Si estás leyendo esto, lo más probable es que ya te haya estado dando la lata con el Fediverso. Como no puedo callarme al respecto, y como me veo enviando los mismos enlaces a todo el mundo todo el tiempo, pensé que sería bueno tener una ’entrada de aterrizaje’ a la que poder referir a la gente.

If you read this you have most likely been harassed by me about the Fediverse. Because I can’t shut up about it, and because I find myself sending around the same links to everyone all the time, I thought it would be good to have a ’landing post’ to refer people to.

How is feudalism making a comeback? What exactly makes Google, Meta and Amazon feudal? Why does it matter, and how should we escape?

A few days ago I shared this post, which basically adds to the many warnings (within and outside the Fediverse) that the U.S. is quickly descending into fascism. What is new?

One of the (private) responses came Nuwagaba Gift, a 21-year old teacher, community organizer and farmer from Uganda, and we ended up exploring some of the historical details of this Sturmabteilung (SA). Among other things, Nuwagaba pointed out the crazy story of the co-founder and leader of the SA, Ernest Röhm, who, before he was killed in night of the long knives, was recruited by the Bolivian military ataché of the Netherlands to serve in the Bolivian army…

This is the second part of a two-part series. See also this article. Both articles first appeared in a slightly different form on the blog of OpenTech(AUC).

“…if we can’t convince people to take over the means of production when it only requires a USB stick with Linux and a short online course on bash/python, how are we ever going to gain control over (and share the fruits of) other, more material and inert kinds of technology?”

In this post I share three tips that have helped me find great people on Mastodon.

In contrast to your regular corporate Big Tech social media, the Fediverse is not packed with algorithms that build your world for you. You have to do it yourself.

To be sure, this has advantages. For example, your digital world will be a more active product of who you are and what you like, rather than what some algorithm thinks you like, on the basis of some superficial reading of who you are. Also, it prevents a few popular accounts from getting even more popular, which helps to spread and share the community’s attention more equally.

This post originally appeared on the website of OpenTech(AUC).

Imagine you’re at a house party, and people are getting drunk. Slowly but steadily, they are raising their voice. And as more and more people do, you are going to have to raise your voice as well. At the end of the night, everyone is screaming in each others’ ears, without being any more audible than when everyone was talking at a normal volume.

One reason why Mastodon, being part of the Fediverse, is great, is that whenever the next big thing pops up (let’s say the Mastodon of The Future), and it stays within the Fediverse, we will all stay connected. No more “starting over” our networks from scratch.

We all have friends and family who are like “so you want me to switch to Mastodon now? Last year it was Signal, and before that Telegram. I can’t be starting over all the time. I’m sticking to Whatsapp and Twitter”. Now they won’t have an excuse anymore. After switching to the Fediverse we never have to start over again.

Originally published 19 Jan 2022.

TLDR: I think the Fediverse - a group of community-owned, open-source, self-hosted, decentralized and interconnected social media platforms - is a cool and promising alternative to the absolute mess that we have let ourselves be trapped in. For more info on the Fediverse, see for instance this.

In short: I don’t like how large corporate social media platforms 1) collect our data, aggregate it and keep it to themselves, 2) use that data to influence us in a way that makes them and others exorbitant amounts of money (and also happens to undermine the foundations of our democracy by drawing people into fascist filter bubbles), and 3) make it artificially hard to leave them.