At Twitter, it's chaos. Since the takeover of the social network by the
billionaire Elon Musk, the instability of the company is felt even among theusers of the platform. In question, on the one hand the dismissals of half of thecompany's employees, and on the other hand the whims and changing moods of itsnew and sole owner. While Twitter had, sadly, become an essential platform,especially in the political and media world, it is now impossible to predictwhether the company, and therefore its platform, will survive the year 2023. ----In reaction, we observe a massive influx of new and new users on Mastodon, a freeand decentralized microblogging social network alternative to Twitter. It is notyet possible to know whether we are witnessing a migration, which would involveleaving the initial platform, or simply the creation of accounts on an additionalservice by these people, or even to predict whether they will remain present onLonger term mastodon. But whatever the case, we, librist activists of theLibertarian Communist Union, can only rejoice in the promotion of alternativesocial networks to centralized capitalist platforms.UCL has always promoted free software and decentralized networks, bothinternally[1]and externally[2]. As such, UCL has been present on the Fedivers(federated universe) for a long time, and does its best to raise awareness of thepolitical issues embodied by these alternatives, whether through articles in ourmonthly Alternative Libertaire[3]or by our presence at the 2022 Free Software Days.The concrete difference between Twitter and Mastodon? Surveillance capitalism.If UCL is also attached to these fights for digital freedoms, it is of coursebecause the models of free software, open protocols, federated and interoperablenetworks correspond better to our political aspirations, but not only.Structurally, the implications of these technical choices directly impact theuser experience.Twitter, the company, aims to sell display advertising, which must be both thebest targeted and the most seen possible to be profitable. This implies thatTwitter, the platform, makes its users captive so that on the one hand they giveas much time as possible to its use, and on the other that they always interactmore on Twitter, the network, since it This is how the work of extractingpersonal data is done, which makes it possible to refine profiles[4]. Of course,the quality of those interactions is irrelevant to Twitter. On the contrary, toachieve the objectives mentioned, the platform's algorithms will highlight thecontent that will make people react, for good or bad, but especially badly sincethe debates which escalate last longer and involve more people, which also favorsdisinformation in particular, as we have seen[5]...It's all very different on the Mastodon side. Already, it is not insignificantthat on the side of capitalist social networks, it is impossible to discern thecompany, the software (the platform), the network itself. Mastodon is freesoftware, not a platform. Each installation of the software corresponds to aninstance that participates in a network, the famous fedivers (which is notlimited to Mastodon!). And because of its decentralization, the network willnever depend on a single company that a billionaire could take control ofovernight to change the rules that govern it according to his wishes and opinionsof the moment. The multitude of instances that participate in the network(several thousand to date just for Mastodon) are managed independently and bydifferent types of structures: individuals, collectives, associations, etc. Allmodels are possible and can coexist, which also allows experimentation withmoderation methods and rules, for example. Moreover, outside of surveillancecapitalism, there is no need to provoke reaction at all costs.Where Twitter is always looking to grow bigger to increase its number of users,Mastodon instances have no interest in keeping its users captive, on thecontrary, and many Mastodon instances are closing their registrations to avoidhaving too many users, for a question of cost (server resources, storage,networks) and on the other hand to avoid a concentration of the network around afew large instances to which this would give too much power[6].On the one hand, Twitter has transformed the "fav" marked with a star andnotifying only the author of the message placed in favorites into "like" markedwith a heart and made public to its subscribers, or even more widely to the rightwant platform algorithms, to generate notifications and react. On the other,Mastodon prefers to stick to simple bookmarking of messages.Where Twitter allows shares with quotes (quote-retweets, or "QRT") which inpractice are used overwhelmingly to respond publicly, most often to expressdisagreement, and in some cases to unleash its many subscribers against theauthor of the quoted message (to the point of regularly causing waves ofharassment), Mastodon has chosen not to implement this feature in order to calmthe discussions.Where Twitter imposes on the view of its users the messages that will make themreact the most according to its profiling algorithms, Mastodon not only contentsitself with presenting chronologically the messages posted and shared by theaccounts to which we are subscribed, but also allows the use of a warning(content warning) when writing a message whose content is considered to beshocking to certain people, in order to give subscribers the choice of whether ornot to reveal this content[7].All of these choices (absence of QRT, of core system, use of content warning),thus go against the logic of surveillance capitalism, ready to do anything tohold the attention of users and to react, including exploiting their traumas; Onthe contrary, Mastodon's functionalities invite a more peaceful exchangeframework that respects the availability of all of its users.Here are some examples of very concrete differences in the experience that we canhave on free and decentralized social networks. Of course, these structuraldifferences also require compromises to be made elsewhere, on ease of use forexample. Typically, to join the network, it is not enough to register on a singleclearly identified platform, and as a result your username·ice is not a simplenickname: it also contains the name of the instance.As for an e-mail address, you must first choose which instance to register on (atUCL, as far as e-mails are concerned, we will recommend RiseUp or ProtonMail muchmore readily than Gmail or Hotmail, for example ), and then your ice usernamealso includes the instance name, so your contacts can find you. For example, youdon't write to "bidule" but to "bidule@protonmail.com", at least as long as youdon't have "bidule" saved in your address book.It's the same on Mastodon: you will therefore have to subscribe to @ucl@todon.nland to @alternativelibertaire@framapiaf.org once you have joined the network!Some Recommended Instanceshttps://piaille.fr/ (generalist)https://toot.aquilenet.fr/ (general practitioner, proposed by Aquilenet,association from Aquitaine)https://mastouille.fr/ (generalist)https://masto.bike/ (bike focused)Libertarian Communist Union, November 18, 2022.To validate[1]See our article Libertaires libristes: UCL seizes digital issues inAlternative libertaire n°301, which looks back on a vote of the first FederalCoordination of UCL.[2]See for example our campaign Against surveillance capitalism and technopolice,free software.[3]See for example our article Network: Understanding fedivers in Alternativelibertarian n°300.[4]On this subject, see our article If it's free, are you the one producing? inAlternative libertarian n°297.[5]See our article Social networks: false neutrality, real disinformation inAlternative libertarian n°323.[6]See our article Decentralization: Framafin of (certain) framatrucs inAlternative libertaire n°302.[7]On Twitter, the militant practice is generally to make a first message withthe warning then to make a message thread with the content to be told; but thanksto sharing and recommendation algorithms, the platform regularly displaysmessages from the thread, and necessarily those that cause the most reaction,among people who have not even been aware of the warning...https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Comparaison-tout-a-fait-partiale-entre-Twitter-et-Mastodon_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten