<synthesis> <unlike-us> termination of the unlike us list

[hellekin]

Hey,

I did not follow the discussion on the mailing-list changes, but wanted
to comment a bit of Geert's message on the late Unlike-Us mailing list.

On 5/20/20 1:28 PM, Geert Lovink wrote:
> The list started in 2011 and has been moderately successful. Let’s
> say, it had its ups and downs...
>
Unlike-Us was great and came at a time when it was needed to bring
together the people from the alternative Social Web, P2P and privacy
activists, and independent Internet hosting parties. I would suggest
that it was "moderately successful" partly because all these people had
their own online venues already, quite a lot of diverging views, and in
my opinion did not find here enough radical politics to sustain the
conversation beyond technical issues that were discussed elsewhere -- or
rather: the radical politics involved in hackers taking to the
infrastructure do not really match the abstraction that was dominating
this space ; more importantly, this list went looking at the mainstream
and not the alternatives: it's probably because the simple outlook of
mainstream/alternatives does not match the reality of "the alternatives".

I remember an informal meeting during UU#2 in Amsterdam where, in my
enthusiasm, I declared that we were making history. Looking back, and
watching where we stand now, I think that indeed, the people involved
then have been growing in agency and are forming stronger and tighter
solidarity networks than a decade ago. But the opposing forces have been
intensifying as well.

From my perspective, "the alternatives" were not really into providing
alternatives to "the mainstream" but instead were looking into creating
free technologies and infrastructure for the resistance: not merely
escaping the capitalist black hole that was absorbing all the humans and
all the matter, but building the means to organize globally and resist
it. I think we've gone a long way in that direction and grew stronger,
although this is all very fragile anyway, as hackers are dealing with
scraps, paling in comparison to the insane power of Internet Giants.

But as P2P technologies mature and acceptance grows, discontent also
grows sharply -- as do the tensions on people, energy, food, and water,
in other words: the systematic war on life. After this event of the
COVID-19 crisis, many more people understand the need to organize away
from the capitalist surveillance system. There's no reason yet to
believe a majority of people will prefer to take to the streets instead
of staying home consuming crap, or to stay home for a living and
code/abstract away. What changed is that activists, who have continued
to fight during the confinement realized how much they needed to find
technologies matching their ethics -- because of the need to gather and
organize and the difficulty to do so in systems that are designed to
track individuals and dislocate communities, because of the surveillance
and censorship, because of the integration of such services in the
apparatus of oppression. Many woke up to the lies of "information" in
societies of control -- what Deleuze defined as "the controlled system
of watchwords" -- maybe we could say in nuspeak: information is the
timeline of hashtags.


> If you want to continue the debate about social media alternatives,
> please subscribe to the ‘billions’ list, moderated by Sam de Silva out
> of Melbourne:
>
I've been through the whole archive of this list, and I must say I won't
subscribe to it, because it does not serve my purpose. I have no
interest in following what happens to Fakebooz. I'm interested in what
the peasants do against corporations and patriarchy, what commoners do
to safeguard the Commons, and what hackers do to give them the means to
organize the resistance and do it effectively and safely, to disrupt the
watchwords, and to bring about a civilization that will escape solitary
confinement.

Living within 6 walls never appealed to me, and many on this planet
cannot even afford them six walls. If some dream to send humans into
space, I dream that we realize that we're already there. Nobody needs a
seventh wall. It's when we turn away from them that their message become
shallow until it fades away in the ambient noise. Whatever we do, they
do something else, bigger, faster: but we still can step away and do
without them. Let them crash. The only way to win this game is not to
play it. If you like to support the alternative, you must use it and
stay away from the propaganda: step where you want, and be sure it's
away from the Castle.

Good luck watching the wardens play their game.

Cheers,

==
hk