Several months ago I had a lot of ideas rolling around in my head regarding this idea of community, networking (social and electronic), and administration. It looked something like this and like this.
From a post I wrote on community:
As working-class people, as wage laborers, as members of physical and digital communities, there must be a way to reorganize our digital social lives so that we can bridge the gap between the global and the local. So much of the "local" is lost in the global digital sea. Hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people all live within the local range of each of us, and yet the platforms we engage with thrust us into communicating with people hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of miles away. Much of this has to do with capital accumulation, you need to centralize as many people into your tent to maximize profits. This, in a way, is a form of capitalist encirclement. Our digital lives, and digital communities, are at the mercy of capitalist rule and often subjected to capitalist discipline.
I still feel this is broadly true. In the time since I made this post Hexbear has had its ups and downs, both social, and technical. We've nearly lost our domain address, we've had a fair few struggle sessions, we've debated the contradiction between posters and mods. We've seen new left communities emerge into our space, like the comrades at Anarchist Nexus. The social consciousness of places like db0 have made qualitative shifts leading to principled action to protect their community from fascists. Our own @TankieTanuki@hexbear.net is suffering from success, hosting our beloved TankieTube. We've seen the reputation of piefed (a competing solution in the Reddit-like space) have its reputation tarnished over a silly comment I made about how it works. I launched news.abolish.capital, which continues to deliver left news to roughly 50 Lemmy instances every day. I'm sure there is more I'm missing!
What this represents is a growing network of like-minded people, all willing to put in their own time, energy, and money, into building what I think can be called a Proletariat Network, or The Proletarian Web. An Anti-capitalist, revolutionary, network creating spaces that allow us all to communicate, educate, and uplift each other from across the world. We are a diverse, funny, skilled, and resourceful group of people to be sure!
I hesitate to prescribe what exactly The Proletarian Web is, because I think it is bigger then any single persons ideas. All I've done here is what amounts to branding. A logo and a title, to go with my observations.
I write this out as a kind of springboard. I'm currently in the process of finally putting a front page on the abolish.capital domain I bought several months ago. In doing so, it got me thinking about this idea again. I want to include a kind of, manifesto if you will, about what exactly "The Proletarian Web" is, on the site. I want to compile a list of communities and sites that constitute that idea. I want to build a hub that makes The Proletarian Web accessible to more people, to direct them to more places.
I think though, if I'm going to be doing something like that, I can't just rely on my own ideas. I think I need to hear from you, those who inhabit this space along with me. After all, this thing that is forming isn't doing so by itself in isolation. It is the accumulative efforts of all of us! I think whatever we describe The Proletarian Web to be, should be a reflection of the people who exist there.
I'll leave the linked comment above here:
I would really like a custom web search that has only domains/sites that have been manually added, and can be removed if reported by users as no longer good.
Don't have to be too snobby, but allow-list limiting would make a lot of websearching less annoying because it would defacto exclude trash AI slop.
Not trying to contradict anything, just genuine question: what are the reasonings that led to the decision of this "popular front" approach, and what is included in this front?
That's just my interpretation of current conditions. Obviously there will be red lines within this front, but I see no reason why Anarchist, Marxist (ML), and historically progressive movements can't find common ground within this network. If Israel is the model for modern colonial stronghold's to siege and genocide native peoples in service of expanding and maintaining modern imperialism, then Palestine is the model of resistance. One of the characteristics of that resistance is its popular front.
Though, more pragmatically, I mostly believe this because of how network effects make these federate systems run effectively. But hat's just my perspective. Others might disagree. I'm avoiding prescribing anything superstructural at the moment. That idea was one I had seven months ago for what its worth.
Lemmy is interesting in its intersection between its adoption and success and with its core developers having clear and present ideological leanings. Not to imply that Communists haven't developed software before or something. However, it's had a real tangible impact on the development of the social relations within the Lemmy network. It invites other ideologically focused groups to join the network, but also forces those "free of ideology" (liberals) to expose their ideology openly. That's how I interpret the recent pro-zionist actions on lemmy.world for example. I don't think that would have played out the way it did if it wasn't for the existence of the explicit proletarian character within the network.
The success of Lemmy however isn't simply because communists built it. If the developers had taken an exclusionary approach, only allowing similarly ideologically aligned contributors, the pool of available contributors would have limited its development. There are a lot more people who believe in this techno-libertarian utopian ideal of "free association" that are willing to contribute to projects like Lemmy.
