Cory Doctorow explaining why he endorses the āFree Our Feedsā initiative (Lemmy discussion)
During the Napster wars, the record labels seriously pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
[ā¦]
One thing everyone agreed on was how disgusted we all were with the labels. What we didnāt agree on was what to do about it. A lot of us wanted to reform copyright ā say, by creating a blanket license for internet music so that artists could get paid directly. This was the systemic approach.Another group ā call them the āindividualistsā ā wanted a boycott. Just stop buying and listening to music from the major labels. Every dollar you spend with a label is being used to fund a campaign of legal terror. Merely enjoying popular music makes you part of the problem.
Hereās what I would say when people told me we should all stop listening to popular music: āIf members of your popular movement are not allowed to listen to popular music, your movement wonāt be very popular.ā
We werenāt going to make political change by creating an impossible purity test (āEw, you listen to music from a major label? God, whatās wrong with you?ā). I mean, for one thing, a lot of popular music is legitimately fantastic and makes peoplesā lives better. Popular movements should strive to increase their membersā joy, not demand their deprivation. Again, not merely because this is a nice thing to do for people, but also because itās good tactics to make participation in the thing youāre trying to do as joyous as possible.
[ā¦] When social media is federated, then you can leave a server without leaving your friends. Think of it as being similar to changing cell-phone companies. When you switch from Verizon to T-Mobile, you keep your number, you keep your address book and you keep your friends, who wonāt even know you switched networks unless you tell them.
Thereās no reason social media couldnāt work this way. You should be able to leave Facebook or Twitter for Mastodon, Bluesky, or any other service and still talk with the people you left behind, provided they still want to talk with you.
Thatās how the Fediverse ā which Mastodon is part of ā works already. You can switch from one Mastodon server to another, and all the people you follow and who follow you will just move over to that new server. That means that if the person or company or group running your server goes sour, you arenāt stuck making a choice between the people you love who connect to you on that server, and the pain of dealing with whatever bullshit the management is throwing off.
We could make that stronger! Data protection laws like the EUās GDPR and Californiaās CCPA create a legal duty for online services to hand over your data on demand. Arguably, these laws already require your Mastodon serverās management to give you the files you need to switch from one server to another, but that could be clarified. Handing these files over to users on demand is really straightforward ā even a volunteer running a small server for a few friends will have no trouble living up to this obligation. Itās literally just a minuteās work for each user.
Another way to make this stronger is through governance. Many of the great services that defined the old, good internet were run by ābenevolent dictators for life.ā This worked well, but failed so badly. Even if the dictator for life stayed benevolent, that didnāt make them infallible. The problem of a dictatorship isnāt just malice ā itās also human frailty. For a service to remain good over long timescales, it needs accountable, responsive governance. Thatās why all the most successful BDFL services (like Wikipedia) transitioned to community-managed systems.
There, too, Mastodon shines. Mastodonās founder Eugen Rochko has just explicitly abjured his role as āultimate decision-makerā and handed management over to a nonprofit.
I love using Mastodon and I have a lot of hope for its future. I wish I was as happy with Bluesky, which was founded with the promise of federation, and which uses a clever naming scheme that makes it even harder for server owners to usurp your identity. But while Bluesky has added many, many technically impressive features, they havenāt delivered on the long-promised federation.
Bluesky sure seems like a lot of fun! Theyāve pulled tens of millions of users over from other systems, and by all accounts, theyāve all having a great time. The problem is that without federation, all those users are vulnerable to bad decisions by management (perhaps under pressure from the companyās investors) or by a change in management (perhaps instigated by investors if the current management refuses to institute extractive measures that are good for the investors but bad for the users). Federation is to social media what fire-exits are to nightclubs: a way for people to escape if the party turns deadly.
So whatās the answer? Well, around Mastodon, youāll hear a refrain that reminds me a lot of the Napster wars: āPeople who are enjoying themselves on Bluesky are wrong to do so, because itās not federated and the only server you can use is run by a VC-backed for-profit. They should all leave that great party ā thereās no fire exits!ā
This is the social media version of āTo be in our movement, you have to stop listening to popular music.ā Sure, those people shouldnāt be crammed into a nightclub that has no fire exits. But thankfully, there is an alternative to being the kind of scold who demands that people leave a great party, and being the kind of callous person who lets tens of millions of people continue to risk their lives by being stuck in a fire-trap.
We can install our own fire-exits in Bluesky.
Yesterday, an initiative called āFree Our Feedsā launched, with a set of goals for ābillionaire-proofingā social media. One of those goals is to add the long-delayed federation to Bluesky. Iām one of the inaugural endorsers for this, because installing fire exits for Bluesky isnāt just the right thing to do, itās also good tactics.
Hereās why: if a body independent of the Bluesky corporation implements its federation services, then we ensure that its fire exits are beyond the control of its VCs. That means that if they are ever tempted in future to brick up the fire-exits, they wonāt be able to. This isnāt a hypothetical risk. When businesses start to enshittify their services, they fully commit themselves to blocking anything that makes it easy to leave those services.
[ā¦]
We can do better than begging people to leave a party theyāre enjoying; we can install our own fucking fire exits. Sure, maybe that means that a lot of those users will stay on the proprietary platform, but at least weāll have given them a way to leave if things go horribly wrong.After all, thereās no virtue in software freedom. The only thing worth caring about is human freedom. The only reason to value software freedom is if it sets humans free.
If I had my way, all those people enjoying themselves on Bluesky would come and enjoy themselves in the Fediverse. But Iām not a purist. If thereās a way to use Bluesky without locking myself to the platform, I will join the party there in a hot second. And if thereās a way to join the Bluesky party from the Fediverse, then goddamn I will party my ass off.
Iād like to interject here for a second and point out that āBillionaire-proofing XYZā is both a praxis and narrative we should be doing way more often. Forget about socialising healthcare, just billionaire-proof it.