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Fediverse as activist tool? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I recently made a post about Shinigami Eyes and BlockParty and started thinking about activist tools.

The ones mentioned are of course merely mitigation tools, but speaking of activist tools more broadly, like some people suggest Signal and Tor Browser for activists, as a fine balance between security and a low technical bar for entrance.

I am not really sure that any of these differ substantially from Matrix and Firefox and why they are so special.

The ActivityPub protocol. the one Lemmy uses, is a mature protocol and people have put thought in various aspects of it.

Apart from Lemmy, there are ActivityPub applications that foster activist and IRL communication, like Framasoft's Mobilizon.

The main issue I would think of about ActivityPub instances for community organizing is the lack of specialized features for this type of work, like polling.

And the major issue of course is the pseudonymity/anonymity and completely open signups renders existing apps like Lemmy untenable for community activism organizing.

In your opinion, what would it take for an Activity Pub application to be a secure, efficient tool for community activism?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Private messages would need to be end-to-end encrypted. No ActivityPub-based platform does this. I've been mulling over how to do it but haven't landed on anything solid yet.

Signs-ups don't have to be open, they can be closed or vetted - it's just a config option that can be changed with a couple of clicks.

PieFed has polls. But it'd be helpful to take inspiration from Loomio and add much richer functionality here to turn a poll into a proper group decision-making tool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

add much richer functionality here to turn a poll into a proper group decision-making tool

This wording shapes my thought better than I did in the post.