A presentation of alternatives to Big Tech social medias for Amnesty International Warsaw team

Fediversity
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Hello all,

I’m close to conclude my free software engagement, with https://OneWomanLess.github.io, being excluded/mobbed from one project - with (suspected) complex trauma as a result to that, stress induced hyperandrogenism (diagnosed), inability to progress with the other project, that has been eventually misappropriated from me following a private harassment at the event I was invited to and encouraged to participate, despite my reluctance - and finally, being mistaken as a sex worker at the community event last year. Really.

A few days ago, after publishing the website, I received some worrying, anonymous night messages, from an account that was deleted a few hours later - that defamation is a crime in Germany and unless I can prove things it will be taken against me. Great, there are already 3 groups of people that may act on rage on me.

I didn’t go anywhere this summer, to either prove or disprove anything, not to push or question other peoples bloated boundaries or just to participate in the events and social life.

5 years ago, I started to contribute to open source because I had an idea that this way I can keep in contact with software development while having a kid and as I moved from one continent to the other when my father was terminally ill. Also - because I believed in decentralisation, as a systems engineer, and as I was already a member of a foss community project that was privatised (not fully accurate term for what happened).

Anyways, to the topic: I recently started to volunteer with Amnesty International, and in the Warsaw office there is being prepared an anti-BIG-TECH campaign, with the higher goal of making pressure on policy makers in Poland to enforce European Digital Services Act on X in the country.

The campaign is planned to be held on Twitter/X and other monopolist social media platforms - so I proposed to make it in Fediverse in parallel, and post links to that, so to raise awareness about the existence of the alternatives too.

I was asked to prepare an overview of the alternative social medias for the group, with particular focus on that campaign. I wander if anyone would be willing to meet with me in the coming days for an hour or so to talk it through and help me systemise the tiny things that I know from here and there, so I can prepare a more comprehensive presentation.

Let me know here or on matrix

Thanks!

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Oh @mariha I’m so sorry to read you… I wish we could take the time to document your experience and bring more women together sharing theirs. Can you be in Brussels next Spring? We’re planning to make an OFFDEM later than February, and this topic could well be part of it. It’s been a heavy burden in the free software community not being able to welcome feminist practice and thwarting toxic masculinity.

I guess AI (for Amnesty International :sweat_smile:) is already in contact with Panoptikon, a member of EDRi who would definitely align in an anti-BIG-TECH campaign.

Your strategy is wise, since you can

  1. post originals in the Fediverse and guarantee prior art
  2. relay to centralized platforms linking to originals
  3. removing comments on centralized platforms to encourage people moving to the Fediverse to take part in the discussion

@aschrijver has been working on Delightful Fediverse Apps and has good knowledge of the environment. It would be a good moment to form @software.hosts as well. I’d be happy to help.

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Yes, I think documenting my experience by someone else then me, and having more women sharing theirs, to amplify their single unheard and sometimes even silenced voices and to build a more coherent common story is a very good idea.

I was thinking already earlier of coming to OFFDEM. I’m not well connected and it’s quite an effort for someone who feels already more not part of it then still in the community, but maybe I’ll make it for whatever reason. It makes me feel like it was still considered to be more my issue then anyone’s else. I underestimated that factor when choosing a field of study.

I’m not sure if that’s an issue of toxic masculinity, I feel like I’m personally quite resistant to that, I’m good with any type of masculinity, for me it’s more a community issue of ignorance, carelessness, and no respect for another human being, unless they have enough power to be looked after and cared about. It is an issue of human value being attached to the power they already have, with no sense of minimal baseline of decency, and irresponsibility of those who already are - in power. And that they happen to be, in vast majority - men. Though apparently, it’s often not different for women or non-binary people in power as well - so I think it’s more an issue of power with no responsibility or accountability than of a gender, and then that it disproportionately more affects women* than men. And in this sense, it becomes a gender issue. Presenting it as a power issue feels better to me, though.

The strategy of attacking the soft spot was not what I was prepared for.

I love AI as an abbreviation for Amnesty International :D. I’ve just recently started to volunteer with them, so I have little knowledge about who they are in contact with, and probably not in a position to change the course of already planned campaign, but I’ll try to contribute with some meaningful input. Maybe if not this time it can be useful for the future. The main goal of this campaign is to make pressure on the policy makers with a storm of tweets, not to target the platforms and their usersbases directly, but the underlying issues and solutions are aligned.

