Jürgen HubertOct 3, 2023

I've seen a lot of voices saying that " #Mastodon does not need to grow to be successful", and "we don't need to put in more effort to welcome new users", and frankly this attitude is pissing me off.

"The reason that social media did not work as promised is not because we misunderstood the nature of the internet and the possibilities of digital connectivity, but because oligarchs took over the digital space."

If there is any chance of using social media as a force for democracy, we desperately need a system that _cannot_ be taken over by the oligarchs. And, right now, the #Fediverse is the best candidate for this.

Thus, there is homework that needs to be done. We cannot just rest on our laurels and proclaim that the tech is already good enough, and that the #Fediverse tech approach somehow magically solves all the problems of other social media platforms. We need to get away from the overwhelmingly white male European/North American user base and look for ways on how to increase #BIPOC user participation - not to mention participation of users from Asia, Africa, and South America.

If we try to maintain the Fediverse as the home of a small, incestuous group of people with a particular tech slant, the oligarchs will win.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23896050/protest-decade-2010-revolutionary-handbook-vincent-bevins-arab-spring-brazil-occupy-hong-kong

The 2010s was a decade of protests. Why did so many revolutions fail?

Journalist Vincent Bevins grapples with grassroots movements from Egypt to Brazil to Hong Kong.

Vox
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@juergen_hubert

We're part of a long struggle between the commons and enclosure.

Of course the capitalists want to privatise the internet. That's what they did with the enclosures of common land at the very inception of capitalism, and what they did to the world during colonialism, and what the neoliberals did to public services in the 80s. But us commoners just won't lie down, will we?

It's true some of us sometimes get tired of the struggle and check out to try building a separate, secluded, self-sufficient community. Maybe they'll achieve by example what the rest of us work for through engagement?

If you're interested in a dramatisation of this dynamic, by the way, look up Arnold Wesker's 'Roots' trilogy - a jewish family fights fascism in the 30s, but via its encounter with less politically aware rural working class people, turns towards a more peaceful rural idyll - though in the process setting a new seed of class and gender consciousness in that same rural working class community...

Oct 3, 2023 at 10:39amWeb