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organizing

Notes (and thoughts) on organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere

Some potential paths forward -- but the landscape is complicated.

Jon

• 16 min read
"I need a solution right away. And these sound like solutions that are in the works, and not something that normal people like me are going to be able to figure out and use."

– an organizer who helps lead a progressive activism group, at a Zoom meeting on organizing on decentralized social networks

Ouch.

Depending on what you're looking for, the situation isn't necessarily that bleak – and by the end of the meeting, most of the people felt they had some paths worth investigating. There's a lot of promising work happening in the decentralized social media ecosystems known as the fediverses ("federated universes") and the ATmosphere (a fediverse built on Bluesky's AT protocol), including some interesting experiences with organizing.

Still, the landscape is very complicated. And for grassroots organizers currently relying on Facebook groups – or looking to reach audiences as large as what was once possible on Twitter or Facebook – the alternatives still aren't where they need to be. That's something we need to change, and If not now, when? Mutual aid and organizing in the fediverses, the ATmosphere, and whatever comes next has some thoughts about directions. As part of that project, I've hosted several online group discussions as well as talked 1-1 with more than a few US-based organizers. Here's an attempt to write up the notes so far.

Contents

The slides for the Zoom meeting also have a lot of background, including a look at three projects that are currently using decentralized social networks for organizing.0

My apologies to those in the rest of the world, but I'm taking a very US focused approach here – that's where my experience and networks are. I'm certainly interested in hearing how much of this does, and doesn't apply elsewhere ... but the challenges discussed in Engine Room's report on Exploring a transition to alternative social media platforms for social justice organizations in the Majority World (and nicely summarized by Erin Kissane in What people in the global majority need from networks) are huge potential barriers.

Key use cases – and constraints

One of the key takeaways was general agreement on what the organizers involved are looking for in social networks. Of course, this is just one data point; there are lots of different approaches to organizing, and these certainly aren't exhaustive! But, other organizers I've talkd to since then generally agree that these are important use cases – and they're areas that people don't have good solutions for today, so useful to focus on.

Private communications, including

  • communicating within a group's leadership team
  • communicating between leadership and members – announcements once or twice a month (also going out via email), questions and answers, and discussions
  • communicating with leaders of other groups

Interacting with the broader public, including

  • getting the word out about events and action alerts,
  • sharing and contextualizing accurate news and information
  • messaging
  • countering disinformation and propaganda
  • etc etc etc
IMPORTANT: None of the social networks discussed here provide end-to-end encryption! For secure communications, use Signal (or potentially some other encrypted messaging service)! See EFF's Surveillance Self Defense page for tips on using Signal securely.

But there are also some critical constraints:

  • The software needs to be very straightforward to use. Some organizers said people in her group even found Signal challenging, and I saw several other heads nodding.
  • People feel like they already have too many accounts (and organizers already have to deal with multiple communications channels with their group members) so are very reluctant to add new ones – especially if they can't get rid of any of their existing accounts
  • Almost none of the groups are confident they have the tech capacity to host an instance, especially when taking security and denial of service into account.

Private communications

I've lost track of how many organizers have told me they're looking for alternative to Facebook groups for communicating within their organization – and across organizations. Slack (or other messaging systems like Discord and Matrix) can work to some extent, but isn't great for people who aren't online all the time – and leads to notification overload for people who are in multiple organizations. So there's a lot of desire for better tools for private communications.1

More and more groups are using Signal group chats for this, and the end-to-end encryption and security-focused design provide much stronger security than any social network (or Slack or Discord). It's quite easy to join a Signal group chat – you can share a link or QR code to the chat – and most people find it as easy to use as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Group chats work best for relatively-sall groups (the leadership team, working groups); once you get up into the hundreds of people it can get unwieldy. And notification overload is a huge problem here as well once you're in multiple Signal DM groups (or even one fairly large group). Yes, you can mute notifications for individual groups (and I do!) but then it's easy to miss stuff.

So social networks can be a very complementary alternative – there's a reason Facebook groups were so popular for activism! Unfortunately, there aren't yet any great decentralized alternatives.

  • Bluesky is currently all-public, and while their recently-released protocol roadmap discusses their plans to add private data, it's still at the very early stage.
  • Mastodon doesn't have any equivalent to Facebook private groups.2
  • Some niche software like Friendica and Hubzilla does, but the user experience is very klunky (and at least to me, confusing) and the installed base is tiny, so at least IMHO they ready for broad adoption.

That said, there are a couple of options that could work today for some use cases.

Forum software

NodeBB, Discourse, and Flarum are all fairly easy to use – and the basic form (aka message board) interface is familiar to most people who were online before social networks were widely adopted. Everything old is new again! So this could work well in a couple of scenarios:

  • an organization could set up a forum site with one private group (or categories, as they're called in NodeBB and Discourse) for leadership discussions, another for Q&A with members, and another for broad membership discussions.
  • a coalition or network of organizations could set up a forum site with private categories for each organization and cross-organization working group.

