encrypted chat, but make it decentralised

maybe we don’t need Big Tech as much as they tell us we do

A project I've been working on recently is setting up an encrypted, decentralised chat server for leftists and grassroots organisers (especially those based in Naarm) to use. As part of that, I've also been creating videos about it which attempt to explain what the project is, why I'm doing it, and to encourage people to try it out and potentially shift their comms over to this server. I've only really been sharing them on Instagram so far - this post is to share the three videos I've made so far for those who prefer email.

The first one is a quick overview and explains how to sign up to the server:

I don’t use TikTok lol except to edit this video! And Insta sucks etc etc. But let’s take a baby step in a positive direction towards autonomy and community control of how we use the internet.

This vid explains how to use an encrypted chat server I set up. Ok but why should u care about decentralisation?

In the tech world, decentralisation pushes have a lot of overlap with anticapitalist movements. Who owns and controls data is increasingly becoming a major political force shaping our world and its really getting worse. ‘Centralised’ services really just means they want to hold your data hostage to maximise their competitive advantage, your commitment as a consumer, and ultimately their profits.*

Anyway yeah give it a go if you want, or consider proposing that your collective try it out. It’s early days so could be a few bumps in the road but would love to see more collective investment in autonomous infrastructure. Hard to feel like anything matters in the digital realm but remember: the internet is a physical material thing. It’s a geopolitical entity. It’s an integral part of colonial neoliberal society as well as a site of resistance. The lines we draw, the choices we make, the relationships we build matter.

*Signal is actually a rare not for profit exemption to this rule but like I said in the vid, Matrix/Element has a few benefits over Signal for large groups and communities

Also I said Naarm in this vid but what I actually mean is, people who somewhat share the political context that I live in. So i don’t rly mind if ur in a different place but yeah happy to chat. Keen for thoughts/questions/w/e x

Here is the second vid, which tries to explain some of the features and benefits as well as summarising quickly how to sign up:

The third one is more like a 'manifesto' explaining why at a deeper level I'm working on this project and what I see as the stakes:

Before signing off with that, just a few words on decentralisation leading to ‘destroying Big Tech’: ultimately, it is the capitalist legal system that enables such monopolies to exist. Part of the anti-Big Tech advocacy is necessarily focused on attempting to revitalise anti-trust law in the United States, and I would consider this a non-reformist reform in the fight against capitalism. Without a socio-political component it is easy to imagine Big Tech maintaining dominance even in a new decentralised internet.

Decentralisation in general (both federation/server-server protocols and client-server interoperability) attempts to patch (economic) exploitation vectors inherent to the current paradigm of client-server networking - that is, user data is typically homed on private company servers, granting them the power to limit how you use it. This is what results in switching costs and the network effects that have kept the big social networks at top and prevented competition. Attempts to shift away from this paradigm and towards ‘decentralisation’ certainly attack the monopolising capacity of Big Tech to prevent competition, but they don’t take away their ability to compete (with their enormous unfair advantage).

For this reason I wouldn’t say that technical decentralisation is in any sense a radical movement. At the same time, as I explained in the third video, I think it’s incredibly important to be able to say that we don’t need to shut off the rest of the world to have local governance, or in other words community autonomy. The combination of autonomy and relationality is what enables solidarity, and solidarity is what makes a leftist-anarchist movement viable.