I see it like this: The "Digital Commons" as an ideal that built the backbone of the internet exists as a result of the socialization of labor. Socialization of labor is the crowning achievement of the Bourgeoisie as a historically progressive class. Through the socialization of labor under a definite plan, the Proletariat class, and its historical mission emerged. The internet couldn't exist today without the socialization of labor, and yet, despite all the efforts of the Bourgeois class it does not have total control or ownership over what happens on the internet. I view the efforts to repeal Section 230 in America, and the international effort to implement Age Verification at the system level, as a means of implementing the enclosure of the Digital Commons. Already, the digital landscape that exists is privately owned by our current techno-fascist Bourgeoisie, yet through the socialization of labor, formations like the Open Source movement have emerged. This represents a split away from the private ownership of the Digital Commons. It has democratized the labor process of creating software and delivering services, and allowed for individuals or groups of laborers to create together absent of the private ownership by capital.
It is not a total, or even clean separation, however. GitHub was bought by Microsoft as a way to control and monetize this democratized labor pool. Even before this happened, however, self-hostable services such as Gitea and now more popularly Forgejo have emerged, and in some ways achieved feature parity with GitHub (including things like supporting GitHub Actions). Much of the production of things is a result of the Open Source Movement, and that cannot be denied. Open any manual for any device you own, and you fill find Open Source disclosures inside. The production process of all non-compute bound things uses compute bound things, which inevitably rely on Open Source projects for their operation. There is plenty to be critical of when talking about Open Source, do not misunderstand me. However, one thing I think cannot be denied is that it represents a schism in the bourgeois model of socialized labor, and the emergence of the proletarian model of socialized labor. Right now, exists a full technology suite of tools that can be hosted by a network of laborers out of their own houses to create and manage an entire end-to-end software production line, with zero private (for profit) ownership of the means of production (meaning: the tools, software, servers, and even hardware, that is required for the production and distribution of software.). It is not perfect, but I believe the foundations are there.
The next logical step is ownership of the network itself. As it stands now, large portions of private capital own the underlying network that supports the internet, but it also intersects with public institutions as well. As an example, the internet connection for the school I work at is provided by a regional network owned and operated jointly by the state, and it's public university. It is part of The Quilt, which describes itself as "[a] national coalition of non-profit U.S. regional research and education networks representing 43 networks across the country. Members of The Quilt provide advanced network services and applications to over 900 universities and thousands of other educational and community anchor institutions". So, as we can see, even the underlying network technology isn't completely privately owned by the Bourgeois class. This point I'm making isn't to say that The Proletarian Network will be a literal network delivering internet access to people. It is only to illustrate that the internet as an entity exists in a duality of public and private ownership. As such, it is not something yet fully enclosed by the Bourgeoisie.
Other developments, like ActivityPub and federated social media systems is again an expression of the resistance to the enclosure of the Digital Commons. As places like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram blaze down the path of enshittification, it only further incentivizes this group of techno-proletarians (which inevitably includes those afflicted with the California/Silicon Valley Libertarian ideology) to create alternative systems that replicate the experiences of the decaying legacy systems. Once those systems are hosted and operated by individual, working class people, they take on a proletarian character. They are no longer large socialized but privately owned means of communication and community building, but instead a collectively owned and diverse group of federated means of communication.
As ideological proletarians, I think we have a task in front of us, which is to insert ourselves into this emerging network of federated systems, which could expand beyond simple social networks, and do so from a principled ideological standpoint. That is going to require us to think internationally, as an international proletariat, which means offering critical support to groups of people who are attempting to maintain their own part of the digital commons in the face of its enclosure. The skills we have gained through the socialization process of our daily labor can be utilized to influence and shape this emerging form of relations. Allow for a network of ideologically proletarian spaces to exist outside direct private ownership in the same way that Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc, have existed since their inception. This means acting as shepherds to onboard people to existing spaces, but also provide documentation and guidance to emerging communities that aids in establishing, securing, and safeguarding those spaces. It means expanding the footprint of the existing ideological proletarian character of the federated network so that it can become the defining character of the network.
This is obviously a lot of ideas that need to be put into practice. Where to start, is having these kinds of conversations, and see where they take us.
Thanks for the elaborate reply.
I never actually made this analysis before:
I find it very compelling and accurate, so thanks for sharing that with us.
