If not now, when? Mutual aid and organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere (DRAFT)

Draft! Feedback welome!

Mutual aid. Organizing. Sharing, contextualizing, and making meaning of news and health information to combating propaganda and information overload. The use cases for alternative social networks – not controlled by techbro white supremacist CEO's working with their cronies in authoritarian governments – practically write themselves in today's world.

The good news is there's a lot of promising work happening in the decentralized social media ecosystems known as the fediverses ("federated universes") and the ATmosphere (a fediverse built on Bluesky's AT protocol). For example ...

"Dr. Timnit Gebru's Distributed AI Research Institute is an interdisciplinary and globally distributed AI research institute rooted in the belief that AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable, and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes it can be beneficial. DAIR-tube, their PeerTube page, includes videos of their Data Workers Inquiry and Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – world-class research, foucsed on justice and equity, available on the Fediverse. Along with their Mastodon instance dair-community.social, it's a great example of what's possible with today's technology."

– A lot of good stuff is happening in the fediverses!, November 2024

"Blacksky is providing a platform to amplify, protect, and moderate Black content so users can safely build community online.
The mission and purpose of the project is to de-center whiteness as the default and to provide a space for Black folk to discuss the Black everyday in a way that feels affirming. "

– Blacksky Algorithms, January 2025.

"As a Blind person i never thought i would be on social media savoring photos. But the communal Mastodon alt text game is so strong that sweet, poetic or silly descriptions abound on my timeline."

– Chancey Fleet, quoted in What kind of social network experience are you looking for?. If you use a screenreader or other assistive technology, Accessibility resources for Mastodon and compatible software might be helpful.

"Following this overview, I highlight the practices with which people seek to create a better Fediverse outside Meta’s grasp."

– Jamie A. Theophilos, Closing the Door to Remain Open: The Politics of Openness and the Practices of Strategic Closure in the Fediverse, December 2024, Social Media + Society, 10(4)

And the Free Fediverse Theophilos discusses is just the latest example of of resistance to fascism in the fediverses. Back in 2019, the ActivityPub Fediverse responded to Gab's attempt to join with an overwhelming wave of "no, go away". And even before that, in Lessons (so far) from Mastodon (2017/8), I noted that

"Policies against racism, sexism, discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, and Nazis are extremely appealing positioning these days."

It's still true.

Still, as promising as these efforts are, there's still a long ways to go.

Think of today's networks as prototypes at scale

Unlike big commercial social networks that spend zillions of dollars a year, most development teams in the fediverses and the ATmosphere are tiny. So a lot of the software is a lot less polished – understandable, but also a barrier to many people. And decentralization makes a lot of things more complex (and can be confusing, especially at first), so everything more challenging (especially at first) than on centralized social networks.

Not only that, there are huge cultural issues as well, including anti-Blackness, misognynoir, anti-trans biases, and Islamophobia. And the vast majority of development for adoption of these networks has focused on Western Europe, the US, and Japan; the Engine Room report on Exploring a transition to alternative social media platforms for social justice organizations in the Majority World explores some of the impacts of this.

One way of looking at is that today's decentralized social networks are prototypes at scale, with big holes including privacy and other aspects of safety, equity, accessibility, usability, inclusion, sustainability, and governance.

• On the one hand, despite their limitations, they're usable enough for a lot of people – and they're flexible enough that they've allowed the emergence of new possibilities. On centralized social networks, there isn't any way for DAIR to control their own data or avoid having some topics censored; there isn't any equivalent to an ATmospheric community like Blacksky, or the Website League, or the fedifams and caracoles discussed in Closing the Door to Remain Open. So that's exciting!
• On the other hand, today's prototypes are not usable, accessible, or safe for a lot of people – especially people who are already marginalized and at risk, in society and on corporate social networks. As Afseneh Rigot says in Can We Build Tech That Is Not Oppressive?

"Newer platforms need to make sure they don’t repeat mistakes and leave the same gaps that make them inaccessible or unsafe to those that need them most. Only then can they truly challenge monopolies. There’s so much potential if the right methods are used for better futures in our tech ecosystem."

Complementary paths forward

So we need to accelerate work on a few things at once:

• Find ways to leverage and improve the current prototypes for mutual aid, organizing, and fighting information warfare and overload – while also improving safety (especially for people most likely to be targets of harassment) and moderation.
• Help people move from corporate social networks - without losing their support networks, ties to communities, and connections with friends and family. Sydette Harry has framed this as a digital refugee project, and many of the poeple involved may also be refugees in the physical world. Erin Kissane's How to buy shoes in the fediverse and revealing the fediverse’s gifts have some great perspectives on this. Resources for choosing the right fediverse instance gives an idea of the some of the complexity today.
• Build whatever comes next. Structurally, and in terms of applications, what will decentralized social networks, designed from the margins using design justice principles look like? What about networks designed from the beginning with a focus on safety, consent, and moderation – built on next-generalition infrastructure like Spritely, Veilid, and Cwtch, with privacy and security designed in from the beginning. ?

And, in all of these threads we need to get beyond recreating existing corporate social networks (decentralized Twitter, federated Instagram and Reddit, etc etc etc) that are grounded in surveillance capitalism, colonialism, ableism, and rich-get-richer dynamics. We also need to address the lack of attention to safety and moderation . Not only that, we need to be conscious of the increasing surveillance and crackdowns on dissent by authoritarian governments and their supporters.

Easier said then done, but the opportunity is there. As Rigot says in Can We Build Tech That Is Not Oppressive?

"The details of how highly marginalized communities are criminalized are the key to how we can build robust and even scalable tech that is not oppressive. This is how Design From the Margins truly works....

The experience of the most criminalized in the US and globally shows how power really works. This knowledge, the workarounds, can also be translated into stealthy tech design, build, and engineering choices that help navigate systems."

Let's discuss!

How to make more rapid progress? The decentralized nature of the fediverses (and the limitations of current tools) makes it challenging to broaden participation and find synergies between the promising work that's happening. Still, gotta start somewhere. Upcoming events like the ATmosphere Conference and FediForum (both of which allow remote participation) provide opportunities for focused discussions, but why wait?

Here's some open questions to kick things off. Please share your perspectives – on Bluesky, Mastodon (which should also work for accounts using GoToSocial, Akkoma, or most other ActivityPub software), and/or in this CryptPad form (if you'd prefer to remain anonymous, or don't have accounts in the fediverss).

• What examples have you seen of successfully leveraging social networks for organizing and mutual aid?
• How could social networks better support organizing and mutual aid?
• What do you see as the most promising and/or urgent short-term opportunities?
• Who else should be involved in the discussion? We're especially interested in perspectives that are usually marginalied -- disability justice, Indigenous organizing and mutual aid, perspectives from the Global South -- but all suggestions are welcome!
• Are there any articles, papers, books, zines, videos, podcasts, etc on organizing, mutual aid, and/or social networks that you'd recommend?
• What other related topics would you like to see discussed?
• What else do you want to share? What other questions should we be asking?

Note: the converation will (hopefully) includes both Bluesky and the ActivityPub fediverse. If you want your posts to be visible in both places, consider bridging your accounnt by opting in to Bridgy Fed. In the fediverse, follow @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy; on Bluesky, follow @ap.brid.gy. For more on Bridgy Fed, see the docs.