Toward a Minor Tech:Niederberger5000 - Revision history

http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech%3ANiederberger5000 Toward a Minor Tech:Niederberger5000 - Revision history 2026-04-09T16:29:12Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.45.1 http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=3442&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User:Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-09-13T19:34:04Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User:Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 19:34, 13 September 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l81">Line 81:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 81:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Anarcha-membercard-final.jpg|thumb|480px|Figure 6: Handwritten membership card of Anarchaserver. (image: the author).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Anarcha-membercard-final.jpg|thumb|480px|Figure 6: Handwritten membership card of Anarchaserver. (image: the author).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I have argued this to be an active refusal of the master voice of the infrastructure of functionality and abstraction. This refusal opens up technological practice into a space to be inhabited (Niederberger). And as both texts insist, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' exist only because they are cared for by a community, as the need of having them is expressed in acts of creating them. Instead of abstraction, the territory offered by ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' is therefore structured by affection. This foregrounds practices of care: administration, maintenance, moderation (meaning the entire scope of making a community work), documentation, fund raising, and last but not least also using the services, which comes with the responsibility of monitoring and providing feedback on functionality. The wiki of Anarchaserver (one of the many ''Trans*Feminist Servers'') refers to the roles included in Trans*Feminist Server practice as “guardians, fire extinguisher, interfaces and scribes” (anarchaserver). It is interesting to note how these roles point towards specific needs, dependencies, and meaningful relations—that is, embodied contexts.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I have argued this to be an active refusal of the master voice of the infrastructure of functionality and abstraction. This refusal opens up technological practice into a space to be inhabited (Niederberger). And as both texts insist, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' exist only because they are cared for by a community, as the need of having them is expressed in acts of creating them. Instead of abstraction, the territory offered by ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' is therefore structured by affection. This foregrounds practices of care: administration, maintenance, moderation (meaning the entire scope of making a community work), documentation, fund raising, and last but not least also using the services, which comes with the responsibility of monitoring and providing feedback on functionality. The wiki of Anarchaserver (one of the many ''Trans*Feminist Servers'') refers to the roles included in <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">''</ins>Trans*Feminist Server<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">'' </ins>practice as “guardians, fire extinguisher, interfaces and scribes” (anarchaserver). It is interesting to note how these roles point towards specific needs, dependencies, and meaningful relations—that is, embodied contexts.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Hence, being part of a Trans*Feminist Server means participating in an ongoing negotiation of the conditions for serving and service. Here, use is not an act of consumption, but one of creation and re-creation that includes the whole territory of relationships with a community and—importantly—with infrastructure itself. </div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Hence, being part of a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">''</ins>Trans*Feminist Server<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">'' </ins>means participating in an ongoing negotiation of the conditions for serving and service. Here, use is not an act of consumption, but one of creation and re-creation that includes the whole territory of relationships with a community and—importantly—with infrastructure itself. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Conclusion ==</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Conclusion ==</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In the aftermath of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, many users considered Mastodon as an alternative. Whereas it is a microblogging service like Twitter, it is not corporate-owned but is a network of connected servers, often operated by communities and nonprofit organizations. However, the change from Twitter to Mastodon proved difficult for many users. I analyze this as a crisis in the user subject position provoked by what I call 'the return of the server'. As tangible infrastructures, servers have been abstracted away from the user perspective due to a further step in the abstraction of digital technology, the cloud, where users deal with seamless fluid processes, dynamic availability, and decontextualized services. Bringing back servers as a central element in signing up to a service asks users to identify themselves not as autonomous individuals, but with respect to a community. This is very different than the consumer choices of big data platforms. To be a user is therefore not self-evident, but deeply shaped by the infrastructural organization of technology, a process Althusser called interpellation. This process also constitutes the subject position of the user as a shared imagination, against which individual subjectivity can be developed. Subjectivity therefore can be seen as a link between the personal and the structural, the individual and the shared, and thus it is a place of being affected but still a place for agency. