unshittified.club

Yes, on youtube. But doctorow put it there, so https://youtu.be/KwySDtKPCJs?si=og1BsZ7DKWDGwt3O

I keep coming back to one central idea that is foundational to see real change. We need participation not delegation. Anyone that tells you to “send money and we will fight for you” is advocating for delegation, and with it, a natural attrition of participation. We don’t need freedom as a service! We need to be free! So that is the central tenet of what I want to build. Get asses out of seats and moving, talking, interacting without corporate interests chaperoning the whole affair.

Here we are, the beginning of the holidays, and I would like to say that I am more optimistic than I have been in a while. Yes, capitalist greed runs rampant in the United States. Yes, our politics are a self perpetuating duopoly. But my optimism isn’t about that. It’s about the passion of the resistance I see to it as I start to poke around. The well formed thoughts and layered solutions I see rebuking it. People see the problems for what they are, have names and definitions for the problems that accurately describe them. I believe that we can throw our hats into the ring and make a difference that is not a financial donation to one entity or another. Thats how we got here; our representation has failed us and has constructed a themed houses of mirrors for us to get lost in, and so be complacent. I believe we can find our way by participating directly and encouraging others to do so as well, by speaking directly to the points and not watering them down with binary labels like “conservative”, “liberal”, “democrat”, “republican”, “left” and “right”. Labels that frankly mean very little and engulf us in cults of personalities that torpedo our clarity of mind and meaningful discourse. Lets talk about what we want more of, what we want less of, and then make it happen! Thank you for those that have started this conversation with me here, and to those who’ve I’ve encountered thus far in well designed media and in my exploration on other platforms. This is just the beginning, and I have hope.

@skeet whats the best way to collaborate on graphics? We can take this to the DMs if we get too in the weeds. I have used gimp most recently with moderate success. Its installable software and while not as slick as photoshop seems to have all? Of the stuff i want.

Doctorow highlights this paid search engine as using googles apis for search but not applying their rank algorithms. Fair warning, this obviously seems like it can end up quickly in defunct or enshittified status. But for now, its worth a shot. I will sign up and report back

https://www.whoshallrule.com/p/enshittification-and-how-to-fight?mc_cid=081394627f&mc_eid=47dad25235

@sn Thank you bring the ILSR to our attention. This place looks great. https://ilsr.org I see they had a pretty active podcast and being an auditory learner i think i will dig in with an interview with David Morris and report back. Thanks!

This new version of the board has the concept or remote categories and federated content. Going to look into that because maybe other people are using it for similar things. Im mulling over ideas about using web vs something like discord, and also if both things can live in harmony without bifurcating a community. Distributed anonymous systems are less corruptable, but hosting our own server(s) is also less corruptable.

This site is intended to give users a place to discuss the future. A site that will not turn into a pile of shit. This site will never monetize with advertising. As it scales, we will divide the board into smaller regional boards and pay all server costs with private donations. We will maintain this site as a group for this group! I’ve run an instance of nodebb (the lovely open source forum software which this board runs on) for a small community for a decade. That other board never earned a penny and we like it that way. No ads, no federated authentication. No bullshit. This board will focus on educating society about the forces that are dragging us into the Enshittocene. However, I hope you make meaningful friendships along the way, and this experience should not pretend to be linear. We are better together. A good internet can be done! I ask for your trust and lets build something distributed that will not fail.

Please post any links to other forums facillitating societal discourse with others.

In a system dominated by corporate interests, those who do not have profit-driven agendas have their own set of strengths. It is important to acknowledge and leverage them: We do what makes sense, not limited by profitability and increasingly amoral algorithms. What makes sense resonates with people. They know it when they see it. Many of the things we seek do not require large sums of money. They only require communication. To overtly limit communication will be easily identified as inhumane, so corporations divide us through more insidious methods. But we have a global communication network that requires no middleman and can be reached instantly. And so we are here.