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THE YESTERWEB

Sections:

 1. Mission
 2. Manifesto
 3. Social Etiquette
 4. Summary


MISSION

Working with the guidelines established by the manifesto and the social
etiquette to progressively transform the culture of the internet and beyond.


MANIFESTO FOR A NEW WEB

This is a set of three core commitments derived from the practical experiences
of the Yesterweb staff after two years of community organization. They
concentrate what we have learned and how we operate into a general template that
can be applied to any community at a foundational level. We propose these
commitments as the basis of unity for those individuals or groups who wish to
move in the same direction, while allowing a diversity of focus, interests, and
missions. They are neither rules nor guidelines: they are expectations that are
upheld by all participants, to the best of their ability, who believe in
building a new culture for the web.

 1. The commitment to social responsibility and partisanship:
    
    Safety and self-defense are a basic necessity of any community, which
    includes the recognition that it is impossible to accommodate all people in
    the same social space due to the inevitability of antagonistic beliefs.
    Diversity of opinion is respected up until certain bounds that reflect
    oppressive intentions such as discrimination against age, sex, gender,
    class, nation/race/ethnicity, religion, or disability. When these conflicts
    inevitably appear, the community must strive to understand the situation and
    take the side of the oppressed at any cost. In cases where it is ambiguous
    whether the harm is intentional or accidental, an investigation through
    dialogue is necessary to determine malice or ignorance, as ignorance can be
    resolved with education.

 2. The commitment to collective well-being and personal growth:
    
    Sustainable amounts of selflessness and sacrifice, ideally from all
    individuals, are required to build a healthy community. Building and
    maintaining a new culture requires a consistent social effort as well. We
    should be mindful of collective health, taking compassionate consideration
    of the personal growth of everyone (actively or passively) involved in any
    situation. In our communication we should train our ability to listen and to
    empathize, patiently striving for unity and dialogue rather than division
    and debate, and approaching conflict with the intention of resolution. It is
    important that the community does not create goals purely out of opposition
    or antagonism toward something, and instead works in a positive and creative
    manner, toward building solutions either in individual or collective
    practice.

 3. The commitment to rehumanizing social relations and reversing the process of
    social alienation:
    
    The development of information technology capital has further disintegrated
    our social being, but being social is a mental necessity. We are left with
    the burden of re-learning the way we relate to each other and rebuilding our
    social bonds in a way that treats everyone as equals. This includes
    unlearning dehumanizing behaviors such as treating others as potential
    sources of profit/assets or romantic/sexual objects without knowledge or
    consent, and establishing rules to demarcate separate spaces in which all
    participants are aware and do consent (if such spaces are deemed necessary
    by the community). We should question the impact of our environment on our
    behavior, and carefully conscientiously transform that environment so that a
    better culture and humanity can flourish.


SOCIAL ETIQUETTE

These are guidelines for social behavior that can be applied in online (and even
offline) spaces.

 1. Engage in good faith
     * To engage in "good faith" means to assume that others have sincere,
       honest and respectful intentions.
        * Bad faith discussions are approached with:
           * Personal attacks
           * Assumptions about bad intent
           * Misrepresenting others' ideas
       
        * Good faith discussions are approached with:
           * Honesty and openness
           * An effort to understand others' thought process (where they are
             coming from)
           * Mindfulness of potential misunderstandings that may arise
           * Assumption that others are not deliberately trying to be harmful
    
     * It's important to note: When dealing with sensitive issues that go
       against the dominant worldview (e.g., "commonly accepted ideas"), others
       will likely not have all of the knowledge they need to come to a complete
       understanding of the issue. We should not attack
       seemingly-well-intentioned people for this, and instead work toward
       coming to a mutual understanding when possible.
     * Even when bad faith is evident, do not attack others or lose your cool.
       If help is needed, reach out to the mod team.

 2. Engage in constructive conflict
     * Conflict is necessary for growth. It can be uncomfortable, but it also
       fuels change. There is constructive and destructive conflict. We can only
       engage in constructive conflict when all parties engage in good-faith
       discussions.
        * Destructive conflict looks like:
           * An effort to win at any cost
           * Treating questions or criticisms as personal attacks
           * Mocking or ridiculing others
           * Ignoring, dismissing, mocking or ridiculing others' ideas
       
        * Constructive conflict looks like:
           * People interested in coming to a mutual and, ultimately, better
             understanding
           * Listening closely to others' viewpoints
           * Openness to reconsidering your own perspective
       
           * Reconsidering your perspective doesn't necessarily mean
             reconsidering your position. Perspective is how you view something,
             and perspective is always clearest when we analyze all parts of a
             situation.
    
       
       
     * We should approach conflict as a dialogue instead of a debate.
        * What is the difference between a debate and a dialogue?
           * A debate is oppositional: two or more sides oppose each other and
             attempt to prove each other wrong.
           * A dialogue is collaborative: two or more sides work together toward
             common understanding.
    
     * If it becomes apparent that constructive conflict is not possible, the
       best thing to do is to disengage.

 3. Be mindful of participating in a shared, public space
     * Community space is shared with other people.
     * We should not speak over, interrupt or interject a conversation with
       unreasonably off-topic comments.
     * We should not make our own voices louder than others, being careful not
       to take up more than our own share of space.


SUMMARY

Table of contents:

 1.  Context
 2.  Introduction
 3.  The Mass Movement
 4.  Movement Spontaneity
 5.  Movement Consciousness
 6.  Movement Direction
      a. The Individual Level
      b. The Social Level
      c. The Systemic Level

 7.  The Role of Nostalgia
 8.  The Need for Organization
 9.  Organization Formation
 10. Organizational Methods
      a. The Localized Scientific Method
      b. The Mass Democratic Method
      c. Conflict Handling
      d. Conflict Resolution
      e. Conflict Avoidance
      f. Constructive Criticism

 11. Organizational Goals
 12. Organizational Structure
 13. Observed Phenomena
      a. Cultural Propagation and Transformation
      b. Community Splitting
      c. The Online-Offline Connection
      d. The Role of Youth
      e. Socially Marginalized Diasporas
      f. Pseudonymity
      g. Organizational Discontinuity
      h. Moderation as Work
      i. The Serial Moderator
      j. Class and the Class Taboo
      k. The Professional-Managerial Class
      l. Digital Artists and Game Developers
      m. International Issues

 14. Significant Errors
      a. Handling Die-Hard Personalities
      b. Community Space Overgrowth
      c. Moderator Recruitment
      d. Elitism
      e. Privacy and Security
      f. Free Software Issues
      g. Sexual Discussions
      h. Misunderstanding of Counterculture
      i. Missing Transparency
      j. Mixed Messaging

 15. Conclusion
 16. Appendix I: List of Personal Manifestos
 17. Appendix II: Yesterweb Convention Notes
 18. Appendix III: Subculture vs. Counterculture
 19. Appendix IV: Forum Shutting Down Topic

CONTEXT

The Yesterweb began in February 2021 as a chat server on Discord. From there, it
expanded to a webring, a zine, a Mastodon server, and finally a forum. These are
not a complete list of Yesterweb spaces, but a highlight of the biggest and most
popular for context. The main concentration of the community and its social
phenomena was within the Discord server, and then, to a much smaller extent, the
forum. It briefly spearheaded an anti-web3 campaign in November 2021 which
spurred a rapid growth in the community. Unable to find sufficient organizers to
handle this growth, the organizers went on strike against the community in
January 2023, closed down the Discord server in February 2023, and closed down
the forum on May 1st, 2023.



INTRODUCTION

On May 1st, 2023, the Yesterweb core organizers will cease all
community-building activities with the closure of the self-hosted forum. This is
our experience-summation of online community-building.



In short, the rapid growth of the community (in contrast to the slow growth of
organizers) as well as the unexpected increase in offline responsibilities of
the organizers led to fatigue and burnout, unsustainable community standards,
and a gradual decline in quality of the social spaces. This occurred primarily
in the Discord server (closed in February 2023) but the same symptoms began to
appear in the forum.

We have decided it best to put the organization on indefinite hiatus so that we
could recover and leave the possibility of re-organization in the future, though
under a different name for reasons discussed further within this document. The
potential for community-building still exists through the Mastodon server, but
there are currently no plans to do so.

The following will be a reflection on our experiences (not necessarily in
chronological order) and our analyses of phenomena that appeared along the way.
This summary reflects two years of preliminary work and remains approximate and
incomplete. We hope that it will help observers and participants gain a better
understanding of everything that happened and is still happening, and that this
serves as a useful resource for those individuals deciding to continue the
project in the same spirit that we have summarized in the mission.

THE MASS MOVEMENT

The "movement" is a digital movement of people, thousands if not tens/hundreds
of thousands, who are deciding to reduce their participation in the core web,
with some of those people choosing instead to increase their participation in
the peripheral web. These are separate concepts from dark web, surface web, deep
web, darknet, clearnet, etc. which are left to the interested reader as a
personal analysis.



The core web is the "default" internet experience for all human beings, largely
defined by monopoly-capitalist platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit,
and others. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon largely provide the foundations which
define the (soft but noticeable) boundaries of the core megalopolis through
their search engines and hosting services. That is to say that most internet
users are confined within the boundaries of what they are able to search for and
what has been presented to them. The core web experience is profit-optimized,
keeping individuals within their platforms and services and susceptible to their
media in order to maximize advertising, sales, and data collection.

