This is also how I understand your vision for SocialHub – and I see it as an incredibly important part of SocialHub’s heritage to carry forward.
There’s a huge tension in the fediverse these days between the depoliticized “open social web” framing – which includes Meta and other surveillance capitalists – and more liberatory view of the potential to create an alternative to surveillance capitalism that’s grounded in anti-oppression and community instead of domination and exploitation. Decentralization is a key strategy for countering Big Tech’s power – but can also be the basis for decentralized surveillance capitalism.
Right now though, it’s very challenging for for people and communities who are focusing on the liberatory view to communicate (or even find each other), and there aren’t any spaces where we can work together safely and collaboratively. Hopefully SocialHub Next Generation can help fill this gap!
Of course, in a decentralized world there won’t be only one hub – and as the Statement on discourse about ActivityPub and AT Protocol highlights, we really need to be thinking across protocols and across networks. In the ATmosphere, Blacksky, Northsky with its 2SLGBTQIA+ focus, and Latinsky are all coming it it from a liberatory perspective (even though Bluesky itself most definitely is not). Looking forward, projects like Spritely and Veillid are also relevant. So I think it would be a mistake to restrict the partcipation here and the focus too narrowly to the ActivityPub world.
Right. And in any case, SocialHub’s political focus is a strength so we should be building on this going forward, not trying to take it off the table!
This is another important part of SocialHub’s heritage and I also hope it carries forward. @angus, with the community in flux, it feels to me like a really bad time to reopen this discussion.
Yes, although that’s one aspect to focus on. Participation on SocialHub also needs to be more diverse and equitable – both demographically and in terms of expertise. Right now, for example, if somebody shares a proposed moderation-related FEP here, it doesn’t get any feedback from Black people, women of color, or trans people of color (three of the demographics that are most at risk from bad moderation on the fediverse), so there’s no way to know if the proposal meets their needs; and very few experts in moderation or trust & safety participate here, so there’s not a lot of subject matter expertise either. Change these dynamics will require a more inclusive culture, but that by itself isn’t enough.