I tried to reach out to 5 or 6 human rights NGOs in the course of last 2-3 years, mostly with no answer, one answered that they don’t deal with human rights “in IT projects”. My sense of agency is quite low at the moment. From AI Poland, after multiple attempts, I got an informal answer that the project is too ambitious for them. Haven’t tried Panopticon yet. At the moment I also feel more threatened by obscure privacy that makes a good filed for a misuse and abuse than fully open exposure in the public. An evolutionary developed, different gender adaptation and a default strategy how to deal with a potentially dangerous situations.

I recently tried HateAid, a week or so ago, no answer so far, and EDRi was on my list as well. I truly wish someone did it for me and I could move on to do other things in life.

I had a meaningful exchange and mutual understanding of the severity of the human rights issues in digital space with Digital Dignity team so far only.

Thanks for the link to the Delightful Fediverse Apps, I’m impressed how it’s grown!

Not sure what exactly you mean by forming @software.hosts. I’ll be happy to connect with people, I won’t take a lead role for any group project at the moment / ever any more.

Sorry for the long post, I’m exhausted with it as well. I wish it had gone differently.

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Mariha, I am so sorry to hear what a godawful horrible experiences you went through! It is good that you are able to re-evaluate what you want to do and are out seeking new passions in life and the welcoming places where you can work on them. I hope you’ll soon find yourself in much happier uplifted spirits again. :revolving_hearts:

At the moment I’m unable to commit to anything and can offer only little help (living paycheck to paycheck), but I will reach out to you on matrix, and maybe I have some quick tips and advice we can brainstorm on a bit.

It is funny, at Social coding commons where I’m currently involved, I also intend to introduce an alternative to the AI acronym: Alternative intelligence. Meaning real people. There might be something of a major art project around the theme someday. One can dream.

Regarding Amnesty, what I’m able to do is send mail to the founders of Center for Humane Technology on behalf of you / Amnesty (with e.g. Tristan Harris known from “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix). Maybe they can lend their weight to the campaign. More thoughts here, I’ll follow up with.

Thank you, and thanks @how for mentioning the ‘delightful commons’ initiative (as it is now named). There are 3 fedi-related lists and the best entry-point is via the static auto-generated website at:

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@mariha, very sorry to hear about the ghastly way you’ve been treated, sadly far too common in open source communities. Thanks for sharing your story here and elsewhere … agreed that it’s not just toxic masculinity, it’s a complex interlocking system of structures of dominance and abuse that reinforces cis white male heteronormative ableist capitalist power by enlisting/coopting people who don’t fall into all of those categories.

Thanks for the information about the Amnesty International campaign, and very much agree about the value in doing it in parallel on the Fediverse. I have a couple of posts from a couple of years ago on tactics for legislative activism in the US, some of it might be relevant to what you’re trying to do as well. #Privacy activism on Mastodon and in the fediverse looks at things in general, and the sections on Lemmy and kbin FTW! and It’s harder than it sounds in Can the Fediverse Help Stop Bad Internet Bills? are a followon.

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Kia ora @mariha , sorry to hear you’ve had such a frustrating and stressful experience of trying to contribute. How can we help?

The problem as I see it is out-of-control ego, where people see commons like software projects and community spaces as their property, or even as part of themselves. Resulting in defensiveness when the status quo of a commons is questioned, and aggressiveness towards people who try to change it, even for the better. This often manifests in forms that reflect specific hierarchies common in our societies (eg man over woman, or straight over gay), but IMHO the root problem is hierarchies in general, and the authoritarian impulse to create, maintain, and leverage them for ego gratification.

So while I welcome specific initiatives like Outreachy that aim to diversify participation in software freedom projects (by women, non-straight people, non-white people, etc), and I’ve even created some modest ones myself (like this one, and this one), I’ve come to see them as bandaid measures. Treating the symptoms, but not addressing the cause; the belief that it’s ok to impose one’s will on others. That includes doing it “for the greater good”, in the belief that the (stated) ends justify the means, which is often the excuse for egotistical, authoritarian behaviour in ethical tech commons, and in activist projects in general.

