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You absolutely should not dismiss the AT Protocol technology that runs this place as boring nerd stuff, because that is the exact technology we are going to need to ensure that usable social media that isn’t controlled by Nazis continues to exist.

You don’t need to become an expert on AT Protocol, you don’t need to learn to code, but I really do want to impress upon people that “federated social media” is a vitally important concept in a time of global authoritarian and technofeudalist consolidation.

I used to be less convinced of this, but I’ve really come around to it in the past year or so, especially because I think federation, if done properly, could be really useful for digital sovereignty and reducing the influence of US tech companies.

I think it’s absolutely vital - I’ve been around global digital rights circles since 2010 and this has been crystal clear to me.

I’m not a digital rights guy, so for me I associated it with annoying nerds on Mastodon and people with a terrible political analysis. Basically neutral on it and unsure how you’d convince normies to adopt it. But now I feel, couched in the right political program, it could be incredibly useful.

I started my career reporting on tech and human rights in a dictatorship (Cambodia), and was at RightsCon earlier this year - the rest of the world has a LOT to teach Americans about using tech to survive and fight back under authoritarian regimes.

Yeah I agree, and honestly the more I use emails and the more I realize how the internet could be. The late 19th and early 20th saw anti-trust law become a thing we now must do similarly but with tech giants. The digital world we live in is very reminiscent of the second half of the 19 century.

Take power generating and distributing company. Each had its own standard and as a result the grid was not interoperable. So customers were locked into one company which could then extract rent. It also meant that each company was running its own cables leading to those sort of sight.