Welcome to the very first special issue of the Immaterial Labour Union zine! After the announcement from WhatsApp in August 2016 regarding the sharing of private user information with Facebook, the homebrewserver.club (HBSC)—a Rotterdam based initiative hell-bent on seizing the means of serving—convened with the purpose of collectively exploring and setting up decentralised instant messaging alternatives. Following a philosophy that puts a higher premium on approaches, instead of apps, the HBSC decided to explore the possibilities for federation offered by XMPP, an instant messaging communication protocol designed as an open standard. Those meetings resulted in the desire to write an extended article on the world of private messaging services, as well as the problems of scale and trust, and so this special issue was born. Besides continuing the Immaterial Labour Union's longstanding tradition of looking at the issue of privacy from a labour perspective, this issue offers you hands-on guides on how to set up your own XMPP server and XMPP Messenger (both desktop & mobile). Last but not least, at the end of this special issue, you can find an XMPP glossary that we put together to give a better understanding of all the jargon involved. You can also read these articles on the homebrewserver.club official website1!
About the Homebrew Server Club
The Homebrew Server Club is a monthly gathering for those who (wish to) host their own online services from home, rather than using commercial and privacy unfriendly alternatives.
All contributions to the zine are licensed under the CC-BY-SA License2.
1: https://homebrewserver.club/
2: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/