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New blog post: https://harihareswara.net/posts/2024/changelogs-and-release-notes/
- The distinction between detailed changelogs and brief release notes (with examples)
- Why it's worth doing both
- Why relying solely on GitHub as a project's communication platform discourages publishing and reading release notes
Spurred by @nedbat 's https://hachyderm.io/@nedbat/113152493265812268 , with references to @wiredferret @kfogel @leonardr @agateau @olivierlacan @xavdid @zwol @zulip and more.
#maintainers #opensource #FLOSS #maintainership #documentation -
Hello world!
I'm a post doc category theorist at LIPN in Paris, France. In my research I am surrounded by toposes and monoid actions.
I'm unlikely to post often here, but I'f quite active over on the Category Theory Zulip channel. Also, I have a fantasy-horror podcast, A Bell Chimes, which you might like to check out if that's your thing.
#introduction #lipn #postdoc #podcast #math #computerscience -
Hei, 21. jūlijā Rēzeknes centrālajā bibliotēkā notiks #OpenStreetMap kartēšanas pasākums un piena galdu projekta aktivitātes!
Stāstiet Latgales draugiem un radiem, un brauciet paši :)
Sīkāka info būs arī citur tūlīt, pagaidām Regita ielikusi šeit:
https://osmlatvija.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/360540-pas.C4.81kumi/topic/R.C4.93zekne.2021.2Ej.C5.ABlij.C4.81 -
#Discord is worse than #Mailingists, #IRC and #Forums combined because those - like #GitHub #Issues or any other public site & server - can at least be #crawled and #archived in a #searchable fashion.
Whereas Discord is peak #Enshittification and not only #AntiAccessibility but also the worst kind of communication solution, as there isn't even any option to export stuff from within it - something even #Slack & #MicrosoftTeams can do [#Zulip has been able to do that from the start]...
Discord is a bad and wrong excuse not to provide #public documentation and/or downloads.
#GithubPages is free & #DDoS-protected #Webhosting and for fast downloads on the cheap, #BitTorrent exists for almost two decades now...
I mean, do people who use Discord know how many times people like me needed to use @internetarchive / #InternetArchive's #WaybackMachine to access contents?
How many hours of labour have been collectively saved by #DuckDuckGo #InstantAnswer linking to the correct #StackOverflow / #ServerFault thread??Discord is an #InformationBlackHole and should be regarded with the same public accessibility as a intelligence agency's database: Don't use it and don't contribute to it - period!
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#PythonForSciComp behind the scenes. This is my #livestream setup that also lets me monitor what all the audience and @coderefinery instructors are communicating. Maybe a bit excessive but it seems to work well!
#OBS for broadcasting, #zoom for instructor studio, @zulip for internal communication, @hedgedoc for audience communication, #twitch for the stream, #github for lessons. #debian of course.
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@bblfish @emondb @hochstenbach @josd @w3c
I'm starting to lose track of all the different discussions in various venues. I'll put a #RDFSurfaces tag on this in hopes of being able to find it again.
I do remember discussing #Peirce and #LogicalGraphs and #CategoryTheory and #DigrammaticReasoning et cetera with Henry in one of the Zulip chatrooms a year, or maybe two ago ...
I'll repost some of what I wrote on the W³C list for anyone who may have missed it.
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#matterbridge - #bridge between mattermost, IRC, gitter, xmpp, slack, discord, telegram, rocketchat, twitch, ssh-chat, zulip, whatsapp, keybase, matrix, microsoft teams, nextcloud, mumble, vk and more with REST API (mattermost not required!)
https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge -
Is any one using MatterBridge? It almost seems to good to be true. Does it really link up all of the listed services?
#MatterBridge #Matrix #Mattermost #Telegram #XMPP #IRC #Whatsapp #FacebookMessanger and more
GitHub - 42wim/matterbridge: bridge between mattermost, IRC, gitter, xmpp, slack, discord, telegram, rocketchat, twitch, ssh-chat, zulip, whatsapp, keybase, matrix, microsoft teams, nextcloud, mumble, vk and more with REST API (mattermost not required!)bridge between mattermost, IRC, gitter, xmpp, slack, discord, telegram, rocketchat, twitch, ssh-chat, zulip, whatsapp, keybase, matrix, microsoft teams, nextcloud, mumble, vk and more with REST API...
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Today #LinkedData and #Time, at #LinkedPasts #Pelagios
This activity brings together projects and institutions with an interest in the representation of time and the sharing of temporal data:
- To discuss and catalogue existing shared standards in both the synchronous meeting and asynchronously edited documents;
- To examine the structure of sample data contributed by participants and explore its use in some existing tools for temporal modeling;
- To develop a charter for a proposed Time Interest Group for the Pelagios Network.To get involved, please join our Zulip chat channel: https://time.zulipchat.com/join/j2lfopwju4v26lkppohpzvkj/
Zotero library for nascent Pelagios Time Activity (open membership): https://www.zotero.org/groups/885185/pelagios_network_time_activity
GitHub organisation for collecting data and creating public documents (request access on Zulip chat): https://github.com/historical-time
For anyone interested in #SemanticWeb #DigitalHumanities #GLAM #OpenGlam #archaeodons @digitalhumanities @archaeodons
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I think I can find satellites in @Sony A7S videos now. @SpaceX #Transporter2 mission w/ its 88 sats's a tough nut, @elonmusk. The objects I can find are still in close formation during 2021-07-01. Next step of the #challenge: orbit determination. https://aerospaceresearch.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/291512-Challenges/topic/find.20satellites.20in.20images
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#Discord is worse than #Mailingists, #IRC and #Forums combined because those - like #GitHub #Issues or any other public site & server - can at least be #crawled and #archived in a #searchable fashion.
Whereas Discord is peak #Enshittification and not only #AntiAccessibility but also the worst kind of communication solution, as there isn't even any option to export stuff from within it - something even #Slack & #MicrosoftTeams can do [#Zulip has been able to do that from the start]...
Discord is a bad and wrong excuse not to provide #public documentation and/or downloads.
#GithubPages is free & #DDoS-protected #Webhosting and for fast downloads on the cheap, #BitTorrent exists for almost two decades now...
I mean, do people who use Discord know how many times people like me needed to use @internetarchive / #InternetArchive's #WaybackMachine to access contents?
How many hours of labour have been collectively saved by #DuckDuckGo #InstantAnswer linking to the correct #StackOverflow / #ServerFault thread??Discord is an #InformationBlackHole and should be regarded with the same public accessibility as a intelligence agency's database: Don't use it and don't contribute to it - period!
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#Discord is worse than #Mailingists, #IRC and #Forums combined because those - like #GitHub #Issues or any other public site & server - can at least be #crawled and #archived in a #searchable fashion.
Whereas Discord is peak #Enshittification and not only #AntiAccessibility but also the worst kind of communication solution, as there isn't even any option to export stuff from within it - something even #Slack & #MicrosoftTeams can do [#Zulip has been able to do that from the start]...
Discord is a bad and wrong excuse not to provide #public documentation and/or downloads.
#GithubPages is free & #DDoS-protected #Webhosting and for fast downloads on the cheap, #BitTorrent exists for almost two decades now...
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Hei, 21. jūlijā Rēzeknes centrālajā bibliotēkā notiks #OpenStreetMap kartēšanas pasākums un piena galdu projekta aktivitātes!
Stāstiet Latgales draugiem un radiem, un brauciet paši :)
Sīkāka info būs arī citur tūlīt, pagaidām Regita ielikusi šeit:
https://osmlatvija.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/360540-pas.C4.81kumi/topic/R.C4.93zekne.2021.2Ej.C5.ABlij.C4.81 -
Hei, 21. jūlijā Rēzeknes centrālajā bibliotēkā notiks #OpenStreetMap kartēšanas pasākums un piena galdu projekta aktivitātes!
Stāstiet Latgales draugiem un radiem, un brauciet paši :)
Sīkāka info būs arī citur tūlīt, pagaidām Regita ielikusi šeit:
https://osmlatvija.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/360540-pas.C4.81kumi/topic/R.C4.93zekne.2021.2Ej.C5.ABlij.C4.81 -
Hei, 21. jūlijā Rēzeknes centrālajā bibliotēkā notiks #OpenStreetMap kartēšanas pasākums un piena galdu projekta aktivitātes!
Stāstiet Latgales draugiem un radiem, un brauciet paši :)
Sīkāka info būs arī citur tūlīt, pagaidām Regita ielikusi šeit:
https://osmlatvija.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/360540-pas.C4.81kumi/topic/R.C4.93zekne.2021.2Ej.C5.ABlij.C4.81 -
Unstable Stream Update: 17th of January, 2026
This week, we waited a little longer to do this Unstable Stream Update because COSMIC DE 1.0.2 and KDE Plasma 6.5.5 came out alongside Linux 6.18.5, which were all duly landed.
In addition, Reilly Brogan also did a bunch of upgrades (with some feature enablement on top) all across our recipes repository. So now gvfs and vlc will let you use NFS shares as well.
For JS developers, NodeJS 24 was landed and is now the default in the repository.
For gamers, installing Steam now causes the ntsync module to get loaded automatically. And speaking of gamers, we also had a new contributor join who has access to NVIDIA cards and may potentially be able to help us set those up correctly for use with dGPUs.
Meanwhile, joebonrichie added support for debuginfod, which enables automagical downloading of relevant dbginfo files when firing up gdb or lldb to investigate issues. This yields a much more streamlined Developer Experience than before, where each relevant dbginfo file needed to be installed manually.
On the documentation side, NomadicCore landed new guidance for packagers in relation to how we believe high quality Pull Requests should look (https://aerynos.dev/packaging/workflow/updating-an-existing-recipe/).
Highlights
- COSMIC DE 1.0.2
- GNOME 49.3 application updates
- KDE Plasma 6.5.5
- discord: 0.0.120
- fish: 4.3.3
- lazygit 0.58.1
- linux-desktop 6.18.5
- linux-firmware v20260110
- linux-handheld 6.18.5
- prism-launcher 10.0
- qemu 10.2.0
- ruby 4.0.1
- syncthing 2.0.13
- vscode 1.108.0
- vscodium 1.108.10359
- wine 11.0
- zed: 0.218.7Major Upgrades
- KDE Gear v25.12.1
- KDE Frameworks v6.22
- libwacom 2.17.0 (for use with drawing tablets)
- pip 25.3 + rebuildsNew Packages
- brush 0.3.0-dev (bash shell written in Rust)
- foot terminal 1.25.0
- ghostty terminal 1.3.0-dev
- gtk4-layer-shell 1.3.0
- pandoc 3.8.3
- signal-desktop 7.84.0
- zig 0.15.2Full git changelog
As usual, there are many other updates not mentioned here as the list would get too long. You can see the full changelog here:
How to Contribute
As ever, feel free to report any issues below and join our Zulip-desktop server (https://aerynos.zulipchat.com/).
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Reposting - So, doing a soft launch for a new #tilde slash #pubnix slash #DigitalSpace - Tilde.red
It existed previously, in a couple of forms, and after the last one, I took custodianship of the domain name, with the understanding I'd either find a new, good home for it, or launch a new project that was aimed towards a similar goal as Pavel was trying to go for.
So, I've got the time, and spoons to go for it, so here it is. Tilde.red is an #anticapitalist, #antiracist, #antifascist, digital collective building art, tools, and spaces for people to run collectively and as a #cooperative endeavor.
I think we're at a good spot to do the soft launch. Most of the infra is there, finishing touches going up still.
So, if you're wanting to help build a digital community dedicated to making things to make our world a better place, I'm excited to have you!
You can DM me, @ me, whatever, I'll send you an invite to the chat, which has the goal of being the hub of everything for the community.
EDIT
Here's the invite to the chat: https://tildered.zulipchat.com/join/53me3xobgko3aan4zdfgkddx/Its a soft launch, because, well, not everything is documented. Not everything works yet.
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So, doing a soft launch for a new #tilde slash #pubnix slash #DigitalSpace - Tilde.red
It existed previously, in a couple of forms, and after the last one, I took custodianship of the domain name, with the understanding I'd either find a new, good home for it, or launch a new project that was aimed towards a similar goal as Pavel was trying to go for.
So, I've got the time, and spoons to go for it, so here it is. Tilde.red is an #anticapitalist, #antiracist, #antifascist, digital collective building art, tools, and spaces for people to run collectively and as a #cooperative endeavor.
I think we're at a good spot to do the soft launch. Most of the infra is there, finishing touches going up still.
So, if you're wanting to help build a digital community dedicated to making things to make our world a better place, I'm excited to have you!
You can DM me, @ me, whatever, I'll send you an invite to the chat, which has the goal of being the hub of everything for the community.
EDIT
Here's the invite to the chat: https://tildered.zulipchat.com/join/3dhoinwfbgwzhl4scgpeayam/Its a soft launch, because, well, not everything is documented. Not everything works yet.
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AerynOS Repository Update: 18th November 2025
Another week, another repository sync. This was a shorter week as we synced later in the week last week, however there was still a lot that we got landed!
Major Updates:
- KDE Plasma 6.5.3
- Mesa v25.3
- KDE Frameworks v6.20.0
- vscode-bin v1.106.0
- wine v10.19
- intel-microcode v20251111
- ibus 1.5.33
- freeglut v3.8.0
- qemu now supports aarch64/arm
- git 2.52.0
- discord 0.0.114Minor updates:
- qemu
- qpwgraph
- easyeffects
- cython
- ddcutil
- wine
- glycin
- sshfs
- kquickimageeditor
- gnu-coreutils-compat
- syncthingtray
- resources
- just
- graphviz
- libdrm
- networkmanager
- drm-info
- glib2
- nssNew packages:
- deepfilternet
- kubectl (https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/)
- hugo (https://gohugo.io/)
- zola (https://www.getzola.org/)
- gitkFixes:
- solaar didn't have access to uinput in a Wayland session and so rules that created virtual keypresses wouldn't work
- DLSS support with the Nvidia driver not working (hopefully fixed)Security updates:
- libarchive 3.8.3
- openvpn 2.6.16Git changelog:
As usual, there are many other minor updates not mentioned as the list would get too long. You can see the full changelog here:
Get Involved:
If you would like to engage with the team, join our new Zulip server at:
https://aerynos.zulipchat.com/join/fuqokhsomj5mzqj6akqaiqlr
To sponsor the project, we accept donations via Ko-Fi to directly support our project costs and ensure the long term viability of the project:
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CW: apparently no one on fedi knows how to read
both my rss and fedi feeds are now completely full of people piling on that DRAMATICALLY OUT-OF-CONTEXT quote[^1] from the rust llm policy and yet almost no one is actually wearing the mantle of responsibility and compromise that comes with this sort of discussion.
i for one am absolutely impressed by the courage of the people that are least *trying* to do something about it, like jyn for rust-lang/rust, or emilazy for nixpkgs, despite all the vitriol and straight up harassment that is happening here. so many people are so used to just being "concerned" or "outraged" all the time and never actually do anything about it except build walls, enforce higher and higher purity standards, destroy their own beloved communities because compromise is hard and annoying and feels like defeat more often than not. i don't really agree with some points of the respective policies, but it's insane to see so many people act as if they're blank pages with just written "i want to see the world burn and every contributor has to personally kill a child from now on." can we NOT fracture into all-or-nothing parties that hate each other because of petty grievances over wording or possibilities.
it feels like most of the people complaining about either the rust or nixpkgs RFCs have just no idea how to actually govern and get a large community to *do* stuff. you have to have broad agreement, you have to have debates over specific things and prevent discourse that will never go anywhere or just infiltrated everything, you have to have compromises. no one wants a nazi bar here, but you also can't just cut out everyone that isn't exactly you, or you don't have a community anymore: that's either a cult, or a sad lonely birthday party.
[^1] for reference, right before the "please don't devolve into an ethics class again" quote that everyone and their dog has probably read by now, you can clearly see the very reasonable justification for that:
> This PR is preceded by an enormous amount of discussion on Zulip. Almost every conceivable angle has been discussed to death. [...]
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The Techno Anarchist Manifesto aka Let’s fuck up Techno Feudalism
This practical and profanity-laced manifesto provides the loose philosophy, strategies, battleplans, tactics, and weapons to destroy Techno Feudalism via the practice of Techno Anarchism. It explains the war we are in, the Techno battle’s place in it, and what Techno Feudalism and Techno Anarchism are.
Don’t worry, I not going to start capping tech CEOs anytime soon. I’m not a 1914 anarchist out to destroy aristocrats, the state, and the church. Nor advocating for it in general. We are taking tactics from Proudhon’s federative socialism as opposed to Russian Nihilism. We are against the perversion of society by oligarchs.
Introduction
The same day I started writing this article about some ideas floating in my head, Joan Westenberg kind of beat me to the punch on its premise.
This piece will now be more expansive and a sort of manifesto.
I want to focus my thoughts regarding the battle against Techno Feudalism. And narrow my scope. And be systemic.
I will build whatever this ends up being in public. And put my masters degree in Political Science to work. So, this is just the start of a living document. I will update it with more of the philosophy of Techno Anarchism (and other points) in the coming weeks. It will also be influenced by my versions of other philosophies including Stoicism and Taoism.
It’s also the first thing I’ve written that needs a table of contents.
Here’s what we’re exploring:
- Introduction
- Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
- The War
- Enshittification
- The Winnable Battle
- Resources
The Mission
As supporters of democracy we need to engage in a positive fight against this timeline’s bullshit in a manner we can control ourselves.
Our goal should be to destroy autocracy rather than protect democracy. Simply because most of us live in autocracies unfortunately.
Still, we must both reform democracy and neuter it’s biggest threat, Big Tech.
I aim to make this writing more actionable than academic. We need action on the individual level and in small groups – neighborhoods, communities (geographical or digital), libraries, companies, unions, teams, non-profits, associations, clubs, schools, real churches, credit unions, local governments, the arts, independent media, etc. These groups have always been the building blocks of democracy. And they must be nurtured through use and membership.
I call the solution I propose to combat autocracy and Techno Feudalism, Techno Anarchism. While political anarchism as defined by Wikipedia is currently unlikely if not impossible (it’s wrong about human nature), you will see that in the tech arena, it is possible.
“Major definitional elements of anarchism include the will for a non-coercive society, the rejection of the state apparatus, the belief that human nature allows humans to exist in or progress toward such a non-coercive society, and a suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy.”
Again, it’s idealistic but not 100% practical. But it does have ideas we can use to build its practicality via our interactions with tech.
The writer and philosophical father of Anarchism, Proudhon believed the principle of revolution is freedom.
- Political freedom. This includes universal suffrage, an independent centralization of social functions, a continual revision of the constitution.
- Industrial (economic) freedom. This includes a guarantee of credit and sale.
He wanted “no government by men by means of the accumulation of power (autocracy) and no exploitation of men by means of the accumulation of capital (oligarchy).
His hopes for political transformation were based on the expansion of knowledge: demo-cracy was to evolve into demo-paedy, and gradually lead to anarchy of its own accord. The north star for him was justice.
To define it a little more, a later figure, Errico Malatesta wrote:
“While preaching against every kind of government, and demanding complete freedom, we must support all struggles for partial freedom…. If today we cannot get rid of every kind of government, this is not a good reason for taking no interest in defending the few acquired liberties and fighting to gain more of those.”
In other words, even if you are an anarchist you should support democratic governments and protected political rights.
He supported:
- voluntary associations, self-managed industries, and free communes—cooperating through networks and federations.
- a larger federation to advance anarchist ideas and not a centralized party aiming to take state power by elections or revolution. (Very important.)
- a radical democracy with majority decision-making but with a participatory process where any and all can have their say and minority rights are fully respected.
- an anarchist democracy that is a radical, direct, participatory democracy. One with no violence or coercion by a majority over the minority nor by a minority over the majority.
You get the idea. Individual freedom is key. And corporations are not individuals.
Personally, I view anarchism as democracy without the state, however unlikely it is. Anyway, enough with the anarchism proper.
Now, Wikipedia defines a manifesto as:
“A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent manifestos reject accepted knowledge in favor of a new idea.”
Is that what this will be? Let’s find out.
The Problem
But, before going into the details of this manifesto, let’s explore our major problem as humans, what and who we are fighting, and the bigger war that the techno feudalism versus anarchism battle takes place in.
