I've been saying this for a long time as well. All the tools are available for us. We have a few issues I think:

• Networking
• Administration
• Ease of access

Networking

We need to built a network (read webring or similar) of leftist sites. We need to take a Popular Front approach to this work. Connecting groups via our shared core goals regardless of our ideological differences. This way, that list of shared sites is more easily and readily accessible. Remember, Google Search isn't going to turn up these sites on a query most of the time. So building a network of sites is key to discovery. This could also work as a kind of federation group.

Administration

We need to foster a cadre of technical minded comrades as well as community minded comrades to build these sites. This is a dual issue that needs to be worked out in unison, because these sites need to be stable. Not just in terms of uptime but also in its community. A site which is wither up and down often, or unmoderated and full of wreckers does us nothing and will make this task more difficult for everyone. We have a dedicated person on the team at Hexbear maintaining our UI fork for example. Its unclear of we have a backup plan for a "hit by a bus" scenario here. So we must ensure open communication with the wider administrative community but also find ways to educate and train more like minded technical comrades and community builders. Likewise we need to be involved as much as we can in contributing to projects to ensure they suite our needs and to ensure their continued development.

Ease of Access

Lastly, we should be collecting and collaborating together on how to make the setup and management of these sites as easy as we can for future operators. Hosting things like Lemmy, Matrix, Mastodon, etc, is no simple task at times. This goes hand in hand with Administration. Part of being a good administrator is having good documentation. Many of these services have decent documentation, but it could be better. So as part of ensuring ease of access we should be collecting:

• guides on configuring popular services.
• docker configurations for easy spin up.
• write-ups on various services to run, their maintenance complexity, and ease of administration.
• an authoritative list of queer/leftist software to investigate.

We should also be evaluating the underlying tech stack as well and providing guidance on things like: what hosting sites to use, What domain registrars to use, How to host out of your house, etc.

If we want this network to grow; if we want it to be the safe harbor for users who will be driven off mainstream social media, we have to make that process easier for people. With the_deprogram kicked off reddit, I wonder if they would have taken the option of building their own site if we had materials ready to ease them into that process.