[liberationtech] Techno-utopia -> techno-pessimism: Are we *too* glum now? Need your thoughts.

[Erik Moeller]

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 12:29 AM Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com> wrote:

> As I see it, excesses of optimism or pessimism manifest as dangerous
> addictions, drivers of a depleting procrastination at scale. We often hear of
> a paralysing pessimism, but a glut of optimism is no less disabling. To quote
> the climate scientist Kate Marvel, "We need courage, not hope" in this era, to
> get out of bed and work in earnest to improve the given reality as it presents
> itself.

Well put! I would add: Sometimes there are very simple things
individuals and movements _can_ do to move towards a healthier
relationship with technology, they just don't do them. And I don't
mean that in the sense of the tech equivalent of putting stuff in the
correct recycling bin, but choices which have network effects of their
own.

As an example, Elon Musk has arguably done us a large favor by
revealing Twitter for what it always was: a dangerously centralized
platform enabling the gamification of propaganda and hate. We should
never have put "@foo" handles on our business cards with the implicit
agreement to refer to one commercial website by this convenient
shorthand. We should never have relied on such for-profit
infrastructure for public services from emergency services to
university accounts.

Yet, in this window of opportunity, where the harm of this
centralization of public squares (plural intended) has become evident
beyond all doubt, institutions that recognize this nevertheless
"pragmatically" refuse to leave Twitter/X because of the false belief
that they have to be there to reach their constituents. This is in
spite of the fact that many institutions that have moved on to
platforms like Mastodon and BlueSky _have_ been able to realize higher
engagement with their audiences there. Organizations with Twitter/X
accounts hang on to phantom numbers of followers that have very little
meaningful basis in reality.

This is where courage comes in: move on, and help others to follow. To
make this easier, I'm maintaining a spreadsheet [1] of notable
accounts that _have_ migrated off Twitter/X. There are also other
efforts, such as a petition for universities to move to Mastodon. [2]
I'd love to see every open source project, every podcast, every indie
game, every community hackerspace on the fediverse -- and, sooner or
later, off Twitter/X.

I would translate this approach to other areas where liberation tech
(and I do count the fediverse as liberation tech) has windows of
opportunity. Indie gaming recently had its own liberation moment, when
Unity enshittified and tried to exact ridiculous per-install fees from
small developers. The result: the open source Godot Engine is booming
like never before, and has every chance to turn into an open source
success story like Blender.

Every instance of enshittification, every attempt to centralize
control, should be seen as a window of opportunity to build and
promote alternatives. That, more than debates about pessimism vs.
optimism, will help us to avoid waking up in ever more dystopian
realities.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] http://bit.ly/eXit - it's a GDoc behind a bit.ly link, which is
IMO fine for this use case, but feel free to spin off alternatives
[2] https://www.openpetition.de/Unis4Mastodon