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2024-12-13 04:47:39

kissane@mas.to

I wrote up the things I think are the most relevant for fediverse advocates and network builders from a great new Engine Room report on what activists and other folks doing social justice/civil society work in the Majority World/Global South need from networks. I'll do a thread tomorrow, but here's the link for the night shift:

https://www.wrecka.ge/what-people-in-the-global-majority-need-from-networks/

2024-12-13 10:11:36

Feral Ferment

feralferment@klacker.org

@Erin Kissane

The Engine Room report is a well-meaning effort. But as you note, the “majority world” refers to

“places and populations that have historically been colonized and underdeveloped by the ruling classes of the "Global North." Not incidentally, these are also the places and populations from which the Global North extracts both the raw materials and the crushing physical and cognitive labor that our networks and increasingly voracious software systems require.”

As you hint in your second sentence, #colonialism and #imperialism were not something that simply happened in the past, they are ongoing processes of exploitation. The peoples of the #GlobalSouth, in their myriad ways, are working to redress the injustices and the imbalances of colonialism and imperialism, practiced by the #GlobalNorth. What we see on social media (even the alternative social media) is just a reflection of those injustices and imbalances.

The best path to a more egalitarian social media, whether centralized or federated or whatever, is through the struggle for the overthrow of colonialism and imperialism. For obvious reasons, the global north is deeply invested in crushing such struggles. If it ceases to exploit the global south, the global north ceases to exist (in its present dominant form). Therefore, the most resilient and meaningful social media will be shaped by the antagonistic relation between the global north and the global south.

But reports like this will not, and cannot, point this out. Ultimately, funding for these initiatives comes from non-governmental organizations that are a part of the global north establishment, and have a stake in maintaining the dominance of the global north.

Within that structural limitation, the Engine Room report does a decent job. But because of that limitation, its recommendations amount to nothing more than a band aid.

I am not discouraging such efforts, merely pointing out that they will have built-in limitations precisely because they come from structures within the global north establishment.

2024-12-13 21:06:28

Erin Kissane

kissane@mas.to

@feralferment No argument from me! "Smash capitalism and the machinery of colonialism" is sort of the invisible watermark on the paper of this kind of work. (One of the lead authors has a background in documenting atrocities and I can't speak for him, but I don't know anyone in that field who doesn't live with permanent simmering rage.)

I do think that in the meantime, foregrounding the voices of humans working in these contexts is more useful than most other modes of research.

2024-12-14 08:51:07

Feral Ferment

feralferment@klacker.org

@Erin Kissane

Sure, foregrounding the voices of global south activists, and supporting them in whatever way possible, is great.

The Engine Room team, and you and your colleagues, are doing the best under the circumstances---I appreciate that.

My earlier post, as you understood, was an unstated prediction about one possible future. If an alternative social media (or any other) movement takes off in the global south and becomes a tangible threat to the status quo, the "watermark on the paper" can no longer remain invisible, and the mask of paternalistic support by global north organizations to researchers like the Engine Room team will come off in a flash. And out will come sanctions and other tools of repression.

But that possibility need not stop such researchers from their activities and activism today. When the circumstances change, they will have to play by ear.