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thenexusofprivacy, 10 months ago to random

Strategies for the free fediverses

https://privacy.thenexus.today/strategies-for-the-free-fediverses/

The fediverse is evolving into different regions

• "Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.

• "free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally

The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.

Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.

• Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!

• Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

• Emphasize "networked communities"

• Support concentric federations of instances and communities

• Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)

• Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'

• Build a sustainable ecosystem

• Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light

• Reduce the dependency on Mastodon

• Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity

• Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses

• Organize!

#fediverse #freefediverse #threads @fediverse @fediversenews