The Left Needs to Change Our Social Media Use
The corporations are going to move to remove all left-wing content, it's best we begin changing strategy. Popular social medias need to be a secondary relation, not a primary.
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Our dependence on corporate social media has yielded little for our movement - and this is going to change with new censorship rules under the new administration and rising fascism.
We need to change how we use the internet and organize with it. Starting first with safer, less censored platforms. Spaces where we can mass-share content, coordinate discussion, and distribute agitprop without interference
This leads me to the topics of federated sites, self-hosted servers, and encrypted networks.
What is Federated Sites?:
Federated sites are independent platforms - like Mastodon, Lemmy, or Hexbear - that can talk to each other using a shared protocol called ActivityPub. Instead of one central server controlling everything (like Twitter or Reddit), each site is its own community with its own rules, but users can still follow, reply to, and interact across sites as if they were on the same network.
ActivityPub is the protocol that makes this possible. It’s like a common language that lets different platforms exchange posts, likes, and follows. This creates a decentralized ecosystem called the fediverse, where control is distributed, privacy is respected, and communities can thrive without corporate oversight.
-Federated Sites The Left Should Use:
-Current Left-Wing Federated Sites:
-Non-Federated, Left-Wing Sites
With these federated sites, federated and non-federated socialist sites, we can mass use these for written articles, agitprop, discussions, book review posts, event planning, mass communication, socialist songs, video content, etc. These coupled with sites for little censorship or ads like:
Substack, which has a wide variety of content. Articles, videos, podcasts, etc. | Subscribe to me, by the way.
Rumble, which needs more left-wing content to infiltrate Conservative audiences with little censorship. | Like mine.
With the federated sites and these less censoring sites, if we organize and post/archive consistently, we wouldn’t need to worry about the wrong post removing an entire account and the wide connections we made, and we can use content to spread and agitate people on popular social medias or radicalize people we are talking to in our day to day lives or community engagement.
We Need To Change Strategy:
We need to drastically change the current strategy and begin treating the internet and these sites less like a way to express ourselves (primarily) and more like what it actually is: A tool of mass agitation. The ability to influence millions and organize effectively & quickly.
Many of us still use the internet primarily for entertainment and personal expression. Which for the most part is fine, but as members of this movement we need to see this more as a tool. We have the ability to influence thousands or millions per post and per content or timing. We need to take that to full advantage and treat it more like a means to fight, and less for personal interests.
Self-Hosted Sites & Encrypted Communications:
Self-hosting servers, communities, archives, and websites is the best we can ask for because it gives us complete control and protection against infiltrators and backwards views. Encrypted communications is going to need to be our go-to for any form of organizing and planning.
Obsidian, Self-Host decentralized notes app, where your notes is not saved in a cloud but hosted on your given device.
Revolt, a Discord-style, encrypted communications site, you can (and it’s more preferred to) self-host via downloading the open source software and hosting onto a website domain. Otherwise you’ll be subject to Revolt’s moderation on their servers.
Briar, Messaging & forums, decentralized and end to end encrypted via P2P over Tor. Heavily trusted by activists and whistleblowers.
Matrix + Element, direct chats & server collaboration, end to end encrypted and can be self-hosted on your own servers. Trusted by activists, cyber security specialists and hackers.
CWTCH, decentralized, end to end encrypted anonymous messaging,
Call For A New Strategy:
Federated and non-federated socialist sites, and using federated general sites, need to be our main go-to for anything dealing with our politics as it is less likely to be censored. This, also, needs to be the primary places we share content with the explicit purpose to archive, then mass spread and repost elsewhere including popular social medias.
Popular social medias should mainly be a way to keep up with current events and spread propaganda. We need to see them less as sites to depend on and more as sites to channel our influence to, especially into as many Subreddit communities, Twitter or Facebook groups, and other circles as much as possible. The same way the far-right has a person in every community to influence, is the same way we need to operate. Every member of this movement becomes a node to channel influence out into different locations.
-What makes a pipeline a pipeline?
What makes a pipeline a pipeline is the many entry points into it that leads to specific political communities. The Far-Right perfected the pipeline, the Left barely has one. At most the Left often has disillusioned and upset former conservatives, former liberals, former Bernie bros, who all look for answers and stumble upon far-left communities or theory. The most of a pipeline we get is influencers of the Left who educate on matters which lead more people to becoming left-wing - be that anarchist, socialist, communist, etc.
There is no “Alt-Left Pipeline” but there should be - and people on TikTok are starting to realize that.
Covert propagandists, people who belong to one of many (or multiple) subcultures and online or real life communities, who talk about their subject and micro-dose beliefs and ideology into their content as a way to begin the entry into the pipeline. They don’t make politics their primary topics to discuss, it’s secondary to their hobby or niche as a way to begin radicalization. Once the algorithm picks up on left-wing talking points or positions, it will begin feeding more left-wing content to their audience. THAT is the point of the pipeline, plant the seeds, let the technology or their own questioning begin bringing them to the more blatant stuff. It’s memetic & psychological warfare mixed with algorithm manipulation.
Overt propagandists, this is the majority of Left content creators. People who are so open about their politics that it’s not hard to tell where they align. There is so many of these kinds of influencers that, while it is good, it doesn’t help funnel larger audiences to the Left. There isn’t many entry points to bring others to them unless the overt propagandists are so dramatic and obnoxious that it’s almost impossible to ignore them - which is both a good and bad thing as it creates as many enemies as it does followers. I know this personally & have seen it with others.
Ultimately we need both for this pipeline to exist, and the strategy to mass influence as many people as possible, to work. That said, we can have thousands of covert & overt propagandists but it wont be as powerful without every single left-wing person mass spreading content as far and wide as possible. Yes, outside our echo chambers. Yes, even into communities you may not agree with. Yes, even into groups dealing with your local city, county, or state (of course maintain OPSEC).
You need to see every corner of the internet as a city to influence and people to bring towards the movement as best as possible. That’s our biggest weak point in the Left in terms of influence, the lack of mass mobilization and spread of influence.
Additionally, another massive weakness in our influence is our lack of collective building as influencers/propagandists. We either all have our own small communities, echo chambers, or work with a small group of content creators. We need to get as many content creators and supporters into one central server as much as possible so we can strategize, plan, share tips and guidance on content, and boost each others work or memes to wider audiences as a way to manipulate engagement quotas so the algorithms pushes it out more. That is why I and other comrades created Redline Media Institute:
With all of this now laid out and clear, we know what our next steps must be, and I encourage you to share this piece to as many on the Left as possible to begin building the necessary network for mass influence as soon as possible. We need entry points, propaganda spreaders, into every space across the internet. Nothing should be out of our reach.
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