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In the aftermath of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, many users considered Mastodon as an alternative. Whereas it is a microblogging service like Twitter, it is not corporate-owned but is a network of connected servers, often operated by communities and nonprofit organizations. However, the change from Twitter to Mastodon proved difficult for many users. I analyze this as a crisis in the user subject position provoked by what I call 'the return of the server'. As tangible infrastructures, servers have been abstracted away from the user perspective due to a further step in the abstraction of digital technology, the cloud, where users deal with seamless fluid processes, dynamic availability, and decontextualized services. Bringing back servers as a central element in signing up to a service asks users to identify themselves not as autonomous individuals, but with respect to a community. This is very different than the consumer choices of big data platforms. To be a user is therefore not self-evident, but deeply shaped by the infrastructural organization of technology, a process Althusser called interpellation. This process also constitutes the subject position of the user as a shared imagination, against which individual subjectivity can be developed. Subjectivity therefore can be seen as a link between the personal and the structural, the individual and the shared, and thus it is a place of being affected but still a place for agency. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I discussed ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' as an example of opening the territory for a relation not only to a community, but also to technology and infrastructure itself. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both narratives and situated technological practice, and through this they are able to re-articulate a territory of technological relations as a whole. They do so by using the server as a protagonist who offers a discussion and a terrain for practice, being both narrative work and lived technological practice. As part of their narrative work, they raise questions of servitude: what does it mean to be served and to serve? Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' formulate different relations, informed by care and maintenance and not by abstraction. This also raises new possibilities for user subject positions: to be a user of a Trans*Feminist Server means being part of an ongoing negotiation about the conditions of services and serving as a part of a community, but also as a part of technological practice on the level infrastructure itself.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I discussed ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' as an example of opening the territory for a relation not only to a community, but also to technology and infrastructure itself. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both narratives and situated technological practice, and through this they are able to re-articulate a territory of technological relations as a whole. They do so by using the server as a protagonist who offers a discussion and a terrain for practice, being both narrative work and lived technological practice. As part of their narrative work, they raise questions of servitude: what does it mean to be served and to serve? Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' formulate different relations, informed by care and maintenance and not by abstraction. This also raises new possibilities for user subject positions: to be a user of a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">''</ins>Trans*Feminist Server<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">'' </ins>means being part of an ongoing negotiation about the conditions of services and serving as a part of a community, but also as a part of technological practice on the level infrastructure itself.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' challenge the conventional consumer subject position of the user, who is a self-regulating autonomous liberal individual. Mastodon does this by suggesting the identification of a user being in relation to a community as an initial step in the sign-up process. Becoming a user on Mastodon therefore means becoming a member of a community first. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are community-run infrastructures and thus require being associated with a community as well. However, in a second step they offer also different relations to infrastructure itself in that they radically question relations of servitude and replace them with relations of care and maintenance. This opens up an ecology of practices, transforming use into a contribution far beyond consumption. Being a user on a ''Trans*Feminist Server'' thus means being part of the re-creation and maintenance both of the community and the infrastructure.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' challenge the conventional consumer subject position of the user, who is a self-regulating autonomous liberal individual. Mastodon does this by suggesting the identification of a user being in relation to a community as an initial step in the sign-up process. Becoming a user on Mastodon therefore means becoming a member of a community first. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are community-run infrastructures and thus require being associated with a community as well. However, in a second step they offer also different relations to infrastructure itself in that they radically question relations of servitude and replace them with relations of care and maintenance. This opens up an ecology of practices, transforming use into a contribution far beyond consumption. Being a user on a ''Trans*Feminist Server'' thus means being part of the re-creation and maintenance both of the community and the infrastructure.</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=3440&oldid=prev Simoon at 10:55, 13 September 2023 2023-09-13T10:55:37Z

<p></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 10:55, 13 September 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l43">Line 43:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 43:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both the user and the nerd are subject positions of technological practice. One aspect in said crisis of user subjectivity is what I call 'the return of the server'. Even if scale is an important aspect for user experience, the difference between Twitter and Mastodon is not only one of numerical scale in terms of user count, but first and foremost one of organization on an infrastructural level. Twitter operates as a centralized platform; it is a unified service accessed through an app, and its data and processes are located in the cloud. Mastodon, however, runs on a decentral network of federated<ref>“Federation is a concept derived from political theory in which the various actors that constitute a network decide to cooperate collectively. Power and responsibility are distributed as they do so. In the context of social media, federated networks exist as different communities on different servers that can interoperate with each other, rather than existing as a single software or single platform.” (Mansoux and Abbing 125)</ref> servers connected by a shared protocol.