The Fediverse has been teaching me how to be a better digital citizen. Actually, let me rephrase that: without the shadow of a doubt, the Fediverse has made me a better digital citizen.
You may have heard in passing how Fediverse networks are considered to be “ethical social media” – but this description has rarely been followed up by an explanation of how and why. I’d like to give it a shot, through the prism of my personal experience.
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting by “Values of the Fediverse”, but I was pleasantly surprised! It focuses on what over the decades seem to be the core values of Open Source software movements, such as openness, independence, and freedom to use the software how you choose to use it. Just applied to the concept of social media. Which makes sense.
My main home account is on Lemmy.ca not Lemmy.ml ( or another Lemmy instance) because that is how I’ve chosen to associate, and I can. And I could spin up my own instance, and federate or de-federate with whomever I choose.
This isn’t a novel concept, OpenSource.com has a page on “The Open Source Way” which espouses transparency, collaboration, “Release early and often”, inclusive meritocracy, and community. I remember reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” back in the day, and Eric Raymond seemed to extrapolate several values or principle from the open source model.
The free software movement does implicitly have positions on “political” topics. Right to repair, DRM, and privacy come to mind immediately. These shouldn’t be seen as being “Left” or “Right”,
Thank you for the feedback and the testimony – original blog post author right here 👋 I’m glad to hear you were pleasantly surprised and I appreciate the tips about opensource.com and The Cathedral and the Bazaar - made a note to look it up and read it.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is considered a classic, but it’s been 20+ years since I read it. I’m curious how well it holds up.
I was trying to recall some points from C&B and I realized I was muddling much of it up with The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen from the same era, so apparently that made an impression as well.