What do we do about this? Honestly, I have no idea. I've spent three years so far trying to get developers and advocates to care about this. I founded my own research firm, New Design Congress, specifically to get platform designers -- *especially in the decentralized community* -- to come to terms with this reality, that all infrastructure are expressions of power, and are at their very core political.

We've been blown off consistently, especially by people who ought to know better and who now either steer massive emerging projects, or act as major ideological activists for these platforms.

New Design Congress spent three years sending proposal after proposal to funders like @mozilla, Reset.tech, @EC_NGI, the @PrototypeFund, and others. We've been knocked back every time. We have **never** received direct support or advocacy from civic society organisations who champion the rebuild of a equitable Internet. We have **only** been able to continue our work and grow thanks to our NDC community and a handful of extremely forward thinking private organisations -- or, shamefully, organisations who have already been subjected to the precarity of decentralization.

I despair for the future of the #fediverse #decentralization movement - #bluesky, #mastodon, #peertube, #ipfs, #dat, #lemmy, all of it.