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both the user and the nerd are subject positions of technological practice. One aspect in said crisis of user subjectivity is what I call 'the return of the server'. Even if scale is an important aspect for user experience, the difference between Twitter and Mastodon is not only one of numerical scale in terms of user count, but first and foremost one of organization on an infrastructural level. Twitter operates as a centralized platform; it is a unified service accessed through an app, and its data and processes are located in the cloud. Mastodon, however, runs on a decentral network of federated<ref>“Federation is a concept derived from political theory in which the various actors that constitute a network decide to cooperate collectively. Power and responsibility are distributed as they do so. In the context of social media, federated networks exist as different communities on different servers that can interoperate with each other, rather than existing as a single software or single platform.” (Mansoux and Abbing 125)</ref> servers connected by a shared protocol.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on. <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"> </del></div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|480px|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|480px|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l58">Line 58:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 58:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In order to make it easier for people willing to join, the first move was to solve the problem by meeting the expectations of users (and with copying it the conventions of corporate platforms), and giving up the list in favor of promoting only one server: mastodon.social. Mastodon.social is one of the biggest instances (servers) operated by Mastodon GmbH, a nonprofit organization run by Eugene Rochko that is registered in Berlin (Eugene Rochko is the developer of Mastodon, but not the owner<ref>Mastodon is only one piece in a larger set of applications that exchange posts and contents through a shared protocol (ActivityPub), which includes not only the microblogging service of Mastodon (and its forks), but also, among others, Peertube, a video sharing platform, and Pixelfeed, an image-based platform not unlike Instagram. This larger ecosystem of interconnected services is called the “Fediverse.” In the Fediverse you can have content coming from different sources mixed into one feed, which is very different from the gated environments of big tech platforms.</ref>).</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In order to make it easier for people willing to join, the first move was to solve the problem by meeting the expectations of users (and with copying it the conventions of corporate platforms), and giving up the list in favor of promoting only one server: mastodon.social. Mastodon.social is one of the biggest instances (servers) operated by Mastodon GmbH, a nonprofit organization run by Eugene Rochko that is registered in Berlin (Eugene Rochko is the developer of Mastodon, but not the owner<ref>Mastodon is only one piece in a larger set of applications that exchange posts and contents through a shared protocol (ActivityPub), which includes not only the microblogging service of Mastodon (and its forks), but also, among others, Peertube, a video sharing platform, and Pixelfeed, an image-based platform not unlike Instagram. This larger ecosystem of interconnected services is called the “Fediverse.” In the Fediverse you can have content coming from different sources mixed into one feed, which is very different from the gated environments of big tech platforms.</ref>).</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice. <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"> </del></div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|300px|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|300px|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l75">Line 75:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 75:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Transfeministservers-s.jpg|thumb|642px|Figure 5: Screenshots of the The Wishlist for *TransFeminist Servers (2022), and the Manifesto for Feminist Servers (2014) (from left to right).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Transfeministservers-s.jpg|thumb|642px|Figure 5: Screenshots of the The Wishlist for *TransFeminist Servers (2022), and the Manifesto for Feminist Servers (2014) (from left to right).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>At the center of this articulation are questions of servitude. “Are you being served?” was the title of a workshop that took place in Brussels in 2014. During a three-day event at Constant, an artist-run space in Brussels (About Constant), artists and practitioners met to discuss concepts and exchange alternative practices involving servers along the questions of who is being served, by whom, and what the conditions of services are (Hofmüller et al.). Introducing the question of servitude allows for a discussion of relationships to and through technology. This involves the subject positions they invoke. Users of platforms are encouraged to believe to be at the receiving end of servitude through a discourse about use-fulness and use-ability, but services are provided under very specific conditions marked by privilege. The chances of being served are not equally distributed, and vulnerable communities often find that they, their content, and their communication <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">is </del>not protected by platforms (to be clear, this includes Mastodon, which is notoriously white and has been proven to be hostile towards people of color in far too many cases). Servitude is a very specific relation between users and technology. It includes the strong distinction between users and the contexts of running services, including the materialites of infrastructures and all of the practices that are needed to make a service work. Servitude is deeply marked by abstraction from specific contexts, with uncomfortable links to slavery as the most radical abstraction, or thingification. This link is still present in technological terminology of master and slave relationship, or less explicitly, in talking about clients and servers. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' try to open up these relationships towards other, more careful ones while keeping in mind the “swamp of interdependencies they are with” (A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers).</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>At the center of this articulation are questions of servitude. “Are you being served?” was the title of a workshop that took place in Brussels in 2014. During a three-day event at Constant, an artist-run space in Brussels (About Constant), artists and practitioners met to discuss concepts and exchange alternative practices involving servers along the questions of who is being served, by whom, and what the conditions of services are (Hofmüller et al.). Introducing the question of servitude allows for a discussion of relationships to and through technology. This involves the subject positions they invoke. Users of platforms are encouraged to believe to be at the receiving end of servitude through a discourse about use-fulness and use-ability, but services are provided under very specific conditions marked by privilege. The chances of being served are not equally distributed, and vulnerable communities often find that they, their content, and their communication <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">are </ins>not protected by platforms (to be clear, this includes Mastodon, which is notoriously white and has been proven to be hostile towards people of color in far too many cases). Servitude is a very specific relation between users and technology. It includes the strong distinction between users and the contexts of running services, including the materialites of infrastructures and all of the practices that are needed to make a service work. Servitude is deeply marked by abstraction from specific contexts, with uncomfortable links to slavery as the most radical abstraction, or thingification. This link is still present in technological terminology of master and slave relationship, or less explicitly, in talking about clients and servers. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' try to open up these relationships towards other, more careful ones while keeping in mind the “swamp of interdependencies they are with” (A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers).</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Feminist*Servers exist as communities and real infrastructures (List of Feminist Servers) out of a real need to create safer spaces online for vulnerable communities (spideralex). Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both a thinking tool and communal infrastructures (Snelting and spideralex), which means that their work is both narrative work and lived technological practice. This is radical in the sense that it re-articulates the whole territory—both conceptually, with the protagonist of the server, as well as practically, in that it operates technology as a community project. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Feminist*Servers exist as communities and real infrastructures (List of Feminist Servers) out of a real need to create safer spaces online for vulnerable communities (spideralex). Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both a thinking tool and communal infrastructures (Snelting and spideralex), which means that their work is both narrative work and lived technological practice. This is radical in the sense that it re-articulates the whole territory—both conceptually, with the protagonist of the server, as well as practically, in that it operates technology as a community project. </div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l90">Line 90:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 90:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I discussed ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' as an example of opening the territory for a relation not only to a community, but also to technology and infrastructure itself. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both narratives and situated technological practice, and through this they are able to re-articulate a territory of technological relations as a whole. They do so by using the server as a protagonist who offers a discussion and a terrain for practice, being both narrative work and lived technological practice. As part of their narrative work, they raise questions of servitude: what does it mean to be served and to serve? Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' formulate different relations, informed by care and maintenance and not by abstraction. This also raises new possibilities for user subject positions: to be a user of a Trans*Feminist Server means being part of an ongoing negotiation about the conditions of services and serving as a part of a community, but also as a part of technological practice on the level infrastructure itself.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>I discussed ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' as an example of opening the territory for a relation not only to a community, but also to technology and infrastructure itself. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are both narratives and situated technological practice, and through this they are able to re-articulate a territory of technological relations as a whole. They do so by using the server as a protagonist who offers a discussion and a terrain for practice, being both narrative work and lived technological practice. As part of their narrative work, they raise questions of servitude: what does it mean to be served and to serve? Thus, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' formulate different relations, informed by care and maintenance and not by abstraction. This also raises new possibilities for user subject positions: to be a user of a Trans*Feminist Server means being part of an ongoing negotiation about the conditions of services and serving as a part of a community, but also as a part of technological practice on the level infrastructure itself.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' challenge the conventional consumer subject position of the user, who is a self-regulating autonomous liberal individual. Mastodon does this by suggesting the identification of a user being in relation to a community as an initial step in the sign-up process. Becoming a user on Mastodon therefore means becoming a member of a community first. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are community-run infrastructures and thus require being associated with a community as well. However,<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"> in </del>a second step they offer also different relations to infrastructure itself in that they radically question relations of servitude and replace them with relations of care and maintenance. This opens up an ecology of practices, transforming use into a contribution far beyond consumption. Being a user on a Trans*Feminist Server thus means being part of the re-creation and maintenance both of the community and the infrastructure.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' challenge the conventional consumer subject position of the user, who is a self-regulating autonomous liberal individual. Mastodon does this by suggesting the identification of a user being in relation to a community as an initial step in the sign-up process. Becoming a user on Mastodon therefore means becoming a member of a community first. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are community-run infrastructures and thus require being associated with a community as well. However,<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"> in </ins>a second step they offer also different relations to infrastructure itself in that they radically question relations of servitude and replace them with relations of care and maintenance. This opens up an ecology of practices, transforming use into a contribution far beyond consumption. Being a user on a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">''</ins>Trans*Feminist Server<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">'' </ins>thus means being part of the re-creation and maintenance both of the community and the infrastructure.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Notes ==</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Notes ==</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=3167&oldid=prev Simoon at 20:34, 21 July 2023 2023-07-21T20:34:46Z