The peripheral web can be described as the outskirts of the core web, with
platforms such as Mastodon, SpaceHey, Neocities, Discord and IRC chatrooms,
Matrix rooms, various imageboards, and others, including various functional
clones of core web applications. It is the digital countryside of the corporate
megalopolis. Advertising, sales, and data collection are substantially reduced
if not entirely eliminated, providing better conditions for people to socialize
in and a healthier experience overall. It is composed of web platforms that are
hosted on separate infrastructure from the core web by individuals or
organizations with various sources of funding. The peripheral web is discovered
largely through word-of-mouth and personal research. In other words, bridging
the peripheral web to the core web takes a significant amount of effort: the
vast majority of internet users remain unaware of its existence.

This division between core and periphery is approximate and relative, as there
are services and platforms which are ambiguously in-between, such as Cloudflare
and WordPress. There are also areas that can be considered more "rural" than the
scope of our investigation like tilde communities.

MOVEMENT SPONTANEITY

The movement is almost entirely caused by a reaction to the deteriorating
conditions experienced in core web spaces and services, particularly on social
media networks (the combination of social media with social networks).



This reaction can be conscious or unconscious, with most individuals being
semi-conscious of it. Efforts from peripheral inhabitants to convince core
inhabitants to move to the periphery are almost entirely spontaneous and
disorganized. The intention is short-sighted, missing any long-term strategy for
sustainability or retention of new people within the peripheral web. While there
are many social and mental benefits to migration, deeper societal issues are
never addressed and are often reproduced in the absence of a sustainable
organized effort.

Although the migration is gradual, the movement is largely grown through spikes
in activity that are influenced by significant events. Sometimes as frequently
as monthly, a negative event takes place on one of the core social media
platforms. This is usually a corporate decision to modify their services in some
way or some particularly distressing news or social conflict breaks out, causing
a portion of core residents to experience extreme dissatisfaction. Individuals
from the periphery then attempt to seize the opportunity by mobilizing on their
own initiative to convince this dissatisfied group to migrate.

MOVEMENT CONSCIOUSNESS

Any notion of mass consciousness requires a subject: What is there to be
conscious of? We know of the conditions driving the reaction, but to encapsulate
the full spectrum of consciousness in regards to how the web evolves over time
we choose our subject of consciousness as the underlying causes of those
conditions which spawned the movement. We can then divide the mass movement into
three sections: the unconscious, the semi-conscious, and the conscious.



The unconscious section of the movement is unaware that any such problems exist.
They come to inhabit the peripheral web for hobbyist reasons, or from accidental
discovery due to a related trending topic that sparks interest or curiosity. The
unconscious section is significant, but it is, at this time, not the majority.

The semi-conscious section is the overwhelming majority, and it ranges from
those who intuitively feel that something is wrong with the internet, to those
who have a vague idea of the systemic forces driving the problems with the
internet. This section will be further analyzed later.

The conscious section has a reasonably systemic understanding of the economic
and political forces that determine the internet's past, present, and future,
and are sometimes able to make accurate predictions about developments in the
core web, or are, at the very least, unsurprised by them. They consist almost
entirely of a very tiny section of intellectuals who have undertaken self-study.

SEMI-CONSCIOUSNESS

The majority of the movement is aware that problems on the web exist, but vary
in their perceptions of what the problems actually are. However, the
explanations given for the perceived problems contain some truth to them in a
deeper analysis. The reaction to negative experiences within the core web also
has a mental component that drives the need for an individual to explain their
experience in a way that makes sense to them.



We will identify the three general levels of problems experienced: the
individual level, the social level, and the systemic level.

At the individual level, there is an experience of repression of one's own
speech or expression, or of being exposed to things one does not wish to observe
or participate in. The problem is solved with the movement into social
communities that are more accepting of the particular personality which is
seeking it out, or with the creation of personal spaces such as websites or
highly-customizable social media accounts.

At the social level, there is an experience of "toxicity" - the actions of
individuals which negatively impact collective mental well-being - or social
exclusion from the core web due to the tendency of its communities to form echo
chambers and avoid diversity of opinion. There is also an experience of
alienation: the inability to relate to others as human beings and thus feeling
like one is, or others are, sub-human or even non-human objects like robots.
This is resolved with a concentrated and sustained effort to rehumanize
relations through a transformation of culture in smaller and more dedicated
social spaces.

At the systemic level, there is an experience of systemic repression that
reflects the power structures at the foundational level of society. The systemic
consciousness is able to generalize specific incidences as evidence of
underlying oppressive mechanisms. Attempts to solve this are guided by one's
specific worldview and the solutions take various forms according to personal
interpretation.

MOVEMENT DIRECTION

Through its actions, if not completely ineffective or self-defeating in trying
to solve its problems, a movement can go in two basic directions: toward the
future, or toward the past - in other words, progress or regress. We will
analyze the proposed general solutions of the three levels of problems by
splitting them into their representative directions.



Our overall strategy was to educate people through the progressive perspective,
work to resolve problems in the progressive direction on the individual and
social level, and criticize the regressive perspectives and solutions to win
people over to the progressive direction.

THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

The regressive solution identifies the problem as the suppression of freedom of
speech or as being forced to view progressive propaganda against their will. It
attempts to resolve this by escaping from these spaces and finding like-minded
people sharing propaganda they already agree with, or are partial to.



The progressive solution identifies the problem as a deterioration in the
overall experience of the web due to terrible management decisions, leading to
poorer content quality, worse mental health, increased hostility, and
occasionally persecution. It attempts to resolve this by reducing participation
in the core web and reducing social connections and internet usage to a
healthier and more manageable level.

THE SOCIAL LEVEL

The regressive solution identifies the problem as a result of a corrupted
education system, "wokeism" and several other red herrings, or an overall
attitude shift against bigotry, jokingly or otherwise, becoming largely
unacceptable in the wider internet. It attempts to resolve this problem by
seeking alternative spaces that are free from the social consequences of their
antiquated attitudes.



The progressive solution identifies the problem as a culture of suffocating
toxicity, enabled by the optimization of algorithms to drive engagement (and
ultimately revenue) at the cost of mental and social well-being. It attempts to
resolve this problem by seeking spaces without advertisements,
commercialization, recommendation systems, and monopolization.

THE SYSTEMIC LEVEL

The regressive solution identifies the problem as a concentrated effort by a
political elite, such as liberals, globalists, socialists, communists, and the
like.



The progressive solution identifies the problem as one or many social systems,
such as capitalism, imperialism, and the like.

Discussing the solutions are outside of the scope of our investigation since the
solutions remain outside of the movement's current abilities. We hypothesize
that our cultural work is a preliminary step for enabling a progressive systemic
solution, having consistently worked to help others understand systemic concepts
so that they may develop a more interconnected view of world systems and their
role in generating past, present, and future events.

THE ROLE OF NOSTALGIA

The rapid increase in popularity of platforms like Neocities and Spacehey were a
strong indicator that nostalgia was a significant force driving migration to the
peripheral web in recent years. The community was first created when pandemic
restrictions were just starting to loosen up. Nostalgia was often the first
thing that stood out and appealed to new members: there is comfort in nostalgia,
especially during particularly rough times.



However, Nostalgia would often lead to a regressive attitude within the space
that made it difficult to achieve any sort of change. Users focused highly on
nostalgia would value aesthetics as their primary focus which would lead to a
distrust of new tools that did not meet their nostalgic criteria.

This focus on nostalgia would also lead to an uncritical view of what the "old
web" was. Many users would express a desire to return to an "old web" that did
not exist, often with beliefs that the old web was inherently less bigoted, less
consumerist, and less restrictive. While some of this is true depending on where
you look, users would become hyper-focused on returning to a past that never
existed rather than wanting to pursue a future that fit their values.

This disconnect also meant that people who held a much more conservative view of
the "old web" as their ideal would obliquely be under the same label as those
with the more progressive view. These two groups being under the same label
despite wildly differing views means that this label is largely ineffective as
something to build a community around.

Nostalgia for the old web was not just limited to people that had experienced
the old web. Surprisingly, there were many children and young adults that felt
anemoia, or nostalgia for a place or time they have never been. It is clear that
this was a response to the deterioration of the core web that these young people
had grown up in. What isn't clear is whether this reaction is a longing for the
old web and its aesthetics or if it reflects a deeper desire for change that is
partially reflected by the positive aspects of the old web.

THE NEED FOR ORGANIZATION

An uncomfortable truth is that external influences play a dominant part in
shaping our environment and even our own decisions. Anyone who is organized with
others will have a greater ability to influence their environment than those who
are less-organized or not organized at all. As organizations increase in
strength, unorganized individuals will eventually be so powerless as to simply
accept the transformations that are happening due to the will of the
organization.



We have come across many people in this space who express an opposition to
structure or hierarchy in general. Any group of people that comes together for
any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some way. Therefore, a lack of
structure becomes a way of hiding or masking undemocratic power dynamics. For
example, leadership still exists in supposedly 'structureless' organizations,
however this fact is concealed or denied. This is exclusionary to the remainder
of the organization who is not aware of these power dynamics.

The Yesterweb played a significant role in transforming the community and parts
of the peripheral web. This has made a lot of unorganized people very upset -
particularly transphobes, anti-social personalities, and general regressives -
and has driven many of them away from these spaces.

There will always exist a threat of being out-organized by regressive forces. A
textbook example of this is the purchase of Twitter by the richest man on earth.
If the market potential ever appears, capital can always flow into the
peripheral web and transform it into part of the core web.

ORGANIZATION FORMATION

The organization began as a handful of individuals working to discover and
address the needs of the community. As the community grew larger, it transformed
into a loose organization composed of staff members. Finally, a well-defined
organization formed at the core of the staff that created a distinction between
organizers.



