Yes donating to the admin is nice, but have you considered we can use this energy to build institutions for actual user power?
Large scale user unions which fund the systemic development and sustainability of this environment? That fund moderation labor across the network?
Democratic institutions that can push back simultaneously against Big Tech, BDFL like Mastodon and misguided legislation to regulate the internet?
Umbrella organizations that can shield users from arbitrary abuses of instances and simultaneously assist teams running instances with legal issues, know-how, funds and best practices?
We're currently only scratching the surface of what federated social networks can be and we need to be way more ambitious.
meta
@rra I'd be very concerned about creating systems of power that are easily exploitable -> lead to oppression, which would make things worse.
This sort of large-scale power-building makes sense in situations where you're dealing with a large powerful adversary (government, employer, etc.), but... is that actually what we're dealing with here on fedi?
Or would a loose association of likeminded folks, like we have now, be capable of achieving the same thing but without the risks of power systems? Because that certainly seems preferable.
meta
@joepie91 Two things: first we should be prepared for that adversary to arrive and draw lessons from how google pulled an Embrace Extend Extinguish on the previous federated network namely #XMPP. Second, in the last weeks I saw a lot of admins struggling to cope with the scaling of the network and there should be ways of alleviating that. Not too sure about the specific form though.