Since "no investigation = no right to speak" and I'm not well aware of the idea behind this proletarian network, I'll go ahead and ask some more questions:
Is the fediverse de-jure protected from instances promoted by capitalist companies, governments or anything inbetween? Is there anything in the Fediverse rules stopping, say, the EU from funding big instances or creating new ones, electing their moderation, advertising them, and coopting the less ideologically advanced (and unfortunately majority) instances?
If I understand this correctly, your arguments for wide popular front stem more from a technical point of view (as in a need for an abundance of experienced developers). How does this interact with the "ring of leftist communities" thing? Sharing a common software platform but not directly interacting through social networks? As an example, the necessary protection of leftist spaces from Zionist, racist, queerphobic or misogynistic points of view, or even direct anticommunist propaganda, requires a degree of moderation that most people in the lemmyverse don't consider acceptable, as we see for example from the constant hatred towards tankies emanating even from self-declared leftist spaces such as quokk or blahaj.
Point One
We've already seen this happen when Meta launched Threads with ActivityPub support. The community, by and large, rejected their presence and opted to preemptively de-federate from Threads. Those actions you describe, would only recreate existing social dynamics on bourgeois platforms that have historically driven people away to create these federated systems. In the case of a government getting in the business of hosting a platform for its citizens to engage with, it would only make the contradiction playing out on these platforms more explicit. When the EU hosts a platform and purges it of all Pro-Palestinian speech, it's a lot harder to wave away the idea that it's just the actions of a few deranged ruling class operators. Some governments, like Germany for example, are already engaging in this kind of policing even without owning the platforms. That reality was at the heart of the defederation between DB0 and Feddit.org, since Feddit claimed to be bound by German Law and as such couldn't ban zionists, as that would run foul of German Antisemitism Law (according to the owner of Feddit). It would only sharpen the contradiction.
Point Two
A couple of things I think I can clarify: When you say "ring of leftist communities" I think you're talking about my previous ideas about having a "web ring" which is just an old means of discoverability that existed before search engines. In some ways, that model might still be useful as the content discussed on these ideologically proletariat services and sites might not easily surface on modern search engines, since those companies actively engage in manicuring search results. However, what I'm talking about here and now is more broadly about making an ideological declaration based on the shared proletarian ideological character that exists in this space. That would probably manifest similarly to declarations like, https://indieweb.org/, https://web-revival.neocities.org/, or https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/. These are all examples of a kind of return to form, a desire to go back to the way the internet was before capitalist accumulation dominated it so heavily. The idea that is forming in my head is closer to these sorts of declarations except it's different in one major way. All of these declarations are void of ideology, but instead are about attempting to transform the technology in the hopes that it brings us back to a more sensible time on the internet. A return to simple HTML and web hosting, or a reconfiguring of software stack topology, in a way that then in theory transforms the internet landscape. It equates to "if we just all stopped using this style of internet infrastructure, and instead used this other type of infrastructure that is wildly different, we'll have solved the problem with the internet" or "The Past was nicer, let's just abandon all technological progress and retvrn to the old days". It's magical thinking, because it is born from the minds of liberals. This brings me to the second half of point two.
You mention "Sharing a common software platform but not directly interacting through social networks?" When in fact what I mean, in the here and now, is the opposite. The way you transform this space isn't through any one given software stack, it is through principled ideological action within the space. What I'm proposing isn't a declaration of a proletarian software stack which is what many of these other nu-web movements are doing (declaring a "transformative" software stack), but instead a proletarian social stack (ew, I don't like that phrasing). The hostility you observe from places like Blahaj and Quokk are manifestations of their conflict with us ideologically, they harbor false consciousness, and as a result leads to the fracturing of the network. This isn't isolated to just Lemmy though, Tankie has gained wide usage by the terminally online across the internet, and that is a manifestation of the growing class consciousness of people generally. Five or even Ten years ago, using the word "tankie" would have been out of place, but as socialist thought has become more mainstream, it emerged as a common slur that liberals hurl at us to dismiss our ideas.