First, let’s look at the problem, ourselves. We have not evolved enough as humans to keep up with the culture, economies, and technology we’ve developed. That’s why we feel alienated and a little lost.
We need a purpose be it one dictated by religion (for the weak-minded), nationalism (for idiots) or philosophy. Or maybe a very strong personal moral framework (which is difficult to develop). We might even get by with a manifesto. 😉 What we want to avoid is ideologies.
In general our overwhelmed brains need structure for things we don’t understand or can’t explain. We want simple, not the truth, which is why autocrats have an advantage. We’re mostly uneducated, unaware, unobservant, and intellectually lazy so we want easy answers.
H. L. Mencken wrote, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Yanis Yaroufakis notes: there’s no doubt “…about humanity’s infinite capacity to mess things up, to turn miraculous technology into living hell.”
I note: or religion’s capacity for the same with ideas.
In fact, Greg Epstein’s book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation has this:
“Today technology is the water in which we swim, whether on not we notice we are fish. Tech provides contemporary Western lives, so polarized and divided in countless ways, with a universal organizing principle… It offers myriad rites, capturing our attention and transforming our consciousness, connecting us with a community of people who spend their days…indeed their entire lives engaging in the same repetitive behaviors with the same fervent intensity.
Naturally, we all hope our devotion to this community of fellow travelers will bear fruit: surely tech will lead to a better future! Even a kind of paradise! But the truth is many of us fear, more than we’d like to admit, this may all be heading to a deeply dark place.
In other words: technology has become a religion.”
As you see, Big Tech now functions as a religion. It provides (easy though dubious) answers as more people reject the horseshit of traditional religion.
But, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle so it needs to be reformed into a more satisfying “religion”. More the Tao of Pooh than the Torah, Koran, and Revelations. More philosophy and morality for how to live life and less damnation, doctrine, and hate. One grown by us and not tech oligarchs. More good, less evil. Ok.
So before we move on, here’s some Taoism for you from The Tao of Pooh:
“Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.”
“The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.”
“We simply need to believe in the power that’s within us, and use it.”
Also, here’s something good from the Stoics who focused on promoting a life in harmony with nature (as does Taoism), within which we are active participants. They believed logic helps us see what is really there, reason effectively about practical affairs, stand our ground amongst confusion, differentiate the certain from the probable, and so forth.
They identified virtue with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
B compassionately using ideas from Taoism, Stoicism, and Techno Anarchism – we can unfuck most of our problem as humans with quality education, the right attitude, some logic, and striving for the difficult goal of simplicity in our tech.
Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
Next let’s take a look at economics. Currently we are stuck in the economic model of capitalism. The problem is that it’s not really capitalism. It’s rigged, crony, oligarchic capitalism headed back toward feudalism. Some argue persuasively that it has already fully evolved into Techno Feudalism.
So, let’s define Techno Feudalism.
Is it a malign denomination of the Tech religion?
The child of Big Tech and Late Stage / Crony Capitalism?
Or just a bunch of cunts in Silicon Valley?
Yanis Varoufakis coined the term Techno Feudalism. In his book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, he asks this question:
“Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?”
He advises thinking about money in this way:
“It is, above all else a reflection of our relation to one another and to our technologies; i.e. the means and the ways in which we transform matter. …Money is the alienated ability of mankind.”
In other words, if you can’t do it yourself, you can do it with money.
So, here’s his hypothesis:
“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.
… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”
How’s that for an academic sentence. 😉
Yanis continues:
“… capital’s mutation into what I call cloud capital has demolished capitalism’s two pillars: markets and profits.
Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms, which look like, but are not markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor, rent.
… the owners of tradition capital … have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital.
… the rest of us have returned to our former status a serfs … contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labor – in addition to the waged labor we perform, when we get the chance.”
Does this sound familiar? I think so.
And who wants to be a fucking serf? Not me.
More on this will follow in future updates.
The subject of equality is obviously relevant to feudal overlords and serfs.
In his book, A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty writes:
“…since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a historical movement toward equality. The world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or that of 1900, which were themselves more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780. ..over the long term, no matter the criterion we employ, we arrive at the same conclusion. Between 1780 and 2020 we see developments tending toward greater equality…
To continue… crises and power relations are necessary, as was the case in the past, but we will also need processes of learning and collective engagement, as well as mobilization around new political programs and proposals for new institutions.
Resistance by elites is a reality, in a world in which transnational billionaires are richer than states. Much as in the French revolution, such resistance can be overcome only by powerful collective mobilization during moments of crises and tension.
To ensure that everyone can contribute… in a decentralized way, we must develop new forms of sovereignism with a universalist vocation.”
I maintain that Techno Feudalism is contributing to the current slow to non-existent grow of equality. And I also maintain that Techno Anarchism can reverse the trend and grow equality via small-scale social mobilization and personal-data-sovereignty among other strategies to destroy Techno Feudalism.
Politics aka The War
Now, on to politics. Let’s begin with a few points. And a quick note, this isn’t about parties, but policies and exercising political rights.
Autocracy is a threat to democracy. Authoritarianism is a threat to human rights. Fascism is a threat to minorities. Autocrats, Fascists (secular or religious), and Communists are the bad guys.
However, unregulated capitalism and digital technology are a deadlier threat to democracy. Big Money and Big Tech equal the really bad guys. Oligarchs suck.
These two threats to human freedom go hand in hand. Unbound capitalism leads to fascist / authoritarian governments which lead to corrupt, crony capitalism or state capitalism aka hypocritical communism. Both of which erode and eventually destroy democracy, the environment, and human rights.
So, we need to reform and regulate large-scale capitalism and keep autocracy at bay. And again, reform democracy to function in the world we now live in.
Tech both in its Silicon Valley incarnation and the tools of repression Chinese / Israeli model are destroying democracy. One via corrupt, oligarchic capitalism / Techno Feudalism. And one via surveillance authoritarianism.
In we want democracy to survive we must fight these two tech models along with autocrats, autocratic political parties, autocratic nations, and autocratic ideologies.
The War’s Combatants
To reiterate, the larger war which I think of as WWIII is one between supporters of democracy and what I call the Evil Empire (Reagan is dead and I have commandeered the term!):
- Unregulated Capitalists / Techno Feudalists
- Big Tech in general
- Autocrats
The Evil Empire
Unregulated capitalist oligarchs, and Techno Feudalists
We’ve seen who they are.
Big Tech which is mostly Techno Feudalists, and some Techno Fascists
Regarding Tech Bros / oligarchs in general and how we got to this point, Cory Doctorow notes the following in his book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“Forty years ago, we shot anti-trust laws in the guts, and we let companies led by mediocre idiots no better than their forebearers establish monopolies. These donkeys were able to parlay their monopoly winnings into policies that prevented new technologies from supplanting their own. They got to decide who was allowed to compete with them, and how.
Notably, tech giants today are able to wield the law against interoperators: new technologies that plug into their services, systems, and platforms.”
That sounds about right, doesn’t it.
In her book, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, Marietje Schaake writes:
“…the fact that our social, professional, and civil lives are increasingly digitized and, essentially, all aspects of digitation are in the hands of private companies; that certain technologies have inherent antidemocratic characteristics, while laws to protect democratic values and the rule of law are lagging; and that, most important, democratic governments’ outsourcing of key functions has led to a hollowing out of government’s core capabilities.
These systemic problems are now undermining the core principles of democracy: free and fair elections, the rule of law, the separation of powers, a well-informed, public debate, national security and the protection of civil liberties such as freedom of expression, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy.
As digitization progresses, we see a gradual shift in responsibility and power away from democratic leaders. This shift accelerates two trends: growing digital authoritarianism and a wholesale decline in democratic governance.”
We are the frogs being slowly boiled in the pot as the temperature rises. But, it’s not a fucking joke.
More on this will follow in future updates.
Autocrats
You are probably most familiar with these villains. They either rule your country or are a political party(ies) in it.
In her book, Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World Anne Applebaum writes:
“Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, (today’s Autocrats) operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power, Autocracy, Inc.
Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are cemented not through ideals but through deals – deals designed to take the edge off sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich.
Autocracy, Inc., offers its members not only money and security but also something less tangible, impunity.
Their enmity toward the democratic world is not merely some form of traditional geopolitical competition… (It) …has its roots in the very nature of the democratic political system, in words “accountability,” “transparency,” and “democracy.” They hear that language coming from the democratic world, they hear the same language coming from their own dissidents, and they seek to destroy them both.”
More on this will follow in future updates.
Democracy Supporters / Enlightened Humans
This is short. It’s us. At least the intelligent ones in the “Western World”, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea rules-based world. Plus a few other countries in the global south and various dissidents everywhere.
Enshittification
Before moving on to Techno Anarchism, here’s a quick note about Enshittification. It is part of techno feudalism and increasingly capitalism in general. Chicken or the egg first? I don’t know.
But, Cory Doctorow describes enshittification like this:
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
So, not only are Techno Feudalists part of the evil empire, their products suck as well.
Ok, enough about the cunts. Let’s move on the good guys.
The Winnable Battle
Will democracy win the war against autocracy? Who knows? It’s an eternal war that the bad guys currently have the upper hand in. And have had for the last decade or two. And have had for 99.99% of human history. Make what you will of that.
But, one of the war’s largest current battles can definitely be won. Equality can continue to grow. And our lives can be improved. And the world’s apocalypse can be delayed.
This battle is the one where Techno Anarchism opposes Techno Feudalism.
It is winnable because this victory can be achieved at the personal and small group level. It also has the advantage that the bad guys can’t defeat it (only resist it). Only apathy (which is also hard to overcome) can defeat Techno Anarchism. If you have a hundred million of drops of water you might drown an elephant. If you have a hundred you can’t even get one toe wet.
It’s also winnable because it’s more of a matter of changing habits (difficult) than political beliefs (extremely difficult). Anarchists and libertarians can be partial allies here along with many other freedom lovers.
And partial is important because this battle’s tactics are modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time. It’s easy to be a soldier and not too hard to be an officer. You can increase your efforts over time as you get in the martial groove. Hopefully, you can even become a general.
Finally, the battle’s winnable because software is exceptional. Via backwards engineering in the worst case, programs can be written to interoperate with those for other platforms. iWork literally kept Apple from dying.
As Cory Doctorow notes interoperability can make Big Tech a lot smaller, very quickly (assuming we can kill off monopolies). Siphoning off its users reduces its revenues and lobbying power.
Software is also exceptional because it allows us to fight big tech with its own weapons.
Cory notes in The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“If we someday triumph over labor exploitation, gender discrimination and violence, colonialism, and racism, and snatch a habitable planet from the jaws of extractive capitalism, it will be thanks to technologically enabled organizing.”
And more importantly taking actions. Which brings us to ⇊.
Techno Anarchism
So, let’s move on to Techno Anarchism / Digital Distributism and Digital Sovereignty (which is slightly different). It is the philosophy, strategies, and actions needed to defeat Techno Feudalism.
As I mentioned before, Joan Westenberg published something similar to my gestating thoughts. So, let’s not reinvent the wheel and look as her points.
The article in question is The Revolution Will Be Decentralized. It’s not really a revolution, but more a radical adjustment of habits. But, if it happens it will be decentralized. Anyway, take a break and go read her article now! You may need to eat lunch too.
You’re back. Great.
She uses the terms Digital Democracy and Digital Feudalism versus Techno Anarchism and Techno Feudalism.
Westenberg’s central idea addresses both distribution and personal data sovereignty:
“The implementation of Digital Distributism rests on three foundational pillars: infrastructure commons, data sovereignty, and algorithmic democracy. Each pillar requires specific technical and organizational structures to function effectively.
The revolution toward digital democracy begins with individual choices. Every person who moves to decentralized platforms weakens the grip of tech monopolies. Every contribution to open source projects builds alternative infrastructure. Every act of resistance against surveillance and control helps shift the balance of power.
But individual action is not, is never enough. It must be coupled with collective organization. We need coordinated efforts to build and promote alternatives. We need political movements that understand the connection between digital and democratic power. We need communities dedicated to practicing digital distributism in their own operations.
The infrastructure of freedom won’t build itself. But neither did the infrastructure of control. Every system of power depends on the daily choices of millions of individuals. Will we shape the change toward digital democracy or submit to digital feudalism?”
That’s the question. And fortunately you can answer it.
How? With a blast from the past.
Joan and I both propose a similar idea, the Digital Distributist Alternative (Joan) and Techno Anarchism (me).
But FYI, these are not new ideas. They existed before as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately, they didn’t win out.
Distributism
Traditional Distributism is summarized by Wikipedia as:
”Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world’s productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially those of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, due to their extreme concentration of ownership. Instead, it favors small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations, as well as small to medium enterprises and vigorous anti-trust laws to restrain or eliminate overweening economic power.”
Joan says:
“Digital Distributism updates this framework for the internet age, recognizing that digital infrastructure is now as fundamental to human flourishing as land was in the agricultural era. It offers a comprehensive alternative to digital feudalism by reimagining how we structure and govern the technologies that increasingly mediate human existence.”
Techno Distributism / Anarchism is the modern equivalent fighting Techno Feudalism as opposed to unregulated capitalism and state socialism. And it has a better chance of coming out on top. It’s more about the means of computation and consumption versus the means of production.
We’re digital serfs here, not the proletariat.
More on this will follow in future updates.
So, we now have our nebulously defined movement, Techno Anarchism. How do we win the war against its all to real foe?
By slowly killing Techno Feudalism with weapons of course. It will experience death by a thousand cuts.
The Arsenal of Techno Anarchism
Okay, so what are the weapons we can use to destroy Techno Feudalism?
Open Source Technology
We start by using open-source technology. Again, it has the advantage that it can’t be bought and enshittified at scale.
Let’s examine the arsenal in detail. Please explore and start using these tools while dropping their enshittified, corporate, feudalistic alternatives. Obviously, all of these are not for everyone. But, do what you can.
They will also boost the privacy and security of your personal data aka your digital sovereignty.
More details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Password Manager
VPN
Browser
Search Engine
Cloud
Office Suite
Grammar Checker
Chat / Messaging
Team Chat
eMail
eBook Management
Maps
Personal Websites via opensource publishing software
- Write Freely (integrates with Fediverse)
- WordPress.org not .com (integrates with Fediverse)
- Micro.Blog (integrates with Fediverse)
- Microwebber
- Publi
- Ghost (integrates with Fediverse)
- Grav CMS
RSS
Your website should have it. And you should follow your allies’ websites with it.
App Building
Project Management
Git
Wiki
Operating Systems
Computers – Linux. But very user-friendly, similar to Chromebooks.
Mobile Operating Systems
Hardware
Open Media Network
Hamish Campbell is a self-described openweb organic intellectual, technologist and part of the Open Media Network. He writes:
“Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.
Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. Google, Meta, TikTok—they thrive on extracting context from your every click. It’s not about what you say, but what your patterns say about you. They sell this to advertisers, to governments, to anyone with enough cash. Capital controls metadata, metadata controls behaviour, and behaviour keeps the system in place. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.
Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation. The state controls metadata, metadata controls capitalism. It’s the digitised return of the command economy.
Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a more blinded, slightly less abusive cage.
Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way
What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy. The #4opens and the OMN (Open Media Network) are an explicit political project to create this.
- Open data: everyone can see and use.
- Open metadata: the tail behind the content, telling you where it came from and how it’s been passed around.
- Open process: how decisions are made is visible and changeable.
- Open code: tools are modifiable and forkable.
The Open Media Network doesn’t pretend metadata isn’t powerful, it’s built around that power. But instead of hiding it, it makes that power visible, shared, and accountable. We’re not encrypting metadata into irrelevance. We’re composting it into trust.”
What does that mean for you? Like us you can be part of the Open Media Network by hosting a website using the tools listed in the previous section, putting a blog on it, writing, and distributing it via RSS. And don’t use AI! You’ll also want to implement ethical SEO and boost your writing on the Fediverse. This is one of the most vital things you can do to kill off Techno Feudalism.
Fediverse
In the home stretch, let’s look at the most powerful weapon against techno feudalism, The Fediverse. It’s also part of the Open Media Network.
Corporate social media is even worse than mass media. Millions of morons can get on it and pontificate as much as they want. It is used by extremists and conspiracy theorists to devastating effect. And it’s run by the motherfuckers behind techno feudalism. Today’s true rulers control the algorithms that show all this horseshit, encourage it, and addict us to following it.
In her book, Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, Renee DiResta writes:
“My focus is on a profound transformation in the dynamics of power and influence, which have fundamentally shifted, and on how we, the citizens, can come to grips with a force that is altering our politics, our society, and our very relationship to reality. For sure, companies and governments must bear their burden of figuring out how to regulate this new space, and how to restore trust and shore up institutions, but we as citizens, have a responsibility to understand these dynamics so we can build healthy norms and fight back. This is the task of a new civics.”
Well said, though I have no faith in the companies doing shit and little faith in governments doing their part competently. So it falls to us as Techno Anarchists to unfuck this. We can do this by leaving corporate social media and moving to the Fediverse.
In his book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, Nathan Schneider writes:
“The ways people can and cannot collectively self-govern in daily online life, furthermore, have been constrained in dominant social networks… the constraints on governance in online spaces have contributed to the peril of democratic politics in general. It is not enough to merely defend existing governmental institutions, healthy democracy depends on enabling creative new forms of self-governance, especially on networks.
If democracy is on the horizon (for humanity), self-governance is a plausible practice for moving in that direction. Governable Spaces, then, are where democratic self-governance can happen.
…the design of online social spaces has contributed to the atrophy of everyday democratic skills. (Fortunately) …the future of democracy can begin at the level of ordinary community, wherever we find ourselves together, where each of us has a chance to make a difference.”
You and I can have a profound impact on the governance of the Fediverse in addition to the good it does in the world. Pick a platform and get involved.
We covered the enshittification of corporate social media above.
For its The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation page, Cory Doctorow’s publisher wrote:
“When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms are hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.”
Cory writes:
“Switching cost are all the things you have to give up when you stop using a product. When switching costs are high enough, people will keep using products and services even though they hate those products and services.
Interoperability lowers switching costs. It allows users to set the terms on which we use that technology. It allows us to use the parts of products and services that benefit us, and block the parts that don’t.”
His publisher continues:
“We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. (We must) …seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.”
To counteract enshittification (and speed up the death of these feudal social platforms) we must seize the means of communication / computation via self-publishing with open-source tech. This is provided by personal websites built with open-source technology and distributed with RSS as seen earlier and via the Fediverse. Decentralization and interoperability are key. We must work for these results politically as well.
The Fediverse is the most formidable weapon of Techno Anarchy because it is unbuyable. It is unseizable if hosted in Europe. And it lets us focus on localism (again small groups) vs globalism. It’s distributed not siloed. And open-source not corporate. No ads, less harassment, and less bullshit greet you there. It’s also quite anarchic in general.
Learn more about the technical aspects and platforms of the Fediverse from these Symfony Station articles.
- You say you want a revolution: help the free, fair, and friendly Fediverse destroy Big Social
- Intrigued by the Fediverse – Traverse our Accounts to Map your Journey
And more details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Publishing – Distribution
Publishing – Personal Websites / Blogging
Microblogging
- Mastodon – Do join Mastodon, but don’t join the mastodon.social instance.
- Friendica – Follow me on Friendica.
- GoToSocial
- And more.
Photos
Do join Pixelfed, but don’t join the pixelfed.social instance.
Videos
Podcasting
Forums / Link Aggregators
Music
Curation
It’s a critical tactic to use these weapons. It’s also important to support them financially and to be active in their communities.
Tactics
Here are some more easy and local tactics. And for those with the technical skills, difficult ones.
Support the Independent Non-profit Press
The mass media is an unreliable ally in the war against autocracy much less the battle against Techno Feudalism.
Traditional journalism is flailing and failing. And it’s slowly going out of business. Plus, they are too spineless to save themselves. It’s because they are corporate and thus cowards. And they are mostly owned by c^nts.
Instead, we need to support and patronize independent non-profit journalistic organizations. That means giving them money directly my fellow anarchists.
Like this publication the following examples are tech-oriented or politics-oriented. But there are many for every issue you care about.
