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.
One thing I heard about how facebook got its teeth in: It was originally launched in just a few universities (5 or 8 iirc). The details have to do with their specific marketing strategy. But the general idea which is to focus on getting good saturation in a specific geographic/demographic group is a good one. What is needed is to find existing constituency and convince a critical slice of them (the coolest ones) to participate. So you focus really hard on making it awesome, then other people will want in.
Prior to the social media take over, we would hear about a website "coming to town". Do you remember when your area "got craigslist"? Some other local forum or news site that may or may not be running anymore? Or facebook? Facebook was the last one to do that really. Now platforms just ooze into existence.
Hexbear is actually an example of the older model because it started with an existing constituency
r/chapo users. Who were all looking to make a move en mass.
This is all reflecting on the "local" aspect, which is in a bit contradiction with the "revolutionary" aspect and I am not sure if they are meant to be together or separate?
I think there might be hunger for local-based online spots not run by corporations. I have noticed a return to people putting posters up around the block for roommates, selling things, side businesses, cults, etc, which was entirely dominated by fb marketplace and the like. And apparently paper phone books are coming back. Because the internet is impossible to use.
Would need geography-specific committees but if treated as a serious project is not impossible.
If focusing on the "revolutionary" side it is difficult to distinguish from a honeypot so would need to consider how such a website could be a honeypot, and ostentatiously not do those things.
I don't think anything can be separate. In order to build a mass movement you must meet the people where they are. But inversely, you also need the people, where they are, to meet each other.
Right now a lot of local streams of information are owned by capital. Neighborhood, Facebook, Reddit predominantly own the "front page" for your locality. You'll log into Facebook and find groups for your local PSL, your municipality, your local whatever. You'll go to reddit for your state and city subreddit, you'll hit up neighborhood (maybe) to see what people in your town or block are talking about (do people use neighborhood??).
If people are looking to talk politics about their city or town, where do they go? All the liberal and Nazi owned internet spaces? I know that's what its like in my town. Your (I use, "you" broadly here, not you specifically) town/city/state social online space are owned by Nazis or by liberals who will defend the right for Nazis to exist in the space.
I guess the point I'm making is, where do you (again speaking generally, not you specifically) organize between the organizing and who owns that space? Is it Facebook who owns the space you use for organizing in your community? Why should it? What would those spaces be like of they were operated by people who share our perspective? Obviously some liberals would leave, but much like this space they will show their ideology while they do so.
I think in order for local adoption to take place though, you need to start larger. I think Midwest.social is an interesting model. But people need to know that operating something like that is possible. In a way that makes it seem "easy enough" for at least someone to host it.
Building that bridge between the the global and the local is a long term objective for sure. But it can only help a revolutionary movement. Creating networks of communication and community not owned by capital is only going to make the movement more resilient. It's not something I imagine happening in months or even years. It might be something that can only happen organically. This is one of those thoughts I had 7 months ago. I think I have a better perspective currently to recognize it as a kind of idealistic part of this whole exercise.