Dan Goodin on Nostr: As the wave of authoritarianism has crested, I've been challenging myself and others ...

As the wave of authoritarianism has crested, I've been challenging myself and others to ween ourselves off of centralized platforms that leak our private data (through breaches or voluntarily) and deplatform us for any reason or no reason, leaving us high and dry with no warning. You know this is awful when labor unions, civil rights groups and other groups under threat continue to trust Slack, Gmail, Xitter and the rest now of the broligarch-owned gatekeepers more than ever.

Some of you (and in some cases I) have responded with criticism of those still using these platforms. Many of you say unions should use decentralized alternatives such as Zulip, PGP on top of Slack, Mattermost, Matrix. Besides victim blaming, this response is misguided because it expects groups divert resources from their core missions to making immature and hard-to-use platforms work inside their organization.

All of this reminds me of the struggles we had with our dependence on unencrypted email in the 2000s and early 2010s. Back then, the only alternative was PGP, which was unusable for 50% or more of email senders. Then Signal (npub1rkw…5q62) came along and solved most of the sticking points, almost overnight.

The lesson: decentralized, privacy-preserving platforms don't happen by accident. And they can't be cobbled together in beta form. They require funding and smart engineering that prioritizes usability as much as security.

I'm still not sure how we ween ourselves off of centralized platforms, but I think the success of Signal may serve as a useful model. Maybe we don't try to replace all platforms at once, Maybe for now we focus on finding an alternative to, say, Slack and use the momentum of that to tackle other platforms afterward.

I obviously don't have answers yet. I don't think anyone does yet. But it's important we start asking questions and stop blaming non-technologists who just want a platform that works.