<p></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 20:34, 21 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1">Line 1:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>__NOTOC__</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>__NOTOC__</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">= Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' =</del></div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>'''Shusha Niederberger'''</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>'''Shusha Niederberger'''</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">= Calling the User:<br>Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' =</ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><span class="running-header">Calling the User: Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and <i>Trans*Feminist Servers</i></span></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Abstract ==</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Abstract ==</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=3134&oldid=prev Manetta: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-21T18:36:44Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 18:36, 21 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l94">Line 94:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 94:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Works cited ==</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Works cited ==</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><div class="workscited"></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>''About'' ''Constant.'' https://constantvzw.org/site/-About-Constant-7-.html?lang=en. Accessed 19 June 2023.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>''About'' ''Constant.'' https://constantvzw.org/site/-About-Constant-7-.html?lang=en. Accessed 19 June 2023.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l165">Line 165:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 166:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Srnicek, Nick. ''Platform Capitalism''. Polity Press, 2016.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Srnicek, Nick. ''Platform Capitalism''. Polity Press, 2016.</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></div></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:5000 words]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:5000 words]]</div></td></tr>  </table>

Manetta http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=3012&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-17T14:33:40Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 14:33, 17 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l7">Line 7:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 7:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this paper I discuss how user subject positions are invoked by digital infrastructures as an alternative to big technology platforms. With subject positions I mean a shared and often unarticulated understanding of what kind of technological practice is meant when we talk about users: user as a cultural form. I start with the analysis of a crisis in user subjectivity as it manifested in the migratory waves from Twitter to Mastodon at the end of 2022, after Elon Musk bought Twitter. Like Twitter, Mastodon is a microblogging service, but it operates as a network of connected servers run by nonprofit organizations and communities. I argue that Mastodon—by way of its infrastructural organization around servers and communities—invokes a different subject position of the user than the self-contained autonomous liberal subject, one that is based on a relationship with a community. In a second case study, I discuss how the artistic activist practices of ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' create a territory to rethink relations to technology itself, most prominently through raising questions of servitude: what does it mean to serve and to be served? I argue that through this, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are able to reformulate use as part of relations of care and maintenance and implement them in their technological practice. As I conclude, both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' project a user exceeding the neoliberal subject. While Mastodon does so by proposing a subject position related to a community first, ''Trans*feminist Servers'' go a step further and moreover open use as a practice beyond consumption, thus operate on relations to infrastructure itself.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this paper I discuss how user subject positions are invoked by digital infrastructures as an alternative to big technology platforms. With subject positions I mean a shared and often unarticulated understanding of what kind of technological practice is meant when we talk about users: user as a cultural form. I start with the analysis of a crisis in user subjectivity as it manifested in the migratory waves from Twitter to Mastodon at the end of 2022, after Elon Musk bought Twitter. Like Twitter, Mastodon is a microblogging service, but it operates as a network of connected servers run by nonprofit organizations and communities. I argue that Mastodon—by way of its infrastructural organization around servers and communities—invokes a different subject position of the user than the self-contained autonomous liberal subject, one that is based on a relationship with a community. In a second case study, I discuss how the artistic activist practices of ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' create a territory to rethink relations to technology itself, most prominently through raising questions of servitude: what does it mean to serve and to be served? I argue that through this, ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' are able to reformulate use as part of relations of care and maintenance and implement them in their technological practice. As I conclude, both Mastodon and ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' project a user exceeding the neoliberal subject. While Mastodon does so by proposing a subject position related to a community first, ''Trans*feminist Servers'' go a step further and moreover open use as a practice beyond consumption, thus operate on relations to infrastructure itself.