Anyone want to meet up for video chatting about what we want the digital future to look like? Perhaps what do we expect the decentralized internet to look like and what does society gain from it? How will society wide adoption of libre software impact the world? What do you envision?

I'm suggesting 1900 CET On sunday.

I believe that if we can create a symbol to represent digital issues, it will be easier to mobilize around these issues. We need a brand that people can point to so that we appear less like a cesspool of aimless people and more like a movement with a grand vision for the future.

I believe that we can use the color orange. This color represents:

• the excitement of having tools that has no dependency on developers.
• the freedom of expression you gain from having privacy from corporations, states and peers.
• the peace of mind from knowing that your device is repairable and made to last.
• the warmth of an inclusive internet where everybody has access and feels welcome. Regardless of wealth and socioeconomic status.

If you have other suggestions for symbolism, I encourage you to post a comment.

I believe that in order for libre software to serve the people, we need to make sure that the process is actually democratic. The voices of normal people has to be heard.

There is miniscule interest for libre software developers to listen to normal people. It is understandable. They invest their free time to create something and they have their own vision of what they want to develop. Developers may also be disinterested because there is too much that can go wrong.

I also think that normal people understand this and it has gotten to the point that nobody is even trying to give any feedback.

I believe the lack of enthusiasm is because there isn't any arena for voicing these desires.

I believe what we are missing is an arena to cultivate the relationship between developers and people. Where people can voice what they want, generate attention for these desires and connecting people to developers.

My suggestion

I'm imagining a platform where a person can create a post voicing their desires. A person can give peer support to desiree where they argue why this would help them as well. Developers can propose a solution. A peer supporter can vote on this solution as interested/uninterested. A peer supporter can apply for mandate which desiree can grant. A person can propose software that already exist or are in development that will satisfy the desire. The desiree's voting is highlighted.

If developer and mandates are satisfied with the response, they can proceed to the next step where they meet up in any format to get a thorough understanding of what the participants expectations are. If the participants agree, a post will be created associated with the original post with an official statement of what will happen. The mandates and the developer will sign the contract. This will notify all peer supporters. The rest of the project can happen independently from this arena.

This was originally a response to @lemm1ngs recent post, but I figured that it suited as it's own post.

The strong moderation tools for social societies gives us great advantages. The strength is that we don't live in the centralized wild west anymore. The terms of service are upheld. More moderation can turn communities much more healthy.

On the other side, there's a power shift. Moderators and admins on an instance can abuse their power. They can exercise power without the transparency of the process, they can change the terms without notice. They can do this without the intervention of the members of the society. They can ban members without notice, they can censor what goes against their own personal agenda. They are the gatekeepers and decide whom can be allowed in and whom are left out, in effect deciding the demography of the instance. They can also abuse power by intentionally ignoring members who overstep the terms in order to keep the population up.

Understanding the weaknesses of the federated social infrastructures makes us aware of how to handle them. We can construct weak or strong systems to combat the worst aspects.

As the fediverse grows, it will be increasingly important to have philosophies around how to govern social societies. Because if we do not have it, we will lack the tools to criticize mismanaged societies. It is very possible to envision a future where we gain a lot of traction, but where a few big societies sabotages the reputation of the fediverse as a whole.

A good philosophy can also coordinate the efforts across societies.

Running your own servers can be very stressful for reasons I'm not going to get into here. It is very understandable that a lot of people want to steer away from that. At the same time, we need people to take back ownership of the internet.

In short term we have to rule out that they can set up these services by themselves. The digital alphabetism is so low that a significant proportion will struggle with the setup. Me included. That is why it's so great that we have services like masto.host which does this job for them.

For the most important services, we need self hosting to be as simple as possible. In particular, I think that the peertube project needs a masto.host like service.

Just wanted to share what I intend to post tomorrow on reddit. Any thoughts? I think I'll post it on free software. My hope is that I encourage people to move to lemmy. Not sure if all of it makes sense.

START

I have been on reddit for some years. I liked going to league of legends subreddits discussing theory. Going to juggling subreddits to show my skills and discuss. Following US politics. Having some laughs. Learning how nuanced people's opinions could be. Last summer I did some live streams of me juggling. I posted a little bit about my vision for a better digital future.

I believe that reddit is a bad platform. Not because of it's content, but because it is controlled by a single organization, like in a dictatorship. With it's only values being creating profit for it's shareholders. It has a business model of tracking their users and create addiction among it's users. It will only devolve in time.

There are two forces in the digital realm.

Those who want to concentrate power. They want to centralize the internet, enchain users to walled gardens, privatize code, restrict how we share (copyright, drm) and monitor us.

And those who want to distribute power. Those who fight for the decentralization of the internet, liberating users with community owned pods, public code, sharing culture and privacy.

I am an distributist. That does not mean I shouldn't use software and services made by concentratists. But my end goal is to create the most amount of freedom for people. I can use a concentratist solution if it means that more people will gain freedom. The means justify the cause.

I believed it made sense for me to stay on the platform to spread awareness about distributionism.

I have been using lemmy lately and I believe it can take on reddit. Therefore I will make this last post to endorse lemmy and urge everyone to move to the platform and/or create their own lemmy instance. I will also encourage subreddit admins to abandon their subreddits and link to a lemmy pod instead.

https://join-lemmy.org/instances

One post I made recently as example.

https://lemmy.ml/post/74457

This is the last post I will make before I delete my account, but I may reply the next couple days.

Also remember to create a mastodon or other fediverse account to subscribe to fediverse content.

END

I know it sounds strange to talk about liberating Apple devices when they are proprietary hell. However, there are still 1.3 billion devices in use today. So I think it makes a lot of sense to discuss the liberation of Apple users. Through a more healthy mindset, reducing their data footprint and giving them more digital freedom. Therefore I created this community.

When social media is decentralized, content are grouped based on whether it be in alignment with the purpose of the pod. A pod can have any purpose. Maybe the promotion of the hosters business? Maybe spreading awareness around a specific subject? Or a service to socialize within a community.

Either way, we go away from a singular model where addiction is the goal, to something more organically driven. Where social values are taken into account.

In many movements, symbolism has played an important role in their success. You can see this in the LGBT movement with the rainbow flag, in feminism with the symbol for women and BLM with the black fist.

How can we develop a symbol for progressing our digital interests? Do you have some ideas? Let's hear it!

The reason companies has grown so big over the years is because of the concentration of data. If you get paid 1 dollar for your data, that is because your data is worth more than 1 dollar. You are sabotaging yourself.

I believe we have a right to:

1. Privacy
2. Autonomy over tools
3. Free Speech
4. Access to the digital resources.
5. Control over content.

The right to privacy will be a powerful tool against surveillance.

Autonomy over tools will secure our right to repair and control over software.

Free speech should make everybody feel comfortable about speaking up. In particular the unprivileged.

Everybody has a right to participate in the digital world. It enables conversations that would otherwise be very hard to take place. Access to computer with internet access would secure this right.

Control over data will allow you to export data and migrate freely between platforms.

Edit: added 5. Thanks @[email protected] :)

Technology companies are increasing by the day and have monopoly over our data. We have to fight it because if not, they'll eventually become too powerful.

I believe we have to strive for decentralization of everything. Decentralization of social media, decentralization of money. Decentralization of hosting. This is the only way to combat the trend.

There's a zero sum game in the power struggle between the centralized agents and decentralized agents. If we win, they loose. If they win, we loose.