[liberationtech] Wealthy entrepreneurs ask whether you would use a Liberationtech-friendly Twitter clone?

[Kate Krauss]

Hi friends,

Wealthy entrepreneurs and *philanthropists* could co-sponsor *a meeting in
the US* such as the exciting one that took place three weeks ago in France,
sponsored by Henri Verdier, France's digital ambassador (because they have
one). It brought together 100 entrepreneurs from France and India. Its
purpose was to envision together a "secure and innovative digital
commons....The digital commons of tomorrow."

*“The internet should be neither a superstructure that states use to
dominate people nor a trap leading to a sort of capitalism trap for data.
An open and public infrastructure is needed.” - Henri Verdier.*

Here's their tweet about it (yes, ironic)
https://twitter.com/AmbNum/status/1517136067681521666

I'd also point to the tremendous innovation that is happening in Taiwan in
the civic tech scene because of the G0v movement and Taiwan's digital
minister Audrey Tang, who is part of that movement. To offer just one
example, Taiwan is obviously a major target of mainland China and yet has
evolved its civic tech to effectively fight a barrage of disinformation and
to preserve its free elections. And to preserve a digital commons.

I'm not saying that either of these situations is perfect, and I'm not at
all limiting ideas to non-profit projects--we need options!  But I am
saying that it would be great to have an open and inclusive meeting to
discuss the many possible futures for a digital commons, maybe with some
kind of hacking component if that seems useful: Policy + practice; policy
in practice.

The G0v folks are experts in this --they have developed an inclusive system
for thinking about the needs of Taiwanese society at the highest level and
winnowing those down to tools that serve users. There are probably other
great models I'm forgetting.

If we've already had such a meeting in the US, that's great! But I'd say
it's time to do it again.

-Kate Krauss


On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 9:56 PM Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I think that we many more kinds of electronic commons, both for-profit and
> non-profit. I'd welcome a new one.
>
> -Kate Krauss
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 9:36 PM Brian Behlendorf <brian at behlendorf.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022, Yosem Companys wrote:
>> > Dear Liberation Technology community,
>> >
>> > A group of wealthy serial entrepreneurs who built a Twitter clone to
>> foster civic democracy in the 2020 elections just reached out to me to ask
>> whether you would be interested in using a
>> > Liberationtech-friendly Twitter clone now that Elon Musk has bought
>> Twitter. They want to know the following:
>> >  *  Would you use a Liberationtech-friendly Twitter clone?
>> >  *  What would make you want to use it? Conversely, what would make you
>> NOT want to use it?
>> >  *  What would you name it? They said they might even be open to
>> calling it Liberationtech, if there were enough interest.
>> > Thank you, Yosem
>>
>> If there is any lesson from all this, I suspect it's that any centralized
>> communication service even run by the most competent, well intentioned,
>> humble and not-profit-oriented (clearly, judging from their stock price)
>> founders & techs is susceptable to subsequent capture by others. As the
>> open source software community figured out, the "right to fork" is the
>> only meaningful check on the winner-take-all power-corrupts dynamic in
>> networks.
>>
>> So I think the answer is, those founders should either make their service
>> with, or just go use one of the existing implementations of, Mastodon or
>> other emerging dweb alternatives.
>>
>> Brian
>> --
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>
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