Click here for direct access to the AUC FediScreen.

Organizing our collective escape

Watching the news, it is getting harder and harder to deny or ignore: we are stuck in digital networks that undermine the basic foundations of our (academic) freedom and sabotage our democracies.

We find that many within our community, both students and staff, want to leave these networks, but the very strong network effects make it very hard to do so individually.

We believe that the university has a unique opportunity and responsibility to help its community overcome these hurdles and to provide the coordination and incentives that are necessary to escape what is essentially a classic collective action problem.

Social innovation

The technology is already there: for several years the open source community has developed the Fediverse, a network of federated platforms that have community autonomy built into their very core.

But technology is not enough; you also need the people. This is where our plan for the FediScreen comes in.

In short, the FediScreen would be a screen at a visible spot in the building that would show the posts of a curated list of Fediverse accounts that use the hashtag “#FediScreen”.

Adding a chicken

The logic is to break the “chicken and egg” problem of new media platforms. Right now, many content producers are hesitant to invest their time and efforts in new media platforms because their audience is not there, while their audience is hesitant to join new media platforms because the content producers are not there.

The FediScreen breaks this stalemate by giving content producers an incentive to publis on the Fediverse, even when their audience is not yet there. This in turn, we hope will also atract the audience to the Fediverse, kickstarting the Fediverse snowball we have all been waiting for.

Long-term goals

Over time, we hope …

• … that the FediScreen encourages more AUC bodies to (also) produce content on the Fediverse,
• … that this content will in turn attract more members of our community to the Fediverse.
• … that this will spread awareness of the existence of the Fediverse.

It’s FOSS!

The code to run the FediScreen is very simple: just one html file. The git repo gives some simple tips how to adjust it to your own liking, and we are of course very happy to help out.

The FediScreen movement!

Like we said, we believe the university has a special responsibility to guide its community towards a world without, so we hope that other universities will soon put up their own FediScreen.

Having said that, we believe that the basic logic of the FediScreen applies as much to other types of organizations. We can for instance easily imagine organizations like Surf, de Groene Amsterdammer or the NRC putting up a FediScreen for themselves.

All it takes is a simple place to host an html file, and a screen with internet access!