In its loosely organized phase, attempts were made to draw the whole community
into organizing efforts. Results were poor because of low participation, and
because the participants were mostly composed of the newest members who had the
least knowledge about the community. We could not ensure an accurate
representation from this setup, so we moved the decision-making as a
responsibility for staff members. This would not work out either as moderators
had varying levels of commitment and we could not reasonably expect them to take
a greater responsibility.

We had eventually run into a serious problem with one moderator in particular
that had several anti-democratic tendencies. It presented a real risk of going
against our goals that had been derived from our social investigations within
the community and replacing them with a personal vision of how the community
should be managed. It was this situation that prompted the creation of a more
rigorous organizational structure: requiring extensive study and training on the
scientific method, the democratic method, and relevant skills for solving
community problems described below.

ORGANIZATIONAL METHODS

THE LOCALIZED SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Since our goal is to create perceptible societal improvements, there needs to be
a procedure which helps give structure to our actions and the interpretation of
their consequences. We would prefer a rigorous scientific method, but it is
impossible for us to have enough control of the social environment to produce
results meeting academic and professional standards. Instead, the collective
body of knowledge is localized, only applicable to and making sense within the
organization and particularly among its practitioners.



To generate localized knowledge, we use this generalized method:

 1. Analysis: Observe the environment and the results of past actions, study
    what is happening and how things are changing. Determine the productive
    aspects and unproductive aspects of any relevant action, event, topic, or
    situation.
 2. Hypothesis: Think of actions, questions, or conversations that will improve
    the situation or guide it toward meeting specific goals, often with the aid
    of external study materials when uncertain on how to proceed. It must be
    socially acceptable.
 3. Experiment: Put the hypothesis into practice to the best of one's ability.
    Be mindful and vigilant during this experiment, determining whether it
    should be changed or aborted entirely as the situation changes. When the
    actions, questions, or conversations have been carried out, return to step
    1.

It is through repeating this practice that we discover the real needs of our
community. We try our best not only to meet those needs but to explain why they
exist and to teach people the necessary knowledge to address those needs
themselves. Once they have grasped that knowledge, they can share it with
others, eventually extending and advancing the organization.

While imperfect and prone to error, this method does help the practitioner to
gain an understanding and mastery of social situations over time. As it is being
carried out in a social context, social mistakes need to be addressed and
resolved (sometimes with more than just an apology).

It can also be applied to many other situations, such as learning a platform or
program, building a website, moderating, or even in daily activities like
cooking and cleaning.

THE MASS-DEMOCRATIC METHOD

We used a specialized version of the mass line, tailored to the functions of our
online spaces, that can be described in three steps:

 1. Learn about and actively seek out the ideas, desires, and problems of the
    people within the community space, particularly from those that we have
    gotten to know and have achieved the highest degree of social connection
    with.
 2. Study those ideas, desires, and problems, discover their root causes,
    discard their regressive aspects, and put it all into a message with a clear
    and simple language that makes sense to whoever we intend to hear/read this
    message.
 3. Work not only to spread this message, but also to live and act in accordance
    with the message in order to serve as an example to be followed for the
    community. Observe the results of this work over time, determine its
    successes and failures, and then return to step 1.

This method is a cyclical process that has to be practiced like a skill,
generally becoming more effective and efficient over time as the experience of
its practitioners grows. Its ultimate goal is to foster progressive growth in
people by helping them to understand and put into practice knowledge which
improves their mastery over their personal situations, leading to better
decisions and actions over time. Correct application under favorable conditions
will inspire and convince others to learn more about this form of leadership,
drawing them into the process of organization.

People who carry out the mass-democratic method can be thought of as an
externalized brain with the purpose of intellectual growth of itself and its
external connections. It is concentrated mental labor done in service to others
who may not yet have the ability or recognize the need to do it themselves.
However it is not automatic since the recipient of this labor must still perform
their own mental labor to understand it, and will not do so unless convinced
that the effort is worth giving. Thus, one of the most important tasks of the
organizational brain is the task of convincing, which is also a skill learned
through practice.

There is also a necessary component of education in this practice. Those who are
being served with democratic means must be taught the reasoning behind these
actions so they can one day put it into their own practice. After the
effectiveness of this practice is realized, the usefulness of democracy becomes
understood. Democracy then becomes the subject of education for its witnesses,
leading to a reproduction and expansion of the democratic process. The
democratic process is finally understood as a practical activity, in contrast to
an idealistic notion of governance, politics, or society. Its primarchy
characteristic is not that it is direct or representative, but massive - it
originates and operates within the mass of people. Just as with the scientific
method, the democratic method is no longer thought of as an external
responsibility belonging to delegated professionals, but as a practice of
everyday life.

Some of the ways we have gathered the ideas of the community include showing
genuine interest in their personal experiences and opinions, taking submissions
for manifestos (see Appendix I), and hosting a counterculture convention inside
of our chatroom (see Appendix II).

CONFLICT HANDLING

The main activity driving the qualitative development of our community space was
the resolution of conflict. The main destructive force causing the deterioration
of our community space was the avoidance of conflict. By conflict we
specifically mean everything that is ultimately derived from intense differences
in desires, beliefs, or perspectives. This can be overt, like criticisms,
disagreements, or direct statements of opinion, or it can be covert, like
pettiness, pedantry, using coded language, passive-aggression, interrogation,
harassment, bullying, doxxing, canceling, or snitching.



All conflict is resolved patiently and on a case-by-case basis, and is the main
responsibility of community work that was carried out by the organizers and
sometimes the moderators. Conflict that is avoided or remains unresolved tends
to silently grow over time until it reappears with greater intensity. The main
reason for the ultimate failure of these community spaces can be reductively
described as an inundation of unresolved conflicts far greater than the staff
was able to handle.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

The social etiquette in this document is an attempt to simplify the method of
conflict resolution that has been used throughout the history of the community.
It was derived from the dialectical method, the socratic method, the scientific
method, and Freirean conscientization. It is not complete and it deserves to be
improved upon by future practitioners.



Conflict is something that arises in every large social space independently of
our own desires, and it arises primarily from differences in, or
misunderstandings of, the personal beliefs of others. It is also something that
happens within an individual in the form of cognitive dissonance. We made it our
responsibility as community-builders to resolve these conflicts between and
within people, often succeeding at reaching a greater collective harmony that
drove the growth of the community and its culture.

Unfortunately in some cases we are unsuccessful in resolving conflict. Within
these cases, the majority are due to certain community members practicing
conflict avoidance or even being stubborn and resistant to criticism. The
minority are due to our inability to understand the problem enough to resolve
it, such as in heated disagreements over obscure topics that are characteristic
of a subculture we are unfamiliar with.

CONFLICT AVOIDANCE

At the opposite end of conflict resolution is the avoidance of conflict. This is
the normal disposition and habit of the community and likely the majority of the
web. We are choosing to define avoidance as anything that does not ultimately
resolve the problem, which is quite a broad definition that takes many forms. A
conflict is avoided by expressing discomfort, or finding an excuse, or trying to
change the subject, or ignoring it entirely, or trying to bury it in a multitude
of ways to reduce its visibility, or finding another conflict to start as a
distraction, or silencing any discussion, or removing members from the
community, or deleting evidence, and so on.



Our most common example: going silent or leaving due to a disagreement, then
discussing it in secret or in a remote location among others who are already in
agreement. This is the echo chamber mentality, but it is understandable; it
takes effort and skill to coexist in a space with a wide diversity of thought.

Our most ridiculous example: we had community members trying to act like secret
police, investigating other members' social media accounts and blogs in an
effort to find evidence that would remove the originator of dissenting opinions
from the community. Anything and everything has been attempted to avoid dealing
with cognitive dissonance, or with the realization that one might be wrong.

The culture we were building was one which values the seeking out of multiple
perspectives in order to further our own misunderstandings, which necessarily
means that we have to be skeptical of our own knowledge. Critics have countered
this by saying that our rules suppress freedom of speech and enforce conformity
of thought. We counter this by saying that we have only suppressed a very small
subset of speech that corresponds to oppressive speech, and our experience
confirms a healthy, near-constant clashing of differing perspectives without it.

We have never banned a member on a difference of opinion except when that member
is stubbornly enabling the denial or suppression of the existence of transgender
people, the times of which can be counted with our fingers. Several banned
members have gone on to obscure the real reasons for their banishment in order
to gain sympathy from others. These situations have shown us that banning can
become a form of conflict avoidance: the conflicts are often exacerbated outside
of our spaces where we have far less power to resolve them.

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

Sometimes conflict resolution requires the introduction of a new conflict in the
form of constructive criticism. The purpose of constructive criticism is to
provide an analysis of a negative situation to its originators, at the very
least increasing their consciousness or understanding of a situation, and
ideally proposing a solution so that better outcomes can be achieved in the
future.



Giving constructive criticism is a skill that must be practiced to improve.
There is often a resistance to giving constructive criticism out of fear of
generating negative consequences. Receiving constructive criticism is a
different skill, but there is also a resistance to receiving it that varies
wildly by individual. Some see criticism as a personal attack or a public
humiliation even if it is clear that they are being approached in good faith and
with the intention of improving a situation.

Constructive criticism is also the last resort before banning an individual from
the community space. They are given the chance to change their behavior with the
aid of reasonable understanding. If no significant change is made, they are
banned without the option to appeal.

ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

All of our goals are derived from the mass-democratic method described above.
They are subject to change based on re-application of the method because, if
correctly applied, the community's thinking evolves over time. This is the
reason why we transformed from hobbyist endeavors, to internet activism, to
social activism, to finally countercultural advocacy.



It is important now to proclaim that we no longer consider what we do as part of
a web revival. We have progressed largely beyond such a characterization because
what we have achieved and reorganized around in our final phase is something
fundamentally new to the web. The "Yesterweb" is now an outdated and misleading
term - we have grown to be far more "today" and "tomorrow" than we are
"yesterday". There is a lot of significance and impact in words and we have to
be careful when we say things like "old web" and "yesterweb" and "web revival"
because it obscures the fundamentally new aspects of what is going on. The
fascination with the old ideals and aesthetics had a real effect on our ability
to advance towards a new web.

An overemphasis on the past will lead to a dead end. The good aspects of the old
web have been brought into the present, the bad aspects have been left behind,
but ultimately our actions and thinking represent a new web.

It is for this reason that we can more accurately be described as advocates for
an internet counterculture that will one day supersede the pre-existing culture,
first in the peripheral web and then in the core web. As the original Yesterweb
staff transition away from community-building, we are calling for prospective
organizers who believe in this mission to study the message we have prepared in
this document and carry it out to the best of their ability, individually if
necessary. The manifesto we have left only encompasses the countercultural
spirit, and future advocates will have to find creative ways to put it into
practice and improve upon it.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

The staff is composed of those holding organizer, administrator, and moderator
positions. As of this writing, all organizers are both administrators and
moderators, and all administrators are organizers. Not all moderators are
organizers, but some perform organizational tasks, making them semi-organizers.



The core organizers were trained to follow a rigorous democratic method. Their
goal was to represent the progressive desires of our community, and carry them
out to fruition to the best of their ability.

We have never taken applications. Moderators are selected from the membership if
they have demonstrated that they are principled, self-disciplined, and recognize
the importance of the community through a personal sacrifice of time and effort
dedicated to serving them. Organizers are then selected from the moderation team
who are consistently present and participate in organizational matters, when
they have proven their democratic disposition, and when they have demonstrated a
commitment to advancing the mission of the organization.

A moderator's only responsibility is to maintain a social space to a certain
defined standard. They can do more than this and often do, but not always. An
organizer has a much larger responsibility, simply put as carrying out the
mission of the organization, but oftentimes that means to moderate the spaces
when there is a short supply of moderators. There is overlap between the two
positions, but it's pretty easy to tell when one is primarily a moderator or
primarily an organizer.

Decision-making is discussed among the organizers and is based on the
concentrated ideas derived from the long-term observation and participation of
the community. Care is taken to ensure that these decisions head in the
direction that leads to the fulfillment of the deepest needs of the community.
Most decisions are arrived at by consensus, but in the case of not being able to
reach a consensus in a timely manner, the minority opinion must carry out the
decision of the majority opinion. Decisions are typically analyzed and reduced
to a series of simple "yes or no" questions to reduce any potential ambiguity.

Once a decision is made, it is brought to the moderators for a second opinion.
If the moderators introduce a conflicting opinion, the organizers reconsider the
decision in light of the new perspective. In particularly difficult decisions
(except for the decision to strike and shut down), the decision is brought
publicly to the whole community for a third opinion. If there is no reason to
reconsider, the decision is carried out.

OBSERVED PHENOMENA

CULTURAL PROPAGATION AND TRANSFORMATION

The culture of a community does not begin as a clean slate, it begins with the
introduction of other cultures that inhabit the minds of the individuals
participating within the same space. Through individual expression, cultures of
other communities are propagated into the new space where they mix and collide
with each other. Because some aspects of these cultures are diametrically
opposed they cannot exist within the same space and are often the underlying
cause of interpersonal conflict.



If dialogue does not resolve these cultural antagonisms, they necessarily
require that one aspect of a culture is suppressed while another one prevails.
Without moderation, this antagonism is resolved by the most dominant and
resolute carriers of their culture. With moderation, this antagonism is resolved
with the use of power as typically defined by rules or enacted at the discretion
of the moderation team. If an individual community member feels that their
culture is suppressed they will mostly either acquiesce or leave, with a handful
becoming resistant and even hostile.

The culture of a community space over time is thus roughly the totality of the
agreeable aspects of several cultures that have been allowed to be established
within that space. However, even if it appears stable, it is always subject to
change with enough strength and determination from new members, and with the
disappearance or neglect of old members - particularly the moderation team.

With enough knowledge and experience it becomes possible to accurately guess
which space a new member typically inhabits through clues that come out from
their expression. In other words, whether it is from language or opinions or
general perspectives and attitudes, we can tell if someone spends most of their
time on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and the like. We are all not as
independently-minded as we would like to believe: enough exposure to any social
environment over time will cause us to adopt some of its established culture.

There is an early phase of acclimation when a new member enters a community
space with a different culture. It is in this early phase where both the new
member and the community are particularly vulnerable, because both cultures are
attempting to resist  the transformation of one into the other. This is why if
there are too many new members with too little effort to acclimate them into the
community's culture, the established culture becomes destabilized and
transformed into something different at the dismay of the established community
members.

COMMUNITY SPLITTING

Individuals permanently leave the community spaces often. The reasons are
largely unknown but are sometimes because of decisions by staff members or due
to disagreements and other negative interpersonal events. In some cases of major
organizational decisions being made, the amount of individuals leaving is
significant enough that they break off into new community spaces and form their
own collective identity separate and opposed to ours. The irreconcilable
differences that arise from our decision-making drive these splits which become
defining events in the history of the community.



The first split was roughly driven by the decision to loosely organize the
community space and give it a mission beyond hobbyism. Members who wanted to
preserve the hobbyist aspect, and who were opposed to any sort of activism, left
and formed their own spaces.

The second split was driven by the decision to move toward a solid
organizational structure. This move to require study and training to make
leadership decisions was the spark for one particular moderator to attempt a
power-grab by starting a separate space without prior discussion. The use of the
same name and the promotion of the same staff members to staff positions without
consent gave the community the illusion that it was a collective decision, when
in reality it was an attempt to siphon the community away into a space where
this moderator had the highest authority. The addition of age-restriction and
the permissiveness of individual advertising - changes that we would have been
adamantly opposed to - was enough evidence to suggest that it was done due to
irreconcilable differences in opinion over which direction to take the
community.

The third split began with the announcement of the closure of our community
spaces and is still in progress, so it is difficult to describe the potential
outcome. Many are being subsumed into the community spaces following the web
revival trend, with a couple expressing their desires to assume the Yesterweb
name and carry it out based on our outdated ideas. We are hoping for the
emergence of a completely new trend that is based on the countercultural mission
we are laying out within this document.

With each split and creation of new spaces came discussions of disagreement or
discontent with us. These spaces became the primary sources of disinformation
about the staff, the goals of the organizers, and our community in general, and
would increase in severity with each organizational decision made in opposition
to their desires.

THE ONLINE-OFFLINE CONNECTION

Almost everything that we have experienced in building an online community has a
similar experience in offline communities that it can be related to. After all,
people communicating with each other through technological tools are still
people communicating with each other - only its physical manifestation is
different. Social and organizational skills learned in offline settings were
readily transferable to their online counterpart, and we expect that our online
experiences will go on to inform our offline experience (if it hasn't already).



We learned about the "extremely online": the section of people who are perceived
to have a severe online-offline balance and out of touch with reality. Through
dialogue we came to understand that it truly is their inescapable reality. We
found no evidence of anyone making a decision to confine themselves indoors that
wasn't severely affected by conditions outside of their control. It can be a
disability, an illness, a dependency, a displacement, a remote location, a
financial situation, a hostile environment, or a streak of bad luck. Being
extremely online can be a temporary experience that lasts months or years - most
will try to fix this imbalance if they believe in the possibility.

Several of our active members had gone offline for months and came back to visit
for brief periods of time. Several others went offline and never returned. After
the completion of this document, several staff members will greatly reduce their
online activity or disappear entirely. In this hybridized world we are uncertain
of where to draw the line, but we have learned to neither dismiss its importance
nor overplay its significance. Understanding why active members may decide to go
offline for extended periods of time is important to forming accurate analyses
and conclusions. It is possible that a change in culture caused their departure
or something else completely unrelated to the community.

THE ROLE OF YOUTH

Children between the ages of 13 and 17 have played an important role in our
community spaces. They are often the section of people most deeply familiar with
the problems of the core web in the present day. It is having a tremendous
impact on their early development and their relationships with their peers. They
are often the most rebellious and the most willing to transform the state of the
web, and their perspective is invaluable to adults who are burdened with
responsibilities that prevent significant self-study into the newest social and
cultural developments. They ultimately inherit the earth, and should be treated
with the respect that deserves.



We almost banned children from our community spaces because we wrongly
associated certain behaviors as being characteristic of children in general. A
closer investigation revealed that these behaviors (mistaken to be a mark of
immaturity) were overwhelmingly performed by those between the ages of 18-25,
even as high as 30 years old. We also visited an adult-only space with
significant overlap with our community and noticed no significant improvement in
the quality of discussions there - they were the exact same discussions. All of
the evidence over time confirms that we were right in working to make the place
safe and welcoming for children to the best of our ability.

Even under the context of having banned sexual discussion in the community for
all ages, adults still express being uncomfortable around children or having
problems with children for largely unspecified reasons. We can only speculate
that they are afraid of being around children due to a lack of self-control in
discussing inappropriate topics, or that they have a disdain for new cultures
that they do not understand, or that they have an irrational prejudice toward
children (even though they were once children themselves). We call for thorough
self-reflections on this matter.