I’m a longtime researcher for fediverse.party and currently stepping into the role of maintainer of that site. Like @aschrijver I have a lot on my plate, especially right now, but I’m happy to help if I can.

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@jdp23 thanks for the good words and very helpful articles about activism in fedi!

I agree very much with this. Not sure if that’s authoritarian or maybe more/sometimes ignorant and disrespectful to the other(s) human being(s), but it’s definitely the belief that the (stated) ends justify the means in a combination with some ego issues. (edit: clarified later)

I’ll be happy to get some help from you, @strypey. Thanks! I’ll write you directly, probably not today, though.

It’s the Amnesty in Poland local campaign, not the whole Amnesty, but I agree that they would be a good partner for the Fediverse outreach campaign. I’m thinking myself of positioning Mastodon as a social media where one can significantly reduce the risk of gender-based online violence. There is an article about hate speech and although I’m not sure if the analysis they refer to took into account/normalised the cultural context of users of mastodon.social and Twitter/X, the federated architecture allows for greater diversity between instances and so also safety. If you know some other research in regards to that I’d be interested as well.

I also believe the lack of women in tech and free software in particular is affecting all of us as consumers of [free] software and is worth a film and this scale of audience and outreach - but made in a way that takes the responsibility off from the shoulders of the few women that happen to be here, and shows it in a broader context as an environment issue, largely external to us. I’ve had this repeated feeling of realising/experience that I just happened to be in a bad place, that it’s a sort of a social trap with no escape without getting injured. Some social studies would definitely be good.

The two topics got intertwined here. They are connected but might be worth trying to discuss them separately. Not sure.

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Aww, I overlooked that. Humanetech.com folks are quite US-focused or globally oriented. I still have some potentially interesting things to discuss regarding the Humane Tech Community I started on their Discourse forum. The community is dormant, and I have no time and opportunity to facilitate it. Same as @how for SocialHub I should initiate a responsible reboot or shutdown. And I strongly want a reboot, plus have interesting thought on how that may look like. It is something I will follow up on in Matrix.

From my time at Humane Tech Community I know a film maker who may be interested here. We didn’t have contact for a long time now, but I can try to connect you with them.

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For general Fediverse, it’s by far out of my thoughts/scope at the moment. Maybe worth to know for others or for some undefined future, wherever my collaboration with Amnesty brings me.

For women underrepresentation in foss, not to discourage you, but I’m myself not interested in making or playing in a film. With OneWomanLess.github.io I’m rather trying to close the topic for myself then open new chapters of it, but I can definitely give an account of my existence for others to build on that, if they were into this. So you’re welcome to forward the link to them, as you feel, but I won’t push the idea forward myself. I hope you can understand :saluting_face:. Thanks :green_heart:.

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I think it’s probably not the egotistical, authoritarian behaviour but the implicit powers and the tyranny of structurelessness. Or a combination of both, depending on the case.

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Hey @Mariha,

Thanks for contributing so important realities, I will forward your one women less initiative to women free software mailing lists (syster servers, and /etc) I am certain people will have important things to contribute.

Regarding your remark about power issues while I very much understand what you are refering to (and yes I also think Tatcher is evil) I still think fminism is an important solidarity structure to counter those problems.

For example you mention:

Feminism addresses the causes for this and they are rooted in the gender based patriarchal organisation of our society. Nothing essentialist about that, one is not born with special capacities or qualities along with their gametes, but as they are socialized as men they are given special powers by society, while women are tasked with empathy and caring, this explains a lot why men take place in areas where they can continue to accumulate power (as they are tasked by their socialization), and make those places toxic because they do not practice care.

regarding AI, there are many accounts for local AI branches on mastodon maybe that can be used as an example to convice the polish local branch

image
image388×711 62.1 KB

Heart and Courage to you

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Thank you for writing this and everything else. In my case, I got discredited by caring - or maybe exceptionally empathetic and slightly egotistic/maybe more opportunistic then truly caring, and that empathy is where theirs extra power comes from (if I was to analyse others) and keeps accumulating. I was in a difficult and particularly fragile moment in my life. Have never before had any similar issues.

