culture

recently, one of the people i have approached regarding working out ways snailhuddle might be asked me whether this community venue bizo was “to deal with social media harassment and racism online or something else?”

and i recognise yes, i have assumed too much that people i mention snippets to will somehow already have a sense of what whys apply in my mind.

an attempt, at clarifying where i'm coming from:

so… the internet's become increasingly influential in people's lives over the last couple of decades, right? not just through time spent online but also through broader processes that are used to sustain or are being facilitated by the internet — including the ramping up of 20th century classics like planned obsolescence and neocolonialism and neoliberalism and so forth, and the rise of various new horrors i imagine you've probably also experienced, witnessrd or heard about.

i reckon we can turn some of the detrimental patterns around, at community scales. (hence the concept being a bit fuzzy; on an individual scale my suggestions would be meaningless, so i don't definitively know where we're going). this prject from my perspectie (with the site-initiator hat on), has been about….how could community control its own digital infrastructure (insofar as is practicable); in wha ways can we resist or mitigate or even heal from harm associated with computer networks, the dominant approaches to running them, and the prevailing systems enabling them; what lovely things could we do/make/borrow/contribute to; and what of demystifying the underlying tech and the practices of running the joint…how can aaall this be done by people who don't necessarily even like computery stuff, or for whom its largely inaccessible (i mean, that's me on both counts).

the actual outcome could be regarded as being simply: for communicating online. by means that better align with the values of the people taking part. the communicating doesn't have to adhere to particular subjects or to particular ends. (unless the group decides so).

the overall project will involve multiple platforms (each to accommodate a different form of internt use), for which we'll be adopting existing software.

the specific site[…] at book.snailhuddle.org, is run on software called BookWyrm. there are few dozen other BookWyrm sites that ours is interconnected with. BookWyrm as a platform is an anticapitalist network for talking about books, tracking reading progress, making or finding book recommendations, that kind of thing.

BW isn't exctly optimally designed for immediately huddling in with the mmbers of one particular site-community, though some BW servers do maintain set themes and/or a particularly distinct group identity (a number of BookWyrm sites exist to promote reading in a minority language, for example). whereas the collectve focus (or foci?) of ours looks more likely t be.. whatever forms organically, and/or throug ongoing negotiation around desired vibe? (((fcourse, who's given the opportunity to join in will e a big factor too))).

that said, backwater that it is, the bookwyrm network's part of the social media landscape, as will be any other platform we adopt for more general-purpose socmed. so, structurally, functionally, the project can't not be concernedwith social media harassmet and racism online. if the venue is to be safe for anyone but white peple.

and further to that / cycling back to the start, spaces and resources proferred by te tech giants (or their much smaller cousins) are obviously buil of business models that aggressively exploit marginalised people / perpetuaet oppression, especially by way of tactics inextricable from racialisation. yet antiracist standards of practice among existing noncommersh alternatives seem to be nascent at best. in that context, yeah, such an undertaking not only has to address racism, but (i think) necessarily must assume antiracism as a core purpose? or what would be the point?

so i don't know if that answers your question properlu (i'm not sure in what sense(s) you meant "what the space/platform is for" etc or if i've covered relevant permutations…coherently) ?

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working title snailspace
waaaaah..wadadadaah
it's been a hectic year but i do want to get somewhat stuck back into establishing the infra
writing up the ol process notes
and engagin with ye olde big issues concerning the housing of a huddle
autumn-/winter-willing