SOCIALLY-MARGINALIZED DIASPORAS

A significant part of the Yesterweb userbase was what we will call
"socially-marginalized diasporas". This label includes societally marginalized
groups such as LGBT  + people, neurodivergent/neuroatypical people, and groups
that are marginalized in more informal ways such as furries,
otherkin/alterhumans, non-disordered plural systems, and more.



We believe a major aspect of this was the hobbyist creation of personal websites
appealing to these groups. Since these groups are often unwelcome or otherwise
mistreated in major swaths of the internet, the idea of a space for pure
self-expression unable to be affected by third parties was greatly appealing.
Another reason for this may be that these communities are common in spaces in
which the "old web" aesthetic has thrived, such as Tumblr, Tiktok, Instagram,
Pinterest, etc. Many users interested in this aesthetic would end up drawn to
Neocities, and by extension the Yesterweb due to the Yesterweb's presence on
Neocities.

The third reason, and potentially the most relevant, was that the Yesterweb
always dedicated itself to making it clear that bigotries towards those
socially-marginalized diasporas was unacceptable. Due to our memberbase being
majority queer at least in terms of the most active users as well as clear
messaging from moderation that it was unacceptable to spread bigotry and hatred,
we believe that this led to the Discord server becoming a comfortable space for
socially-marginalized people to express them.

Unfortunately, this reputation would occasionally lead to us being targeted
either in the form of individual trolls or harassers or very rarely in the form
of larger online communities. In either case, members of these diasporas would
be mocked or sometimes targeted for harassment through messages on several
different personal venues. This would lead to members of these diasporas
becoming uncomfortable and sometimes they would end up leaving Yesterweb
community spaces to avoid being targeted further.

While most of this mocking occurred in social spaces outside of the Yesterweb,
we would have instances of this behavior within the Discord itself. This
occasionally took the form of blatant bigotry which would be dealt with, but it
more often took the form of passive-aggression. For example, users would
interrogate members of these diasporas on their identity as well as express
disbelief or confusion on why users identified the way they did. While some of
this was likely genuine confusion, most of this would be recognized (sometimes
only after the fact) as an attempt to humiliate or cause confusion and
self-doubt.

The large presence of these diasporas would later lead to accusations that the
Yesterweb was overly focused on trans issues or that the Yesterweb was a "trans
circlejerk" for these diasporas. We never entertained these accusations as we
understand they rose from a discomfort to see people discussing their
experiences with oppression and a discomfort being in a space in which these
socially-marginalized diasporas had the largest voice.

PSEUDONYMITY

Members of the community would typically introduce their online presence with
either a  pseudonym or their real-life identity. Sometimes there would be a mix
of both. Typically, those revealing their legal names were professional artists
or tech workers.



Occasionally, someone using their legal name would express that they do not
understand the point of using pseudonyms. They would claim that they chose not
to use one because they had "nothing to hide". This line of thinking appears to
come from an ignorance of particularly acute social conflicts, either from a
lack of direct experience or from a lack of knowledge that it has happened to
someone they know.

Pseudonyms are used online for a variety of reasons, such as being a more
privacy-focused individual, desiring a separation between personas such as your
"work" or "legal" persona as opposed to your "online" persona, for its own sake,
or any number of personal reasons. However they are also a means of protection
for socially-marginalized people. The anonymity that a pseudonym affords them
protects these individuals in real-life ways.

ORGANIZATIONAL DISCONTINUITY

A large-enough community is always active at all times of the day. Significant
events, discussions, and conflicts are completely unpredictable and are never
convenient. Compounding this is that these happenings often require a timely
response. Especially when the goal of the staff is progressive growth, it is
often the case that such opportunities are missed or even go unnoticed due to
floods of further activity. The staff needs time to read, to reflect, to
discuss, to learn, and to act. If a staff member has to step away to handle life
events, not only do they miss out on several developments, the rest of their
team loses their perspective and it greatly affects the ability to do community
work.



MODERATION AS WORK

A significant amount of labor - particularly emotional labor - went into the
moderation of the Yesterweb discord and, to a lesser extent, the Yesterweb
forum. In both of these cases, organizers noted a schism in community perception
of the role of moderation as well as the perceived labor that went into
moderation. This division in thought led to an occasionally combative nature
between the moderators and the community.



Many members of the community had never moderated an online space, or at least
had never moderated a space as large as the Yesterweb. These members would thus
have misconceptions about the labor going into making sure the Yesterweb ran
smoothly. This lack of first-hand knowledge as well as the influence of online
stereotypes on the job of moderation meant that many users had a radically
different view of the work that a moderator does and what they assumed a
moderator did.

This divide brought around conflict more than once. Several users expressed, at
one point or another, a belief that moderators were "taking things too
seriously" during public moderation work. Other users would, either within
Yesterweb spaces or in spaces that detached from the Yesterweb, express
disbelief that moderation work was as labor intensive as moderators would claim.

Unfortunately, part of this comes from a problem summed up with the following
quote:
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
Much of the moderation work was done behind the scenes such as answering tickets
and occasionally pulling users aside to talk to them privately. Many aspects of
moderation work are invisibilized to reduce the stress and mental-health impact
they would have on the community. It would be difficult to express this
behind-the-scenes work without revealing private information or discussing
situations that were still in progress, especially when public revelation would
exacerbate the problems and cause further unnecessary stress.

This disconnect between community and staff perceptions of moderation led to an
interesting phenomenon in which, after the decision to dissolve the community
spaces was finalized, several members would express that they "would have been a
moderator had someone asked." Not only did these users often not fit the
criteria mentioned above on how moderators are chosen, but their expressed
perception of what moderating was like made it clear that the gulf between
community and staff had grown wide.

The emotional labor associated with moderation also led to issues within the
moderation team. Due to the burnout that moderation would cause, work would
occasionally be slanted towards one or two moderators as the other moderators
would be busy or inactive. Those few moderators would have to shoulder a
significant amount of the emotional labor that was usually spread out amongst
the team. This would lead to those active moderators having to work through
severe burnout and emotional drain.

The drop-in, drop-out nature of moderation also led to inconsistencies with
moderating certain issues. One moderator may more severely punish a rule break
than another. This inconsistent moderation would lead to strain between
community and staff as a behavior that was previously un-moderated due to going
unnoticed or being considered a low priority. When this behavior would be
addressed, users would push back considerably due to becoming comfortable in
this behavior. One significant example was a handful of users that were overall
negative for the community but moderation was split on how to handle these
users. This split led to a large amount of mixed messaging that only made it
more difficult to handle these users in the future.

THE SERIAL MODERATOR

We have come across a certain type of person that can best be described as a
"serial moderator". While the ones we have encountered have several years of
moderation experience and tend to jump seamlessly from one moderation position
to another, this title goes beyond being someone with a history of moderating a
variety of communities. This type of individual is drawn to moderation roles
because of the power these roles afford them. Though never explicit, it is
revealed during acute conflicts with these moderators that they expect something
in return out of their voluntary service for their community.



Serial moderators have a specially-curated identity. They value being in the
spotlight. Their manner of communicating tends to be formal, non-controversial
and managerial or "public relations" in character, even between their moderator
colleagues. Generally, serial moderators want to protect their personal image at
all costs, rarely revealing how they truly feel or what they truly think. It is
only through careful and prolonged investigation that we find evidence of their
underhanded and opportunistic nature that differentiates them from other
moderators, sometimes selling out or taking advantage of their communities for
personal publicity or career advancement.

Despite their experience in moderation, they often are a poor fit for moderating
communities. Their dedication to be non-controversial and PR-oriented often
means that they will make decisions that put the least amount of pressure on
themselves, even if it is the wrong decision for the community. They have
strongly anti-democratic tendencies and are vocally against making any decisions
that could jeopardize their control of the situation. They quickly resort to
abuses of power if it grants a personal benefit.

For example, it is a common practice of the serial moderator to delete or censor
even the most mild controversial discussions, particularly ones in which they
belong to the minority opinion (they never intervene in arguments where their
opinion is "winning", even when the hostile attitudes of their proponents are
deserving of moderation). This creates the conditions that ultimately lead to an
ideological space that reflects the beliefs of a small group of people. In the
case of the Yesterweb, a space in which we encouraged opposing opinions and
disagreement within our community, this meant that valuable discussion would
immediately become a target for a serial moderator who wished to avoid conflict
all together. While we had few issues with this due to the overall democratic
nature of the Yesterweb moderation, this can be seen in other spaces run by
these serial moderators.

CLASS AND THE CLASS TABOO

Our experience with class in the community is very important, but very difficult
to discuss. About one-third of humanity is still not online - that's over two
billion people whose voices and culture are missing from the web. Of the
two-thirds who are online, the advanced economies have had a significant lead in
settling in and propagating their cultures in the core web. The peripheral web
is probably worse; it requires more time, effort, and expertise to discover and
participate in which, from a global perspective, is a luxury.



It is difficult to discuss class because it remains a taboo subject among the
relatively, collectively, wealthy internet users. We have found so many willing
to admit so many intimate details about their lives, going as far as publicly
listing their mental illnesses or disorders without fear of consequence. Very
few people in the peripheral web openly reveal information about their class.
Most of the people who do so are professionals who benefit from the status and
authority their credentials confer to their voice, or as a social identity that
helps them network with other professionals.