- Propublica
- 404 Media
- The Markup
- CalMatters
- The 19th News
- good internet magazine– coming soon
- Investigative Journalism Foundation
- Tech Policy
- Bellingcat
- Mother Jones
- Newsletters, unless they are on SubStack
- Associated Press
- NPR
- Public Media
- ABC (Australia)
- Al Jazeera (Qatar)
- BBC (UK)
- The Conversation (US)
- Crikey (Australia)
- DW (Germany)
- The Guardian (UK)
- Haaretz (Israel)
- The Tyee (Canada)
- The Breach (Canada)
- The Narwhal
- Sequencer Magazine
- The Xylom
- The Appeal
- The Conversation
- Lawfare
Think Global, Buy Local
In general, please explore the principles of degrowth.
But in particular, before spending your capital, think about that decision’s impact on our planet and your fellow humans. That’s basic morality. And please buy physical products from a local brick and mortar store. And only if you need them.
More relevant to Techno Anarchism, buy digital products from small tech suppliers or open-source suppliers or non and not-for-profits. Donate as much money as you can to open-source technology and other non-profit service providers.
This is easy, it just takes a little conscious thought and avoiding lazy thinking. Or a lack of thinking.
Technical Professionals
We Disagree has a fantastic but long article entitiled Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers. Read it at your convenience, but for now here is the most important part.
The author, Frank Miroslav promotes four approaches tech professionals can take to battle the Tech Right.
“Despite this the sheer scale of things that people could do, it is still possible to demarcate between broad approaches to categorize politically consequential action that people might take. To this end I like the following conceptual scheme which breaks forms of action into four broad categories that I break down on the following axes – whether or not the action occurs within a capitalist institution and what the action seeks to achieve.
One can act inside institutions like the state or corporations or outside those institutions. Such action can aim to be to be destructive in that it undermines property claims or destroys mechanisms of control or it can be constructive in that it builds technology or capabilities that helps people fight oppression or go live beyond capitalism.
ApproachesInsideOutsideDestructiveShaping internal policy in firms, stopping or sandbagging projectsBreaking infrastructure, freeing intellectual propertyConstructiveWorking on subversive projects funded by the state or capitalBuilding and maintaining technology that subverts capitalPeople within specific positions who have accumulated a significant degree of knowledge about the software they work on are not just hard to replace, but can also engage in hard-to-detect sabotage and subtle infrastructural changes that can frustrate attempts to use technology in bad ways. Given the increasing risk workplace organizers face thanks to the threat of layoffs, more informal forms of activism may be necessary.
However, while such activism may be critical for preventing immediate dangers, in the long run, the real interesting stuff is in activism that attempts to break apart the control vectoralists (TechnoFeudalists) have over information or infrastructures of control, rather than attempting to ameliorate their negative effects from within.”
So, if you have the tech chops, wreck havoc on the c^nts.
Battleplan
I am sure you’re ready to kick some ass. So, what can you do? I think you mostly know by now. It’s not complex. We’re not invading Normandy here.
Digital Sovereignty
You must own your communications, own your data, own your digital identity, own your digital devices, and own your own online real estate. Use the open-source technology featured here. Use open-source hardware. Each time you do you place a nail in Techno Feudalism’s coffin. The more you use, the faster that death occurs.
Choose Your Weapons and Kill Techno Feudalism
Use the weapons in Techno Anarchism’s arsenal. Again, the battle against Techno Feudalism is modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time or one weapon at a time. Put more nails in. And add as many as you can over time. Let’s shut that fucker tight.
As Joan says:
“Each new protocol, each independent instance, each decentralized application creates another crack in the walls of digital feudalism.”
You’re the General
Again, proceed at your pace. Rome wasn’t built or destroyed in a day and these corporate shits are difficult to leave. Intentionally.
We’re in WWIII here and its going to take a while to kill these fucks and cripple their allies. But, they are going to die. Not, inglorious bastards style but via Techno Anarchism. So no bullets or baseball bats. That’s the final resort I hope we never see.
Thanks for reading my semi-manifesto. Please share it, bookmark it, and come back to it later as a reference and to see its updates.
Keep Fighting, Techno Anarchists! We can win this. The power is yours.
Resources
To begin with, follow us each week for the latest happenings in this battle via Battalion’s Destroying Autocracy posts.
Follow me via the Fediverse. Or follow this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
If you are of an academic bent, feel free to take a deep dive into the resources inspiring this manifesto.
Tech as a Religion
The War
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
Autocrats
Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Techno Feudalism
Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism
How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism:The Making of the Digital Economy
Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason
Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Governable Spaces book: Democratic Design for Online Life
Techno Anarchism/Digital Distributism
The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- Please share this article.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
- Or follow Battalion on Bluesky.
Ringleader, Battalion
#4opens #anarchism #arsenal #Authoritarianism #Autocracy #battleplan #BigTech #Capitalism #combatants #Democracy #Distributism #enshittification #Fascism #fedivers #Fediverse #general #local #media #mission #OMN #opensource #problem #resources #sovereignty #tactics #TechnoAnarchism #war #weapons #winnable https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=1212
Reuben Walker
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The Techno Anarchist Manifesto aka Let’s fuck up Techno Feudalism
This practical and profanity-laced manifesto provides the loose philosophy, strategies, battleplans, tactics, and weapons to destroy Techno Feudalism via the practice of Techno Anarchism. It explains the war we are in, the Techno battle’s place in it, and what Techno Feudalism and Techno Anarchism are.
Don’t worry, I not going to start capping tech CEOs anytime soon. I’m not a 1914 anarchist out to destroy aristocrats, the state, and the church. Nor advocating for it in general. We are taking tactics from Proudhon’s federative socialism as opposed to Russian Nihilism. We are against the perversion of society by oligarchs.
Introduction
The same day I started writing this article about some ideas floating in my head, Joan Westenberg kind of beat me to the punch on its premise.
This piece will now be more expansive and a sort of manifesto.
I want to focus my thoughts regarding the battle against Techno Feudalism. And narrow my scope. And be systemic.
I will build whatever this ends up being in public. And put my masters degree in Political Science to work. So, this is just the start of a living document. I will update it with more of the philosophy of Techno Anarchism (and other points) in the coming weeks. It will also be influenced by my versions of other philosophies including Stoicism and Taoism.
It’s also the first thing I’ve written that needs a table of contents.
Here’s what we’re exploring:
- Introduction
- Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
- The War
- Enshittification
- The Winnable Battle
- Resources
The Mission
As supporters of democracy we need to engage in a positive fight against this timeline’s bullshit in a manner we can control ourselves.
Our goal should be to destroy autocracy rather than protect democracy. Simply because most of us live in autocracies unfortunately.
Still, we must both reform democracy and neuter it’s biggest threat, Big Tech.
I aim to make this writing more actionable than academic. We need action on the individual level and in small groups – neighborhoods, communities (geographical or digital), libraries, companies, unions, teams, non-profits, associations, clubs, schools, real churches, credit unions, local governments, the arts, independent media, etc. These groups have always been the building blocks of democracy. And they must be nurtured through use and membership.
I call the solution I propose to combat autocracy and Techno Feudalism, Techno Anarchism. While political anarchism as defined by Wikipedia is currently unlikely if not impossible (it’s wrong about human nature), you will see that in the tech arena, it is possible.
“Major definitional elements of anarchism include the will for a non-coercive society, the rejection of the state apparatus, the belief that human nature allows humans to exist in or progress toward such a non-coercive society, and a suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy.”
Again, it’s idealistic but not 100% practical. But it does have ideas we can use to build its practicality via our interactions with tech.
The writer and philosophical father of Anarchism, Proudhon believed the principle of revolution is freedom.
- Political freedom. This includes universal suffrage, an independent centralization of social functions, a continual revision of the constitution.
- Industrial (economic) freedom. This includes a guarantee of credit and sale.
He wanted “no government by men by means of the accumulation of power (autocracy) and no exploitation of men by means of the accumulation of capital (oligarchy).
His hopes for political transformation were based on the expansion of knowledge: demo-cracy was to evolve into demo-paedy, and gradually lead to anarchy of its own accord. The north star for him was justice.
To define it a little more, a later figure, Errico Malatesta wrote:
“While preaching against every kind of government, and demanding complete freedom, we must support all struggles for partial freedom…. If today we cannot get rid of every kind of government, this is not a good reason for taking no interest in defending the few acquired liberties and fighting to gain more of those.”
In other words, even if you are an anarchist you should support democratic governments and protected political rights.
He supported:
- voluntary associations, self-managed industries, and free communes—cooperating through networks and federations.
- a larger federation to advance anarchist ideas and not a centralized party aiming to take state power by elections or revolution. (Very important.)
- a radical democracy with majority decision-making but with a participatory process where any and all can have their say and minority rights are fully respected.
- an anarchist democracy that is a radical, direct, participatory democracy. One with no violence or coercion by a majority over the minority nor by a minority over the majority.
You get the idea. Individual freedom is key. And corporations are not individuals.
Personally, I view anarchism as democracy without the state, however unlikely it is. Anyway, enough with the anarchism proper.
Now, Wikipedia defines a manifesto as:
“A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent manifestos reject accepted knowledge in favor of a new idea.”
Is that what this will be? Let’s find out.
The Problem
But, before going into the details of this manifesto, let’s explore our major problem as humans, what and who we are fighting, and the bigger war that the techno feudalism versus anarchism battle takes place in.
First, let’s look at the problem, ourselves. We have not evolved enough as humans to keep up with the culture, economies, and technology we’ve developed. That’s why we feel alienated and a little lost.
We need a purpose be it one dictated by religion (for the weak-minded), nationalism (for idiots) or philosophy. Or maybe a very strong personal moral framework (which is difficult to develop). We might even get by with a manifesto. 😉 What we want to avoid is ideologies.
In general our overwhelmed brains need structure for things we don’t understand or can’t explain. We want simple, not the truth, which is why autocrats have an advantage. We’re mostly uneducated, unaware, unobservant, and intellectually lazy so we want easy answers.
H. L. Mencken wrote, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Yanis Yaroufakis notes: there’s no doubt “…about humanity’s infinite capacity to mess things up, to turn miraculous technology into living hell.”
I note: or religion’s capacity for the same with ideas.
In fact, Greg Epstein’s book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation has this:
“Today technology is the water in which we swim, whether on not we notice we are fish. Tech provides contemporary Western lives, so polarized and divided in countless ways, with a universal organizing principle… It offers myriad rites, capturing our attention and transforming our consciousness, connecting us with a community of people who spend their days…indeed their entire lives engaging in the same repetitive behaviors with the same fervent intensity.
Naturally, we all hope our devotion to this community of fellow travelers will bear fruit: surely tech will lead to a better future! Even a kind of paradise! But the truth is many of us fear, more than we’d like to admit, this may all be heading to a deeply dark place.
In other words: technology has become a religion.”
As you see, Big Tech now functions as a religion. It provides (easy though dubious) answers as more people reject the horseshit of traditional religion.
But, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle so it needs to be reformed into a more satisfying “religion”. More the Tao of Pooh than the Torah, Koran, and Revelations. More philosophy and morality for how to live life and less damnation, doctrine, and hate. One grown by us and not tech oligarchs. More good, less evil. Ok.
So before we move on, here’s some Taoism for you from The Tao of Pooh:
“Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.”
“The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.”
“We simply need to believe in the power that’s within us, and use it.”
Also, here’s something good from the Stoics who focused on promoting a life in harmony with nature (as does Taoism), within which we are active participants. They believed logic helps us see what is really there, reason effectively about practical affairs, stand our ground amongst confusion, differentiate the certain from the probable, and so forth.
They identified virtue with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
B compassionately using ideas from Taoism, Stoicism, and Techno Anarchism – we can unfuck most of our problem as humans with quality education, the right attitude, some logic, and striving for the difficult goal of simplicity in our tech.
Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
Next let’s take a look at economics. Currently we are stuck in the economic model of capitalism. The problem is that it’s not really capitalism. It’s rigged, crony, oligarchic capitalism headed back toward feudalism. Some argue persuasively that it has already fully evolved into Techno Feudalism.
So, let’s define Techno Feudalism.
Is it a malign denomination of the Tech religion?
The child of Big Tech and Late Stage / Crony Capitalism?
Or just a bunch of cunts in Silicon Valley?
Yanis Varoufakis coined the term Techno Feudalism. In his book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, he asks this question:
“Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?”
He advises thinking about money in this way:
“It is, above all else a reflection of our relation to one another and to our technologies; i.e. the means and the ways in which we transform matter. …Money is the alienated ability of mankind.”
In other words, if you can’t do it yourself, you can do it with money.
So, here’s his hypothesis:
“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.
… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”
How’s that for an academic sentence. 😉
Yanis continues:
“… capital’s mutation into what I call cloud capital has demolished capitalism’s two pillars: markets and profits.
Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms, which look like, but are not markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor, rent.
… the owners of tradition capital … have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital.
… the rest of us have returned to our former status a serfs … contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labor – in addition to the waged labor we perform, when we get the chance.”
Does this sound familiar? I think so.
And who wants to be a fucking serf? Not me.
More on this will follow in future updates.
The subject of equality is obviously relevant to feudal overlords and serfs.
In his book, A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty writes:
“…since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a historical movement toward equality. The world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or that of 1900, which were themselves more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780. ..over the long term, no matter the criterion we employ, we arrive at the same conclusion. Between 1780 and 2020 we see developments tending toward greater equality…
To continue… crises and power relations are necessary, as was the case in the past, but we will also need processes of learning and collective engagement, as well as mobilization around new political programs and proposals for new institutions.
Resistance by elites is a reality, in a world in which transnational billionaires are richer than states. Much as in the French revolution, such resistance can be overcome only by powerful collective mobilization during moments of crises and tension.
To ensure that everyone can contribute… in a decentralized way, we must develop new forms of sovereignism with a universalist vocation.”
I maintain that Techno Feudalism is contributing to the current slow to non-existent grow of equality. And I also maintain that Techno Anarchism can reverse the trend and grow equality via small-scale social mobilization and personal-data-sovereignty among other strategies to destroy Techno Feudalism.
Politics aka The War
Now, on to politics. Let’s begin with a few points. And a quick note, this isn’t about parties, but policies and exercising political rights.
Autocracy is a threat to democracy. Authoritarianism is a threat to human rights. Fascism is a threat to minorities. Autocrats, Fascists (secular or religious), and Communists are the bad guys.
However, unregulated capitalism and digital technology are a deadlier threat to democracy. Big Money and Big Tech equal the really bad guys. Oligarchs suck.
These two threats to human freedom go hand in hand. Unbound capitalism leads to fascist / authoritarian governments which lead to corrupt, crony capitalism or state capitalism aka hypocritical communism. Both of which erode and eventually destroy democracy, the environment, and human rights.
So, we need to reform and regulate large-scale capitalism and keep autocracy at bay. And again, reform democracy to function in the world we now live in.
Tech both in its Silicon Valley incarnation and the tools of repression Chinese / Israeli model are destroying democracy. One via corrupt, oligarchic capitalism / Techno Feudalism. And one via surveillance authoritarianism.
In we want democracy to survive we must fight these two tech models along with autocrats, autocratic political parties, autocratic nations, and autocratic ideologies.
The War’s Combatants
To reiterate, the larger war which I think of as WWIII is one between supporters of democracy and what I call the Evil Empire (Reagan is dead and I have commandeered the term!):
- Unregulated Capitalists / Techno Feudalists
- Big Tech in general
- Autocrats
The Evil Empire
Unregulated capitalist oligarchs, and Techno Feudalists
We’ve seen who they are.
Big Tech which is mostly Techno Feudalists, and some Techno Fascists
Regarding Tech Bros / oligarchs in general and how we got to this point, Cory Doctorow notes the following in his book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“Forty years ago, we shot anti-trust laws in the guts, and we let companies led by mediocre idiots no better than their forebearers establish monopolies. These donkeys were able to parlay their monopoly winnings into policies that prevented new technologies from supplanting their own. They got to decide who was allowed to compete with them, and how.
Notably, tech giants today are able to wield the law against interoperators: new technologies that plug into their services, systems, and platforms.”
That sounds about right, doesn’t it.
In her book, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, Marietje Schaake writes:
“…the fact that our social, professional, and civil lives are increasingly digitized and, essentially, all aspects of digitation are in the hands of private companies; that certain technologies have inherent antidemocratic characteristics, while laws to protect democratic values and the rule of law are lagging; and that, most important, democratic governments’ outsourcing of key functions has led to a hollowing out of government’s core capabilities.
These systemic problems are now undermining the core principles of democracy: free and fair elections, the rule of law, the separation of powers, a well-informed, public debate, national security and the protection of civil liberties such as freedom of expression, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy.
As digitization progresses, we see a gradual shift in responsibility and power away from democratic leaders. This shift accelerates two trends: growing digital authoritarianism and a wholesale decline in democratic governance.”
We are the frogs being slowly boiled in the pot as the temperature rises. But, it’s not a fucking joke.
More on this will follow in future updates.
Autocrats
You are probably most familiar with these villains. They either rule your country or are a political party(ies) in it.
In her book, Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World Anne Applebaum writes:
“Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, (today’s Autocrats) operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power, Autocracy, Inc.
Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are cemented not through ideals but through deals – deals designed to take the edge off sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich.
Autocracy, Inc., offers its members not only money and security but also something less tangible, impunity.
Their enmity toward the democratic world is not merely some form of traditional geopolitical competition… (It) …has its roots in the very nature of the democratic political system, in words “accountability,” “transparency,” and “democracy.” They hear that language coming from the democratic world, they hear the same language coming from their own dissidents, and they seek to destroy them both.”
More on this will follow in future updates.
Democracy Supporters / Enlightened Humans
This is short. It’s us. At least the intelligent ones in the “Western World”, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea rules-based world. Plus a few other countries in the global south and various dissidents everywhere.
Enshittification
Before moving on to Techno Anarchism, here’s a quick note about Enshittification. It is part of techno feudalism and increasingly capitalism in general. Chicken or the egg first? I don’t know.
But, Cory Doctorow describes enshittification like this:
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
So, not only are Techno Feudalists part of the evil empire, their products suck as well.
Ok, enough about the cunts. Let’s move on the good guys.
The Winnable Battle
Will democracy win the war against autocracy? Who knows? It’s an eternal war that the bad guys currently have the upper hand in. And have had for the last decade or two. And have had for 99.99% of human history. Make what you will of that.
But, one of the war’s largest current battles can definitely be won. Equality can continue to grow. And our lives can be improved. And the world’s apocalypse can be delayed.
This battle is the one where Techno Anarchism opposes Techno Feudalism.
It is winnable because this victory can be achieved at the personal and small group level. It also has the advantage that the bad guys can’t defeat it (only resist it). Only apathy (which is also hard to overcome) can defeat Techno Anarchism. If you have a hundred million of drops of water you might drown an elephant. If you have a hundred you can’t even get one toe wet.
It’s also winnable because it’s more of a matter of changing habits (difficult) than political beliefs (extremely difficult). Anarchists and libertarians can be partial allies here along with many other freedom lovers.
And partial is important because this battle’s tactics are modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time. It’s easy to be a soldier and not too hard to be an officer. You can increase your efforts over time as you get in the martial groove. Hopefully, you can even become a general.
Finally, the battle’s winnable because software is exceptional. Via backwards engineering in the worst case, programs can be written to interoperate with those for other platforms. iWork literally kept Apple from dying.
As Cory Doctorow notes interoperability can make Big Tech a lot smaller, very quickly (assuming we can kill off monopolies). Siphoning off its users reduces its revenues and lobbying power.
Software is also exceptional because it allows us to fight big tech with its own weapons.
Cory notes in The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“If we someday triumph over labor exploitation, gender discrimination and violence, colonialism, and racism, and snatch a habitable planet from the jaws of extractive capitalism, it will be thanks to technologically enabled organizing.”
And more importantly taking actions. Which brings us to ⇊.
Techno Anarchism
So, let’s move on to Techno Anarchism / Digital Distributism and Digital Sovereignty (which is slightly different). It is the philosophy, strategies, and actions needed to defeat Techno Feudalism.
As I mentioned before, Joan Westenberg published something similar to my gestating thoughts. So, let’s not reinvent the wheel and look as her points.
