Disenshitify the fedi (from centralisation) using RMS’s prescription for hopeless Facebook enablers as inspiration

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27305158

Just as Facebook wields and abuses disproportionate power over social media, Cloudflare wields and abuses disproportionate power over the web and threadiverse. Richard Stallman prescribes guidance for FB enablers who are at least willing to take some marginal action against FB’s power. I highly suggest Facebook users read his guidance.

I would never use FB but RMS’s guide conveys basic ideas that can generically be transposed in the centralised fedi context. For years I have practiced a workflow in the threadiverse analogous to RMS’s anti-FB advice to at least do my part in disempowering centralisation. This entails limiting the excessive power of Cloudflare centralised instances, as well as instances centralised by sheer uncontrolled size. Activitypub tries to facilitate decentralised infra, but the Lemmy web UI is actually designed to exacerbate centralisation and the network effect. User diligence is required to counteract it.

1. Target your initial post in a decentralised community that merits promotion.

2. Cross-post incrementally over time. And delay cross-posting to a centralised community like L/W or sh.itjust.works as long as possible.

3. (Lemmy stock web client) In the profile settings, block these centralised instances:

4. (m/kbin stock web client) Block communities on centralised instances.

5. Exploit the fedi datasets for searching.