Open admission to being lower-class is almost only found on core social media
platforms among the people accessing the internet from the poorer countries
within Asia, Africa, or Latin America. From our social investigations across
many different areas of the peripheral web and within our community, those using
the internet who are genuinely lower-class do not have the time to be online as
they are busy trying to survive. They participate on average far less in online
spaces than their middle-class counterparts. Our rare lower-class members spent
far more time observing than participating and were more likely to drop out
entirely because of their offline situations.

Open admission to being middle-class is far worse: middle-class internet users
do not understand class, they often believe they are lower-class, or are ashamed
of having wealth and thus rationalize or omit details about their lives to make
them appear as lower-class. Most will take their relative poverty out of
context, dismissing their dependence on wealthy family members. This is
especially common of middle-class children and young adults, who weaponize their
identity in order to elevate their voice and gain sympathy for their perspective
while omitting how their generational wealth significantly colors their reality.
Those who are openly, proudly, middle-class belong near-exclusively to the
regressive section of the peripheral web: they have either never engaged with
our community or have been discovered speaking negatively about the community on
remote platforms.

We understand that, while economic class shapes our beliefs and culture, class
position is not finally determinant of our thinking. Middle-class people can
learn and adopt a lower-class mentality if they make a genuine attempt to do so,
and some do. However, this still remains exceptionally rare in the peripheral
web. Even those online who believe themselves to be class-conscious and advocate
for the lower-class still hold a dominant middle-class perspective and make
middle-class decisions. We are mentioning all of this because it was a
determining factor in what we were able to accomplish as a democratic
organization operating in an overwhelmingly middle-class community.

The middle-class mentality is derived from competitive capitalist needs. It is
the default mentality learned from social media, mass media, and mass education.
It is deeply a consumer mindset. It is highly individualistic - sometimes
egotistic, cynical, and even misanthropic. More selfish than selfless, personal
ends justify the means. Work is undervalued (unless it's one's own) and often
delegated to others, and if it is ever done, there has to be a guaranteed return
on personal investment. It solves difficult problems with money. Survival is
solitary, exclusive, and cutthroat. It holds the masses in contempt.

In contrast, the lower-class mentality is derived from the needs of survival
under the most difficult conditions of working life. It is learned either
through participation or through investigation of lower-class life. It is deeply
a producer mindset. It is cooperative and collaborative. It understands through
direct experience that work is the source of all value and all creative
development. More selfless than selfish, sacrifices for the collective
well-being are made within reason: there is more to gain than to lose when
working in the service of others. It solves difficult problems through effort.
Survival is necessarily social. It sees the masses as their own.

It takes serious time and effort to cultivate a lower-class mentality,
especially among those who have no direct experience with it. It is necessary
for any truly democratic community initiative: we saw this to be the case when
we called for community members to build the community they wished to see
without relying on the work of staff. There was a collective silence. For those
individuals or groups who tried to take the initiative there was a complete
unawareness on how to collaborate, with many members starting their own projects
in isolation, or without the foresight of added maintenance that implied the
staff was going to eventually hold the responsibility of maintaining it.
Projects were decided based on short-term personal interests rather than
achieving the long-term goals of the community, worked on only at one's own
convenience without shouldering any collective responsibility.

As organizers, we had no expectation that the community would take leadership if
we called for it. The purpose of such calls were to prove that the community was
unable to meet its own desires for expansion or progression. There were plenty
of people with plenty of time, energy, and resources who believed in our
community and wanted it to thrive, so why did only a handful rise to the task of
organized, collective community-building, even after teaching by example and
patiently explaining its necessity over several months? We believe it was
because we did not have sufficient time to cultivate the lower-class mentality,
but we tried our best under the conditions we found ourselves in.

THE PROFESSIONAL-MANAGERIAL CLASS

A common group that often brought a change-resistant attitude is that of the
members of the professional-managerial class. These people work in the tech
industry or in related fields, either as specialized workers or managers. These
figures have much experience in the overall industry aspect of the internet and
often had their real-life identity tied to their Yesterweb presence.



Professionals and managers rely on a few things that made them oppositional to
our goals:

 1. They highly value their label as skilled workers, and often express
    opposition to untrained or hobbyist work related to these fields as this
    would devalue their positions. The value of their positions is determined
    more by their exclusivity than their difficulty, reflected outwardly as
    academic or professional elitism.
 2. Their money is directly tied to things that we stand in direct opposition
    to: advertising, data-gathering, platforms exploiting users, etc. Oftentimes
    they are directly employed by the businesses which are responsible for
    creating the conditions of the core web. This leads to hesitations for
    pursuing any change that could threaten their income or even their capital.
 3. They are often anti-democratic in decision making and often believe that,
    due to their professional experience, they were the most qualified and
    valuable voice in any and all internet-related issues. Tech workers would
    occasionally spread misinformation that users would uncritically absorb due
    to their professional credentials setting themselves up as a uniquely
    knowledgeable source.

The most difficult aspect of dealing with the members of this class is that they
would pay oblique lip service to our goals but they were privately opposed to
the more radical ideas of what we believed. A deep investigation into their
personal beliefs reveal that, more often than not, they will not give up the
benefits offered to them by their class position. Their solidly middle-class
outlook only takes them as far as participating in a subculture, with no genuine
desire for generating a counterculture.

We reiterate that our economic classes do not completely determine our class
mentality. In the end any individual from this class can reason that the class
in general is terrible. You can be a tech worker and be consciously aware that
your coworkers in general benefit too much from the current culture to make real
fundamental change. It requires a psychological betrayal of one's livelihood,
sometimes accompanied by the sacrifice of social status - very difficult, but
not impossible. We remain open to the possibility that the members of this class
in general will one day come around and see the long-term importance of adopting
a lower-class mentality.

DIGITAL ARTISTS AND GAME DEVELOPERS

A considerable amount of visual artists and game devs inhabited the community
space and the work they shared became a definitive part of our creative culture.
The way that traditional social media and other core web platforms were
negatively affecting these trades was a common and popular topic. Many expressed
a desire to leave their presence in the core web entirely, but could not do so
because they relied on these connections for advertising, trade-related news,
and networking.



As the community space grew at a rapidly-accelerating pace, we saw an increase
in opportunistic behavior among those artists and game devs who viewed the space
as another place to increase their visibility and their business. Several
artists would join and only contribute by sharing their portfolio and links to
their pages that advertised for commissions, sometimes putting in effort to
briefly feign interest in the rest of the community. Game devs, though a much
smaller group in comparison, operated in a similar manner. Like a chain
reaction, marketing activity would trigger more marketing activity up to a point
where artists would buy labor from web developers within the community to work
on their websites.

Once we were made aware that a potential grifting had taken place, we took a
risky decision to experiment with the suppression of bourgeois rights: we banned
all commercial market transactions within the space. Many of our members were
trying to escape from the marketing hellscape that pervades the entirety of our
lives and we did not wish for our own space to become just another extension of
the digital marketplace; it was killing the vibe. Banning advertising helped to
improve the social atmosphere, reducing the quantity and improving the quality
of messages being sent within the community space.It also reduced the number of
opportunistic people who joined with the near primary purpose of using the
pre-built userbase of the Yesterweb for personal gain. While some of these users
would slip through the cracks, it made the number go down significantly.

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

English has been used like an international language on the web, but it is still
a limitation that shapes the culture of a shared community space. Like many
spaces in the core web, the members of our community were overwhelmingly located
in countries where English is the primary official language.



We often struggled with americentrism in our community spaces. We have noticed
that it is common to refer to "internet culture" as a universal entity which
really refers only to the English-speaking, middle-class and often American
internet.

Americentrism, as we experienced it, is characterized by:

 1. A lack of awareness regarding technology and its adoption outside of
    America.
 2. A general disregard for members whose second language was English. This was
    expressed by an overreliance on slang in discussion, making no attempt to
    ensure all users could understand their messages.
 3. A lack of knowledge of any significant platforms from non-English-speaking
    parts of the internet.
 4. A general assumption, among some Americans, that everyone else in the space
    was also American, giving no context for political or cultural references
    and showing little interest in affairs outside of America.

Americentrism in our community has had an off-putting effect on non-Americans,
causing a couple of members to voice discontent or leave. Efforts to keep the
community oriented to an international perspective were futile.

SIGNIFICANT ERRORS

HANDLING DIE-HARD PERSONALITIES

Out of every hundred community members, one will show up with a rigid,
unchanging character. While not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes these
characters carry within them toxic traits that slowly (and oftentimes subtly)
poison the well-being of others within the community. This often but not always
takes the form of attention-seeking or space-dominating behaviors. Like serial
moderators their identity is curated, although not to the same refined degree.



What demarcates them from the rest of the community is their refusal to change
what is harmful, or even acknowledge the harm that they are causing. If it is
acknowledged and understood the problematic behavior is addressed by the
individual, but over time it resurfaces as if nothing fundamentally had been
resolved, only temporarily hidden.

We never removed them from the community because we still believed in their
ability to change for the better, but after we announced the shutdown of our
public spaces, several of these characters began openly expressing their
long-held hostility to us. It revealed that their unchanging negative behaviors
were not due to an inability, but to an active but well-hidden defiant
resistance. They took advantage of our kindness, and we have learned our lesson
to not to be so lenient in the future.

COMMUNITY SPACE OVERGROWTH

It makes no sense to have over a thousand people in one chatroom and
simultaneously have high standards for the quality of social connection and
discussion. It is overwhelming for everyone involved and it leads to
dehumanization, alienation, and ultimately a regression for any advances made in
generating a new culture.



