LarrySanger.org

Thanks for striking

Let me express my extreme gratitude to everyone who signed the Declaration of Digital Independence and went on social media strike July 4 and/or 5. I’d also like to thank the many reporters who picked up this story.

I’m cognizant that this attention represented some trust of me, i.e., that I wouldn’t hijack this movement for selfish and profit-making ends. I’ve been a heavy social media user since the late 2000s and I’m basically just a disgruntled customer. Since from my small platform I can help organize people online, I thought it was my duty to try to do so. Let me reiterate that I don’t want to start or join an organization or represent any social media company, etc. My interests lie 100% with the users. It is now easy to see the massive latent user demand for decentralized social media, and I want to keep pushing into motion its mass adoption.

Tomorrow or the next day I’ll have a couple new posts for you with a more detailed debriefing and suggestions for next steps. If you want to give me (and everyone reading) some advice, please feel free to use the discussion below for that purpose!

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Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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Please do dive in (politely). I want your reactions!

3 responses to “Thanks for striking”

  1. Михаил Михайлович Соболь

    I am sure that if you call the boycott “strike of producers of original content”, the name itself will bring the idea to the right level. https://t.me/COTEPMIHCK/69

    (Я уверен, что если назвать бойкот “забастовкой производителей оригинального контента”, то само название выведет идею на нужный уровень.)

    Reply
  2. Paul Quirk

    It seems like a paradox when it comes to social media. “Celebrities,” or influencers if you will, have an interest in using a centralized platform where they can profit from advertising dollars and from receiving free products; they’re not going to give that up any time soon. On the other hand, people who enjoy the feeling of being “Connected” to their favourite celebrities or influencers aren’t going to change to decentralized social media unless the sell-outs they love are there first. This is why I believe platforms like Nextcloud are the future; it provides a cloud storage solution that anyone can appreciate, but it can also “Sneak in” distributed social media as a plug-in. I’ll admit it’s not as mature as other solutions yet with regards to social media just yet, but when it gets there with the ability to share photos and videos, growing numbers of people will see it as their one-stop all-purpose web site and will abandon the outdated single-purpose centralized social media sites and finally recognize influencers for the cheese that they are.

    Reply
  3. Stephen Meier

    It feels like there is great apathy among . regarding the crisis regarding their privacy and rights of free speech.

    My suggestion is to put more efforts into PR to raise awareness about the problem and get some luminaries to join the bandwagon and speak out about it. Sam Harris, Zeynep Tufekci, Tristan Harris, Brian Acton to name a few.

    There needs to be a longer lead time and on-ramp of PR before the next strike. Bottom line, keep going.

    Reply

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