In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc…
Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…
It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.
From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?
I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?
(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)
What about the usage demographics within each country?
In underdeveloped/exploited countries, internet usage is more likely to be concentrated among the economic elites who formerly benefited from colonialism—so if increasing adoption in those countries just follows the pattern of other internet use, it could have the opposite effect from the one intended.
Yeah that is what makes this shit so exhausting, at every step where you solve the immediate expression of a systematic problem you have to step back, evaluate your solution and shake your head at how clearly your biases tried to recreate the same problem in your solution.
I agree that we should always be asking questions like you are because this could easily be a future timeline the fediverse goes down.
How do you think we can reduce the chance of this happening?
Also, the interface between the oppressors and the oppressed is always multidimensional and unbelievably manifold. The daughters of ultra powerful oppressors funnel money to the oppressed in shades of moral complexities that are difficult to pin down as righteous or not. This is the way history has always been, what matters is the results, and how much members of the ruling class are willing to betray their class for the greater good of humanity shrugs.