</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><div class="page-break"></div></ins></div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Introduction ==</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>== Introduction ==</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=2977&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-17T13:29:21Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:29, 17 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l56">Line 56:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 56:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">360px</del>|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">300px</ins>|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|280px|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|280px|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=2976&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-17T13:28:02Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:28, 17 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l56">Line 56:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 56:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This earned sweeping critique from the community, which highlighted the dangers of centralization for the whole ecosystem and insisted on the nature of federation being exactly about community-centered infrastructure. Eventually, this was resolved by again putting up an overview of servers, but this time with the ability to filter it by regions and topics, language, and other types of differences. This solution is a strategy to remain loyal to federation- and community-based infrastructures by making the wealth of communities legible in order to facilitate choice. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">300px</del>|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">360px</ins>|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|280px|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|280px|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l69">Line 69:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 69:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>One example of alternative thinking through how subject positions are invoked by means of technology is formulated in ''A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers''. This is an updated version of an older text, ''The Feminist Server Manifesto'' (Constant). Both of them were written by a “community of people interested in digital discomfort,” as the Wishlist puts it. Both the Manifesto and the Wishlist<ref>For reasons of readability, I will use “Trans*Feminist Servers” to refer to issues addressed in both texts.</ref> choose the server as their protagonist, in the form of a self-articulation. A protagonist is what Goriunova calls a “figure of thought” that offers a “position from which a territory can be mapped and creatively produced” (Goriunova, “Uploading Our Libraries”). By means of this self-articulation, the ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' produce different imaginations of technology that include the role of the user.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>One example of alternative thinking through how subject positions are invoked by means of technology is formulated in ''A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers''. This is an updated version of an older text, ''The Feminist Server Manifesto'' (Constant). Both of them were written by a “community of people interested in digital discomfort,” as the Wishlist puts it. Both the Manifesto and the Wishlist<ref>For reasons of readability, I will use “Trans*Feminist Servers” to refer to issues addressed in both texts.</ref> choose the server as their protagonist, in the form of a self-articulation. A protagonist is what Goriunova calls a “figure of thought” that offers a “position from which a territory can be mapped and creatively produced” (Goriunova, “Uploading Our Libraries”). By means of this self-articulation, the ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' produce different imaginations of technology that include the role of the user.</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Transfeministservers-s.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">480px</del>|Figure 5: Screenshots of the The Wishlist for *TransFeminist Servers (2022), and the Manifesto for Feminist Servers (2014) (from left to right).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Transfeministservers-s.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">642px</ins>|Figure 5: Screenshots of the The Wishlist for *TransFeminist Servers (2022), and the Manifesto for Feminist Servers (2014) (from left to right).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>At the center of this articulation are questions of servitude. “Are you being served?” was the title of a workshop that took place in Brussels in 2014. During a three-day event at Constant, an artist-run space in Brussels (About Constant), artists and practitioners met to discuss concepts and exchange alternative practices involving servers along the questions of who is being served, by whom, and what the conditions of services are (Hofmüller et al.). Introducing the question of servitude allows for a discussion of relationships to and through technology. This involves the subject positions they invoke. Users of platforms are encouraged to believe to be at the receiving end of servitude through a discourse about use-fulness and use-ability, but services are provided under very specific conditions marked by privilege. The chances of being served are not equally distributed, and vulnerable communities often find that they, their content, and their communication is not protected by platforms (to be clear, this includes Mastodon, which is notoriously white and has been proven to be hostile towards people of color in far too many cases). Servitude is a very specific relation between users and technology. It includes the strong distinction between users and the contexts of running services, including the materialites of infrastructures and all of the practices that are needed to make a service work. Servitude is deeply marked by abstraction from specific contexts, with uncomfortable links to slavery as the most radical abstraction, or thingification. This link is still present in technological terminology of master and slave relationship, or less explicitly, in talking about clients and servers. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' try to open up these relationships towards other, more careful ones while keeping in mind the “swamp of interdependencies they are with” (A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers).</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>At the center of this articulation are questions of servitude. “Are you being served?” was the title of a workshop that took place in Brussels in 2014. During a three-day event at Constant, an artist-run space in Brussels (About Constant), artists and practitioners met to discuss concepts and exchange alternative practices involving servers along the questions of who is being served, by whom, and what the conditions of services are (Hofmüller et al.). Introducing the question of servitude allows for a discussion of relationships to and through technology. This involves the subject positions they invoke. Users of platforms are encouraged to believe to be at the receiving end of servitude through a discourse about use-fulness and use-ability, but services are provided under very specific conditions marked by privilege. The chances of being served are not equally distributed, and vulnerable communities often find that they, their content, and their communication is not protected by platforms (to be clear, this includes Mastodon, which is notoriously white and has been proven to be hostile towards people of color in far too many cases). Servitude is a very specific relation between users and technology. It includes the strong distinction between users and the contexts of running services, including the materialites of infrastructures and all of the practices that are needed to make a service work. Servitude is deeply marked by abstraction from specific contexts, with uncomfortable links to slavery as the most radical abstraction, or thingification. This link is still present in technological terminology of master and slave relationship, or less explicitly, in talking about clients and servers. ''Trans*Feminist Servers'' try to open up these relationships towards other, more careful ones while keeping in mind the “swamp of interdependencies they are with” (A Wishlist for Trans*Feminist Servers).</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=2975&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-17T13:25:39Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:25, 17 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l41">Line 41:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 41:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">360px</del>|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">480px</ins>|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The return of the server happens very prominently at the first step of the signup process for Mastodon. Here, Mastodon asks users to pick a server and hence a specific context to join. In order to answer this, users need to identify themselves in ways that are different than on big technology platforms. When signing up to a commercial platform, users are asked to identify themselves as a classical autonomous (self-contained) liberal individual. In contrast, the sign-up process for Mastodon asks users to choose a server, which means identifying themselves in relation to a community first. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The return of the server happens very prominently at the first step of the signup process for Mastodon. Here, Mastodon asks users to pick a server and hence a specific context to join. In order to answer this, users need to identify themselves in ways that are different than on big technology platforms. When signing up to a commercial platform, users are asked to identify themselves as a classical autonomous (self-contained) liberal individual. In contrast, the sign-up process for Mastodon asks users to choose a server, which means identifying themselves in relation to a community first. </div></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l58">Line 58:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 58:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|300px|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-serverlist-s.jpg|thumb|300px|Figure 3: Screenshot of the server list on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org/servers</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">300px</del>|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Masto-mobile.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">280px</ins>|Figure 4: Screenshot of the sign-up process start on the official Mastodon app (31.05.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>On the official mobile app (named Mastodon and also maintained by Mastodon GmbH), however, new users are still presented with mastodon.social as the default server. In order to choose another server, users are taken to the list on <nowiki>https://join.mastodon.org</nowiki>, which is a website outside the app. Thus, joining servers other than mastodon.social is discouraged by a complicated process that is difficult for newcomers to navigate. This difference in sign-up procedures on the web and in the app mirrors the tension of how users are conceptualized through technology: as a member of a community around federated servers versus a self-contained liberal individual of a service.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>On the official mobile app (named Mastodon and also maintained by Mastodon GmbH), however, new users are still presented with mastodon.social as the default server. In order to choose another server, users are taken to the list on <nowiki>https://join.mastodon.org</nowiki>, which is a website outside the app. Thus, joining servers other than mastodon.social is discouraged by a complicated process that is difficult for newcomers to navigate. This difference in sign-up procedures on the web and in the app mirrors the tension of how users are conceptualized through technology: as a member of a community around federated servers versus a self-contained liberal individual of a service.</div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=2972&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-17T13:16:51Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:16, 17 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l41">Line 41:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 41:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Of course, technically speaking big technologies and the cloud also operate on servers. Servers are still the main nodes in the infrastructure of the Internet: it is on servers that data is stored and where user requests are processed. But on big tech platforms, servers have been abstracted away in order to make technical systems scalable (Monroe). Servers have disappeared from the view of users due to this recent additional step in the chain of abstractions on which digital infrastructure is built. And with it, a contextual and materialist understanding of digital infrastructure disappeared as well. Specific machines, local contexts, and a diversity of practices turned into immaterial services and apps. Servers have been replaced with the cloud, a metaphor suggesting quite the opposite of the massive, energy-hungry data centers powering large scale digital infrastructure. Thus, in the age of cloud computing, we simply cannot know the number of servers Twitter is running on. </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">480px</del>|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Mastodon-server.jpg|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">360px</ins>|Figure 2: Screenshot of the sign-up page on <nowiki>https://joinmastodon.org</nowiki> (08.06.2023).]