The article in question is The Revolution Will Be Decentralized. It’s not really a revolution, but more a radical adjustment of habits. But, if it happens it will be decentralized. Anyway, take a break and go read her article now! You may need to eat lunch too.
You’re back. Great.
She uses the terms Digital Democracy and Digital Feudalism versus Techno Anarchism and Techno Feudalism.
Westenberg’s central idea addresses both distribution and personal data sovereignty:
“The implementation of Digital Distributism rests on three foundational pillars: infrastructure commons, data sovereignty, and algorithmic democracy. Each pillar requires specific technical and organizational structures to function effectively.
The revolution toward digital democracy begins with individual choices. Every person who moves to decentralized platforms weakens the grip of tech monopolies. Every contribution to open source projects builds alternative infrastructure. Every act of resistance against surveillance and control helps shift the balance of power.
But individual action is not, is never enough. It must be coupled with collective organization. We need coordinated efforts to build and promote alternatives. We need political movements that understand the connection between digital and democratic power. We need communities dedicated to practicing digital distributism in their own operations.
The infrastructure of freedom won’t build itself. But neither did the infrastructure of control. Every system of power depends on the daily choices of millions of individuals. Will we shape the change toward digital democracy or submit to digital feudalism?”
That’s the question. And fortunately you can answer it.
How? With a blast from the past.
Joan and I both propose a similar idea, the Digital Distributist Alternative (Joan) and Techno Anarchism (me).
But FYI, these are not new ideas. They existed before as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately, they didn’t win out.
Distributism
Traditional Distributism is summarized by Wikipedia as:
”Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world’s productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially those of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, due to their extreme concentration of ownership. Instead, it favors small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations, as well as small to medium enterprises and vigorous anti-trust laws to restrain or eliminate overweening economic power.”
Joan says:
“Digital Distributism updates this framework for the internet age, recognizing that digital infrastructure is now as fundamental to human flourishing as land was in the agricultural era. It offers a comprehensive alternative to digital feudalism by reimagining how we structure and govern the technologies that increasingly mediate human existence.”
Techno Distributism / Anarchism is the modern equivalent fighting Techno Feudalism as opposed to unregulated capitalism and state socialism. And it has a better chance of coming out on top. It’s more about the means of computation and consumption versus the means of production.
We’re digital serfs here, not the proletariat.
More on this will follow in future updates.
So, we now have our nebulously defined movement, Techno Anarchism. How do we win the war against its all to real foe?
By slowly killing Techno Feudalism with weapons of course. It will experience death by a thousand cuts.
The Arsenal of Techno Anarchism
Okay, so what are the weapons we can use to destroy Techno Feudalism?
Open Source Technology
We start by using open-source technology. Again, it has the advantage that it can’t be bought and enshittified at scale.
Let’s examine the arsenal in detail. Please explore and start using these tools while dropping their enshittified, corporate, feudalistic alternatives. Obviously, all of these are not for everyone. But, do what you can.
They will also boost the privacy and security of your personal data aka your digital sovereignty.
More details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Password Manager
VPN
Browser
Search Engine
Cloud
Office Suite
Grammar Checker
Chat / Messaging
Team Chat
eMail
eBook Management
Maps
Personal Websites via opensource publishing software
- Write Freely (integrates with Fediverse)
- WordPress.org not .com (integrates with Fediverse)
- Micro.Blog (integrates with Fediverse)
- Microwebber
- Publi
- Ghost (integrates with Fediverse)
- Grav CMS
RSS
Your website should have it. And you should follow your allies’ websites with it.
App Building
Project Management
Git
Wiki
Operating Systems
Computers – Linux. But very user-friendly, similar to Chromebooks.
Mobile Operating Systems
Hardware
Open Media Network
Hamish Campbell is a self-described openweb organic intellectual, technologist and part of the Open Media Network. He writes:
“Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.
Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. Google, Meta, TikTok—they thrive on extracting context from your every click. It’s not about what you say, but what your patterns say about you. They sell this to advertisers, to governments, to anyone with enough cash. Capital controls metadata, metadata controls behaviour, and behaviour keeps the system in place. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.
Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation. The state controls metadata, metadata controls capitalism. It’s the digitised return of the command economy.
Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a more blinded, slightly less abusive cage.
Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way
What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy. The #4opens and the OMN (Open Media Network) are an explicit political project to create this.
- Open data: everyone can see and use.
- Open metadata: the tail behind the content, telling you where it came from and how it’s been passed around.
- Open process: how decisions are made is visible and changeable.
- Open code: tools are modifiable and forkable.
The Open Media Network doesn’t pretend metadata isn’t powerful, it’s built around that power. But instead of hiding it, it makes that power visible, shared, and accountable. We’re not encrypting metadata into irrelevance. We’re composting it into trust.”
What does that mean for you? Like us you can be part of the Open Media Network by hosting a website using the tools listed in the previous section, putting a blog on it, writing, and distributing it via RSS. And don’t use AI! You’ll also want to implement ethical SEO and boost your writing on the Fediverse. This is one of the most vital things you can do to kill off Techno Feudalism.
Fediverse
In the home stretch, let’s look at the most powerful weapon against techno feudalism, The Fediverse. It’s also part of the Open Media Network.
Corporate social media is even worse than mass media. Millions of morons can get on it and pontificate as much as they want. It is used by extremists and conspiracy theorists to devastating effect. And it’s run by the motherfuckers behind techno feudalism. Today’s true rulers control the algorithms that show all this horseshit, encourage it, and addict us to following it.
In her book, Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, Renee DiResta writes:
“My focus is on a profound transformation in the dynamics of power and influence, which have fundamentally shifted, and on how we, the citizens, can come to grips with a force that is altering our politics, our society, and our very relationship to reality. For sure, companies and governments must bear their burden of figuring out how to regulate this new space, and how to restore trust and shore up institutions, but we as citizens, have a responsibility to understand these dynamics so we can build healthy norms and fight back. This is the task of a new civics.”
Well said, though I have no faith in the companies doing shit and little faith in governments doing their part competently. So it falls to us as Techno Anarchists to unfuck this. We can do this by leaving corporate social media and moving to the Fediverse.
In his book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, Nathan Schneider writes:
“The ways people can and cannot collectively self-govern in daily online life, furthermore, have been constrained in dominant social networks… the constraints on governance in online spaces have contributed to the peril of democratic politics in general. It is not enough to merely defend existing governmental institutions, healthy democracy depends on enabling creative new forms of self-governance, especially on networks.
If democracy is on the horizon (for humanity), self-governance is a plausible practice for moving in that direction. Governable Spaces, then, are where democratic self-governance can happen.
…the design of online social spaces has contributed to the atrophy of everyday democratic skills. (Fortunately) …the future of democracy can begin at the level of ordinary community, wherever we find ourselves together, where each of us has a chance to make a difference.”
You and I can have a profound impact on the governance of the Fediverse in addition to the good it does in the world. Pick a platform and get involved.
We covered the enshittification of corporate social media above.
For its The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation page, Cory Doctorow’s publisher wrote:
“When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms are hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.”
Cory writes:
“Switching cost are all the things you have to give up when you stop using a product. When switching costs are high enough, people will keep using products and services even though they hate those products and services.
Interoperability lowers switching costs. It allows users to set the terms on which we use that technology. It allows us to use the parts of products and services that benefit us, and block the parts that don’t.”
His publisher continues:
“We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. (We must) …seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.”
To counteract enshittification (and speed up the death of these feudal social platforms) we must seize the means of communication / computation via self-publishing with open-source tech. This is provided by personal websites built with open-source technology and distributed with RSS as seen earlier and via the Fediverse. Decentralization and interoperability are key. We must work for these results politically as well.
The Fediverse is the most formidable weapon of Techno Anarchy because it is unbuyable. It is unseizable if hosted in Europe. And it lets us focus on localism (again small groups) vs globalism. It’s distributed not siloed. And open-source not corporate. No ads, less harassment, and less bullshit greet you there. It’s also quite anarchic in general.
Learn more about the technical aspects and platforms of the Fediverse from these Symfony Station articles.
- You say you want a revolution: help the free, fair, and friendly Fediverse destroy Big Social
- Intrigued by the Fediverse – Traverse our Accounts to Map your Journey
And more details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Publishing – Distribution
Publishing – Personal Websites / Blogging
Microblogging
- Mastodon – Do join Mastodon, but don’t join the mastodon.social instance.
- Friendica – Follow me on Friendica.
- GoToSocial
- And more.
Photos
Do join Pixelfed, but don’t join the pixelfed.social instance.
Videos
Podcasting
Forums / Link Aggregators
Music
Curation
It’s a critical tactic to use these weapons. It’s also important to support them financially and to be active in their communities.
Tactics
Here are some more easy and local tactics. And for those with the technical skills, difficult ones.
Support the Independent Non-profit Press
The mass media is an unreliable ally in the war against autocracy much less the battle against Techno Feudalism.
Traditional journalism is flailing and failing. And it’s slowly going out of business. Plus, they are too spineless to save themselves. It’s because they are corporate and thus cowards. And they are mostly owned by c^nts.
Instead, we need to support and patronize independent non-profit journalistic organizations. That means giving them money directly my fellow anarchists.
Like this publication the following examples are tech-oriented or politics-oriented. But there are many for every issue you care about.
- Propublica
- 404 Media
- The Markup
- CalMatters
- The 19th News
- good internet magazine– coming soon
- Investigative Journalism Foundation
- Tech Policy
- Bellingcat
- Mother Jones
- Newsletters, unless they are on SubStack
- Associated Press
- NPR
- Public Media
- ABC (Australia)
- Al Jazeera (Qatar)
- BBC (UK)
- The Conversation (US)
- Crikey (Australia)
- DW (Germany)
- The Guardian (UK)
- Haaretz (Israel)
- The Tyee (Canada)
- The Breach (Canada)
- The Narwhal
- Sequencer Magazine
- The Xylom
- The Appeal
- The Conversation
- Lawfare
Think Global, Buy Local
In general, please explore the principles of degrowth.
But in particular, before spending your capital, think about that decision’s impact on our planet and your fellow humans. That’s basic morality. And please buy physical products from a local brick and mortar store. And only if you need them.
More relevant to Techno Anarchism, buy digital products from small tech suppliers or open-source suppliers or non and not-for-profits. Donate as much money as you can to open-source technology and other non-profit service providers.
This is easy, it just takes a little conscious thought and avoiding lazy thinking. Or a lack of thinking.
Technical Professionals
We Disagree has a fantastic but long article entitiled Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers. Read it at your convenience, but for now here is the most important part.
The author, Frank Miroslav promotes four approaches tech professionals can take to battle the Tech Right.
“Despite this the sheer scale of things that people could do, it is still possible to demarcate between broad approaches to categorize politically consequential action that people might take. To this end I like the following conceptual scheme which breaks forms of action into four broad categories that I break down on the following axes – whether or not the action occurs within a capitalist institution and what the action seeks to achieve.
One can act inside institutions like the state or corporations or outside those institutions. Such action can aim to be to be destructive in that it undermines property claims or destroys mechanisms of control or it can be constructive in that it builds technology or capabilities that helps people fight oppression or go live beyond capitalism.
ApproachesInsideOutsideDestructiveShaping internal policy in firms, stopping or sandbagging projectsBreaking infrastructure, freeing intellectual propertyConstructiveWorking on subversive projects funded by the state or capitalBuilding and maintaining technology that subverts capitalPeople within specific positions who have accumulated a significant degree of knowledge about the software they work on are not just hard to replace, but can also engage in hard-to-detect sabotage and subtle infrastructural changes that can frustrate attempts to use technology in bad ways. Given the increasing risk workplace organizers face thanks to the threat of layoffs, more informal forms of activism may be necessary.
However, while such activism may be critical for preventing immediate dangers, in the long run, the real interesting stuff is in activism that attempts to break apart the control vectoralists (TechnoFeudalists) have over information or infrastructures of control, rather than attempting to ameliorate their negative effects from within.”
So, if you have the tech chops, wreck havoc on the c^nts.
Battleplan
I am sure you’re ready to kick some ass. So, what can you do? I think you mostly know by now. It’s not complex. We’re not invading Normandy here.
Digital Sovereignty
You must own your communications, own your data, own your digital identity, own your digital devices, and own your own online real estate. Use the open-source technology featured here. Use open-source hardware. Each time you do you place a nail in Techno Feudalism’s coffin. The more you use, the faster that death occurs.
Choose Your Weapons and Kill Techno Feudalism
Use the weapons in Techno Anarchism’s arsenal. Again, the battle against Techno Feudalism is modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time or one weapon at a time. Put more nails in. And add as many as you can over time. Let’s shut that fucker tight.
As Joan says:
“Each new protocol, each independent instance, each decentralized application creates another crack in the walls of digital feudalism.”
You’re the General
Again, proceed at your pace. Rome wasn’t built or destroyed in a day and these corporate shits are difficult to leave. Intentionally.
We’re in WWIII here and its going to take a while to kill these fucks and cripple their allies. But, they are going to die. Not, inglorious bastards style but via Techno Anarchism. So no bullets or baseball bats. That’s the final resort I hope we never see.
Thanks for reading my semi-manifesto. Please share it, bookmark it, and come back to it later as a reference and to see its updates.
Keep Fighting, Techno Anarchists! We can win this. The power is yours.
Resources
To begin with, follow us each week for the latest happenings in this battle via Battalion’s Destroying Autocracy posts.
Follow me via the Fediverse. Or follow this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
If you are of an academic bent, feel free to take a deep dive into the resources inspiring this manifesto.
Tech as a Religion
The War
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
Autocrats
Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Techno Feudalism
Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism
How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism:The Making of the Digital Economy
Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason
Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Governable Spaces book: Democratic Design for Online Life
Techno Anarchism/Digital Distributism
The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- Please share this article.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
- Or follow Battalion on Bluesky.
Ringleader, Battalion
#4opens #anarchism #arsenal #Authoritarianism #Autocracy #battleplan #BigTech #Capitalism #combatants #Democracy #Distributism #enshittification #Fascism #fedivers #Fediverse #general #local #media #mission #OMN #opensource #problem #resources #sovereignty #tactics #TechnoAnarchism #war #weapons #winnable https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=1212
Reuben Walker
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The Techno Anarchist Manifesto aka Let’s fuck up Techno Feudalism
This practical and profanity-laced manifesto provides the loose philosophy, strategies, battleplans, tactics, and weapons to destroy Techno Feudalism via the practice of Techno Anarchism. It explains the war we are in, the Techno battle’s place in it, and what Techno Feudalism and Techno Anarchism are.
Don’t worry, I not going to start capping tech CEOs anytime soon. I’m not a 1914 anarchist out to destroy aristocrats, the state, and the church. Nor advocating for it in general. We are taking tactics from Proudhon’s federative socialism as opposed to Russian Nihilism. We are against the perversion of society by oligarchs.
Introduction
The same day I started writing this article about some ideas floating in my head, Joan Westenberg kind of beat me to the punch on its premise.
This piece will now be more expansive and a sort of manifesto.
I want to focus my thoughts regarding the battle against Techno Feudalism. And narrow my scope. And be systemic.
I will build whatever this ends up being in public. And put my masters degree in Political Science to work. So, this is just the start of a living document. I will update it with more of the philosophy of Techno Anarchism (and other points) in the coming weeks. It will also be influenced by my versions of other philosophies including Stoicism and Taoism.
It’s also the first thing I’ve written that needs a table of contents.
Here’s what we’re exploring:
- Introduction
- Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
- The War
- Enshittification
- The Winnable Battle
- Resources
The Mission
As supporters of democracy we need to engage in a positive fight against this timeline’s bullshit in a manner we can control ourselves.
Our goal should be to destroy autocracy rather than protect democracy. Simply because most of us live in autocracies unfortunately.
Still, we must both reform democracy and neuter it’s biggest threat, Big Tech.
I aim to make this writing more actionable than academic. We need action on the individual level and in small groups – neighborhoods, communities (geographical or digital), libraries, companies, unions, teams, non-profits, associations, clubs, schools, real churches, credit unions, local governments, the arts, independent media, etc. These groups have always been the building blocks of democracy. And they must be nurtured through use and membership.
I call the solution I propose to combat autocracy and Techno Feudalism, Techno Anarchism. While political anarchism as defined by Wikipedia is currently unlikely if not impossible (it’s wrong about human nature), you will see that in the tech arena, it is possible.
“Major definitional elements of anarchism include the will for a non-coercive society, the rejection of the state apparatus, the belief that human nature allows humans to exist in or progress toward such a non-coercive society, and a suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy.”
Again, it’s idealistic but not 100% practical. But it does have ideas we can use to build its practicality via our interactions with tech.
The writer and philosophical father of Anarchism, Proudhon believed the principle of revolution is freedom.
- Political freedom. This includes universal suffrage, an independent centralization of social functions, a continual revision of the constitution.
- Industrial (economic) freedom. This includes a guarantee of credit and sale.
He wanted “no government by men by means of the accumulation of power (autocracy) and no exploitation of men by means of the accumulation of capital (oligarchy).
His hopes for political transformation were based on the expansion of knowledge: demo-cracy was to evolve into demo-paedy, and gradually lead to anarchy of its own accord. The north star for him was justice.
To define it a little more, a later figure, Errico Malatesta wrote:
“While preaching against every kind of government, and demanding complete freedom, we must support all struggles for partial freedom…. If today we cannot get rid of every kind of government, this is not a good reason for taking no interest in defending the few acquired liberties and fighting to gain more of those.”
In other words, even if you are an anarchist you should support democratic governments and protected political rights.
He supported:
- voluntary associations, self-managed industries, and free communes—cooperating through networks and federations.
- a larger federation to advance anarchist ideas and not a centralized party aiming to take state power by elections or revolution. (Very important.)
- a radical democracy with majority decision-making but with a participatory process where any and all can have their say and minority rights are fully respected.
- an anarchist democracy that is a radical, direct, participatory democracy. One with no violence or coercion by a majority over the minority nor by a minority over the majority.
You get the idea. Individual freedom is key. And corporations are not individuals.
Personally, I view anarchism as democracy without the state, however unlikely it is. Anyway, enough with the anarchism proper.
Now, Wikipedia defines a manifesto as:
“A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent manifestos reject accepted knowledge in favor of a new idea.”
Is that what this will be? Let’s find out.
The Problem
But, before going into the details of this manifesto, let’s explore our major problem as humans, what and who we are fighting, and the bigger war that the techno feudalism versus anarchism battle takes place in.
First, let’s look at the problem, ourselves. We have not evolved enough as humans to keep up with the culture, economies, and technology we’ve developed. That’s why we feel alienated and a little lost.
We need a purpose be it one dictated by religion (for the weak-minded), nationalism (for idiots) or philosophy. Or maybe a very strong personal moral framework (which is difficult to develop). We might even get by with a manifesto. 😉 What we want to avoid is ideologies.
In general our overwhelmed brains need structure for things we don’t understand or can’t explain. We want simple, not the truth, which is why autocrats have an advantage. We’re mostly uneducated, unaware, unobservant, and intellectually lazy so we want easy answers.
H. L. Mencken wrote, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Yanis Yaroufakis notes: there’s no doubt “…about humanity’s infinite capacity to mess things up, to turn miraculous technology into living hell.”
I note: or religion’s capacity for the same with ideas.
In fact, Greg Epstein’s book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation has this:
“Today technology is the water in which we swim, whether on not we notice we are fish. Tech provides contemporary Western lives, so polarized and divided in countless ways, with a universal organizing principle… It offers myriad rites, capturing our attention and transforming our consciousness, connecting us with a community of people who spend their days…indeed their entire lives engaging in the same repetitive behaviors with the same fervent intensity.
Naturally, we all hope our devotion to this community of fellow travelers will bear fruit: surely tech will lead to a better future! Even a kind of paradise! But the truth is many of us fear, more than we’d like to admit, this may all be heading to a deeply dark place.
In other words: technology has become a religion.”
As you see, Big Tech now functions as a religion. It provides (easy though dubious) answers as more people reject the horseshit of traditional religion.
But, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle so it needs to be reformed into a more satisfying “religion”. More the Tao of Pooh than the Torah, Koran, and Revelations. More philosophy and morality for how to live life and less damnation, doctrine, and hate. One grown by us and not tech oligarchs. More good, less evil. Ok.
