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.
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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 ?
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?
What do we propose?
- shared learning and mutual aid: a community where people share their transition towards collective digital autonomy
- tech: Cooperative tools and infrastructure communities actually own and govern.
- fund: A methodology to pool money and fund communities' projects, without holding the funds.
- federation: Solidarity and shared infrastructure across borders, as a collaborative community network.
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 Hi! Please tell more? Who is funding the fund how much money is in it?