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The return of the server happens very prominently at the first step of the signup process for Mastodon. Here, Mastodon asks users to pick a server and hence a specific context to join. In order to answer this, users need to identify themselves in ways that are different than on big technology platforms. When signing up to a commercial platform, users are asked to identify themselves as a classical autonomous (self-contained) liberal individual. In contrast, the sign-up process for Mastodon asks users to choose a server, which means identifying themselves in relation to a community first. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The return of the server happens very prominently at the first step of the signup process for Mastodon. Here, Mastodon asks users to pick a server and hence a specific context to join. In order to answer this, users need to identify themselves in ways that are different than on big technology platforms. When signing up to a commercial platform, users are asked to identify themselves as a classical autonomous (self-contained) liberal individual. In contrast, the sign-up process for Mastodon asks users to choose a server, which means identifying themselves in relation to a community first. </div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon http://cc.practices.tools/wiki/index.php?title=Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Niederberger5000&diff=2957&oldid=prev Simoon: /* Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers */ 2023-07-12T15:48:07Z

<p><span class="autocomment">Calling the User. Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers</span></p> <table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface"> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <col class="diff-marker" /> <col class="diff-content" /> <tr class="diff-title" lang="en"> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td> <td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 15:48, 12 July 2023</td> </tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l32">Line 32:</td> <td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 32:</td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>When Elon Musk bought Twitter at the end of October 2022, people started discussing alternatives. One of them was Mastodon—like Twitter, a micro-blogging service. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not corporate-owned. It is a network of connected servers that are often run by small collectives and nonprofit organizations. Following the acquisition of Twitter by Musk and during every wave of policy change that followed, the Mastodon network showed waves of new registrations. During little more than three months, the Mastodon network grew from 4.5 to 9 million users and, more significantly, from 3,700 to 17,000 servers (according to the User Count Bot for all known Mastodon instances @mastodonusercount@mastodon.social). For comparison purposes: Twitter has 368 million users (Iqbal), so even with the steady growth of Mastodon’s user count, changing from Twitter to Mastodon is a movement through technological scale, with many consequences (because platforms thrive on network effects: the more numerous their users, the more valuable the platform is for everybody [Srnicek 45]). But on the part of the users, this was often experienced as a crisis in subjectivity: </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>When Elon Musk bought Twitter at the end of October 2022, people started discussing alternatives. One of them was Mastodon—like Twitter, a micro-blogging service. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not corporate-owned. It is a network of connected servers that are often run by small collectives and nonprofit organizations. Following the acquisition of Twitter by Musk and during every wave of policy change that followed, the Mastodon network showed waves of new registrations. During little more than three months, the Mastodon network grew from 4.5 to 9 million users and, more significantly, from 3,700 to 17,000 servers (according to the User Count Bot for all known Mastodon instances @mastodonusercount@mastodon.social). For comparison purposes: Twitter has 368 million users (Iqbal), so even with the steady growth of Mastodon’s user count, changing from Twitter to Mastodon is a movement through technological scale, with many consequences (because platforms thrive on network effects: the more numerous their users, the more valuable the platform is for everybody [Srnicek 45]). But on the part of the users, this was often experienced as a crisis in subjectivity: </div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Nerds-for-nerds.png|thumb|<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">540px</del>|Figure 1: Screenshot of a Twitter post by a friend of mine: “As long as the alternatives (somewhat pointedly formulated) are ‘from nerds for nerds,’ this discussion is of little use. This is just how nerds accuse everyone else of being lazy. I would be more interested in discussing who should be responsible for a more inclusive web (commons, public service).” (author’s highlighting and translation)]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Nerds-for-nerds.png|thumb|<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">642px</ins>|Figure 1: Screenshot of a Twitter post by a friend of mine: “As long as the alternatives (somewhat pointedly formulated) are ‘from nerds for nerds,’ this discussion is of little use. This is just how nerds accuse everyone else of being lazy. I would be more interested in discussing who should be responsible for a more inclusive web (commons, public service).” (author’s highlighting and translation)]]</div></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></td></tr> <tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>It is important to understand that this is not only a personal crisis. When my friend articulates here that he is not a nerd and hence Mastodon is not for him, it is not only about him. It also is about the subject position of the user being different than that of the nerd. </div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>It is important to understand that this is not only a personal crisis. When my friend articulates here that he is not a nerd and hence Mastodon is not for him, it is not only about him. It also is about the subject position of the user being different than that of the nerd. </div></td></tr>  </table>

Simoon