other. We also assume that 'Social Network Utility' is nonlinearly increasing function over the number of connected actors in the network - in other words: de-federations always have a cost to the whole network. Agenda of the proposed workshop: After 25min introductory talk to provide context, we suggest to form discussion groups of about 4-5 pax and debate relevant questions in three rounds, with the aim to spend 20min to collectively aggregate our learned lessons from personal experiences on cue cards and discuss pros/cons. Relevant topics: positive/negative experiences in conflict resolution, polarization VS agree-to-disagree. The second 20min round concentrates on synthesizing the principles which should guide discourse in the fediverse. How should healthy dispute look like, and where are the boundaries of disagreement? In the third 20min phase, we propose to engage in a quest for 'concrete' approaches. Relevant topics: Long term stability of addresses (in case of migration problems), characteristics of a 'healthy fediverse' providing public value, commercial interests entering the fediverse. Our aim is to lay out a roadmap for future developments whether they are social or technological. Finally we will come back together for a 25min wrap up session and merge our results. Results from the workshop: Common understanding on known best practices, a list of identified systemic problems that need to be addressed in order to be ready for the 'rough times ahead', and a large number of participants that are eager to continue to collaborate on this (using fediverse #hashtags that we collectively decide upon).