So before we move on, here’s some Taoism for you from The Tao of Pooh:
“Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.”
“The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.”
“We simply need to believe in the power that’s within us, and use it.”
Also, here’s something good from the Stoics who focused on promoting a life in harmony with nature (as does Taoism), within which we are active participants. They believed logic helps us see what is really there, reason effectively about practical affairs, stand our ground amongst confusion, differentiate the certain from the probable, and so forth.
They identified virtue with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
B compassionately using ideas from Taoism, Stoicism, and Techno Anarchism – we can unfuck most of our problem as humans with quality education, the right attitude, some logic, and striving for the difficult goal of simplicity in our tech.
Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
Next let’s take a look at economics. Currently we are stuck in the economic model of capitalism. The problem is that it’s not really capitalism. It’s rigged, crony, oligarchic capitalism headed back toward feudalism. Some argue persuasively that it has already fully evolved into Techno Feudalism.
So, let’s define Techno Feudalism.
Is it a malign denomination of the Tech religion?
The child of Big Tech and Late Stage / Crony Capitalism?
Or just a bunch of cunts in Silicon Valley?
Yanis Varoufakis coined the term Techno Feudalism. In his book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, he asks this question:
“Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?”
He advises thinking about money in this way:
“It is, above all else a reflection of our relation to one another and to our technologies; i.e. the means and the ways in which we transform matter. …Money is the alienated ability of mankind.”
In other words, if you can’t do it yourself, you can do it with money.
So, here’s his hypothesis:
“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.
… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”
How’s that for an academic sentence. 😉
Yanis continues:
“… capital’s mutation into what I call cloud capital has demolished capitalism’s two pillars: markets and profits.
Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms, which look like, but are not markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor, rent.
… the owners of tradition capital … have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital.
… the rest of us have returned to our former status a serfs … contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labor – in addition to the waged labor we perform, when we get the chance.”
Does this sound familiar? I think so.
And who wants to be a fucking serf? Not me.
More on this will follow in future updates.
The subject of equality is obviously relevant to feudal overlords and serfs.
In his book, A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty writes:
“…since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a historical movement toward equality. The world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or that of 1900, which were themselves more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780. ..over the long term, no matter the criterion we employ, we arrive at the same conclusion. Between 1780 and 2020 we see developments tending toward greater equality…
To continue… crises and power relations are necessary, as was the case in the past, but we will also need processes of learning and collective engagement, as well as mobilization around new political programs and proposals for new institutions.
Resistance by elites is a reality, in a world in which transnational billionaires are richer than states. Much as in the French revolution, such resistance can be overcome only by powerful collective mobilization during moments of crises and tension.
To ensure that everyone can contribute… in a decentralized way, we must develop new forms of sovereignism with a universalist vocation.”
I maintain that Techno Feudalism is contributing to the current slow to non-existent grow of equality. And I also maintain that Techno Anarchism can reverse the trend and grow equality via small-scale social mobilization and personal-data-sovereignty among other strategies to destroy Techno Feudalism.
Politics aka The War
Now, on to politics. Let’s begin with a few points. And a quick note, this isn’t about parties, but policies and exercising political rights.
Autocracy is a threat to democracy. Authoritarianism is a threat to human rights. Fascism is a threat to minorities. Autocrats, Fascists (secular or religious), and Communists are the bad guys.
However, unregulated capitalism and digital technology are a deadlier threat to democracy. Big Money and Big Tech equal the really bad guys. Oligarchs suck.
These two threats to human freedom go hand in hand. Unbound capitalism leads to fascist / authoritarian governments which lead to corrupt, crony capitalism or state capitalism aka hypocritical communism. Both of which erode and eventually destroy democracy, the environment, and human rights.
So, we need to reform and regulate large-scale capitalism and keep autocracy at bay. And again, reform democracy to function in the world we now live in.
Tech both in its Silicon Valley incarnation and the tools of repression Chinese / Israeli model are destroying democracy. One via corrupt, oligarchic capitalism / Techno Feudalism. And one via surveillance authoritarianism.
In we want democracy to survive we must fight these two tech models along with autocrats, autocratic political parties, autocratic nations, and autocratic ideologies.
The War’s Combatants
To reiterate, the larger war which I think of as WWIII is one between supporters of democracy and what I call the Evil Empire (Reagan is dead and I have commandeered the term!):
- Unregulated Capitalists / Techno Feudalists
- Big Tech in general
- Autocrats
The Evil Empire
Unregulated capitalist oligarchs, and Techno Feudalists
We’ve seen who they are.
Big Tech which is mostly Techno Feudalists, and some Techno Fascists
Regarding Tech Bros / oligarchs in general and how we got to this point, Cory Doctorow notes the following in his book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“Forty years ago, we shot anti-trust laws in the guts, and we let companies led by mediocre idiots no better than their forebearers establish monopolies. These donkeys were able to parlay their monopoly winnings into policies that prevented new technologies from supplanting their own. They got to decide who was allowed to compete with them, and how.
Notably, tech giants today are able to wield the law against interoperators: new technologies that plug into their services, systems, and platforms.”
That sounds about right, doesn’t it.
In her book, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, Marietje Schaake writes:
“…the fact that our social, professional, and civil lives are increasingly digitized and, essentially, all aspects of digitation are in the hands of private companies; that certain technologies have inherent antidemocratic characteristics, while laws to protect democratic values and the rule of law are lagging; and that, most important, democratic governments’ outsourcing of key functions has led to a hollowing out of government’s core capabilities.
These systemic problems are now undermining the core principles of democracy: free and fair elections, the rule of law, the separation of powers, a well-informed, public debate, national security and the protection of civil liberties such as freedom of expression, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy.
As digitization progresses, we see a gradual shift in responsibility and power away from democratic leaders. This shift accelerates two trends: growing digital authoritarianism and a wholesale decline in democratic governance.”
We are the frogs being slowly boiled in the pot as the temperature rises. But, it’s not a fucking joke.
More on this will follow in future updates.
Autocrats
You are probably most familiar with these villains. They either rule your country or are a political party(ies) in it.
In her book, Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World Anne Applebaum writes:
“Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, (today’s Autocrats) operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power, Autocracy, Inc.
Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are cemented not through ideals but through deals – deals designed to take the edge off sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich.
Autocracy, Inc., offers its members not only money and security but also something less tangible, impunity.
Their enmity toward the democratic world is not merely some form of traditional geopolitical competition… (It) …has its roots in the very nature of the democratic political system, in words “accountability,” “transparency,” and “democracy.” They hear that language coming from the democratic world, they hear the same language coming from their own dissidents, and they seek to destroy them both.”
More on this will follow in future updates.
Democracy Supporters / Enlightened Humans
This is short. It’s us. At least the intelligent ones in the “Western World”, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea rules-based world. Plus a few other countries in the global south and various dissidents everywhere.
Enshittification
Before moving on to Techno Anarchism, here’s a quick note about Enshittification. It is part of techno feudalism and increasingly capitalism in general. Chicken or the egg first? I don’t know.
But, Cory Doctorow describes enshittification like this:
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
So, not only are Techno Feudalists part of the evil empire, their products suck as well.
Ok, enough about the cunts. Let’s move on the good guys.
The Winnable Battle
Will democracy win the war against autocracy? Who knows? It’s an eternal war that the bad guys currently have the upper hand in. And have had for the last decade or two. And have had for 99.99% of human history. Make what you will of that.
But, one of the war’s largest current battles can definitely be won. Equality can continue to grow. And our lives can be improved. And the world’s apocalypse can be delayed.
This battle is the one where Techno Anarchism opposes Techno Feudalism.
It is winnable because this victory can be achieved at the personal and small group level. It also has the advantage that the bad guys can’t defeat it (only resist it). Only apathy (which is also hard to overcome) can defeat Techno Anarchism. If you have a hundred million of drops of water you might drown an elephant. If you have a hundred you can’t even get one toe wet.
It’s also winnable because it’s more of a matter of changing habits (difficult) than political beliefs (extremely difficult). Anarchists and libertarians can be partial allies here along with many other freedom lovers.
And partial is important because this battle’s tactics are modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time. It’s easy to be a soldier and not too hard to be an officer. You can increase your efforts over time as you get in the martial groove. Hopefully, you can even become a general.
Finally, the battle’s winnable because software is exceptional. Via backwards engineering in the worst case, programs can be written to interoperate with those for other platforms. iWork literally kept Apple from dying.
As Cory Doctorow notes interoperability can make Big Tech a lot smaller, very quickly (assuming we can kill off monopolies). Siphoning off its users reduces its revenues and lobbying power.
Software is also exceptional because it allows us to fight big tech with its own weapons.
Cory notes in The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“If we someday triumph over labor exploitation, gender discrimination and violence, colonialism, and racism, and snatch a habitable planet from the jaws of extractive capitalism, it will be thanks to technologically enabled organizing.”
And more importantly taking actions. Which brings us to ⇊.
Techno Anarchism
So, let’s move on to Techno Anarchism / Digital Distributism and Digital Sovereignty (which is slightly different). It is the philosophy, strategies, and actions needed to defeat Techno Feudalism.
As I mentioned before, Joan Westenberg published something similar to my gestating thoughts. So, let’s not reinvent the wheel and look as her points.
The article in question is The Revolution Will Be Decentralized. It’s not really a revolution, but more a radical adjustment of habits. But, if it happens it will be decentralized. Anyway, take a break and go read her article now! You may need to eat lunch too.
You’re back. Great.
She uses the terms Digital Democracy and Digital Feudalism versus Techno Anarchism and Techno Feudalism.
Westenberg’s central idea addresses both distribution and personal data sovereignty:
“The implementation of Digital Distributism rests on three foundational pillars: infrastructure commons, data sovereignty, and algorithmic democracy. Each pillar requires specific technical and organizational structures to function effectively.
The revolution toward digital democracy begins with individual choices. Every person who moves to decentralized platforms weakens the grip of tech monopolies. Every contribution to open source projects builds alternative infrastructure. Every act of resistance against surveillance and control helps shift the balance of power.
But individual action is not, is never enough. It must be coupled with collective organization. We need coordinated efforts to build and promote alternatives. We need political movements that understand the connection between digital and democratic power. We need communities dedicated to practicing digital distributism in their own operations.
The infrastructure of freedom won’t build itself. But neither did the infrastructure of control. Every system of power depends on the daily choices of millions of individuals. Will we shape the change toward digital democracy or submit to digital feudalism?”
That’s the question. And fortunately you can answer it.
How? With a blast from the past.
Joan and I both propose a similar idea, the Digital Distributist Alternative (Joan) and Techno Anarchism (me).
But FYI, these are not new ideas. They existed before as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately, they didn’t win out.
Distributism
Traditional Distributism is summarized by Wikipedia as:
”Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world’s productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially those of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, due to their extreme concentration of ownership. Instead, it favors small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations, as well as small to medium enterprises and vigorous anti-trust laws to restrain or eliminate overweening economic power.”
Joan says:
“Digital Distributism updates this framework for the internet age, recognizing that digital infrastructure is now as fundamental to human flourishing as land was in the agricultural era. It offers a comprehensive alternative to digital feudalism by reimagining how we structure and govern the technologies that increasingly mediate human existence.”
Techno Distributism / Anarchism is the modern equivalent fighting Techno Feudalism as opposed to unregulated capitalism and state socialism. And it has a better chance of coming out on top. It’s more about the means of computation and consumption versus the means of production.
We’re digital serfs here, not the proletariat.
More on this will follow in future updates.
So, we now have our nebulously defined movement, Techno Anarchism. How do we win the war against its all to real foe?
By slowly killing Techno Feudalism with weapons of course. It will experience death by a thousand cuts.
The Arsenal of Techno Anarchism
Okay, so what are the weapons we can use to destroy Techno Feudalism?
Open Source Technology
We start by using open-source technology. Again, it has the advantage that it can’t be bought and enshittified at scale.
Let’s examine the arsenal in detail. Please explore and start using these tools while dropping their enshittified, corporate, feudalistic alternatives. Obviously, all of these are not for everyone. But, do what you can.
They will also boost the privacy and security of your personal data aka your digital sovereignty.
More details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Password Manager
VPN
Browser
Search Engine
Cloud
Office Suite
Grammar Checker
Chat / Messaging
Team Chat
eMail
eBook Management
Maps
Personal Websites via opensource publishing software
- Write Freely (integrates with Fediverse)
- WordPress.org not .com (integrates with Fediverse)
- Micro.Blog (integrates with Fediverse)
- Microwebber
- Publi
- Ghost (integrates with Fediverse)
- Grav CMS
RSS
Your website should have it. And you should follow your allies’ websites with it.
App Building
Project Management
Git
Wiki
Operating Systems
Computers – Linux. But very user-friendly, similar to Chromebooks.
Mobile Operating Systems
Hardware
Open Media Network
Hamish Campbell is a self-described openweb organic intellectual, technologist and part of the Open Media Network. He writes:
“Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.
Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. Google, Meta, TikTok—they thrive on extracting context from your every click. It’s not about what you say, but what your patterns say about you. They sell this to advertisers, to governments, to anyone with enough cash. Capital controls metadata, metadata controls behaviour, and behaviour keeps the system in place. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.
Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation. The state controls metadata, metadata controls capitalism. It’s the digitised return of the command economy.
Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a more blinded, slightly less abusive cage.
Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way
What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy. The #4opens and the OMN (Open Media Network) are an explicit political project to create this.
- Open data: everyone can see and use.
- Open metadata: the tail behind the content, telling you where it came from and how it’s been passed around.
- Open process: how decisions are made is visible and changeable.
- Open code: tools are modifiable and forkable.
The Open Media Network doesn’t pretend metadata isn’t powerful, it’s built around that power. But instead of hiding it, it makes that power visible, shared, and accountable. We’re not encrypting metadata into irrelevance. We’re composting it into trust.”
What does that mean for you? Like us you can be part of the Open Media Network by hosting a website using the tools listed in the previous section, putting a blog on it, writing, and distributing it via RSS. And don’t use AI! You’ll also want to implement ethical SEO and boost your writing on the Fediverse. This is one of the most vital things you can do to kill off Techno Feudalism.
Fediverse
In the home stretch, let’s look at the most powerful weapon against techno feudalism, The Fediverse. It’s also part of the Open Media Network.
Corporate social media is even worse than mass media. Millions of morons can get on it and pontificate as much as they want. It is used by extremists and conspiracy theorists to devastating effect. And it’s run by the motherfuckers behind techno feudalism. Today’s true rulers control the algorithms that show all this horseshit, encourage it, and addict us to following it.
In her book, Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, Renee DiResta writes:
“My focus is on a profound transformation in the dynamics of power and influence, which have fundamentally shifted, and on how we, the citizens, can come to grips with a force that is altering our politics, our society, and our very relationship to reality. For sure, companies and governments must bear their burden of figuring out how to regulate this new space, and how to restore trust and shore up institutions, but we as citizens, have a responsibility to understand these dynamics so we can build healthy norms and fight back. This is the task of a new civics.”
Well said, though I have no faith in the companies doing shit and little faith in governments doing their part competently. So it falls to us as Techno Anarchists to unfuck this. We can do this by leaving corporate social media and moving to the Fediverse.
In his book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, Nathan Schneider writes:
“The ways people can and cannot collectively self-govern in daily online life, furthermore, have been constrained in dominant social networks… the constraints on governance in online spaces have contributed to the peril of democratic politics in general. It is not enough to merely defend existing governmental institutions, healthy democracy depends on enabling creative new forms of self-governance, especially on networks.
If democracy is on the horizon (for humanity), self-governance is a plausible practice for moving in that direction. Governable Spaces, then, are where democratic self-governance can happen.
…the design of online social spaces has contributed to the atrophy of everyday democratic skills. (Fortunately) …the future of democracy can begin at the level of ordinary community, wherever we find ourselves together, where each of us has a chance to make a difference.”
You and I can have a profound impact on the governance of the Fediverse in addition to the good it does in the world. Pick a platform and get involved.
We covered the enshittification of corporate social media above.
For its The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation page, Cory Doctorow’s publisher wrote:
“When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms are hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.”
Cory writes:
“Switching cost are all the things you have to give up when you stop using a product. When switching costs are high enough, people will keep using products and services even though they hate those products and services.
Interoperability lowers switching costs. It allows users to set the terms on which we use that technology. It allows us to use the parts of products and services that benefit us, and block the parts that don’t.”
His publisher continues:
“We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. (We must) …seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.”
To counteract enshittification (and speed up the death of these feudal social platforms) we must seize the means of communication / computation via self-publishing with open-source tech. This is provided by personal websites built with open-source technology and distributed with RSS as seen earlier and via the Fediverse. Decentralization and interoperability are key. We must work for these results politically as well.
The Fediverse is the most formidable weapon of Techno Anarchy because it is unbuyable. It is unseizable if hosted in Europe. And it lets us focus on localism (again small groups) vs globalism. It’s distributed not siloed. And open-source not corporate. No ads, less harassment, and less bullshit greet you there. It’s also quite anarchic in general.
Learn more about the technical aspects and platforms of the Fediverse from these Symfony Station articles.
- You say you want a revolution: help the free, fair, and friendly Fediverse destroy Big Social
- Intrigued by the Fediverse – Traverse our Accounts to Map your Journey
And more details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Publishing – Distribution
Publishing – Personal Websites / Blogging
Microblogging
- Mastodon – Do join Mastodon, but don’t join the mastodon.social instance.
- Friendica – Follow me on Friendica.
- GoToSocial
- And more.
Photos
Do join Pixelfed, but don’t join the pixelfed.social instance.
Videos
Podcasting
Forums / Link Aggregators
Music
Curation
It’s a critical tactic to use these weapons. It’s also important to support them financially and to be active in their communities.
Tactics
Here are some more easy and local tactics. And for those with the technical skills, difficult ones.
Support the Independent Non-profit Press
The mass media is an unreliable ally in the war against autocracy much less the battle against Techno Feudalism.
Traditional journalism is flailing and failing. And it’s slowly going out of business. Plus, they are too spineless to save themselves. It’s because they are corporate and thus cowards. And they are mostly owned by c^nts.
Instead, we need to support and patronize independent non-profit journalistic organizations. That means giving them money directly my fellow anarchists.
Like this publication the following examples are tech-oriented or politics-oriented. But there are many for every issue you care about.
- Propublica
- 404 Media
- The Markup
- CalMatters
- The 19th News
- good internet magazine– coming soon
- Investigative Journalism Foundation
- Tech Policy
- Bellingcat
- Mother Jones
- Newsletters, unless they are on SubStack
- Associated Press
- NPR
- Public Media
- ABC (Australia)
- Al Jazeera (Qatar)
- BBC (UK)
- The Conversation (US)
- Crikey (Australia)
- DW (Germany)
- The Guardian (UK)
- Haaretz (Israel)
- The Tyee (Canada)
- The Breach (Canada)
- The Narwhal
- Sequencer Magazine
- The Xylom
- The Appeal
- The Conversation
- Lawfare
Think Global, Buy Local
In general, please explore the principles of degrowth.
But in particular, before spending your capital, think about that decision’s impact on our planet and your fellow humans. That’s basic morality. And please buy physical products from a local brick and mortar store. And only if you need them.
More relevant to Techno Anarchism, buy digital products from small tech suppliers or open-source suppliers or non and not-for-profits. Donate as much money as you can to open-source technology and other non-profit service providers.
This is easy, it just takes a little conscious thought and avoiding lazy thinking. Or a lack of thinking.
Technical Professionals
We Disagree has a fantastic but long article entitiled Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers. Read it at your convenience, but for now here is the most important part.
The author, Frank Miroslav promotes four approaches tech professionals can take to battle the Tech Right.
“Despite this the sheer scale of things that people could do, it is still possible to demarcate between broad approaches to categorize politically consequential action that people might take. To this end I like the following conceptual scheme which breaks forms of action into four broad categories that I break down on the following axes – whether or not the action occurs within a capitalist institution and what the action seeks to achieve.
One can act inside institutions like the state or corporations or outside those institutions. Such action can aim to be to be destructive in that it undermines property claims or destroys mechanisms of control or it can be constructive in that it builds technology or capabilities that helps people fight oppression or go live beyond capitalism.
