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

[Kenoli Oleari]

Hey Friends — I presume the irony you refer to in the tweet is that entrepreneurs and public decision makers get to make decisions about our future without consulting the rest of us, the ones that are going to be affected by those decisions.  The constitution originally gave the vote only to men who owned land.  Putting decisions like this in the hands of people with wealth and public power limits decision making to even fewer individuals than limiting it to men with land.  Even the vote itself has been turned into a sham by these people.  At this point, the vote is pretty much controlled by wealth and people in power manipulating the vote to assure they stay perpetually in power.

It seems to me that one horrid result of the proliferation of technology throughout our lives is that the creators and purveyors of that technology are seen as the appropriate people to determine so much of the digital (or other) commons and much more.  This, of course, historically has not been limited to the technology sector but has happened over and over, it is just the sector most visibly creating absurd wealth for a few individuals at this point.  

We who are affected are left out of, and have always been left out of, any direct participation in decisions that determine our future, not to mention the survival of the human race, even of the planet we live on.  The constitution is lauded for the innovation of positing the people as source of power, but the framers then took away that power giving it to a relatively small number of “representatives” of the people who are now fully corrupted by wealth and power.

Where is anyone in technology thinking about these fundamental challenges?

Here we are with a sociopath invading countries again, but now with nuclear weapons in the wings which our “wise” decision makers failed to do away with when there was time to do this.

Even the inadequate opinion polls being taken today show the general population holding wiser opinions than the people given the power to determine the future of the human race.  What about really giving the power to all the people, not just the noisy or wealthy people?  I don’t see technology taking on this task.

Today the internet generally looks more like a commercial marketing tool than anything that might generate free thought and actual democratic power.  The hope we had in the 90s is fully betrayed.

And, I might add, people migrating to one technology over another is not a manifestation of the wisdom of the people, it is a manifestation of Elon Musk’s nonsensical concept of free speech, not a format in which real engaged thought between people can effectively take place.  That takes some real thought, care and design.  There are people who have been thinking about this, but been unable to get much traction where it matters.  Musk certainly doesn’t care, nor anyone else in Silicon Valley that I can see.

—Kenoli

> On Apr 28, 2022, at 6:49 AM, Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 <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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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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