The overgrowth resulted in multiple conversations happening simultaneously in
the same space, leading to people getting talked over and at worst ignored. We
tried to combat this by creating more dedicated discussion spaces, but we found
that this did not solve the problem.

In our community, the member count rising did not always correlate with an
increase in activity, because the majority of the most active members were
die-hard personalities who would take up much more space than the average
member. In the Discord server, we had access to detailed statistics about the
most active members as well as the number of messages they would send in a
period of time. There was a wide gulf between the message count of our most
active members and the rest of the community. That being said, there were some
very active members that contributed to conversations in a constructive way, but
this was generally the exception to the rule.

We watched active members become lurkers over time, and when interviewed, many
would cite the space-dominating behaviors of our most active members as a reason
behind disengaging with the community entirely.

Because of the community's size and activity, the organizers and moderators were
never able to give everyone the time that they deserved.

MODERATOR RECRUITMENT

We never established a solid process for accepting new moderators. We were
choosing them by observing how they participate within the community and then
approaching them about becoming a moderator. There were serious mistakes made in
using this approach because we often rushed the process out of desperation to
lessen the collective workload.



Since moderation is (typically unpaid) work, many moderators rationalize this
sacrifice through non-monetary compensation. Many will realize this value in the
importance of protecting and fostering the community that they believe in.
Others will realize this value in their self-aggrandizement: an increase in
their power, reputation, or potential future financial opportunities. This
rationalization is not immediately apparent, which is why the moderation process
should be careful and never rushed.

Moderators have immense power to shape the composition and direction of the
community, and the community is obligated to scrutinize them. A moderator who
resists scrutiny or who is not open and above board with their intentions is
unfit to be a moderator.

ELITISM

We define elitism as a hidden power structure that exerts influence on
individuals or organizations. In our Discord server, the roles of organizers
were clearly distinguished from moderators so that the power structure was
transparent. On the forum it was not so clear because organizers were not
distinguished from moderators, which caused confusion among forum members who
were not aware of the distinction.



We had several instances of members communicating through secret or remote
channels to make decisions or plans affecting the community that the
community-at-large still remains unaware of. Our proposed solution would be to
request transparency from these hidden organizations, and if the request for
transparency is denied then they should be publicly exposed.

One particularly significant case was that of a moderator's close physical
proximity to her partner, who was also a member within the community but not a
moderator. We remained unaware of the security implications of a relatively
unknown community member having indirect access to moderator discussions for
months because we never made time to think about it. Resolving it would mean
either adding the member as a moderator or removing the existing moderator.
Because the member in question had made negative statements criticizing the
freedom of expression of transgender members in our community, we chose to
remove our existing moderator.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY

Because of the highly noticeable presence of our transgender community sector,
the biggest threat to our community was from hidden internal adversaries that
were leaking personal data to incite bigotry on other platforms. This caused
several of our most vulnerable members to leave out of concerns for their
safety. Future threats were mitigated after enforcing stricter rules on personal
safety, including measures to restrict the visibility of outsiders.



For example, earlier in the Yesterweb's history, there were channels that turned
out to encourage unsafe behavior with regards to privacy. These were the venting
channel, which encouraged individuals to vent their frustrations often about
sensitive and personal issues, and the selfies channel, which encouraged members
to share photos of themselves. Both of these channels attracted negative
attention and had been scraped by third parties in order to mock the users that
had posted.  The decision was made to remove both of those channels due to the
fact that both were directly based around sharing personal information that
could be used against users who posted.

A small but significant threat came from former members of the community, some
who were removed for their antisocial behavior. A handful became vengeful for
several months or longer, spreading rumors, gossip, and general disinformation
among their peers that was often readily accepted.

While it was often the case that the best solution was to ignore these problems
and not incite further conflict, sometimes they became too disruptive to ignore.
Beyond practicing better transparency within the community we are still unaware
of how to correctly handle this problem.

FREE SOFTWARE ISSUES

Throughout the lifespan of the Discord server we were constantly criticized over
our use of Discord, being that it is a proprietary software among several other
legitimate problems. Countlessly many people refused to participate out of
living in accordance with their ideals. At one point we did try to accommodate
them by setting up a Matrix room that bridged to the Discord server. This
experiment was ended due to a lack of support and resources, and also because it
produced poor results overall.



What was not understood at that time was that our mission was always primarily a
social one; the technology was secondary. It was facilitated through technology,
but it was about the people using it. From our time with the Discord refusers it
became clear that the vast majority were more concerned about the technology
(and, ultimately, themselves) and less concerned about its social implications.
Discord was a conscious compromise of sacrificing our privacy to make
connections with a wide variety of sociable people, without which it would have
been impossible for us to accomplish in any significant manner what we had set
out to do.

The use of specialized and obscure tools that require financial resources and
maintenance work are still primarily in the hands of the people in the
professional-managerial class. We wish that it were not so, but that is the
current reality. We hope that in the future, more middle-class people will be
interested in the mission we have laid out here, so that they can finally see,
through their own organizational efforts, the adoption that free software
deserves.

SEXUAL DISCUSSIONS

Pornography and explicitly sexual discussion were banned early on in the
community space. The space had no age restrictions, but we eventually decided to
try creating a hidden and mildly-restricted 18+ area for topics which adults
were not comfortable discussing around children. This was a popular decision and
led to a lot of important discussions over aging, work, finances, relationships,
politics, and other typically serious conversations.



Occasionally the topic of kink and fetishes would enter into the 18+ area; It
existed in a gray-zone of our rules - being neither outlawed nor allowed
(because the conversations did not start over specific kinks or fetishes, but
about kinks and fetishes in general, particularly in their relation to internet
and queer culture). The conversations would gravitate towards sensitive topics
and generate heated discussions.

Particularly difficult was the fetishization of sexual abuse, which drew a lot
of anger from community members who were victims of the abuse in question. The
staff brought up the possibility of banning all kink and fetish discussion
within the space and it was strongly resisted with the position that it would
suppress the culture of the queer community. We originally sided with this
position hoping that the community would have learned how to handle these
conversations better, but the same discussion over the fetishization of sexual
abuse reappeared and even started to spread into the greater all-ages section of
the community space. We realized our mistake and enacted our outright ban on all
sex-related discussion, including kinks and fetishes.

To this day we are still accused of being anti-queer and sex-negative for this
decision, which couldn't be further from the truth. We speak from experience
that such discussions should not be had with complete strangers because it can
go very, very wrong, for reasons we mostly leave up to the imagination. We
believe that these topics deserve to be discussed, but within a restricted space
where a degree of trust, understanding, and consent is established among all
involved. Adults and children should maintain completely separate restricted
spaces for these discussions, which went far beyond our organizational capacity.
Even in a securely adult-only space, there are adults who do not consent to
being exposed to these discussions as they are often-times related to serious
personal trauma. This is the state of our world and we should be mindful and
respectful when discussing these topics among others, as it typically runs
deeper than personal disagreements or ideological differences.

MISUNDERSTANDING OF COUNTERCULTURE

Our understanding of culture had evolved over time and we realized at the very
end that there was a widespread confusion with members mistaking a
counterculture for a subculture. We will provide our current basic
understanding:



A subculture exists within the dominant culture. It coexists with the dominant
culture and reproduces many of the dominant aspects within itself. It is
eventually domesticated (all of its conflicting aspects are neutralized) and it
ultimately becomes synonymous with the dominant culture.

A counterculture is born from within a dominant culture - sometimes with
influence from other external cultures - and is fundamentally antagonistic to
certain aspects of the dominant culture. The counterculture grows out of the
struggle against the dominant culture. If it succeeds in convincing the society
of its superiority, it will eventually overtake and become the new dominant
culture.

MISSING TRANSPARENCY

We attempted to be transparent to the community with our thinking and our
actions to the best of our ability. Beyond what was accidentally or carelessly
omitted, we had difficulty with deciding how to be transparent with particularly
sensitive or serious information. There is a time and place to have difficult
discussions - that time and place can easily be missed.



Our biggest mistake was never disclosing that we had removed one of our
moderators due to an abuse of power. We never announced it because we were
largely caught off-guard by the events that took place and we didn't fully
understand what was happening at the time. We came to understand later that it
was an uncommunicated irreconcilable difference of which direction to build the
community.

Our mishandling of the situation caused a significant split within the community
that eventually became antagonistic, even leading to the creation of an
alternative history of the community which is being propagated today as its
faithful continuation. We disagree with that direction entirely, and this
summation was created in part to convince the community of the necessity of
making a course correction, and to take up the task themselves.

This situation, along with others in which users were removed from the community
and ended up creating their own narrative regarding their removal, exposes one
of the largest difficulties brought on by our lack of transparency. For many
situations, we could have exposed information that would have made the true
events clear. However, due to the sensitive nature of some of this information
and our own difficulty in figuring out how to deal with these situations, we
rarely did. In the future, a more proactive approach to transparency may reduce
the chances of these alternative histories from being created and spreading.

MIXED MESSAGING

Because our goals transformed over time, some of our messaging on the website
and other publicly-facing places became outdated. It was an oversight that was
only corrected when it was pointed out to us by community members, sometimes
months too late. This resulted not only from burnout but also from the failure
to consolidate into a stronger organization.



CONCLUSION

Our primary accomplishment has been the generation of evidence that it is
possible for a qualitative progressive cultural transformation to occur in an
online space - under certain conditions and under the direction of conscious
participants - even if only sustained for a brief moment in time. We are
confident that under better conditions with more experienced and curious
participants, the results would be more stable and widespread, with the
potential of not only causing significant change to core web social spaces but
to offline spaces as well.