ApproachesInsideOutsideDestructiveShaping internal policy in firms, stopping or sandbagging projectsBreaking infrastructure, freeing intellectual propertyConstructiveWorking on subversive projects funded by the state or capitalBuilding and maintaining technology that subverts capitalPeople within specific positions who have accumulated a significant degree of knowledge about the software they work on are not just hard to replace, but can also engage in hard-to-detect sabotage and subtle infrastructural changes that can frustrate attempts to use technology in bad ways. Given the increasing risk workplace organizers face thanks to the threat of layoffs, more informal forms of activism may be necessary.
However, while such activism may be critical for preventing immediate dangers, in the long run, the real interesting stuff is in activism that attempts to break apart the control vectoralists (TechnoFeudalists) have over information or infrastructures of control, rather than attempting to ameliorate their negative effects from within.”
So, if you have the tech chops, wreck havoc on the c^nts.
Battleplan
I am sure you’re ready to kick some ass. So, what can you do? I think you mostly know by now. It’s not complex. We’re not invading Normandy here.
Digital Sovereignty
You must own your communications, own your data, own your digital identity, own your digital devices, and own your own online real estate. Use the open-source technology featured here. Use open-source hardware. Each time you do you place a nail in Techno Feudalism’s coffin. The more you use, the faster that death occurs.
Choose Your Weapons and Kill Techno Feudalism
Use the weapons in Techno Anarchism’s arsenal. Again, the battle against Techno Feudalism is modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time or one weapon at a time. Put more nails in. And add as many as you can over time. Let’s shut that fucker tight.
As Joan says:
“Each new protocol, each independent instance, each decentralized application creates another crack in the walls of digital feudalism.”
You’re the General
Again, proceed at your pace. Rome wasn’t built or destroyed in a day and these corporate shits are difficult to leave. Intentionally.
We’re in WWIII here and its going to take a while to kill these fucks and cripple their allies. But, they are going to die. Not, inglorious bastards style but via Techno Anarchism. So no bullets or baseball bats. That’s the final resort I hope we never see.
Thanks for reading my semi-manifesto. Please share it, bookmark it, and come back to it later as a reference and to see its updates.
Keep Fighting, Techno Anarchists! We can win this. The power is yours.
Resources
To begin with, follow us each week for the latest happenings in this battle via Battalion’s Destroying Autocracy posts.
Follow me via the Fediverse. Or follow this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
If you are of an academic bent, feel free to take a deep dive into the resources inspiring this manifesto.
Tech as a Religion
The War
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
Autocrats
Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Techno Feudalism
Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism
How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism:The Making of the Digital Economy
Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason
Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Governable Spaces book: Democratic Design for Online Life
Techno Anarchism/Digital Distributism
The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- Please share this article.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
- Or follow Battalion on Bluesky.
Ringleader, Battalion
#4opens #anarchism #arsenal #Authoritarianism #Autocracy #battleplan #BigTech #Capitalism #combatants #Democracy #Distributism #enshittification #Fascism #fedivers #Fediverse #general #local #media #mission #OMN #opensource #problem #resources #sovereignty #tactics #TechnoAnarchism #war #weapons #winnable https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=1212
Reuben Walker
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The Techno Anarchist Manifesto aka Let’s fuck up Techno Feudalism
This practical and profanity-laced manifesto provides the loose philosophy, strategies, battleplans, tactics, and weapons to destroy Techno Feudalism via the practice of Techno Anarchism. It explains the war we are in, the Techno battle’s place in it, and what Techno Feudalism and Techno Anarchism are.
Don’t worry, I not going to start capping tech CEOs anytime soon. I’m not a 1914 anarchist out to destroy aristocrats, the state, and the church. Nor advocating for it in general. We are taking tactics from Proudhon’s federative socialism as opposed to Russian Nihilism. We are against the perversion of society by oligarchs.
Introduction
The same day I started writing this article about some ideas floating in my head, Joan Westenberg kind of beat me to the punch on its premise.
This piece will now be more expansive and a sort of manifesto.
I want to focus my thoughts regarding the battle against Techno Feudalism. And narrow my scope. And be systemic.
I will build whatever this ends up being in public. And put my masters degree in Political Science to work. So, this is just the start of a living document. I will update it with more of the philosophy of Techno Anarchism (and other points) in the coming weeks. It will also be influenced by my versions of other philosophies including Stoicism and Taoism.
It’s also the first thing I’ve written that needs a table of contents.
Here’s what we’re exploring:
- Introduction
- Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
- The War
- Enshittification
- The Winnable Battle
- Resources
The Mission
As supporters of democracy we need to engage in a positive fight against this timeline’s bullshit in a manner we can control ourselves.
Our goal should be to destroy autocracy rather than protect democracy. Simply because most of us live in autocracies unfortunately.
Still, we must both reform democracy and neuter it’s biggest threat, Big Tech.
I aim to make this writing more actionable than academic. We need action on the individual level and in small groups – neighborhoods, communities (geographical or digital), libraries, companies, unions, teams, non-profits, associations, clubs, schools, real churches, credit unions, local governments, the arts, independent media, etc. These groups have always been the building blocks of democracy. And they must be nurtured through use and membership.
I call the solution I propose to combat autocracy and Techno Feudalism, Techno Anarchism. While political anarchism as defined by Wikipedia is currently unlikely if not impossible (it’s wrong about human nature), you will see that in the tech arena, it is possible.
“Major definitional elements of anarchism include the will for a non-coercive society, the rejection of the state apparatus, the belief that human nature allows humans to exist in or progress toward such a non-coercive society, and a suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy.”
Again, it’s idealistic but not 100% practical. But it does have ideas we can use to build its practicality via our interactions with tech.
The writer and philosophical father of Anarchism, Proudhon believed the principle of revolution is freedom.
- Political freedom. This includes universal suffrage, an independent centralization of social functions, a continual revision of the constitution.
- Industrial (economic) freedom. This includes a guarantee of credit and sale.
He wanted “no government by men by means of the accumulation of power (autocracy) and no exploitation of men by means of the accumulation of capital (oligarchy).
His hopes for political transformation were based on the expansion of knowledge: demo-cracy was to evolve into demo-paedy, and gradually lead to anarchy of its own accord. The north star for him was justice.
To define it a little more, a later figure, Errico Malatesta wrote:
“While preaching against every kind of government, and demanding complete freedom, we must support all struggles for partial freedom…. If today we cannot get rid of every kind of government, this is not a good reason for taking no interest in defending the few acquired liberties and fighting to gain more of those.”
In other words, even if you are an anarchist you should support democratic governments and protected political rights.
He supported:
- voluntary associations, self-managed industries, and free communes—cooperating through networks and federations.
- a larger federation to advance anarchist ideas and not a centralized party aiming to take state power by elections or revolution. (Very important.)
- a radical democracy with majority decision-making but with a participatory process where any and all can have their say and minority rights are fully respected.
- an anarchist democracy that is a radical, direct, participatory democracy. One with no violence or coercion by a majority over the minority nor by a minority over the majority.
You get the idea. Individual freedom is key. And corporations are not individuals.
Personally, I view anarchism as democracy without the state, however unlikely it is. Anyway, enough with the anarchism proper.
Now, Wikipedia defines a manifesto as:
“A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent manifestos reject accepted knowledge in favor of a new idea.”
Is that what this will be? Let’s find out.
The Problem
But, before going into the details of this manifesto, let’s explore our major problem as humans, what and who we are fighting, and the bigger war that the techno feudalism versus anarchism battle takes place in.
First, let’s look at the problem, ourselves. We have not evolved enough as humans to keep up with the culture, economies, and technology we’ve developed. That’s why we feel alienated and a little lost.
We need a purpose be it one dictated by religion (for the weak-minded), nationalism (for idiots) or philosophy. Or maybe a very strong personal moral framework (which is difficult to develop). We might even get by with a manifesto. 😉 What we want to avoid is ideologies.
In general our overwhelmed brains need structure for things we don’t understand or can’t explain. We want simple, not the truth, which is why autocrats have an advantage. We’re mostly uneducated, unaware, unobservant, and intellectually lazy so we want easy answers.
H. L. Mencken wrote, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Yanis Yaroufakis notes: there’s no doubt “…about humanity’s infinite capacity to mess things up, to turn miraculous technology into living hell.”
I note: or religion’s capacity for the same with ideas.
In fact, Greg Epstein’s book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation has this:
“Today technology is the water in which we swim, whether on not we notice we are fish. Tech provides contemporary Western lives, so polarized and divided in countless ways, with a universal organizing principle… It offers myriad rites, capturing our attention and transforming our consciousness, connecting us with a community of people who spend their days…indeed their entire lives engaging in the same repetitive behaviors with the same fervent intensity.
Naturally, we all hope our devotion to this community of fellow travelers will bear fruit: surely tech will lead to a better future! Even a kind of paradise! But the truth is many of us fear, more than we’d like to admit, this may all be heading to a deeply dark place.
In other words: technology has become a religion.”
As you see, Big Tech now functions as a religion. It provides (easy though dubious) answers as more people reject the horseshit of traditional religion.
But, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle so it needs to be reformed into a more satisfying “religion”. More the Tao of Pooh than the Torah, Koran, and Revelations. More philosophy and morality for how to live life and less damnation, doctrine, and hate. One grown by us and not tech oligarchs. More good, less evil. Ok.
So before we move on, here’s some Taoism for you from The Tao of Pooh:
“Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.”
“The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.”
“We simply need to believe in the power that’s within us, and use it.”
Also, here’s something good from the Stoics who focused on promoting a life in harmony with nature (as does Taoism), within which we are active participants. They believed logic helps us see what is really there, reason effectively about practical affairs, stand our ground amongst confusion, differentiate the certain from the probable, and so forth.
They identified virtue with a life spent practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
B compassionately using ideas from Taoism, Stoicism, and Techno Anarchism – we can unfuck most of our problem as humans with quality education, the right attitude, some logic, and striving for the difficult goal of simplicity in our tech.
Late Stage Capitalism / Techno Feudalism
Next let’s take a look at economics. Currently we are stuck in the economic model of capitalism. The problem is that it’s not really capitalism. It’s rigged, crony, oligarchic capitalism headed back toward feudalism. Some argue persuasively that it has already fully evolved into Techno Feudalism.
So, let’s define Techno Feudalism.
Is it a malign denomination of the Tech religion?
The child of Big Tech and Late Stage / Crony Capitalism?
Or just a bunch of cunts in Silicon Valley?
Yanis Varoufakis coined the term Techno Feudalism. In his book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, he asks this question:
“Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?”
He advises thinking about money in this way:
“It is, above all else a reflection of our relation to one another and to our technologies; i.e. the means and the ways in which we transform matter. …Money is the alienated ability of mankind.”
In other words, if you can’t do it yourself, you can do it with money.
So, here’s his hypothesis:
“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.
… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”
How’s that for an academic sentence. 😉
Yanis continues:
“… capital’s mutation into what I call cloud capital has demolished capitalism’s two pillars: markets and profits.
Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms, which look like, but are not markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor, rent.
… the owners of tradition capital … have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital.
… the rest of us have returned to our former status a serfs … contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labor – in addition to the waged labor we perform, when we get the chance.”
Does this sound familiar? I think so.
And who wants to be a fucking serf? Not me.
More on this will follow in future updates.
The subject of equality is obviously relevant to feudal overlords and serfs.
In his book, A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty writes:
“…since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a historical movement toward equality. The world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or that of 1900, which were themselves more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780. ..over the long term, no matter the criterion we employ, we arrive at the same conclusion. Between 1780 and 2020 we see developments tending toward greater equality…
To continue… crises and power relations are necessary, as was the case in the past, but we will also need processes of learning and collective engagement, as well as mobilization around new political programs and proposals for new institutions.
Resistance by elites is a reality, in a world in which transnational billionaires are richer than states. Much as in the French revolution, such resistance can be overcome only by powerful collective mobilization during moments of crises and tension.
To ensure that everyone can contribute… in a decentralized way, we must develop new forms of sovereignism with a universalist vocation.”
I maintain that Techno Feudalism is contributing to the current slow to non-existent grow of equality. And I also maintain that Techno Anarchism can reverse the trend and grow equality via small-scale social mobilization and personal-data-sovereignty among other strategies to destroy Techno Feudalism.
Politics aka The War
Now, on to politics. Let’s begin with a few points. And a quick note, this isn’t about parties, but policies and exercising political rights.
Autocracy is a threat to democracy. Authoritarianism is a threat to human rights. Fascism is a threat to minorities. Autocrats, Fascists (secular or religious), and Communists are the bad guys.
However, unregulated capitalism and digital technology are a deadlier threat to democracy. Big Money and Big Tech equal the really bad guys. Oligarchs suck.
These two threats to human freedom go hand in hand. Unbound capitalism leads to fascist / authoritarian governments which lead to corrupt, crony capitalism or state capitalism aka hypocritical communism. Both of which erode and eventually destroy democracy, the environment, and human rights.
So, we need to reform and regulate large-scale capitalism and keep autocracy at bay. And again, reform democracy to function in the world we now live in.
Tech both in its Silicon Valley incarnation and the tools of repression Chinese / Israeli model are destroying democracy. One via corrupt, oligarchic capitalism / Techno Feudalism. And one via surveillance authoritarianism.
In we want democracy to survive we must fight these two tech models along with autocrats, autocratic political parties, autocratic nations, and autocratic ideologies.
The War’s Combatants
To reiterate, the larger war which I think of as WWIII is one between supporters of democracy and what I call the Evil Empire (Reagan is dead and I have commandeered the term!):
- Unregulated Capitalists / Techno Feudalists
- Big Tech in general
- Autocrats
The Evil Empire
Unregulated capitalist oligarchs, and Techno Feudalists
We’ve seen who they are.
Big Tech which is mostly Techno Feudalists, and some Techno Fascists
Regarding Tech Bros / oligarchs in general and how we got to this point, Cory Doctorow notes the following in his book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“Forty years ago, we shot anti-trust laws in the guts, and we let companies led by mediocre idiots no better than their forebearers establish monopolies. These donkeys were able to parlay their monopoly winnings into policies that prevented new technologies from supplanting their own. They got to decide who was allowed to compete with them, and how.
Notably, tech giants today are able to wield the law against interoperators: new technologies that plug into their services, systems, and platforms.”
That sounds about right, doesn’t it.
In her book, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, Marietje Schaake writes:
“…the fact that our social, professional, and civil lives are increasingly digitized and, essentially, all aspects of digitation are in the hands of private companies; that certain technologies have inherent antidemocratic characteristics, while laws to protect democratic values and the rule of law are lagging; and that, most important, democratic governments’ outsourcing of key functions has led to a hollowing out of government’s core capabilities.
These systemic problems are now undermining the core principles of democracy: free and fair elections, the rule of law, the separation of powers, a well-informed, public debate, national security and the protection of civil liberties such as freedom of expression, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy.
As digitization progresses, we see a gradual shift in responsibility and power away from democratic leaders. This shift accelerates two trends: growing digital authoritarianism and a wholesale decline in democratic governance.”
We are the frogs being slowly boiled in the pot as the temperature rises. But, it’s not a fucking joke.
More on this will follow in future updates.
Autocrats
You are probably most familiar with these villains. They either rule your country or are a political party(ies) in it.
In her book, Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World Anne Applebaum writes:
“Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, (today’s Autocrats) operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power, Autocracy, Inc.
Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are cemented not through ideals but through deals – deals designed to take the edge off sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich.
Autocracy, Inc., offers its members not only money and security but also something less tangible, impunity.
Their enmity toward the democratic world is not merely some form of traditional geopolitical competition… (It) …has its roots in the very nature of the democratic political system, in words “accountability,” “transparency,” and “democracy.” They hear that language coming from the democratic world, they hear the same language coming from their own dissidents, and they seek to destroy them both.”
More on this will follow in future updates.
Democracy Supporters / Enlightened Humans
This is short. It’s us. At least the intelligent ones in the “Western World”, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea rules-based world. Plus a few other countries in the global south and various dissidents everywhere.
Enshittification
Before moving on to Techno Anarchism, here’s a quick note about Enshittification. It is part of techno feudalism and increasingly capitalism in general. Chicken or the egg first? I don’t know.
But, Cory Doctorow describes enshittification like this:
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
So, not only are Techno Feudalists part of the evil empire, their products suck as well.
Ok, enough about the cunts. Let’s move on the good guys.
The Winnable Battle
Will democracy win the war against autocracy? Who knows? It’s an eternal war that the bad guys currently have the upper hand in. And have had for the last decade or two. And have had for 99.99% of human history. Make what you will of that.
But, one of the war’s largest current battles can definitely be won. Equality can continue to grow. And our lives can be improved. And the world’s apocalypse can be delayed.
This battle is the one where Techno Anarchism opposes Techno Feudalism.
It is winnable because this victory can be achieved at the personal and small group level. It also has the advantage that the bad guys can’t defeat it (only resist it). Only apathy (which is also hard to overcome) can defeat Techno Anarchism. If you have a hundred million of drops of water you might drown an elephant. If you have a hundred you can’t even get one toe wet.
It’s also winnable because it’s more of a matter of changing habits (difficult) than political beliefs (extremely difficult). Anarchists and libertarians can be partial allies here along with many other freedom lovers.
And partial is important because this battle’s tactics are modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time. It’s easy to be a soldier and not too hard to be an officer. You can increase your efforts over time as you get in the martial groove. Hopefully, you can even become a general.
Finally, the battle’s winnable because software is exceptional. Via backwards engineering in the worst case, programs can be written to interoperate with those for other platforms. iWork literally kept Apple from dying.
As Cory Doctorow notes interoperability can make Big Tech a lot smaller, very quickly (assuming we can kill off monopolies). Siphoning off its users reduces its revenues and lobbying power.
Software is also exceptional because it allows us to fight big tech with its own weapons.
Cory notes in The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation:
“If we someday triumph over labor exploitation, gender discrimination and violence, colonialism, and racism, and snatch a habitable planet from the jaws of extractive capitalism, it will be thanks to technologically enabled organizing.”
And more importantly taking actions. Which brings us to ⇊.
Techno Anarchism
So, let’s move on to Techno Anarchism / Digital Distributism and Digital Sovereignty (which is slightly different). It is the philosophy, strategies, and actions needed to defeat Techno Feudalism.
As I mentioned before, Joan Westenberg published something similar to my gestating thoughts. So, let’s not reinvent the wheel and look as her points.
The article in question is The Revolution Will Be Decentralized. It’s not really a revolution, but more a radical adjustment of habits. But, if it happens it will be decentralized. Anyway, take a break and go read her article now! You may need to eat lunch too.
You’re back. Great.
She uses the terms Digital Democracy and Digital Feudalism versus Techno Anarchism and Techno Feudalism.
Westenberg’s central idea addresses both distribution and personal data sovereignty:
“The implementation of Digital Distributism rests on three foundational pillars: infrastructure commons, data sovereignty, and algorithmic democracy. Each pillar requires specific technical and organizational structures to function effectively.
The revolution toward digital democracy begins with individual choices. Every person who moves to decentralized platforms weakens the grip of tech monopolies. Every contribution to open source projects builds alternative infrastructure. Every act of resistance against surveillance and control helps shift the balance of power.
But individual action is not, is never enough. It must be coupled with collective organization. We need coordinated efforts to build and promote alternatives. We need political movements that understand the connection between digital and democratic power. We need communities dedicated to practicing digital distributism in their own operations.
The infrastructure of freedom won’t build itself. But neither did the infrastructure of control. Every system of power depends on the daily choices of millions of individuals. Will we shape the change toward digital democracy or submit to digital feudalism?”
That’s the question. And fortunately you can answer it.
How? With a blast from the past.
Joan and I both propose a similar idea, the Digital Distributist Alternative (Joan) and Techno Anarchism (me).
But FYI, these are not new ideas. They existed before as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately, they didn’t win out.
Distributism
Traditional Distributism is summarized by Wikipedia as:
”Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world’s productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially those of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, due to their extreme concentration of ownership. Instead, it favors small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations, as well as small to medium enterprises and vigorous anti-trust laws to restrain or eliminate overweening economic power.”
