Convener: William Maggos (@wjmaggos@liberal.city)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Charles Iliya Krempeaux (@reiver@mastodon.social)
• Jeremiah Lee (@Jeremiah@alpaca.gold)
• fiore (https://dyad.berlin)
• Anthony Bosio (https://abosio.com, @abosio@fosstodon.org)
• Brian Rayburn (@brianrayburn@mastodon.social)

Website: https://democracyofreach.org

Notes

• William: an intro about democracy of reach

  • Inspired by Elon thing: maximal freedom of speech, not freedom of reach
  • Charles: The complaints about shadowbans of Twitter before. Same thing with a different name (democracy of reach).

• William: talking about Iraq was in early 2000s and transmission of information. If we had had social media then, we might have been able to get more opposition against it. The mass media at the time was largely in favor with little dissent.

• William: not free of reach, but democracy of reach

• William: challenge of leaning strongly towards open federation policy, as big as the Web, but make everyone feel comfortable.

• William: regular people can decide what is important, rather than having it imposed on them by big companies, journalists, states, etc.

• William: Podcasting as example of decentralized media distribution. Blog posts did not stop the war back then. They didn’t get attention. ActivityPub can help solve this. “AP native” makes posted content addressable and boostable.

• William: “Public patron”: If I read an article/watch/listen, I put some amount of money split amongst creators

• William: how to make it so people can financially support creators on the Fediverse

• Uncomfortable relationship today between major social networks and governments: social networks will appease the government’s concerns rather than protect freedom of speech. Then, looking at financial system, it’s similar challenges.

• Book recommendations:

  • Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine

  • infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy by Byung-Chul Han

  • On Censorship by Ai Weiwei: example of governments replacing a censored message with a different message to change the public conversation

  • Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data by Carissa Véliz

• App mentions on supporting democratic governance: https://www.loomio.com/ , https://decidim.org/, https://pol.is/home2

• William: Something special about censorship prevention. People boosting until a story becomes the most seen thing in a culture.

• William: Steal This Story, Please! 2025 documentary film of Amy Goodman and her work on Democracy Now

• William: 3 things:

  • anyone can post anything
  • anyone can boost/share anything
  • people can get paid

• Jeremiah: are those 3 things enough? wouldn’t we need more to get accomplish things.

  • awareness is necessary for change in power, but more awareness does not equal change in power

  • real world social circles often mirror online social circles. People reinforce their own filter bubbles just as strongly as social network overlord’s preferences. If people are selective about who they’re following, I don’t know how more diverse opinion is introduced into social feeds.

  • William: People do talk to each other and people do change. If we take away the overriding media environment, it would be more about who you talk to that influences you.

• William: Before if you wanted to reach people, you had to pay money on tv or newspapers. Maybe there was public access, but in general you had to be very wealthy to reach people. The Web changed that, even pre that: email, BBSes. We’re better off with more access and removing the ability for power to censor.

• “Nazi bar problem” https://www.upworthy.com/bartender-explains-why-he-swiftly-kicks-nazis-out-of-his-punk-bar-even-if-theyre-not-bothering-anyone/

• William: We probably have family members and friends who would have a bad time if they joined a Mastodon server right now. How can we make them welcomed as a “big fedi” so they have a chance of getting a nugget of better information.

• Charles: Twitter was everyone all together, but it there were social community isolations in the early days. Every now and

  • then I get things in my feed I don’t want, but it’s rare. It’s a pretty good experience in general.

• Jeremiah: Hypothetical situation of a manosphere Mastodon community server. I am fine with my content reaching that server, but I don’t want to have to interact with people on community servers that are toxic. There’s no server block model that works that way.

• Charles: I block servers based on bullying behavior.

• William: There should be a Fox News-watching normies server where there are people with conservative views that we well moderated possible. It’s not a problem when the people are in their own corner. The problem is when there are poor interactions between people on different servers.

  • If you know there is a Nazi server on the Internet, you don’t not use the Internet just because it’s there too.

• General support for fediverse being for a diverse spectrum of opinions.

  • Another example: pro-AI and anti-AI opinions

  • Can you post about liking Harry Potter on the fediverse? Probably not right now.

• …https://theforkiverse.com ?

• Another example: pro-AI and anti-AI opinions

• William: unwanted tagging problem: unwanted replies (example: “Die [slur]”)