Toward a Minor Tech:FeministServers5000

From Feminist Servers to Feminist Federation

'We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass'. It's always about critical connections.'

- Grace Lee Boggs

Authors: nate wessalowski, Mara Karagianni

Abstract [yet to follow]

Feminist Federation

After the first phase of the PeerTube platform was implemented on Systerserver and a curated period of try-outs had come to an end, questions regarding the continuation and maintenance of the video platform as well as long-term availability arose. While the response from the resident artists and collectives was very encouraging, growing Systerserver’s video platform into a more visible instance¹ did not align with the sysadmin’s capacities, resources, and interests. Thus, instead of taking up more responsibility as a ‘single point of service’ and adopting the naturalized logic of ‘scaling up’, Systerserver decided to explore a different path to nurturing its feminist communities: the formation of a feminist federation. This is an ongoing process that, at the time of writing, has just started to unfold. This text can thus only provide a preliminary outline of what a feminist federation on the basis of the PeerTube software might eventually grow into.

1Instance is the term for a particular installation of a software on a server.

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