Joan says:
“Digital Distributism updates this framework for the internet age, recognizing that digital infrastructure is now as fundamental to human flourishing as land was in the agricultural era. It offers a comprehensive alternative to digital feudalism by reimagining how we structure and govern the technologies that increasingly mediate human existence.”
Techno Distributism / Anarchism is the modern equivalent fighting Techno Feudalism as opposed to unregulated capitalism and state socialism. And it has a better chance of coming out on top. It’s more about the means of computation and consumption versus the means of production.
We’re digital serfs here, not the proletariat.
More on this will follow in future updates.
So, we now have our nebulously defined movement, Techno Anarchism. How do we win the war against its all to real foe?
By slowly killing Techno Feudalism with weapons of course. It will experience death by a thousand cuts.
The Arsenal of Techno Anarchism
Okay, so what are the weapons we can use to destroy Techno Feudalism?
Open Source Technology
We start by using open-source technology. Again, it has the advantage that it can’t be bought and enshittified at scale.
Let’s examine the arsenal in detail. Please explore and start using these tools while dropping their enshittified, corporate, feudalistic alternatives. Obviously, all of these are not for everyone. But, do what you can.
They will also boost the privacy and security of your personal data aka your digital sovereignty.
More details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Password Manager
VPN
Browser
Search Engine
Cloud
Office Suite
Grammar Checker
Chat / Messaging
Team Chat
eMail
eBook Management
Maps
Personal Websites via opensource publishing software
- Write Freely (integrates with Fediverse)
- WordPress.org not .com (integrates with Fediverse)
- Micro.Blog (integrates with Fediverse)
- Microwebber
- Publi
- Ghost (integrates with Fediverse)
- Grav CMS
RSS
Your website should have it. And you should follow your allies’ websites with it.
App Building
Project Management
Git
Wiki
Operating Systems
Computers – Linux. But very user-friendly, similar to Chromebooks.
Mobile Operating Systems
Hardware
Open Media Network
Hamish Campbell is a self-described openweb organic intellectual, technologist and part of the Open Media Network. He writes:
“Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.
Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. Google, Meta, TikTok—they thrive on extracting context from your every click. It’s not about what you say, but what your patterns say about you. They sell this to advertisers, to governments, to anyone with enough cash. Capital controls metadata, metadata controls behaviour, and behaviour keeps the system in place. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.
Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation. The state controls metadata, metadata controls capitalism. It’s the digitised return of the command economy.
Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a more blinded, slightly less abusive cage.
Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way
What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy. The #4opens and the OMN (Open Media Network) are an explicit political project to create this.
- Open data: everyone can see and use.
- Open metadata: the tail behind the content, telling you where it came from and how it’s been passed around.
- Open process: how decisions are made is visible and changeable.
- Open code: tools are modifiable and forkable.
The Open Media Network doesn’t pretend metadata isn’t powerful, it’s built around that power. But instead of hiding it, it makes that power visible, shared, and accountable. We’re not encrypting metadata into irrelevance. We’re composting it into trust.”
What does that mean for you? Like us you can be part of the Open Media Network by hosting a website using the tools listed in the previous section, putting a blog on it, writing, and distributing it via RSS. And don’t use AI! You’ll also want to implement ethical SEO and boost your writing on the Fediverse. This is one of the most vital things you can do to kill off Techno Feudalism.
Fediverse
In the home stretch, let’s look at the most powerful weapon against techno feudalism, The Fediverse. It’s also part of the Open Media Network.
Corporate social media is even worse than mass media. Millions of morons can get on it and pontificate as much as they want. It is used by extremists and conspiracy theorists to devastating effect. And it’s run by the motherfuckers behind techno feudalism. Today’s true rulers control the algorithms that show all this horseshit, encourage it, and addict us to following it.
In her book, Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, Renee DiResta writes:
“My focus is on a profound transformation in the dynamics of power and influence, which have fundamentally shifted, and on how we, the citizens, can come to grips with a force that is altering our politics, our society, and our very relationship to reality. For sure, companies and governments must bear their burden of figuring out how to regulate this new space, and how to restore trust and shore up institutions, but we as citizens, have a responsibility to understand these dynamics so we can build healthy norms and fight back. This is the task of a new civics.”
Well said, though I have no faith in the companies doing shit and little faith in governments doing their part competently. So it falls to us as Techno Anarchists to unfuck this. We can do this by leaving corporate social media and moving to the Fediverse.
In his book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, Nathan Schneider writes:
“The ways people can and cannot collectively self-govern in daily online life, furthermore, have been constrained in dominant social networks… the constraints on governance in online spaces have contributed to the peril of democratic politics in general. It is not enough to merely defend existing governmental institutions, healthy democracy depends on enabling creative new forms of self-governance, especially on networks.
If democracy is on the horizon (for humanity), self-governance is a plausible practice for moving in that direction. Governable Spaces, then, are where democratic self-governance can happen.
…the design of online social spaces has contributed to the atrophy of everyday democratic skills. (Fortunately) …the future of democracy can begin at the level of ordinary community, wherever we find ourselves together, where each of us has a chance to make a difference.”
You and I can have a profound impact on the governance of the Fediverse in addition to the good it does in the world. Pick a platform and get involved.
We covered the enshittification of corporate social media above.
For its The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation page, Cory Doctorow’s publisher wrote:
“When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms are hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.”
Cory writes:
“Switching cost are all the things you have to give up when you stop using a product. When switching costs are high enough, people will keep using products and services even though they hate those products and services.
Interoperability lowers switching costs. It allows users to set the terms on which we use that technology. It allows us to use the parts of products and services that benefit us, and block the parts that don’t.”
His publisher continues:
“We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. (We must) …seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.”
To counteract enshittification (and speed up the death of these feudal social platforms) we must seize the means of communication / computation via self-publishing with open-source tech. This is provided by personal websites built with open-source technology and distributed with RSS as seen earlier and via the Fediverse. Decentralization and interoperability are key. We must work for these results politically as well.
The Fediverse is the most formidable weapon of Techno Anarchy because it is unbuyable. It is unseizable if hosted in Europe. And it lets us focus on localism (again small groups) vs globalism. It’s distributed not siloed. And open-source not corporate. No ads, less harassment, and less bullshit greet you there. It’s also quite anarchic in general.
Learn more about the technical aspects and platforms of the Fediverse from these Symfony Station articles.
- You say you want a revolution: help the free, fair, and friendly Fediverse destroy Big Social
- Intrigued by the Fediverse – Traverse our Accounts to Map your Journey
And more details on these individual tools will follow in future updates. For now please use the links.
Publishing – Distribution
Publishing – Personal Websites / Blogging
Microblogging
- Mastodon – Do join Mastodon, but don’t join the mastodon.social instance.
- Friendica – Follow me on Friendica.
- GoToSocial
- And more.
Photos
Do join Pixelfed, but don’t join the pixelfed.social instance.
Videos
Podcasting
Forums / Link Aggregators
Music
Curation
It’s a critical tactic to use these weapons. It’s also important to support them financially and to be active in their communities.
Tactics
Here are some more easy and local tactics. And for those with the technical skills, difficult ones.
Support the Independent Non-profit Press
The mass media is an unreliable ally in the war against autocracy much less the battle against Techno Feudalism.
Traditional journalism is flailing and failing. And it’s slowly going out of business. Plus, they are too spineless to save themselves. It’s because they are corporate and thus cowards. And they are mostly owned by c^nts.
Instead, we need to support and patronize independent non-profit journalistic organizations. That means giving them money directly my fellow anarchists.
Like this publication the following examples are tech-oriented or politics-oriented. But there are many for every issue you care about.
- Propublica
- 404 Media
- The Markup
- CalMatters
- The 19th News
- good internet magazine– coming soon
- Investigative Journalism Foundation
- Tech Policy
- Bellingcat
- Mother Jones
- Newsletters, unless they are on SubStack
- Associated Press
- NPR
- Public Media
- ABC (Australia)
- Al Jazeera (Qatar)
- BBC (UK)
- The Conversation (US)
- Crikey (Australia)
- DW (Germany)
- The Guardian (UK)
- Haaretz (Israel)
- The Tyee (Canada)
- The Breach (Canada)
- The Narwhal
- Sequencer Magazine
- The Xylom
- The Appeal
- The Conversation
- Lawfare
Think Global, Buy Local
In general, please explore the principles of degrowth.
But in particular, before spending your capital, think about that decision’s impact on our planet and your fellow humans. That’s basic morality. And please buy physical products from a local brick and mortar store. And only if you need them.
More relevant to Techno Anarchism, buy digital products from small tech suppliers or open-source suppliers or non and not-for-profits. Donate as much money as you can to open-source technology and other non-profit service providers.
This is easy, it just takes a little conscious thought and avoiding lazy thinking. Or a lack of thinking.
Technical Professionals
We Disagree has a fantastic but long article entitiled Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers. Read it at your convenience, but for now here is the most important part.
The author, Frank Miroslav promotes four approaches tech professionals can take to battle the Tech Right.
“Despite this the sheer scale of things that people could do, it is still possible to demarcate between broad approaches to categorize politically consequential action that people might take. To this end I like the following conceptual scheme which breaks forms of action into four broad categories that I break down on the following axes – whether or not the action occurs within a capitalist institution and what the action seeks to achieve.
One can act inside institutions like the state or corporations or outside those institutions. Such action can aim to be to be destructive in that it undermines property claims or destroys mechanisms of control or it can be constructive in that it builds technology or capabilities that helps people fight oppression or go live beyond capitalism.
ApproachesInsideOutsideDestructiveShaping internal policy in firms, stopping or sandbagging projectsBreaking infrastructure, freeing intellectual propertyConstructiveWorking on subversive projects funded by the state or capitalBuilding and maintaining technology that subverts capitalPeople within specific positions who have accumulated a significant degree of knowledge about the software they work on are not just hard to replace, but can also engage in hard-to-detect sabotage and subtle infrastructural changes that can frustrate attempts to use technology in bad ways. Given the increasing risk workplace organizers face thanks to the threat of layoffs, more informal forms of activism may be necessary.
However, while such activism may be critical for preventing immediate dangers, in the long run, the real interesting stuff is in activism that attempts to break apart the control vectoralists (TechnoFeudalists) have over information or infrastructures of control, rather than attempting to ameliorate their negative effects from within.”
So, if you have the tech chops, wreck havoc on the c^nts.
Battleplan
I am sure you’re ready to kick some ass. So, what can you do? I think you mostly know by now. It’s not complex. We’re not invading Normandy here.
Digital Sovereignty
You must own your communications, own your data, own your digital identity, own your digital devices, and own your own online real estate. Use the open-source technology featured here. Use open-source hardware. Each time you do you place a nail in Techno Feudalism’s coffin. The more you use, the faster that death occurs.
Choose Your Weapons and Kill Techno Feudalism
Use the weapons in Techno Anarchism’s arsenal. Again, the battle against Techno Feudalism is modular. It’s not all or nothing. You can take it one step at a time or one weapon at a time. Put more nails in. And add as many as you can over time. Let’s shut that fucker tight.
As Joan says:
“Each new protocol, each independent instance, each decentralized application creates another crack in the walls of digital feudalism.”
You’re the General
Again, proceed at your pace. Rome wasn’t built or destroyed in a day and these corporate shits are difficult to leave. Intentionally.
We’re in WWIII here and its going to take a while to kill these fucks and cripple their allies. But, they are going to die. Not, inglorious bastards style but via Techno Anarchism. So no bullets or baseball bats. That’s the final resort I hope we never see.
Thanks for reading my semi-manifesto. Please share it, bookmark it, and come back to it later as a reference and to see its updates.
Keep Fighting, Techno Anarchists! We can win this. The power is yours.
Resources
To begin with, follow us each week for the latest happenings in this battle via Battalion’s Destroying Autocracy posts.
Follow me via the Fediverse. Or follow this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
If you are of an academic bent, feel free to take a deep dive into the resources inspiring this manifesto.
Tech as a Religion
The War
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
Autocrats
Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Techno Feudalism
Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism
How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism:The Making of the Digital Economy
Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason
Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Governable Spaces book: Democratic Design for Online Life
Techno Anarchism/Digital Distributism
The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- Please share this article.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
- Or follow Battalion on Bluesky.
Ringleader, Battalion
#4opens #anarchism #arsenal #Authoritarianism #Autocracy #battleplan #BigTech #Capitalism #combatants #Democracy #Distributism #enshittification #Fascism #fedivers #Fediverse #general #local #media #mission #OMN #opensource #problem #resources #sovereignty #tactics #TechnoAnarchism #war #weapons #winnable https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=1212
Reuben Walker
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Alternative a Discord
Quali alternative a Discordo esistono? Abbiamo provato a riassumere alcune alternative possibile in questo articolo!
https://www.lealternative.net/2021/03/26/alternative-a-discord/
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https://www.europesays.com/lv/198666/ Lidl Latvijā svin 5. gadadienu ar unikālu zilo produktu sēriju — Lente.lv #akcija #Bizness #Business #jubileja #Latvia #Latvian #Latviešu #LatviešuValoda #LatviešuValoda #Latvija #Lidl #LV #ZiliProdukti
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@Kristian Na ja, Friendica war ja ausgereift. Zumindest soweit ausgereift, wie Friendica selbst und das DFRN-Protokoll es zuließen. Smartphone-Apps gab es nicht, weil man damals, 2010/2011, Smartphone-Apps für Sachen, die es auch als Websites gab, noch als Gimmicks ansah und noch nicht als lebensnotwendig. Das war, bevor die Leute gewisse Websites mehr über dedizierte Apps nutzten als über die Websites selbst.
Nur: Eine Weiterentwicklung war zwingend notwendig. Und die ging nicht mit Friendica, wie es war, denn die ging auch nicht mit DFRN.
Der Auslöser: 2011 waren binnen kurzer Zeit mehrere größere Friendica-Nodes von jetzt auf sofort ohne Ankündigung verschwunden. Einfach so weg. Friendica war durch das Verschwinden einiger weniger, aber jeweils sehr großer öffentlicher Nodes auf die Hälfte seiner Größe geschrumpft. Die andere Hälfte der Nutzer hatte alles verloren ohne die Chance, irgendwas zu retten. Die konnten wieder ganz neu bei null anfangen.
Das beste, was Mike an Friendica selbst machen konnte, war, eine Export- und Importfunktion einzubauen. Damit konnte man Backups des eigenen Konto machen. Das half aber nur, wenn man entweder brav ein tägliches Backup machte oder die Schließung eines Node vorher angekündigt wurde. Noch einmal: Genau das war 2011 nicht passiert. Die Nodes waren einfach futsch. Da hilft dir auch eine Backup-Funktion nicht, wenn du nicht laufend regelmäßig Backups machst.
Mike sah nur eine mögliche wirkliche Lösung. Und das war, indem deine Identität nicht bombenfest an einen Server gebunden ist, sondern simultan gleichzeitig als identische Klone auf mehreren unabhängigen Servern existieren kann. Wenn davon mal einer ausfällt, egal, die anderen laufen ja noch, also läuft deine Identität noch.
Problem: Mit DFRN ging das nicht umzusetzen. Es brauchte ein ganz neues Protokoll. Auch deshalb, weil Mike noch andere Verbesserungen im Kopf hatte wie ein nochmals deutlich aufgebohrtes Berechtigungssystem. Auch das ging mit DFRN so nicht und brauchte ein neues Protokoll. So entstand Zot.
Zum einen hieß ein neues Protokoll aber auch, wo auch immer das eingebaut werden soll, muß das komplette Backend ausgetauscht und neu geschrieben werden. Und große Teile des Frontend gleich mit. Das konnte Mike aber nicht auf Friendica im laufenden Betrieb machen. Friendica hätte unmöglich seine Grundfunktionalität gleichzeitig auf DFRN und auf Zot betreiben können. Und ein Protokollaustausch hätte bedeutet, daß Nodes, die die neue Friendica-Version mit Zot fahren, sich nicht mehr nativ hätten verbinden können mit Nodes, die alte Versionen mit DFRN fahren. Die wären zueinander inkompatibel gewesen.
Mike hatte als neue Entwicklungsplattform ja gerade das neue Red, das ein Fork seiner bisherigen "geheimen" Entwicklungsplattform Free-Friendika war. Das war ebenso "geheim", das konnte er also entsprechend umbauen.
Mike hätte aber niemals gleichzeitig Red komplett umbauen und Friendica selbst auf Free-Friendika weiterpflegen und die Weiterentwicklungen von Free-Friendika nach Friendica selbst bringen können. Und die einzige Alternative zum Umbau von Red auf Zot war, wieder solche Massencrashs wie 2011 mit exakt denselben Auswirkungen zu haben, ohne irgendwas tun zu können.
Also hat Mike sich auf Red konzentriert (dessen Umbau ja alleine schon länger dauern sollte als die Entwicklung von Friendica) und Friendica in die Hände von Tobias und Michael gegeben, die es seitdem nach ihren Vorstellungen weiterentwickeln. Die beiden waren ja meines Wissens sowieso schon Co-Entwickler von Friendica. Das hat Mike ja längst nicht mehr alles alleine gemacht.
Bei Red war das wieder anders. Das machte Mike ganz alleine. Das mußte er ja erstmal aufbauen. Und selbst als es fertig war, wurde es kaum angenommen. Es war zwar kein Geheimprojekt mehr, nachdem es sich von Friendica gelöst hatte. Aber es wurde kaum angenommen.
Auch als es umbenannt wurde in Red Matrix, was es leichter machte, es zu googlen, wurde es nicht angenommen. Die Friendica-Nutzer nahmen es wahr als Friendica mit nomadischer Identität. Was nomadische Identität ist, verstanden sie gar nicht. Selbst wenn doch: Die meisten von ihnen hatten inzwischen ihre eigenen privaten Einzelnutzer-Nodes.
So sahen sie in der Red Matrix gegenüber Friendica keine Vorteile, also warum umsteigen? Mal ganz davon abgesehen, daß Friendica und die Red Matrix nur über das diaspora*-Protokoll oder OStatus kommunizieren konnten. Die einzigen, die wechselten, dürften die gewesen sein, die eh immer das neueste, heißeste Zeug ausprobieren wollten.
Außerhalb von Friendica wußte eh keine Sau, daß die Red Matrix existierte. Herzlich wenige Leute wußten ja überhaupt auch nur, daß Friendica existierte. Mikes "Wenn du es baust, werden sie kommen" funktionierte damals schon nicht. Kleckerweise kamen noch neue Leute nach Friendica. Aber kaum einer ging von Friendica auf die Red Matrix, und absolut niemand ging von null auf die Red Matrix.
Interessant wurde die Red Matrix eigentlich erst 2015, als sie zu Hubzilla aufgebohrt wurde, also auf einmal Sachen konnte, die Friendica nicht konnte, die aber vielleicht nützlich sein konnten. Damit konnte Hubzilla auch für ganz andere Sachen eingesetzt werden als Friendica, also nicht nur als Facebook-Ersatz oder Blog.
Aber wenn Mario schon Anfang 2015 das noch brandneue Hubzilla übernahm, was ja so auf der offiziellen Website steht (nach meinen Informationen war es erst 2018), dann war es ein Wunder, daß Mike überhaupt jemanden fand, der übernehmen würde, der also schon seit Red-Matrix-Zeiten dabei war. Aber Mike hat ja an der Weiterentwicklung von Hubzilla noch weiter aktiv mitgewirkt, nur eben nicht als Projektleiter.
Hubzilla selbst wurde ja erst ab Ende 2015 interessant, als es seinen ersten stabilen Release hatte. Und auch Hubzillas Existenz war eigentlich nur auf Friendica bekannt. Selbst heute noch sind die allermeisten Hubzilla-Nutzer Friendica-Veteranen. Direkt von Mastodon nach Hubzilla ist kaum einer gekommen, von null nach Hubzilla schon gar nicht.
Selbst da war Mike keiner, der Sachen so läßt, wie sie sind, und sie nur noch weiter poliert. Wenn es etwas zu verbessern gibt, dann macht er das auch. Und wenn das nicht auf existierender Software im laufenden Produktivbetrieb geht, dann forkt er eben, und dann nimmt er sich weit mehr Zeit für seinen Fork als für das, was er vorher gemacht hatte. Und das ist auch gut so. Ansonsten hätten wir heute noch nur Friendica und immer noch keine Lösung für das Problem, daß die Leute alles verlieren, wenn mal wieder ein großer Node verschwindet.
