Discussion
Hello world, hello Fediverse! We’re opening up our own presence here. We are the Democratic Tech Fund. We build and fund contra-infrastructure: tools, learning and mobilisation for communities that refuse to rent their digital lives from Big Tech. We’re a bottom-up organised federation. Join us.
@DemocraticTechFund Hi! Please tell more? Who is funding the fund how much money is in it?
Hi @MarloesdeKoning@nrc.social thanks for your questions. Note that DTF is a bottom-up fund, it is all brought together by the members. Now, we are launching the the DTF crowd fund platform, a space where community centred projects can campaign to broaden their community, get donations and in kind contributions so they can realize their ideas. As a community and federation of members we aim to support projects that take back control over the tech they need to realise their social mission. Today at #MozFest in Barcelona we're launching irl!
Then the second phase is to bring in public and private institutions running match funding programmes with us, to multiply th eimpact of the campaigns.
We're glad to dive deeper into this. #dtf let's get down to fund.
@DemocraticTechFund are you folks already talking to @eurosky.social or @bsky.brid.gy / Bridgy ?
@politipet@piaille.fr @eurosky.social@bsky.brid.gy @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy
We are now! Thanks for the reminder!
Do you have a position on LLM usage (so-called AI)?
@unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz thanks for the question! We haven't got a formal policy here, but it is our shared mission to broaden social capacity for the transition towards collective digital autonomy. LLMs from BigTech corporations don't increase our digital autonomy, but instead add an increased layer of dependencies, apart from the various forms of damage tey inflict on people and planet.
Autonomous, local or collectively run services of the type might help collectives? Maybe, let's see the concrete proposals. How's the sustainability of people and planet helped by such services? What do you suggest, do you have relevant policy examples on this front that you could contribute?
@DemocraticTechFund @unchartedworlds Have you used LLMs to generate any of these posts?
(Actually, what I'm really asking is "did you get those bullets using markdown, HTML, unicode, or something else?" - which I guess depends on what server software you are running. Answer: Bonfire. Neat!)
Aw cmon! Let the DTF start posting in the fediverse b4 you start paranoid AI questions! Did you even check out the DTF website? Could you reasonably ask the AI question if you had?
Give us a break! We're hacking a way to civil society autonomy in digital infrastructure in resistance to the Authoritarian Stack. No we don't have policy on Everything That Might Possibly Happen. We're too hard at work, in an agile sprint, bootstrapping, just launching both a crowdfunding platform and a fediverse instance, this week. Join us, become a member?
@kboyd@phpc.social @DemocraticTechFund @unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz
Personally... If you follow my previous fediverse account @mike_hales@social.coop you'll see I post on and off about so-called AI.
@unchartedworlds @DemocraticTechFund
Hello, same question here.
@DemocraticTechFund welcome, friends!
@DemocraticTechFund welcome! Working on something in this space. Following :)
What do we propose?
Find out more at: democratictech.fund/
Why the moment is now? The tools for federated, community-owned alternatives already exist and are production-ready. What's missing is patient, pooled investment to put them in the hands of the communities that need them. The window is open now.
Why are we here? A handful of corporations now own the infrastructure that public life runs on. That's a political fact, not a technical one, and it can be different.
@DemocraticTechFund Welcome!