Forums typically have good moderation tools, and for the vast majority of organizations who don't want to do their own hosting, there are a varietyof paid Of options (although depending on the group's size it might not be cheap).

Of course, if you're in multiple organizations that have forums, you'll probably wind up needing multiple accounts (one on each organiztion's site). And this approach isn't particularly decentralized; while all of these systems have added compatibility with Mastodon and Lemmy and other decentralized software that uses the ActivityPub protocol, at least so far it only applies to public posts.

Still, it's a way of getting off of Facebook, so quite possibly worth looking at.

Mobilizon groups

Mobilizon is primairly a tool to help people find, create and organize events; Political Revolution's Mobilizon site is a good example of how organizers of the 50501 protests are using it. That said, Mobilizon also has group functionality, including the ability to approve who can join a group, invite people, and have members-only discussions.

I haven't talked yet with anybody who's using Mobilizon groups, so am not sure how well they work in practice. Mobilizon is currently maintained by Kaihuri, who seems to be very interested in working with organizations considering adopting it, so especially if you're also thinking of using Mobilizon for events, it might well be worth following up and contacting them.

Local-only posts

GoToSocial, Akkoma, Glitch, Hometown, and some other platforms support "local-only" posts, which provide private communication between members of an instance (a single site running to the software). This means that an instance supporting this functionality can potentially work as an alternative to a single Facebook group.

By themsleves, local-only posts probably aren't enough for most organization's needs. For example, if all the members of an organization are on an instance, local-only posts will work fine for discussions between leadership and members – but discussions within the group's leadership will need some other solution, and so will working groups and cross-group discussions. If the leadership team is relatively small, you might be able to use a direct message thread that tags everybody involved – or you could just use Signal for this – but things could quickly start to get complex.

Still, even though it's not a complete solution, this might be a useful first step for an organization.

Worth keeping an eye on ...

There's clearly a lot of room for improvement on this front. Here's a few things worth keeping an eye on:

  • Bonfire is a toolkit for communities to build and run their own digital spaces. It's extremely flexible, and they're starting to work with some organizers.
  • "Island networks" (networks of instances that fedarate with each other and potentially have some connectivity to broader networks) are a relatively-new concept that in principle could provide a way for multiple organizations in a coalition to work together – while being part of mutiple coalitions.
  • In the ATmosphere, Blacksky has recently announced a project (whose name is still in flux) that's an interesting attempt to implement an equivalent to local-only posts. There's also a lot of other discussion of private data, so we may well see other solutions emerge here as well – although it's hard to know the timeframe.

Hopefully as these and other projects mature, they can be building blocks for custom solutions – and eventually lead to turnkey solutions as well.

Public communications

At least for now, though, it continues to be extremely important. As the Trump administration moves to clamp down on dissent and criminalize protest, there's an open question as to how long this kind of communication will be a viable option. Historically, organizers have used Facebook pages and events, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit for this. Algorithmic changes, censorship, and harassment have made all of these a lot less effective for many organizers – and the general expectation is that things will get steadily worse.

From a functionality perspective, there are certainly some viable decentralized options here. For example,

  • Bluesky has Twitter-like microblogging functionality, and is easy enough to use that most people don't have a problem getting started. Custom feeds, starter packs, and moderation services all have a lot of potential for organizing; Blacksky is a great example of how to combine these tools, and is now providing the infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital space;.
  • Mastodon and compatible software also provide fairly easy-to-use microblogging functionality (although many people find it more challenging than Bluesky to get started); I've had some success with these for privacy-related legislative activism.
  • DAIR-tube is a great example of using PeerTube as a YouTube alternative, with videos of their Data Workers Inquiry and Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
  • Mobilizon is an events platform (compatible with Mastodon et al) that Political Revolution has used successfully for the 50501 protests.

See the slides for a few screenshots of these.

But functionality isn't the only consideration. The biggest barrier to using these networks for broad public communication is that most of the public isn't there. Bluesky's the biggest, with about 10 million active users; Mastodon et al have maybe 1 million.

That could well change over time, and organizers and activists can speed the process along by helping people move from corporate social network to these new options – without losing their support networks, ties to communities, and connections with friends and family. That's easier said than done, but clearly an area to pay attention to. Sydette Harry has framed this as a digital refugee project, which is certainly an interesting way to look at it – and highlights the need for organizing.

What about corporate fediverse sites like Flipboard and Threads?

Flipboard describes themselves as "the best platform to amplify your content." They've been around for years, have a fairly big user base, and are very easy to use. Recently, they've been making a big strategic bet on what they call the "open social web" (aka, decentralized social networks) and are currently beta-testing their new Surf "open social web browser" lets you view, interact with and curate Bluesky, Mastodon, RSS, and other data sources. So there are certainly some intriguing possibilities there.

But does it make sense for organizers to move to another corporate social network?

Of course, that's a question to consider for Bluesky as well – they're also run by a venture-funded startup, have certainly hinted that they're going to introduce ads, and even their own employees are candid that people should view the company as a "future adversary." My take is that neither of these platforms are reliable longer-term bases. That said, I personally think Bluesky is very much worth considering in the short term (see I for one welcome Bluesky, the ATmosphere, BTS ARMY, millions of Brazilians, Black Twitter, and sex worker Twitter to the fediverses for why) ... and similarly it's worth considering Flipboard.

And I guess I should also mention Threads, Meta's Twitter competitor. Threads has implemented limited connectivity with Mastodon and claimes they'll do more over time ... but then again they're owned by Mark F***ing Zuckerberg, with all that implies: a business model based on exploiting users and breaking the law, moderation that's actively anti-Black, anti-Palestinian, and anti-LGBTQ+, and aiding and abetting genocide. So I personally wouldn't recommend it ... but your mileage may vary.

Using Bridgy Fed to connect Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and other compatible software

"Bridgy Fed connects web sites, the fediverse, and Bluesky. You can use it to make your profile on one visible in another, follow people, see their posts, and reply and like and repost them. Interactions work in both directions as much as possible. See the docs for more info."

– the Bridgy Fed site

Bridgy Fed isn't for everybody, but if you want your public posts to be available on all these different networks, it's certainly worth considering opting in.

A few limitations to be aware of, if you're bridging from Mastodon or compatible software:

  • Bridgy Fed truncates longer posts, doesn't bridge polls or profile metadata, and any edits you make won't show up on Bluesky (because Bluesky doesn't support editing)
  • There's no way for bridged Mastodon accounts to use Bluesky blocklists or subscribe to labelers.
  • Keep in mind that Bluesky is an all-public environment optimized for surveillance capitalism – there are already multiple datasets of Bluesky posts on Hugging Face. Bridgy Fed is careful to only bridge public posts, but it's still not for everybody.

Similarly, if you're bridging from Bluesky, while you can block individual users, there's no way to prevent Mastodon instances run by white supremacists, anti-LGBTQ+ bigots, or nazis from interacting with your bridged content – and yes, these sites do exist.

And whether you're bridging from Bluesky or Mastodon, keep in mind that Threads is owned by Mark F***ing Zuckerberg, who we're all trying to get away from. Any content that goes to Threads not only puts money in his pocket, it will also be used to train their AI algorithms to better target advertising and propaganda. Still, there's a big potential audience on Threads, and while only the tiny percenntage who have opted into "Threads Fediverse" can actually follow you, there are situations where it might be worth doing.

If you're using Mastodon or compatible software and don't want your content to go to Threads, see How to block Threads on Mastodon - and a reminder that blocking on the fediverse only provides limited protections. If you're using Bluesky and opt in to Bridgy Fed, I don't know of any way to keep your data from going to Threads.

Does it make sense to use Signal group chats as an interim step to help people move to decentralized social networks?

One very interesting idea that came up in these sessions is to encourage friends and family (or neighbors, or a community of practice, or in a Facebook group) to join a Signal group chat as a first step. It's quite easy to join a Signal group chat – you can share a link or QR code to the chat – and most people find it as easy to use as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. As well as providing an initial partial escape hatch, and a way of keeping connections active, the group can also provide support as people venture onto decentralized social networks.

Of course, there doesn't have to be an interim step. It's easy to sign up on Bluesky, and if you're used to Twitter the interface is very familiar. But what are the right blocklists to use if you don't want to minimize your interactions with scammers, anti-trans bigots, right-wingers, and bots? What starter packs and custom feeds match your interests? What habits from Twitter and Facebook to unlearn? Just what do people mean by "nuclear block", and why is it considered a good thing? How to reconnect with people you were following on Twitter?

And for Mastodon and compatible software, it can be even more of a challenge. What instance to sign up on? Resources for choosing the right fediverse instance goes into a lot of detail, and links out to quite a few useful sites, but realistically how many people want to read a 5,000 word article and follow that many links just to sign up? Erin Kissane's How to buy shoes in the fediverse and revealing the fediverse’s gifts have some great perspectives on this problem in general, and hopefully the process will get easier over time, but right now ... well, let's just say there's room for improvement.

So like I say, an interim step that can then function as a support group is a very interesting idea ...

Potential paths forward

Hopefully there's enough information here for organizers and groups who have the bandwidth to start exploring paths forward. A couple of potential paths forward:

  • If you haven't done so already, consider creating some Signal group chats – for the leadership, for working groups that are interested, and maybe also another one for all members of the organization (although if your orgnaization is huge this might not work out well). As well as ensuring that you have a secure channel for communications in place, this is also a way to start the processs of getting people off of Facebook et al.
  • If you're doing a lot of public-facing activism, consider encouraging members to join Bluesky to start building networks there. Bluesky's a venture-funded startup, and their architecture is optimized for surveillance capitalism, so it's not a great long-term option ... but, right now, there's a lot more activity there (including a lot of other organizers), and tools like Starter Packs and Custom Feeds make it easy to find other organizers.
  • Consider starting up a forum or a GoToSocial, Hometown, Glitch, or Akkoma instance for your group – or partner with other groups to start one up that you can share. Even if it's not yet at the point where it can fully replace Facebook or Slack, it's a great way for you and your members to get experience with these new social networks (and have a backup communcitions network in place). And, identifying where things currently fall short will help drive improvements in the software going forward. See the section on private communications for more on the various options.

And for developers focused on the fediverses and the ATmosphere – or people whoa re thinking of getting involved, well, like I said there's clearly room for improvement. If not now, when? has some overall framing for this, and the last section has a list of questions as well as links to discussions. If you're planning on attending the ATmosphere Conference and/or FediForum (both of which allow remote participation), I'll be proposing sessions there to dig into more details.

Additional topics from Q&A

The various discussions also covered a lot of questions and answers besides social networks ... so I figured I'd include them here.

What are the alternatives to gmail?

PrivacyGuides' Encrypted Private Email Recommendations discusses Tuta (aka Tutanota), ProtonMail, and mailbox.org.

What are the alternatives to Google Drive, Google Docs, etc?

I'm a fan of CryptPad, an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite, and find their tools like Drive (document sharing), Docs (collaborative editing), and Forms fairly usable (although not quite as easy as the Google equivalents). They also have spreadsheets and presentations, which I have less experience with. All their tools feature end-to-end encryption. PrivacyGuide CryptPad Review: Replacing Google Docs has a lot more detail.

NextCloud, an open-source collaboration suite, is another plausible alternative. If you're part of a larger organizaiton, they offer entireprise solutions as well.

Should we be concerned about using Mobilize for events?

The US government can get at any data Mobilize stores or is tracking – who's attending what events, who's looking at various events, and who's sharing and responding to event links. As they start to crack down more on dissent and protests, this could well put people at risk. That said, right now, large organizations like Working Families Party, Indivsible, and various Democratic party groups are still using Mobilize, so clearly thing the risk is acceptable.

Should we be concerned about Slack? Zoom?

Yes. Again, the government can get access to all this data – and they're likely to do so at some point, even if they're not doing it yet. So while it's not clear how time-critical it is to move (like I said, I did one of these meeting on Zoom), it's certainly a good idea to at least start thinking about alternatives. And if you're doing any kind of direct actions, or potentially-illegal yesterday, stop using them now – use Signal instead.

What about Telegram?

Telegram isn't as secure as it claims to be. It does offer end-to-end encryption for "Secret Chats", but those aren't the default – and unlike Signal, it doesn't have encrypted group chats. It also uses its own proprietary encryption method (which as experience cryptographers point out is always something to be skeptical about); and unlike Signal, Matrix, and other encrypted messaging services, its code isn't all open-source. There are also concerns that Russian intelligence is able to access Telegram messages ... given the new US adminstration's friendliness with Russia, is that really a chance you want to take?

Can we take our followers and our posting history with us if we leave Facebook?

Not really. The Facebook Archive lets you download your posts and photos, but that's about it.

How to convince people who are still complacent that we need to take the threat of surveillance seriously?

That's a great question and I don't know any easy answers – sounds like a good topic for followon discussions!

What are some good general resources for online security and privacy?

This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, but here are three that I've found useful

Notes

0 Unfortunately, the video from this session needs a lot of editing to get it to the point where it's useful and doesn't infringe on anybody's privacy, and the machine I've used in the past for video editing doesn't work any more, but I hope to post at least some fragments of it fairly soon, and will update this post once I have them.

1 Slack's channels provide more structure than Signal, but notification overload is still a problem, and like most messaging-based systems it isn't great for people who aren't online almost all the time.

Facebook groups used to be an okay solution, but algorithmic changes means that almost nobody sees stuff unless they explicitly check the group. Plus, a lot of people really want to spend less time on Facebook – and many organizers are (justifiably!) concerned about organizing on a platform controlled by a techbro who's licking the boosts of fascists and authoritarians.

2 Mastodon got a grant to implement groups several years ago but implementation has been stalled for quite a while and isn't currently being prioritized.