Our secondary accomplishment has been the documented success of following a
mass-democratic method in a purely online setting, across international
boundaries and with only the simplest and smallest democratic structures in
place (see Appendix IV). We can derive from our organizational experience that
it is likely possible, under very specific conditions, for an individual to have
the same successes with this democratic method in building a community or
organization from scratch.

Our tertiary accomplishment has been making the movement conscious of itself and
guiding it in a modestly progressive direction.

Following this, we have helped people understand the internet and their
relationship with it, their underlying problems with it, and their desires for
its future. We have provided welcoming spaces for people to learn, grow, and
heal in. We have provided help and support in any way we were able to do so.

For those who have been on the receiving end of our mistakes, who feel wronged
or have been hurt, or who have been left with unresolved tensions, we can only
ask for forgiveness. We started from next-to-nothing and we tried our best, but
we've run out of time. We can't be online forever. Hopefully one day, others
will come along to make it right.

If we work hard enough, long enough, and smart enough, things will change for
the better. There is no longer any doubt. The missing ingredient is genuine
desire, so we leave with a final question: Why build a subculture, when a
counterculture is possible?

This summary has been signed by the following organizers, moderators and/or
members of the community:

 * Cinni
 * Madness
 * Tsvety
 * Iris
 * Grafo
 * Vincent
 * Auzzie Jay
 * Sadness

APPENDIX I: LIST OF PERSONAL MANIFESTOS

If a link is dead, try using archive.org to see if an archive exists.

 * A Slow Life, DIY Media and the Indie Web by jrs-storytime
 * Why Neocities? by ajknox
 * The Old Internet Manifesto by publicdiary
 * Synnnn's Manifesto
 * "User Engagement" is code for "Addiction"
 * My Web Manifesto by flamedfury
 * on-the-grid's manifesto
 * Manifesto by corq
 * Hiraethe's Manifesto
 * Resolutions: A Reflection and Manifesto
 * PLEASE, BE UGLY by axlraimi
 * Manifesto by queergrrrl79
 * My manifesto and feelings of Web 2.0 by linkyblog
 * Reclaiming Territory in Cyberspace by gabe.rocks
 * An Argument for a Return to Web 1.0 by VHSOverdrive
 * SkyKristal's Manifesto
 * Internet Manifesto by sadgrl.online
 * This is not the Web I've Known by David Heinemann
 * doll.im's Manifesto
 * Kirby's Rules I Live By
 * My Website is a Personal Museum by bikobatanari
 * Law of House by oekeiko
 * Gildedware's Manifesto
 * MANIFESTO by hellontheweb
 * Remnants of the Old Web by vencake
 * On Art and the Web (a manifesto) by jade-everstone
 * glitchphoenix98's Manifesto
 * Manifesto by Auzzie Jay
 * Nostalgia, Freedom, Web 1.0 by Rubedo
 * Death to Bullshit by Brad Frost
 * Make Boring Websites
 * THE INTERNET IS DEAD by Bleach World
 * I'm a fucking webmaster by Justin Jackson
 * Breaking Tweets: a Web0 Manifesto by chaiaeran
 * Neonriser's Manifesto
 * delovely's Why is your site like this?
 * The Modern Web Sucks by Thomas Pain
 * msx.gay's Manifesto
 * Web Manifesto by rainmirage
 * Why Neocities? by purplehello98
 * Keep the Internet Weird by ohhoe
 * Vistaserv's About
 * OpenBooks Manifesto
 * Why Neocities by blindtwig
 * The Anti-Social Network by Obsessive Facts
 * haptalaon's Manifesto
 * Why Neocities by Cristian Erasmus
 * The Soul of the Ancient Internet by teaspot.club
 * Bechnokid's Manifesto
 * 10kilobytes - manifesto
 * Internet è cambiato! by avalonluna (italian)
 * Death of the Original Cyberspace by milfgod
 * Dizzywhiz's Manifesto
 * FRANDSZK/MANIFESTO.HTML
 * Every Website is a Shrine by Evergreen
 * lime360's manifesto
 * My Internet Manifesto by Jason's World
 * Indie Web Manifesto by lu
 * tabi98's Why Neocities
 * We Were Here: The Lights of Web 2.0 by shadowfae
 * web0 manifesto
 * Vaea's Mission Statement
 * Why the social internet is unbearable now, by Darkwraith Covenant
 * Sanya's Manifesto
 * Make the web yours again by paintkiller
 * Musing #1 by Al's CyberCenter
 * construindo um espaço digital significativo by oidavid (portuguese)
 * Melon's Manifesto by melonking
 * Disco's Internet Manifesto
 * The Neuroknives Manifesto
 * Downgrade to Web 1.0 by Freyx
 * Arrowheads' Manifesto
 * EYRE's Manifesto
 * Old Web, New Web, Indie Web by Peter Molnar
 * My Corner of the Internet by olia
 * Manifesto by darkmiryam
 * LectroNyx's Manifesto
 * Long live the Yesterweb by autiemotion
 * Why Neocities? by 10kb
 * Caracabe's Manifesto
 * The Web is Fucked by Kev Quirk
 * Cupid's Manifesto
 * Party Like it's 1989 (a Web 0 Manifesto) by starbreaker

APPENDIX II: YESTERWEB CONVENTION NOTES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FIRST SESSION OF THE YESTERWEB CONVENTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TOPIC: IDEAS ON HOW TO EXPAND OUR CULTURE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~ IDEAS ~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

!!! the future of the web is decided by an elite few, marketed as beneficial to everyone
!!! new technology is mostly meant to outmaneuver governments for monetary reasons with no regard to consequences (such as environmental impact)
!!! the premise that we will benefit is true in some sense, but in the bigger picture and in the long-term it will be overwhelmingly to our detriment
!!! it will continue to get worse out there until we do something about it (but we don't know what to do yet)
!!! better to get started as soon as possible
!!! massive, vaguely defined goals are what leads to the death of movements
!!! make sure a project doesn't already exist before you start one
!!! if we had our own effectual systems it would make the dominant systems obsolete

!!! remember that we are the internet oddballs
!!! some of us have to pretend to be normal to survive, which means we can't abandon the surface web entirely
!!! many people can't be arsed to read long paragraphs or design websites for several legitimate reasons
!!! many people, especially the younger and/or latecomers, have no idea that these kinds of personal/creative/social spaces have ever been possible

!!! corporate web subsists on unpaid labor of artists and other creatives
!!! be careful about approaching people who are already making money off of social media

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~ ACTIONS ~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** make a wiki
*** draft a yesterweb manifesto
*** collate a list of members
*** summarize the experiences of our previous projects and share them so we can get a better idea of what we can do.
*** have something of a formalized message
*** define concrete steps towards abstract goals

*** start a radio station
*** start a stream or video showcase
*** interview people about their sites
*** make newsletters

*** reduce the friction of migration
*** get more articles on mainstream news sites
*** make the accidental less accidental (in other words: deliberately intervene, actively recruit)
*** constantly encourage others to join us
*** actually talk to people "on the outside"
*** attract a wider variety of people

*** figure out who we should reach out to (some people are more receptive than others)
*** find out what people's issues are so we can help them fix those issues
*** help people with their problems and help them to see the bigger picture of why these problems exist
*** use the mainstream web to promote alternative content and get people out of their bubbles
*** expose people to good concepts like building shrines and help them abandon bad concepts like being haters
*** teach dangers of metadata / surveillance, not just in regards to privacy but also autonomy and control
*** convince people that having your own virtual space is a basic right

*** develop friendly tools to replace dependence on corporate web (like photo collections)
*** develop an email-based service for photo upload
*** develop more tools that interact between both worlds (like fraidycat)
*** develop a tool to generate websites through GDPR data exports

*** develop alternatives for people who rely on the mainstream web for income (such as artists)
*** challenge the culture of commodifying art (and commodifying ourselves)

*** promote a culture of accessibility
*** encourage static sites
*** if you can't make web design easier, make a new web (make html simpler)
*** make the personal web easy, comforting, pleasing, and desirable by helping people make that transition ourselves
*** make the personal web appealing enough that people will be willing to invest their time and energy into learning it
*** challenge perceptions on perfection and imperfection
*** challenge perceptions on what makes a website aesthetically pleasing

*** Form a cooperative
*** Secure our own resources
*** exploit corporate algorithms (turn it against them) like overloading harmful algorithms with garbage data
*** seize the means of production
*** impose mass surveillance on worldwide corporate activity and enforcing laws on boards of directors
*** find an alternative to money and monetization
*** topple the meat industry

*** start a cryptocurrency, a really bad one
*** smash your keyboards
*** agitate celebrities
*** ban your mom from the internet

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~ QUESTIONS ~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

??? what exactly is the goal / purpose of the community?
??? do we have a common "alternative vision" of the web?
??? how do we differ from those in the EFF and the IndieWeb?

??? does having people make personal sites contribute to the demolishing of the mainstream options?
??? are friction and barriers of entry actually a good thing?
??? can we develop a search or discovery method that works for everyone?

??? what would an internet space that works really well for artists look like?
??? how to bridge the gap between techies and creatives?

??? is this just a niche interest or something more?
??? are people uninterested or are there other factors at play?
??? how can people find us if they don't know we exist?

??? are algorithms (or even people who exploit others) evil?


APPENDIX III: SUBCULTURE VS. COUNTERCULTURE



APPENDIX IV: FORUM SHUTTING DOWN TOPIC

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