To apostatize is to renounce a (religious, political, etc.) belief. Collective Apostasy1 is a grassroots campaign directed to people who were baptized at birth so they can collectively renounce to this sacrament. The objective is to stop being a statistic that the catholic church uses to interfere in public policy. Thanks to the baptism registry, the catholic church considers that 90% of Argentinians are catholic and for that they receive public funding, estimated at $ 13.000.000.000 ARS1 per year.
To apostatize from asocial networks of mass-surveillance doesn't mean to abandon every form of gathering, keeping ourselves informed, sharing or having interesting discussions. There're other social networks that are libre and communitary.
We propose several strategies and scenarios. If you were thinking about leaving Facebook (and Twitter, and Google, etc.), keep reading :)
Drastic
If you're fed up and you don't want to know anything else, you can close your accounts and come with us to the Fediverse.
The Fediverse is a network of interconnected communication nodes, that is, they federate. To talk with someone who's on Facebook, you need a Facebook account, and the same for Twitter, and for every other platform. In the Fediverse you just need to pick one of the many nodes, the one that looks more friendly, more trustable, and through it we can talk with every other.
Networks like Diaspora*, GNU Social, Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, and others, are different software that allow any community to self-administer a node. If before this ability belonged only to corporations, now every collective can have it's own network and federate it with the rest.
Alternative media
While we always propose to abandon capitalist networks, we also understand that they're currently the most massive platforms for public opinion. This turns them into spaces for struggle.
The strategy we have in these cases is to keep these networks, but at the same time, also publish in free and communitary networks. In this way, people that are migrating to them can keep up with the news. It also prevents the effect of joining a new space but abandoning it immediately because "there's no one to talk to".
For organizations
We've found that some collectives are using Facebook not only for public communications, but also for self-organization and decision-making. As Audre Lorde said "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house!" This means that even as Facebook provides groups, in its social model there's no room for horizontal organization. To Facebook, we're only individuals shouting opinions at each other.
There're other tools crafted for horizontal organization and consensus decision-making, like Loomio. Loomio has been inspired by Occupy and it happens to be free software also. At Partido Interdimensional Pirata we've used it and we invite every collective to use it.
Regular uses
Sometimes we want to remove ourselves from capitalist network, but we can't because we'll left behind our affects, families, works, studies...
For these cases, we propose using alternative apps, so our devices won't betray us by giving away information we aren't publishing by ourselves. We can still participate, but more than less in our terms, instead of the ones imposed by corporations.
Tinfoil for Facebook or Twidere, by instance, are free software apps that allow us to access these capitalist networks without the official, gigantic and treacherous apps.
Mutual aid
As any apostasy must be collective to be effective, we propose to gather and help each other to abandon capitalist networks, and flee to libre and communitary ones to keep finding ourselves in the cyberspace, with no exploitation, with no manipulation, with no harassment.
Let's apostatize together!
Disclaimer
There're other alternatives that are distributed, anonymous and encrypted. The apps and nodes we can recommend here are only few, selected with a criteria of security and freedom for the people. Nevertheless, a communication media for left-libertarian organization of actions systematically suppressed by the state and its institutions is only possible with a little more effort. Do you think your affinity group, collective, party or movement will want to have and use better technologies for communication?
You can contact us... there's no interdimensional magic, but there's much to learn, teach, and even develop.
PARTIDO INTERDIMENSIONAL PIRATA
Mail: contacto@partidopirata.com.ar
Diáspora*: partidopirataargentina@diaspora.com.ar
Mastodon: @pip@todon.nl
We're also in the process of apostatizing P)
Twitter: @PartidoPirataAr
Facebook: Partido Pirata Argentino
1: To know more about Collective Apostasy: http://apostasia.com.ar
2: Nearly $ 350.000.000 USD at the time of writing.