@rra One step at a time, I guess. It takes time to figure out, even for the most enlightened minds on these things. But you're right, the time to push the ambitions is now.

@rra

I think you need to elaborate on the big ideas.

I’m hesitant anymore when people talk about establishing units of power, be they called unions, institutions, organizations, or anything else.

Seems like things are working pretty well so far, though I’d like to see more small/medium size instances than big.

I’ve heard of coops working, and might be the right scale and community mindset.

But I’m not really a socmed hanger-on enthusiast, just an observer passing through, so don’t mind me.

@rra that’s not how humans work.

Any organization with over 100 souls eventually gets exploited by people who crave power. Despite the best of intentions.

Create a herd, and the wolves show up.

@rra cc @Marleen

@rra 👍 I will continue donating to lurk but indeed that alone won't stop anybody with the admin password to sell the data corpus, and won't force the Mastodon project to implement encrypted "direct messages". The "founder" centered support for libre soft projects such as developing mastodon or hosting mastodon is the next obstacle to overcome the issues with the open source model.

@rra Agree, better to contribute to the community than donate to the admin.

social.coop an experiment in this
https://wiki.social.coop/How-to-make-the-fediverse-your-own.html

@rra union of users independent of developers? A UUID if you will.

That's actually a great idea, representing the interests of non-programmers and non-this-particular-thing-programmers.

@rra I like the idea of “user unions”. I guess that’s not completely new: we have membership organisations like Consumers Association (UK), EFF, and other advocacy groups? But this would be more, I think.

@rra interesting idea, I guess Wikimedia Foundation is somewhat of a precedent here, with positive and negative aspects. What would make it a union?

@rra You have some intriguing ideas, but...

If we're going to discuss that and organize something on Mastodon & the larger Fediverse, the admins have to keep the power on.

It ought to be possible to do both large and small things at the same time.

@rra
Thing is, some of us have only just joined Mastodon.

I'm looking for small ideas, baby steps first. Sure, that could be part of a larger design but starting small is where a lot of us newbies are at.

:fediverse: :mastodon_oops:

@rra I like this thinking. I hate feeling like a pawn and these large companies make me feel that way sometimes.

@rra this would be a consumer association, not a union

@rra I’ve thought about this as well and I’m not convinced going back to a large scale organization is better. It’s too similar to the centralized social media site many of us have stopped using.

Smaller sites are easier to manage and easier to let fall if they’re not working out.

@rra

Declaration of Digital Autonomy
http://techautonomy.org

The problem I see with institutions is they always turn sour after some time. Maybe I am just lacking imagination and don't get your vision.
@rra

@rra I guess the question is, how do we structure that and at what point did we reinvent the concept of governments? Not that that's a problem...