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.
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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