Why I joined the Fediverse ~WhyIJoinedTheFediverse

There's one author on this blog: dev

Published on Facebook on 9/11/2020:

Things you may care about (or not)

Dear friends, dear pals,
In the next few weeks I want to have a meaningful conversation with you. Feel free to comment below or send me a private message. I’m trying to build something.

I believe it is inevitable that we will do something different in the future.
We, the public, can we already be wary of large, opaque technical systems?
When someone says what kind of hardware or software can be used legally, or what kind of speech is acceptable, can we be extremely wary?
In West Germany the people protesting the 1981 population census finally won a novel right to “informational self-determination”.
We need more state and corporate accountability, consumer protection, user empowerment, and struggle against centralized, opaque systems, whether political or technical.

I see young content managers running reckless with editorial and censorship responsibilities, cracking accounts without much, if any, coherent political thought. These are not defenders of the public interest. Rather, they are trespassers in a discourse with dangerous censorial proclivities that the state is inclined to encourage—despite it being sworn to protect us against this very thing.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when?”

In the next few weeks I will explain my thinking and describe my next steps here.
I do not seek this attention in order to moralize.
Rather, I will try to persuade you.
Maybe you will do something similar.

I want us to move on.
I want you on this journey.

We as humans should be guided by humans.
Not computer-run algorithms.
Plus, I like you.

I’m not going to ask you to exit Facebook or Twitter.
But please do consider what I have to say.
I believe that the technical basis for our future is on the table.
An increasing number of people are accepting this challenge and diverging from centralized failures.

Until my next post,
Dev