What I'm envisioning here is a similar declaration about the internet and its direction, and how it can be changed, which is what those movements I mentioned earlier have attempted to do. However, this declaration would be one rooted in our shared ideology with no specific software stack in mind. The goal is to encourage like-minded people to grow this ideologically aligned network, and also participate in its construction through existing open source pathways. Our spaces would demand a higher degree of moderation, but the result would be one that aids in the raising of class consciousness. The internet, by default, is liberal and what I'm imagining is a rejection of liberalism and building a network of spaces that is ideologically proletarian by default. I believe we can do that by being curators and documentarians (at first), to build a community that can support people in spinning up their own local resources using whatever self-hosted services are available. The network effect has an ideological tension IF we as ideological proletarians foster our side of the network.
Liberals will need to do nothing to foster their side of the network, since it is the default position. Right now what we've built exists as a kind of accumulation of individual choices that only align through our ideological perspective. What I'm proposing is synthesizing these individual experiences into a cohesive declaration that articulates what this space is, how someone can join it, why they would want to, and how they can contribute to its growth. To state clearly that there exists a space that affirms your humanity through these shared values, and attempt to onboard people in a more direct and deliberate way.
It could be like a kind of GNU manifesto for today, with a more consciously proletarian slant? I.e. instead of being focused on freedom to compute, it's focused on freedom to socialize through what modern technology makes possible? With a more comprehensive idea of freedom as in "freedom to engage in the technological social space without abuse, capitalist encroachment, or artificial limitations."
Yes, this I think is in line with what I'm imagining. Through our labor we will build our own means of communication, foster and manage our own communities both digital and physical, collectively, without the private ownership of capital.
Thanks again for the detailed response, I understand much better what you meant originally with your post and the extra comment, really appreciate your time.
As for point two, I think it's a wonderful idea to make this declaration. Idk if it entails something deeper beyond an ideological guideline, such as when you mentioned "cadre building" requiring formal organization further than whatever exists in the form of semi-organized moderators. I'd love an answer to that!
As for point one, I believe that one failed attempt by the ruling class (Threads) and one defederation from Feddit aren't enough evidence that we're safe. The Feddit thing is blatant in that they outright ban pro-palestinian content, but they can come up with much more solid ways to enforce their overton window in social media, which is honestly enough for the most part. I can point to extreme success on their behalf such as libs unquestioningly believing stuff coming from euvsdisinfo, which I've seen plenty linked in the broader Lemmy. We shouldn't let our guards down and believe that "material interests" will sort it out for us
I think initially putting out this declaration, with some ideas about what it means to be ideologically proletarian and what that means for a proletarian web would be enough. Having a space (like a matrix chat room or a lemmy community) to have open discussion about how to turn these ideas from abstract to concrete is likely the next logical step. What defines the proletariat? Socialized labor! Something we should keep in mind when building anything. We can get more done the more people are involved and work together.
Oh, I by no means am under any illusion of safety. Elon Musk bought twitter outwrite to transform it into a Nazi safe space and succeeded. That's not good, but it is radicalizing, and contributes to the growth of alternative platforms. There will be more hurdles to navigate when it becomes clear censoring corporate platforms doesn't actually stifle speech, but simply moves it into "unregulated spaces" like these. The next logical step is attacking hosting providers like Digital Ocean. I think we're a long ways off from that though. Which is exactly why we need to plant this flag, because we risk what exists already. These spaces could flicker out, one by one, as time, energy, optimism, and will erode in the face of social decay. Having a "network" of ideologically aligned people means ensuring that someone could pick up the torch and carry it if you're burning out. Without making this declaration however, we risk never progressing into a collective group and remaining small islands where our shared perspectives are the only thing we share in common.
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Oh, I see. Didn't even know Threads is from FB. Any similar cases with Mastodon instances?
Wasn't this what bluesky was all about? Basically doing Twitter 2.0 using the veneer of Mastodon-like decentralization that was never technically sound or achieved. That's my vague understanding of how things have played out at least.
Yeah basically, except it seemed like what bsky wanted to do was dethrone ActivityPub (otherwise, why wouldn't they just adopt ActivityPub?) and failed to deliver on any of their federation goals. The @Protocal appears to be dead.
Threads is an Instagram thingy, so it's Meta (facebook) → Instagram → Threads.
I don't have much knowledge of any kind of cases with mastodon.
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This sounds very cool, and I'd like to help out. One thing you didn't explicitly state in your examples of documentation but which I think is really important is security. If things go well, we'll have people completely new to hosting stuff setting up their own things. And also, even people not entirely new to hosting might be missing knowledge about something.
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Oh, yes, that's a very good point! Definitely something that needs to be a topic of discussion.