In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc..

Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…

It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.

From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?

I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?

(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I worked with and still know people living in Africa, let me tell you, if you think you have bad, expensive internet, go back a decade or two. The people I know work in tech companies or are otherwise somewhat affluent and even they struggle getting a stable internet connection to have a video call. An office building of an ex-coworker had a single 20Mbit line with multiple companies inside.
The people I know have to make due with 1-2Mbit home lines. The cell connections are better, but only marginally.

A former employer even worked with the governments of some African countries and they couldn't get a datacenter up and running. People were stealing the bricks and wires! The government was trying to move their infrastructure away from the previous colonizers and back home, but their own countrymen and women didn't understand the importance.

Also, it's not only internet infrastructure, but infrastructure in general is messed up there. South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and has (had?) to content with rolling blackouts for years! Service operators struggle to keep their services running and have to move them abroad, which of course isn't great.

The reasons are diverse, but a large factor by far is corruption. Physical colonization with non-native governments are a thing of the past. What's trendy now is economic and legal colonization. Pay off as many people as possible to make laws (and also keep it that way) allowing all the riches (labor and resources) to be extracted from the country at laughable prices - which end up in the pockets of the wealthy and corrupt. Anybody who doesn't fall in line is merc'ed.
Boeing killed off a whistleblower or two and the government exiled another? That's cute! Politicians get shot while campaigning for a better future. The press isn't free, and fair voting circumstances are a dream. Controlling parties can own the voting booths and reward voters in broad daylight for checking the "right" box.

Anyway, while I do support the thought behind asking the question, IMO the only ways to expand the fediverse into ex-colonies are:

making the fediverse so popular that it's "so hot right now" and the trend swaps over
paying a trusted party to set up a server there and pay for everything (including bribes) to have a stable connection, then tell as many locals as possible
going there, doing it yourself, teaching about it, and handing over the reigns to somebody there with the same vision and passion

That's of course if the circumstances are right for people there to even want it. Many foreigners have "gone down there" to "show 'em how it's done" without understanding zilch about their culture, needs, wants, and modus operandi. Only to leave a "white elephant" behind.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz -2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Anyway, while I do support the thought behind asking the question, IMO the only ways to expand the fediverse into ex-colonies are:
making the fediverse so popular that it’s “so hot right now” and the trend swaps over
paying a trusted party to set up a server there and pay for everything (including bribes) to have a stable connection, then tell as many locals as possible
going there, doing it yourself, teaching about it, and handing over the reigns to somebody there with the same vision and passion
That’s of course if the circumstances are right for people there to even want it. Many foreigners have “gone down there” to “show 'em how it’s done” without understanding zilch about their culture, needs, wants, and modus operandi. Only to leave a “white elephant” behind.

There is no set of "only" that can be defined here. There are a million ways to contribute to a momentum in a positive direction here. The biggest is probably contributing labor for translation of documentation into languages that nobody has bothered to translate for yet right? Another is making sure the development community isn't an opaque discord clique where asking naive questions gets you immediately harassed for not using discord's awful search function and that somebody from a very different life experience, culture and language can hack together what your documentation means even if they can't speak your language.

I think there are as many solutions to this power imbalance as there are dimensions of the power imbalance.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, you're probably right. I was thinking in terms of "fediverse is popular in ex-colonies now!" level. But small steps first. Getting off of goddamn discord is definitely one.

Supporting other languages in the dev community is hard though. In my mind it kinda creates a split in the community, so one would need members that speak both languages well and glue the communities together.

Maybe a good step would be hosting per country instances and trying to promote them on proprietary social media.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Supporting other languages in the dev community is hard though. In my mind it kinda creates a split in the community, so one would need members that speak both languages well and glue the communities together.

I think this is a bulk of the hard work that most people in a similar position to me can do (though I only know english and a littttle bit of spanish, but I am referencing my perspective not my life skills). It is hard work, it takes constant people skills and people management. However, I also think the product of that work will undoubtedly have a force multiplication effect on the future growth of the fediverse to more diverse contexts, communities and languages.

As a thought experiment, lets dial this line of thought all the way up to 11. The fediverse would be perfect for hosting say a mastodon instance where all the communication is in a particular endangered language. The community could begin as a place to use an endangered language in conversation, and thus a great place to read and learn the language as well. It could also be a hub for information about classes and events related to the language as well. I believe there is already an Esperanto lemmy community on the fediverse, which is something along vaguely similar lines. Think about it, if somebody with the knowledge, time and skill to set up a lemmy or mastodon instance contacted a teacher conducting classes for an endangered language and offered to set up a community on their lemmy/mastodon server (or help set one up with the intention of handing over control eventually to people in that language community) wouldn't the result be in many ways simpler from that language teachers perspective than trying to hack something together with commercial software? I think along many metrics it would.

Sure, a companies product for that would be slicker but what about custom character support for languages, what about autocorrect for that language built into the lemmy/mastodon server, what about specific features that are critical to the nature of the language, what about moderation policies that take into account the current and historical experience of the people who kept the language alive? Is a massive corporation run by a bunch of astronomically naive techbros mostly from california really going to care about meaningfully prioritizing implementing features for niche communities like this? ...maybe sometimes??

I am disappointed people immediately attacked the details of my question, and focused mostly on the difficulties of constructing any kind of answer that meaningfully predicts the future of an incredibly complex intersection of variables... instead of taking my invitation to think broadly about the future of the fediverse and what the biggest, more direct actions that we can all take to help it grow and become more diverse.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I see where you're coming from and I like the idea of using the fediverse for endangered languages! Providing a forum (lemmy/mbin), audio platform (funkwhale), video platform (peertube), and short form blogging (mastodon or on of the the others) + long form blogging (wordpress? pleroma? ....), could help keep the languages alive through engagement.

Maybe somebody will the find the time for that. I unfortunately am working on other stuff rn.

I am disappointed people immediately attacked the details of my question, and focused mostly on the difficulties of constructing any kind of answer that meaningfully predicts the future of an incredibly complex intersection of variables… instead of taking my invitation to think broadly about the future of the fediverse and what the biggest, more direct actions that we can all take to help it grow and become more diverse.

IMO you should've led with the question, then provided context. The context was too long to read to get to the actual question.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 months ago

IMO you should’ve led with the question, then provided context. The context was too long to read to get to the actual question.

Hey, thanks for the response and honestly that is a great point. I can't be upset at people for wanting a sentence to end in a reasonable amount of time lol.