The world is broken.
You can feel it tonight.
Twitter was not a perfect place. It was managed by an absentee CEO for years, dragged down by inertia, sloppy in its community management.
But as an imperfect substrate for community and civic engagement, a coalition of citizens, leaders, and journalists had made it work.
And because he wanted to, a sloppy rich guy decided to destroy all of it.
This is not a functional state of affairs. It's corrupt, broken and sad.
But that's the world we have right now.
Whatever money wants, money can do. Always worked this way.
Want to make millions into slaves, transport them across the ocean, force them to work? Money is totally into that. Gotta fight a whole war to stop that.
Want to dispossess entire peoples and take their shit? Money is into that too.
Hold people hostage for medicine? Money loves it. Hostage for housing? Money EXTRA loves it.
Name a crime. If it pays, money is in.
For centuries, our systems of money and power have corroded and destroyed, for the benefit of a narrow few.
None of this is new.
But what is new is how power, and money, can be amplified and accelerated by modern technologies.
So, of course. Elon seized Twitter.
There was nothing to stop him. Money. doesn't. care.
But we can heal the world.
We can build systems that value more than money.
I speak to you, right now, on the wings of a dream: that a community could be built enabled by resilient, open, interoperable technologies.
Technology amplifies power.
What Musk resents, because he is so unwell in his hunger, is that he only has a narrow variety of power.
We have power, too.
Tonight we have witnessed the destruction of a commons.
But when we woke up this morning, we woke in the best possible of realities.
A world where an alternative to Twitter was already waiting and prepared to serve in its place.
A world where we own this continuum of thought and relationship cooperatively. A continuum that can grow and scale to meet new demand. A resilient commons of independent communities, electing to work together to build a shared whole.
What a hopeful thing!
We. have. power.
It has never been more possible for small numbers of people to create a positive impact on the world.
Technology allows us to create extraordinary leverage, especially when we use it to amplify the power of others.
Today we witnessed an alternative future to the one we have been sold by so-called visionaries with overloaded checkbooks. Today we witnessed our power to create such alternatives, made REAL.
It should not work the way it did tonight.
It should not be possible invent billions in debt and use it to harm the common interests of so many people.
But money does as it likes.
Let this light a fire in your heart to build a world with an imagination larger than money's. Let this strange vision called a "Fediverse" empower you.
But also: live in reality.
Be prepared to fight for the right to build a web that works like this.
It will be necessary to support the folks at the frontlines of delivering these community technologies.
Keep an eye out for your server admins. If they need cash, and you can afford to contribute, tuck a few bucks in the jar.
Power isn't just going to slink away. They're going to fight, they're going to spam, they're doing to do legal shakedowns.
None of of this gets to be easy. Only possible.