I believe after those experiences I’ll start to appreciate feminist networks more. So far I thought that if I do a highly male dominated job, I do the bottom line feminism, and didn’t see that much value or need to do activism or to participate in the solidarity network. Also as I relocated twice and traveled a lot didn’t have a chance to get to know one.

I made this matrix room: #free-software-duchesses-eu:matrix.org after the Java’s JDuchess program that I remembered to hear about some time ago, and out of my grief of not feeling understood in #women:fsfe.org room. I don’t know /etc and I’ll be happy to get to know. Maybe once I knew but forgot. I remember being lost in some mailing list once.

The Amnesty topic is very interesting. I’ll propose on Wednesday to self-host a mastodon instance, similarly as DigitalCourage does. I wrote to them, and they are also supportive to the idea of an AI dedicated instance.

With Love and Courage for you too!

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Agreed, and I’d also add that intersectional feminism expands this lens to the other interlocking dimensions.

That sounds like a good idea. Depending on their technical resources, they might also consider running a Mastodon fork like Glitch. It has a lot of advantages including better community and safety mechanisms as well as richer formatting for posts, but as far as I know there aren’t any hosting services supporting it.

Also if they are thinking about video, an account on a PeerTube instance will be important. Longer-term they potentially might want to run their own; https://peertube.dair-institute.org/ is a great example of a PeerTube site that complements DAIR’s Twitch and YouTube presence and their Mastodon instance at https://dair-community.social/ . In the short term though that might well be too much too soon.

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How much time consuming is administering a mastodon (or Glitch) instance? Keeping in mind all the variables like number of users, experience etc., just to have an idea what it takes.

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Great question, I don’t really know but will ask Mastodon admins to see what they say (although probably ot until tomorrow, it’s past 2 am here and I’m just about to go to sleep). Digital Courage might have some perspectives as well.

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Feedback I got is that for an experienced sysadmin, Mastodon and Glitch are easy to maintain and nicer to work with than a lot of other software stacks (especially if you use Docker), and there are active chat rooms with helpful people It doesn’t take that much time after the initial setup, but you have to have somebody available who can react quickly. If there aren’t any experienced sysadmin resources with time available, then it’s probably better to use a hosting service like masto.host, which will take care of installation / upgrades / performance / sysadmin (although isn’t cheap – even if you just have a small number of active users but they have high visibility, which will hopefully happen as part of an activism campaign!).

Moderation is the other important thing to keep in mind. There are two aspects of this: moderating the behavior of the people on your instance (which isn’t a big deal if you just have a handful but becomes increasingly important the more people who have accounts there), and dealing with the interactions from people on other instances (which can include spammers, harassers, nazis, terfs, etc etc etc). If it’s going to involve more than 100+ users you’ll almost certainly want a moderation team in place … it doesn’t necessarily require a lot of time on a regular basis, but sometimes flares up. IFTAS has a community for fediverse moderators at https://connect.iftas.org and a bunch of resources in the Library - IFTAS Connect

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Thank you @jdp23, this is very, very helpful!

It’s also good to know about the hosted services. In general great to know about the options!

I may try to self-host by myself and maybe with the two others who have some experience and an interest in this. I feel like I’m in a good team for this if it all works out. And for my mental wellbeing it will be very good to get a normal, regular activity that maybe I can call a job - before I start making the bamboo framed cargo bicycles, that I know little about.

There are also Technical Support Communities :slight_smile:

For the moderation I would hope Amnesty can assemble a team in its members groups.

I am very glad that I asked and that the forum exists!

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Glad it’s useful! A couple more suggestions that came in later:

  • It’s much much much much much more difficult to run an instance with open registration (as opposed to requiring approval, or invitation-only). Spammers and scammers look for open signup instances to set up accounts on; and random people sometimes sign up and start spewing disinformation or hate speech. So I’d strongly recommend against open registration!
  • Here’s an article by FediTips on setting up your own server. One of the sections focuses on using a hosting service, but the rest should be relevant. How to create your own Mastodon server in 10 steps – Grow Your Own Services FediTips has a lot of other resources at https://fedi.tips/

Also, Elena Rossi’s recent video at 📺 Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media gives a good sense of the possibilities of the Fediverse, so might be useful in helping to explain why it’s worth exploring this route even though the numbers are still relatively small

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