I've already written an article on these pages (see "Jurassic Network" in "Umanità Nova" no. 23, September 9, 2018) presenting a recently launched initiative that struck me as interesting even without knowing the Bida Collective comrades who had launched it. In the years that followed, I managed to meet some of them in person at a few "Hackmeetings." I also attended one of the first assemblies held in Bologna shortly before the pandemic, and numerous computer meetings that brought the Collective together, in various ways, with the users of their instance at mastodon.bida.im.
Almost eight years have passed, and that useful and courageous initiative is still active online and offline.
The following is a short interview, written to save space, intended to introduce readers of "Umanità Nova" to what is currently one of the most interesting projects in the non-commercial digital communications landscape, a project based on principles very similar to our own.
I thank the Bida Collective for answering my questions, but above all for their voluntary work, which enables the functioning of tools that are essential to escaping the widespread control that characterizes commercial digital platforms. A trap into which many comrades have fallen and from which they seem unable to escape.
Q: Would you like to introduce yourselves?
Bida: Bida is a collective of social hackers with a political vision oriented towards autonomy, solidarity, and digital freedoms. For over twelve years, it has been working in the field of free technologies, conceiving digital infrastructure as a space for conflict, cooperation, and political experimentation, and not as a simple neutral tool.
Q: How did the collective come into being?
Bida: The collective was born from the meeting of activists from the Camillo Berneri anarchist circle and the experience of the XM24 social center within the hacklabbo, starting from the concrete need to manage and technically support the creation of the Rebal.info meta-OPAC. Rebal began as a project to network anarchist and libertarian libraries and archives, with the aim of facilitating access to knowledge, promoting self-learning practices, and building an active community around the movements' memory and cultural production.
From that initial experience, Bida developed increasingly structured technical and political skills over time, orienting itself towards the construction and management of self-managed digital infrastructures based on free software and decentralized models. In 2018, the collective launched a major generalist initiative, Mastodon, which over the years has grown to over 20,000 members and is still active today, representing one of the leading Italian examples of a federated, non-commercial social network governed by shared community rules.
Q: What other initiatives do you pursue?
Bida: At the same time, Bida has continued to support and assist other collectives, informal groups, and similar political entities, offering digital services, technical consulting, and infrastructure support. The collective's work has always focused on building digital spaces free from surveillance, proprietary algorithms, and dependence on large technology platforms, promoting practices of mutualism, cooperation, and technological self-determination.
Bida doesn't simply "provide services," but works to build networks, communities, and alternative imaginaries, experimenting with horizontal and collective forms of organization. Its approach is part of a broader perspective of critique of digital capitalism and the daily practice of another way of inhabiting, sharing, and building the digital world.
Q: The mastodon.bida.im instance, given how it spends time online, is almost history. Do you plan to write something longer than a press release to recount and summarize this experience?
Bida: It's an idea we've been mulling over for some time, even if we haven't yet implemented it. On the other hand, the experiment isn't over: today we're opening a new chapter with the launch of NoBigTech.social, through which we're offering free Mastodon instances to continue promoting decentralization. This phase will also be part of the story and a broader summary of the experience.
Q: Technical issues aside, what was the biggest problem you faced with the instance? Have you solved it?
Bida: Beyond the technical aspects, the biggest challenge we faced was content moderation. It was both the difficulty of managing differing opinions within the group and, above all, how to communicate these decisions to users. In the debate between comrades, there are highly polarizing topics that, if not addressed with the appropriate tools and attention, can easily degenerate into conflicts that can be very difficult to manage, especially when the ability to recognize and respect the other person is lacking.
Over time, we've realized that the most polarizing topics tend to recur over and over again: Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, vaccines/anti-vaxxers. Unfortunately, behind a keyboard, it's particularly difficult to address these issues constructively.
What we've learned is that real encounters greatly aid mutual understanding and discussion. It's no coincidence that we experienced the most serious problems during periods when relationships were exclusively online: forced isolation during the pandemic, in this sense, was a major factor.
Q: Based on your experience and given the times we live in, how politically homogeneous must a collective that intends to manage an issue similar to yours be?
Bida: More than politically homogeneous, we believe it's essential that there be strong mutual respect within a collective. In our case, for example, we're not all anarchists. However, constant discussion, meeting, and sharing ideas and practices allow us to build a solid trust that, even in the face of disagreements, makes it possible to address and resolve problems. This, for us, is the truly fundamental element.
Q: Without necessarily going into specifics, have you ever had to deal-directly-with state agencies responsible for repression for issues related to the issue?
Bida: Fortunately, not at the moment. We've learned of the existence of some proceedings in which we've been the subject of scrutiny or investigations, but nothing has ever materialized in the form of formal documents or official communications. That's a good thing.
Q: Is the goal of "removing" comrades from commercial social media still valid? Or do you think it's better to spend your available energy building alternatives to those social media?
Bida: The goal of "removing" comrades from commercial social media is still fully valid; alternatives already exist. It's no coincidence that with the NoBigTech.social project, we propose the free creation of Mastodon instances: a service that, at the moment, isn't offered by any radical server (see, for example, the list on riseup.net). Similarly, we promote
the installation of Matrix servers as a concrete attempt to curb the use of Telegram; we also propose PeerTube, an alternative to YouTube.
At the same time, in recent years, we've chosen to focus part of our energy on other fronts, such as strengthening the entire Rebal network and restructuring and improving existing services.
Q: How can "Umanità Nova" readers support your work?
Bida: Contributing to the community: using Bida services like Mastodon, Matrix, PeerTube, and others (https://bida.im/services/) and telling your friends about them.
You can also support our work with a donation by visiting https://bida.im/dona, or even better, by meeting us in person!
We usually have a stand during Hackmeetings, or at other satellite events that are constantly updated at https://hackmeeting.org.
Alternatively, you can meet and chat in person at the Circolo Berneri in Bologna on Wednesday evenings.
Pepsy
https://umanitanova.org/resistenza-digitale-lesperienza-del-collettivo-bida/
_________________________________________
Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #3-26 - Digital Resistance. The Experience of the Bida Collective (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten