Convener: Gilles (@DePemig@social.coop)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• narF (@narF@mstdn.ca)
• Michalis Famelis (@mfamelis@fediscience.org)
• Jayne Samuel-Walker (@tcmuffin@toot.wales)

Notes

The starting topic of this session was: how to create a safe and fun local social network for children in a school class. Questions discussed in this light were:

• What would there be to gain when we would create local fedi-instances for school classes or schools?
• What are potential issues with such a social network?
• Is the “fedi-appraoch” actually superior to “BIg Tech” solutions

The discussion floated all the way to addictiveness, and how to present people who already feel that they should switch to an open network with options so they actually do switch.

Thougths about a local School class instance

• There are risks with a digital network whether it’s classic big tech, or fedi. Digital info can be easily copied, carried outside of the space where it was meant to be, and kept forever.

• We unsuccessfully tried thinking of any feature of fediverse platforms that would make it a worse option for this use case than classic big tech platforms.

• There are great possibilities of a school class instance:

  • Simply have a fun network
  • Have your own rules and supervision: let them be free to make a mess within broad borders.
    • As on the school yard, children can play without close supervision until someone is crying or shouting, a local network can work safely as long as someone is monitoring user reports.
  • Teach children good digital, and real life. social behavior and interactions within an age appropriate cohort in a safe environment. “having a space where people can have actual (social) expectations about each other.” It was noted, that children who were mostly together in online in Corona times got a rather unhealthy intro into digital social life.
  • Get children “into” the fediverse
  • Opportunity for kids to learn that they can shape their own digital space.
    • It would be great if kids could change their instance colors, emoji-sets, rules, and more. Geat to motivate tech-savvy kids to take on the admin role at some point.
    • This is important, because kids will not automatically like what you present them. Michalis told the great anecdote of a school class of pre-social-media children, who did use google docs. It turned out children were all writing together in google docs; creating their own social network.

• Jayne pointed to a acquaintance who actually works on a mastodon instance for a school class and shared this link: https://toot.wales/@davidoclubb/113640905817478950

• Also this discussion: https://toot.wales/@davidoclubb/113639241453476269.

  • EDIT: On David Clubbs blog I read “closed down my mastodon experiment with a primary schools with a lack of resource their end for pursuing it”

More general issues discussed

On big tech, you don’t own your data, and are victim of addictive algorithms and design choices.

Concerning addiction, we all noted that fedi-platforms are at least a bit less addictive.

narF told about his successful offline meetings where he shows around interested people with switching to better platforms and softwares: The workshop that I (narF) organizes was called “Comment quitter X et Meta” (How to quit X and Meta).

• In that workshop, we teach people about alternatives to those web giants. We use simple non-tech vocabulary. We spend half the time teaching and half time letting people discuss among themselves and answering their questions.
• It was hosted by the community space “L’Espace des Possible de la Petite Patrie” (Space of possibilities in Petite Patrie)
• There will be other events on that topic

Miscellaneous

We discussed the issue that in particular for facebook, there do not seem to be good alternatives, since facebook has so many features. Crucially: groups, market place, messenger, and events.

It was noted that Friendica does offer a lot, but is a bit clunky. So, difficult one to offer an alternative. Positive note: once you’re in fedi, you ideally have access to all platforms.