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 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.