When we talk about Mastodon or Bluesky or Reddit or any other social network we tend to talk about them as technical or economic entities, but they are also political visions.
Do you want to live in a country where everything everyone says is public? Or one where anybody can mute anybody, but not prevent the person they are muting from hearing them, or vice versa? Or prevent any speech not accompanied by a picture? That’s a political vision. You are writing a constitution.
https://www.britannica.com/story/american-utopias:
“From the colonial era on, the United States has had a rich array of self-contained utopian communities, walled off from the mainstream of life and dedicated to pursuing various notions of individual and collective perfection. Although economic factors often made such projects unsustainable in the long term and members tended to float away over time, some utopian and experimental communities left significant marks on American life. The impulse to gather together with groups of like-minded people in the hope of discovering better ways of living still exists today, embodied in a diverse array of groupings, including communes, eco-villages, survivalist camps, religious communities, and mystical retreats.”
This came to mind reading David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a revisionist history of money built on his anarchistic understanding of government. I am rethinking social networks as little standalone communities based on a shared ideal for community.
Consider what these would be if they were social networks:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_utopian_communities)
| Zoar | Ohio | Joseph Bimeler | 1817 | 1898 | Founded by German religious separatists who wanted religious freedom in America. |
| Old Economy Village | Pennsylvania | George Rapp | 1824 | 1906 | A Harmonites Village. The Harmony Society is a Christian theosophy and pietist society founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. |
| Nashoba | Tennessee | Frances Wright | 1825 | 1828 | An abolitionist, free-love community. (LEP) |