thinking through my own goals

This past week, I finally decided to announce my intention to start a sociotechnical co-op called LUDDENITES. While I did link the blog post on Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, I haven't made a concerted effort to reach out to my networks and past contacts just yet, since I'm still figuring out basic details and first steps to getting things started. I don't want to ask for help before I have specific asks. At the same time, I know that there are a few things I shouldn't try to tackle alone, especially since I want to launch a cooperative where it's about the team far beyond being just about me.

One of the reasons it's taken me this long to commit to LUDDENITES is hesitation at all the possible points of failure that will come up. It's very likely that this venture will fall flat on its face. But I shouldn't go into it with the intention of letting it fail — I need to acknowledge that I'm not going to get things exactly right on my first try. This is the first time I'm venturing out to found an organization from scratch, and we all gotta start somewhere, right? I can't let the fear of never having done this before stop me from doing the most important thing: actually giving it a try. I need to learn by doing, rather than just sitting with all these doubts in my head.

Of course, I want to do things right. Or, as right as I can. I absolutely do not want to follow the "move fast and break things" and "fail forward" mantras that have dominated the tech industry thus far. Even though I know I'm not going to get it right the first time around, it doesn't mean that I can't be thoughtful about the whole process. So, here's to moving slowly and thoughtfully.

As I start to tackle the early steps of starting a coop (I'm currently looking at the incorporation process in California, thinking about types of coops, articles of incorporation, membership charter, etc.), I also want to be clear about my own time management and goals, both for myself and for those who have a stake in the work that I do. Specifically, it's important to be clear that I am still aiming to complete my graduate program and obtain my PhD by 2027. I am aiming to concurrently launch LUDDENITES while working on my dissertation. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to complete a PhD and then try to figure out how to start a coop while jobless (read: I need health insurance and income), and I think getting some of the initial groundwork laid out now will be invaluable. Not to mention I've been talking about this and dreaming about starting a coop for the last few years, and it's become incredibly clear to me that this is what I want to do with my life for once.

With the world falling apart in so many different ways, and all these frustrating investments into generative AI and the Fediverse that are driving me out of my mind, I want to put my foot down and launch the tech organization that I've always wanted to see. One that defies the trending models in tech today.

I want to reiterate that I'm not here to make a tech solution, because we need systemic social change. However, we can make tech that is enjoyable to use and safer for ourselves and the world around us. While I do think about ventures such as Appolition (as Ruha Benjamin has talked about in Race After Technology as an example of abolitionist tech), I want to be extremely careful when it comes to any sort of technology building task. In my opinion, nothing can replace actual abolition, and there is a real fear that anything else just becomes a stopgap (or in some cases, actually harms the cause). So while I do want to make tech that helps folks, I also want to admit, maybe it's OK to make stuff that's just... kinda neat? And along the way, the ways in which we innovate are in how we treat our team, how we treat our users, how we think about the resources we use, what we do with the moeny we make, etc. What if that's the thing that we're working on changing?

To be fair, the first many things that I'd like to work on with LUDDENITES are things that actually can serve social justice goals and help folks. But very often, folks get into this space and think they're the next messiahs or whatever, making some great difference™️ and letting it get to their heads. I want to avoid this sort of thing and be clear that not everything needs to be solving worldly problems all the time; sometimes it is nice to add joy and play and ratchetry into this world, especially if we do it in a thoughtful and consentful way. But I don't want to get ahead of myself already. The very first thing I want to work on is a social media alternative, which (a) I don't think social media is going to save the world, but (b) social media has offered so much to folks in terms of making meaningful connections – in terms of the personal, the professional, and with organizing, and we've lost so much of that with where social media has gone in recent years. I want to draw on a ton of research and actual in-practice experience to build something better, that we know can be possible, and not just try to rediscover everything from first principles (as some of these platforms frustratingly are doing). And of course, I want to tackle some of the issues that matter to me, such as content moderation, safety, and labor on these platforms, that simply weren't getting enough industry attention in the past.

P.S. (1) I'm thinking about content moderation in terms of how it's experienced on the site (especially to make sure that we have an anti-racist platform that's queer-friendly and accessible), but also in terms of who does the content moderation. We don't want to have more invisibilized, exploited labor. But we also reject that AI is the solution to meaningful, contextual content moderation. This is just one of many examples where we're clearly building a tech product, with certain tech commitments, but it's very explicitly with the framework of thinking about the people involved.

P.S. (2) I'm thinking about labor with reference to content moderation, but also with reference to folks who rely on social media platforms in their work. I'm thinking about how we can make a platform that is safe and sustainable for sex workers, for instance. I'm also thinking about a platform for artists (like anime convention artists) to be able to share their work without fear of it being stolen for generative AI, while being able to connect with their audience. Again, these are very concrete user groups that I want to design for and listen to — grounding a lot of the more abstract, higher-level commitments that researchers and advocates often talk about.