Not linking directly because I don't want to shit on projects I believe are genuinely trying to make the web better, but every time I see a post about "the small web" or a more "humane" web or whatever that includes phrases like this about content: "created without the motivation of financial gain" I sigh so deeply lol
I am begging ethical web enthusiasts to understand what an extreme privilege it is to spend time working on something without worrying about money
Side gripe: a lot of these efforts are based on nostalgia for a past or perceived lost web that's meaningless to almost everyone on the web today, I don't want something we had or believe we had, I want something better that's shaped by the folk who'll be most affected by its future
@sue I absolutely see where you are coming from on this, but some of the web that the nostalgia threads are talking about refers to a time when the software on the Internet was produced by people being paid By government or private grants in aid of research.
@sue I fully realize that version of the web necessarily served far smaller population, but I don’t think it’s wrong to want to the money that underlies the production, care, and feeding of the web to not come from defense contracts, privacy invasions, and pyramid schemes.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want state funding mixed with cooperative sources to create at least a larger corner of the web that is apart from all of that.
Of course you can be white and be marginalised or experience hardship (I certainly have) but the fact that people who definitively enjoy one powerful form of privilege (probably the most powerful one, whiteness) are so consistently those most resistant to the suggestion is pathetic tbh
I come from a deprived background, was homeless as a kid, and poor most of my adult life, AND I've experienced considerable privilege on account of being white and living in a country where I had access to an education that gave me a path out of that situation, see it's not that hard to accept unless you're a fucking baby 👍🏻
@sue i'm sorry you've gone through so much, and also, am surprised these dudes are all making up what an anonymous project's "for financial gain" means but won't extend any benefit of the doubt to you. they like a privileged white dude shaped empty place more than a real human being who isn't that
The replies to this have been pretty wild, a lot of denial of what constitutes privilege, ignorance that there is a world outside the west, opinions about what kinds of work are deserving of pay, and judgements about what people do with their money..
To be clear, I am motivated by financial gain in the way I spend my time
I don't want to spend my entire life working, I've already been working for almost thirty years and want to retire as young as possible
I want to enjoy my life and be able to help other folk out financially, but here's the thing, my spending choices don't need your validation, as long as I'm not using it to hurt anyone, what I spend my money on is none of your business
Maybe I'd do voluntary work if I didn't need to be an employee anymore, I don't know, again, none of your business 👍🏻
I like to think I've managed to do work that empowered folk through my paid jobs, I realise this is dependent on the line of work you're in and that being in education put me in a position to do it while getting paid, but in my experience a lot of people find ways to exert a positive influence through their jobs, there is leverage you can use in a company that many don't think of
I do believe those of us with significant privilege have a responsibility to leverage, "lend" or spend that privilege
But I keep seeing this suggestion that people should be "frugal" for the environment and I.. Climate crisis isn't going to be solved by finger wagging at your average individual buying shit. Have a go at organisations and politicians, and if you want to influence people, do it by modeling what you consider worthwhile, not by judging people wanting to enjoy their lives ffs
I think what I'm really saying here is that people's choices are not subject to auditing by random white guys on the internet, that appears to be news for some 👍🏻
There is a conflation in your first posts between organisational motivation for financial gain and payment for work, these are two very different things and most organisations which are motivated for financial gain tend to exploit actual work by depressing pay. This depression of remuneration doesn't seem to extend people who leverage rentier position in organisations.
You talk here a about leveraging privilege, I'd be interested to know what you mean by "lend" ... privilege. This it seems to hark back to systems of feudal patronage.
Making use of these types of relationships would surely reinforce those systems of privilege and gives people warped views of their own impact on the world and right to power, think of Michael Dell's statements at the WEF years ago. It is appealing to think we can be part of capitalist modernity, and do good through it, work hard to place ourself in that position of security so we don't have to work as much and have lives of leisure. However that can only happen for the few and currently requires the present systems of oppression and privilege to continue.
Where judgement parallels what you seem to criticising:
"Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate how a declaration regarding Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitution and the legality of Defendants’ conduct, on its own, is likely to remedy these."
This is probably fair legal reasoning, in terms of justification for remedy, for a civil case like this, but a question may be asked as to why a criminal case is not even on the agenda.
I have my suspicion and is comes down to the same privileges you seem to be talking about. Because these system of privilege reproduce themselves first and look after others second, if at all.
The work to dismantle them will never come from within that system. Michael Dell would only say what he did at WEF because he wouldn't be in that position if he didn't think that.
I don't know what people should do with their privilege but seeking something which creates privilege, is probably not for the best in the long-term, however much it is currently necessary in the short-term.
Capitalism is a natural outgrowth of a modern economy. It's feudalism by another name.
Feudalism, like communism, is both a political and economic structure. Democracy is political but not economic. Socialism is economic but not political.
The solution to capitalism is to use democratic governance to institute enough socialistic practices to turn the capitalists back into citizens instead of monarchs.
I half agree with your point that you can't defeat capitalism while weak, but you can also not defeat capitalism on its own turf. We need to amass enough power to change the rules, to disassemble the power structure the rich have right now.
You can't out-capitalism capitalists without becoming one yourself. We need to change the game.
Money is only an abstraction of power. If we really want to change the game, we need to make their money powerless.
Commerce/trade will always exist, but it won't be the way to get out of this mess, especially considering that putting an oversized value on those things has been a cornerstone of the mess we're in now.
@sue I couldn't agree more with all of this. Also frustrating are the "this has existed for years" comments. Like...if that was gonna work, it would have.
@sue The internet is a big place, and we’re all allowed to try our own things for our own reasons. Because I choose to write software, and give it away, to enable people to do things with, doesn’t make me a part of some kind of problem, and I’m sorry you see me that way. I can’t do everything for everyone, but I can do this. There are plenty of companies who make money and they’ll happily take you. Turning every free software project into a capitalist, venture-funded, profit-first endeavor isn’t the solution that you think it is.
@sue but people have poured enormous amounts of time into platforms such as reddit for free already. I think the idea of small web etc is that people pour that same energy into places they control. Create their own friendly neighborhoods.
@sue Didn’t Free Software explicitly include „yes, this allows making money from it!“ from the start?
(but this is a problem I see in a lot of idealistic projects. When I suggested donating to a Linux distro I was using so the existing devs could go full-time, the thread about that got so deeply derailed that it never got anywere. Including „but that would skew incentives!“ when there were devs working for corporations pushing their requirements but no one paid by the community)
@sue That said: I like it when people spend their free time to build tools for everyone instead of sitting colluding with other rich people how to squeeze more money out of society.
They could also use their privilege to harm society purely for their own benefit.
@gvwilson@sue I've been rolling code for 24 years and have had a "do good" job only once, and that was for a non-profit.
Capitalism and the profit model are the problem, not the individual's attempt to cleave capitalism from the web. Obviously, we all need to eat, but the idea that even a small portion of people -- let alone everyone could do Good and be paid for it under capitalism is fantasy.
I've personally been thinking about how tech would function in a mutual aid system. But of course that's an idealistic thought, one that wouldn't work in our current reality.
But outside of that, as someone who grew up poor and still fears falling back to that despite doing decently well, I totally understand your point.
@sue It's gives off the same energy as FediBros getting bitchy when an small artist/indie-dev are promoting their game. I get disliking ads that track everybody and some the ads in question are scams but to get annoyed at someone sharing their work hoping that someone would buy it so they can make money to live is crazy.
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