Jetzt wollte Mike Zot weiterentwickeln, wohl auch deshalb, weil Zot, wie es damals war, nicht gut mit ActivityPub zusammenspielte. Aber potentiell kompatibilitätsbrechend. In einem eigenen zusätzlichen Branch von Hubzilla wäre das nicht gegangen, schon deshalb, weil Hubzilla für solche Experimente schlicht und ergreifend zu groß war.
Also hat Mike 2018 Osada von Hubzilla abgeforkt und alles rausgerissen, was im Weg war. Artikel, Karten, Wikis, Webpages, alle Verbindungsmöglichkeiten außer Zot, ActivityPub und RSS/Atom, alles raus.
Weil dann abzusehen war, daß nomadisches Zot6 (zumindest vorerst) mit ActivityPub überhaupt nicht mehr funktionieren würde, brauchte Mike zwei Projekte: Osada behielt ActivityPub, wurde aber nichtnomadisch. Zusätzlich forkte er Zap von Osada, ließ es nomadisch, entfernte aber ActivityPub.
Jetzt konnte Mike endgültig nicht gleichzeitig Zot6 entwickeln und Osada entwickeln und Zap entwickeln und Hubzilla weiterpflegen. Auch dieses Mal half ihm bei den Neuentwicklungen niemand. Also überließ er Hubzilla gänzlich Mario.
Wie es dann weiterging, lag nicht an Mikes Sprunghaftigkeit.
Anfang 2019 fand er einen Weg, auch nomadisches Zot6 mit ActivityPub kompatibel zu machen. Abgesehen davon war die Idee, einen nomadischen Zap-Kanal über einen nichtnomadischen Osada-Kanal mit dem Fediverse zu verbinden, sowieso kompletter Blödsinn und technisch in der Praxis kaum realisierbar, selbst mit Kanalquellen nicht. Also stellte Mike Osada ein, forkte von Zap ein ganz neues Osada und baute da ActivityPub-Support ein. Noch war nomadisches Zot6 + ActivityPub ja noch experimentell, deswegen hat er es nicht in Zap eingebaut.
Dann aber wurden Osada und Zap stabil und bekamen sogar einen 1.0-Release. Inzwischen gab es Leute, die Osada oder Zap produktiv nutzten. Die kamen alle von Hubzilla, denn nur da wußte man, daß es Osada und Zap gab. Nicht mal auf Friendica wußte das jemand, im übrigen Fediverse erst recht nicht und außerhalb des Fediverse schon gar nicht.
So baute Mike dann Osadas ActivityPub-Support auch in Zap ein, schaltete ihn aber standardmäßig auf Serverebene ab, auf Kanalebene sowieso. Das führte dazu, daß Osada und Zap bis auf das Branding und die Standardeinstellungen völlig identisch waren. Es brauchte gar nicht mehr beide. Mike ließ das aber so.
Irgendwie gab es wohl genug Osada- und Zap-Anwender, daß Mike jemanden fand, der beides weiterpflegen wollte. Denn Mike hatte wieder neue Weiterentwicklungen im Sinne, die er aber nicht mehr auf Osada und Zap machen konnte, weil die jetzt beide als stabile Produktivsoftware galten. So gab er Osada und Zap dann wieder an "die Community" weiter, die als quasi erste Amtshandlung mit Mikes Segen Osada nach Zap mergete, in dem Zuge auch auf Zap ActivityPub standardmäßig aktivierte und Osada kurzerhand einstellte.
2020 ging es dann weiter. Zap war damals State of the Art. Zot6 war so stabil, daß es nach Hubzilla zurückportiert wurde. Zap war jetzt quasi der modernere kleine Bruder von Hubzilla, der sich etwas eleganter bediente und einen nicht mit Features erschlug. Nur war Zap immer noch obskurer als Hubzilla, Hubzilla war obskurer als Friendica, und Friendica war selbst sehr obskur, weil für keins der drei wirklich Werbung gemacht wurde. Zap war weiterhin sonst nur auf Hubzilla bekannt und Hubzilla sonst nur auf Friendica.
Und Mike bastelte an Zot8, das nochmals besser werden sollte. Dafür brauchte er aber Software zum Experimentieren. Und so entstanden drei neue Forks in so kurzer Folge, daß heute nicht mehr bekannt ist, was jetzt wovon geforkt wurde, nur daß irgendwas von Zap geforkt worden ist. Im einzelnen waren das schon wieder ein neues Osada, ein neues Mistpark und eine neue Redmatrix.
Warum drei?
Es ging das Gerücht um, das seien verschiedene Stabilitätsstufen. Redmatrix 2020 sei experimentell mit wie früher bei Zap standardmäßig deaktiviertem ActivityPub, das damit der Entwicklung von Zot8 nicht im Wege stehe. Osada sei auch experimentell, aber wie früher schon bei Osada mit standardmäßig aktiviertem ActivityPub, um zu gucken, wie die Weiterentwicklungen von Zot8 sich mit ActivityPub vertragen. Mistpark 2020 wiederum sei "halbstabil" wie Debian testing, also stabiler als Osada und eher für den Produktiveinsatz geeignet, aber aktueller als Zap.
Zap sei also für die, die etwas neueres als Hubzilla haben wollten und auf die Zusatzfeatures von Hubzilla verzichten konnten. Misty sei für die, die etwas noch aktuelleres als Zap haben wollten, also das neueste Zeug noch früher, und die etwaige Instabilitäten in Kauf zu nehmen bereit waren. Osada sei für die, die unbedingt bleeding-edge wollten, instabil oder nicht. Und Redmatrix 2020 sei eh nur für Mike.
In Wahrheit waren Osada, Misty und Redmatrix 2020 bis auf das Branding völlig identisch und quasi Soft-Forks. Alle Commits wurden gleichermaßen und fast gleichzeitig in alle drei eingepflegt.
Warum?
Weil Mike der Markenfetischismus im Fediverse auf den Keks ging. Es gab Leute, die bildeten sich ein, die Software, die sie nutzten, sei die beste, einfach, weil sie Fans der Softwaremarke waren. Ganz besonders gab es die natürlich auf Mastodon, aber auch sonst. Genau diese Leute wollte er trollen, indem er drei bis auf den Namen und das Logo völlig identische Serveranwendungen pflegte. Misty z. B. konnte überhaupt nicht "die beste Fediverse-Serversoftware" sein, egal, wer sich das einbildete, wenn Osada und Redmatrix bis auf die Marke völlig baugleich waren.
Anfang 2021 kam dann Roadhouse dazu. Das Abenteuer Zot8 war im Grunde vorbei, bevor Zot8 stabil war. Denn Zot11 sollte noch besser werden. Vor allem sollte Zot11 von allen Zot-Versionen die beste Kompatibilität mit ActivityPub bekommen. Blöderweise konnte Mike aber Zot11 nicht auf Osada, Misty und Redmatrix entwickeln. Zot11 sollte nämlich zu allen Vorgängern so inkompatibel werden, daß es letztlich nicht mehr Zot heißen sollte. Aber es gab Leute, die Osada, Misty oder Redmatrix produktiv nutzten.
Also mußte Mike von einem von den dreien Roadhouse forken. War ihm aber egal, weil er damit die Leute mit noch einer weiteren Marke trollen konnte. Wohlgemerkt, effektiv hatte er sogar Zap noch an der Backe, weil es in der Community dann wohl doch zuwenig Interesse an der Weiterentwicklung gab.
Nomad, eigentlich ja Zot11, wurde zum Erfolg. Und das Erfolgsrezept lag auch darin, zusätzlich Support für Hubzillas Zot6 einzubauen, über den Roadhouse auch mit Osada, Misty und Redmatrix kommunizieren konnte. Ansonsten waren von den praktischen Features her Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix und Roadhouse identisch und von der Benutzeroberfläche her auch beinahe. Es machte in der Praxis keinen großen Unterschied, welches man nutzte. Außerhalb waren sie eh, wenn überhaupt, nur auf Hubzilla bekannt. Das heißt, Roadhouse war beinahe komplett unbekannt, weil da endgültig nur Mike drüber redete.
Daß es (streams) gibt, obwohl Roadhouse doch gut war, hatte andere Gründe.
Grund 1: Mike fand einen neuen Weg, die Markenfetischisten zu trollen. Nämlich mit Software, die gar keinen Namen und gar keine Markenidentität hat. Also nahm Mike dem neuen Roadhouse-Fork von Ende 2021 den Namen und sogar den fediverseinternen festen Identifikator weg. Letzteren kann man entweder händisch ausfüllen, oder (streams) übernimmt ihn vom Instanznamen. Alleine das wäre mit einem "Debranding" von Roadhouse nicht getan gewesen, weil weiter alle von "Roadhouse" gesprochen hätten.
Grund 2: Dieses ständige Wetteifern, welche Software auf The Federation, Fediverse Observer, der FediDB usw. jetzt am populärsten ist und am meisten genutzt wird, ging ihm inzwischen auch auf dem Zeiger. Ein weiteres "Feature" von (streams) ist, daß Mike neben dem Namen und der Markenidentität auch nodeinfo praktisch komplett entfernt hat. (streams) sendet überhaupt keine Statistiken und hält sich von allen Instanzlisten-Websites fern. Und das ist so gewollt.
Grund 3: Zusätzlich wollte Mike es der Free-Software- und Open-Source-Community leichter machen. Da kloppt man sich ja bekanntlich darum, welche Lizenzen wirklich frei sind und welche nicht. Also hat Mike (streams), dessen sämtliche Vorgänger unter der MIT-Lizenz stehen, in die Public Domain gestellt. Freier als das geht's nun wirklich nicht mehr. Gleichzeitig wollte Mike diejenigen ärgern, die vielleicht vorhaben könnten, aus (streams) proprietäre, kommerzielle Closed-Source-Software zu machen. Die ganzen Apps sind nämlich durchaus schon mal Fremdcode und stehen unter eigenen Lizenzen. Und die sind untereinander inkompatibel.
(streams) sollte stabil werden und wurde stabil. Im Grunde war Mikes Plan, (streams) zu der Fediverse-Software der Zukunft zu machen. So hat er am 31.12.2022 offiziell Zap, Osada, Misty, Redmatrix und Roadhouse eingestellt. Das war aber kein Problem, denn zwischen den fünfen konnten Admins durch einfaches Rebasen nicht nur crossgraden, sondern auch zu (streams) upgraden.
Jetzt gab es nur noch Friendica, Hubzilla und (streams), wovon Mike nur noch (streams) betreute.
Dann kam ja silverpill auf Mike zu mit der Idee der nomadischen Identität über ActivityPub. Mike war interessiert. silverpill trieb das ziemlich voran inklusive dem einen oder anderen neuen FEP, darunter auch FEP-ef61, das in ActivityPub dezentrale Identitäten einführen sollte. Zot hat so etwas, Nomad natürlich auch, aber anders, und ActivityPub hatte das natürlich nicht.
Diese dezentralen Identitäten hat Mike auch in (streams) eingebaut. Langfristig sollte es ja möglich sein, zwischen verschiedenen Serveranwendungen zu klonen, so auch zwischen (streams) und Mitra. Zumindest aber sollten sie voneinander die dezentralen Identitäten als ebensolche verstehen. So sollte (streams) geklonte Mitra-Identitäten als solche erkennen, und Mitra sollte geklonte (streams)-Kanäle als solche erkennen.
Unter Laborbedingungen in Mikes nomadic-Zweig funktionierten die. Also mergete Mike im Juni 2024 den nomadic-Zweig in den dev-Zweig, den allgemeinen Entwicklungszweig. Auch der lief nur unter Laborbedingungen, weil (im Gegensatz zu Hubzilla, wo zwei öffentliche Produktivhubs Entwicklerversionen fahren) niemand außer Mike den dev-Zweig von (streams) produktiv fuhr.
Im Juli 2024 mergete Mike dann den dev-Zweig in den release-Zweig, um die neuesten Weiterentwicklungen an die produktiv gefahrenen, stabilen Server auszurollen. Da war allerdings Schluß mit Laborbedingungen. Jetzt mußten sich FEP-ef61 und die DIDs unter täglichen und breitgefächerten Realbedingungen beweisen.
Genau das taten sie nicht. Erst jetzt stellte sich heraus, daß (streams) mit den vielen Identitäten nicht klarkam. Es föderierte nicht mehr über ActivityPub. Es föderierte nicht mehr mit Hubzilla. Es föderierte nicht mal mehr mit sich selbst. Es konnte sich mit nichts mehr vernünftig verbinden.
Mike brauchte eine Weile, um überhaupt festzustellen, daß der Verursacher dieser Misere ein Identitätenchaos war. Das konnte er aber nicht auf (streams) selbst beheben. Hilfe hatte er auch keine. Die (streams)-Community war so winzig, da gab es niemanden, der ihm hätte helfen können. Der einzige, der die Fähigkeit gehabt hätte, hatte keine Zeit. Und der einzige, der Zeit und Bock hatte, hatte vom Coden keine Ahnung.
So mußte Mike sich erstmal einen Überblick verschaffen. Im August, also dem Monat nach dem Crash, als der Crash noch nicht behoben war, forkte er das streams-Repository und schuf Forte. Da wiederum riß er alles raus, was nicht ActivityPub war, also die Unterstützung sowohl von Nomad als auch von Zot6, um einen freien, ungehinderten Blick auf ActivityPub zu haben.
Inzwischen hatte er auch zwei andere Sachen gelernt: Software, die keinen Namen hat, interessiert keinen. Das verwirrt die Leute eher. Also bekam Forte wieder einen Namen. Die Public Domain brachte auch nichts. Also kam Forte wieder unter die MIT-Lizenz. Und Fediverse-Software, die überhaupt keine nodeinfo hat, ist praktisch unsichtbar. Also bekam Forte wieder nodeinfo, zunächst aber, ohne brauchbare Zahlen zu versenden. So konnte Forte zumindest vom Fediverse Observer und später vom FediIndex gelistet werden.
Forte half ihm, die ID-Misere zu entwirren, zu entflechten und zu lösen. Das reichte er dann auch nach (streams) weiter, das allmählich wieder funktionierte. Allerdings brannte er sich in dem August derart aus, daß er zum 31.8.2024 offiziell sowohl das streams-Repository als auch Forte zur Übernahme anbot und seinen Ruhestand ankündigte.
Dieses Mal fand eine Übernahme gleich gar nicht statt. Wie gesagt, in der (streams)-Community gab es niemanden, der sowohl die Zeit als auch das Know-how hatte, um auch nur Mike zu helfen, geschweige denn, eine Rolle wie Tobias oder Michael oder Mario anzunehmen.
Außerhalb von (streams) war (streams) selbst sogar auf Hubzilla kaum bekannt. Forte war sogar auf Hubzilla noch unbekannter, zumal es noch eine obskure, nichtöffentliche Bastelbude war, bis Mike im September 2024 die erste "offizielle" Entwicklerversion von Forte (und damit Forte selbst) veröffentlichte.
Und außerhalb von Hubzilla? Mike war es so leid, daß Mastodon als alternativlose Referenzimplementation des Fediverse angesehen wurde, daß er um 2023 anfing, Werbung für (streams) zu machen. Das erste Mal überhaupt, daß Mike von "wenn du es baust, werden sie kommen" abkam (es kam ja keiner) und irgendwas bewarb. Nur wußte Mike nicht, wie man zu Mastodon-Leuten spricht; ehrlich gesagt, das weiß auch auf Friendica und Hubzilla kaum jemand.
Oft genug ging aus Mikes Posts nicht mal hervor, daß er über ein konkretes Fediverse-Produkt sprach, und schon gar nicht, über welches. Wie auch, sprach er doch von etwas Namenlosem. Das heißt, auch er fing langsam an, den Namen des Repository zu verwenden. Aber er machte nicht unbedingt wirklich glasklar, daß er von etwas sprach, das jetzt in diesem Augenblick im Fediverse existierte. Schon gar nicht erwähnte er, daß es auch mit Mastodon verbunden ist, denn kaum jemand außerhalb von Mastodon weiß, daß Mastodon-Nutzer das nicht unbedingt automatisch verstehen.
Stand Mitte September 2024 hatte (streams) keine 100 aktiven Nutzer und Forte außer Mike gar keine. Traurigerweise hatte (streams) damals mehr öffentliche Server als heute, derweil Forte anderthalb Jahre gebraucht hat, um auch nur einen hervorzubringen. Wo sollen da Entwickler herkommen?
Mike hat übrigens nicht vor, (streams) einzustellen. Er und nicht nur er sagt, (streams) hat weiterhin seine Existenzberechtigung, und zwar als moderne Fediverse-Software, die von ActivityPub unabhängig ist. Er und nicht nur er sieht den ActivityPub-Schalter als eine Art letztes Bollwerk gegen Mastodon an und das einzige, das auf Kanalebene funktioniert, also nicht nur serverweit.
So, nun noch das Wort zu Smartphone-Apps.
Von Mike selbst war da nie etwas zu erwarten. Fediverse-Apps sind reine Frontend-Sachen. Und wir sollten inzwischen wissen, daß Mike nicht mal Web-UIs kann. Hubzilla ist für seine Oberfläche berüchtigt. Es ist doch erst schick geworden, als Saiwal mit seinen Utsukta-Themes anfing.
Außerdem hatte Mike immer schon genügend mit Webentwicklung zu tun. Da konnte man von ihm nicht auch noch erwarten, eine Smartphone-App zu entwickeln. Besser gesagt, zwei Smartphone-Apps, weil die iOS-App wahrscheinlich separat hätte entwickelt werden müssen. Mike wäre ja auch keiner gewesen, der in einer Smartphone-App nur das nötigste an Features eingebaut hätte. Wenn, dann alles. Er hätte also neben der Serversoftware zwei ziemliche Monster-Apps entwickeln und pflegen müssen.
Apps von Drittentwicklern?
Guck dir mal an, wie lange es gedauert hat, bis es von RaccoonForFriendica einen öffentlich verfügbaren Android-Release gab. Für iOS ist es meines Wissens bis heute nur über TestDrive verfügbar, aber nicht im App Store. Und selbst auf Android ist es noch nicht so stabil und fully featured, daß man es als Daily Driver nutzen könnte.
Für Hubzilla gab es mal Nomad für Android. Das wird seit gut sechs Jahren nicht mehr weiterentwickelt. Unter aktuellen Android-Versionen läuft es inzwischen gar nicht mehr. Und auch das ist nur ein Wrapper für die Weboberfläche, also ein glorifizierter Webbrowser. Ansonsten gibt's nur eine Minimalst-App von Mario, mit der er mal versuchsweise getestet hat, ob man von Android aus nach Hubzilla posten kann. Das ist absolut das einzige, was die App überhaupt kann.
Hubzilla hat eine Client API. Ob die aber funktioniert, ist weitestgehend unbekannt, weil noch nie jemand versucht hat, dagegen eine hinreichend mit Features ausgestattete App zu bauen. Dasselbe dürfte für (streams) und Forte gelten, für die es überhaupt noch nie irgendwelche Apps gegeben hat. Alle drei setzen statt dessen auf den Einsatz als PWA, nur daß da draußen keine Sau weiß, daß es das überhaupt gibt, geschweige denn, wie man das einrichtet.
Auf Drittentwickler kann man hier erst recht nicht hoffen. Von den Leuten im Fediverse, die Smartphone-Apps entwickeln können, kennt genau niemand Hubzilla, geschweige denn (streams) oder Forte. Selbst wenn sie Hubzilla kennenlernen würden, hätten sie keinen Bock, dafür eine App zu entwickeln. Lohnt sich nicht, weil nutzt keiner. Es lohnt sich viel mehr, die drölfzigtausendste reine Mastodon-App fürs iPhone zu bauen. Das heißt, mindestens die Hälfte von denen weiß doch sowieso nicht, was es außer Mastodon sonst noch so im Fediverse gibt.
Auf Hubzilla selbst gibt's nicht einen Mobilentwickler. Auf (streams) und Forte dürfte es niemanden geben, der überhaupt wirklich irgendwas entwickeln kann, nicht mal Webanwendungen (sonst hätte Mike Hilfe), Smartphone-Apps schon gar nicht.
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