Twitter ==> Meta - moving from one platform where you are the product to another. Just a different tech bro.

I've been watching the various options for exodus from Twitter since I (very reluctantly) was put in charge of the @AraPaerangiCom account. As Musk makes Twitter suck more and more, people have been looking for someplace else to go. The latest is the brain child of Mark Zuckerberg (whose Facebook incited genocide) called Threads. What these platforms have in common (in addition to tech bro owners) is that users and the data they generate are the product. Early reports note that Threads is highly tied to Instagram and deleting a Threads account has all kinds of ramifications for one's Instagram account. Not surprising in the least.

Last month a blog post provided a great take on how things can be different titled We need more of Richard Stallman, not less. It argues that we must work collectively to protect the software commons created by free software licenses. The starting place is to maximise the use of free software and minimise use use of proprietary software. This is how I have done my work for over 20 years (with a brief period of exception at a CRI due to being misled prior to being hired) using free software stack for almost everything.

‍When we decided to start te-ara-paerangi.community, I looked for options that were free software. That is how we ended up with una.io as the underpinning technology. Our users are not the product. We aim to provide a public good platform for people interested in a better research sector to find one another, organise themselves, and collaborate. That's it. That is the idea.