The Internet Archive has recently set up its own Mastodon server– a federated/decentralized open source social media package– that has garnered lots of attention lately.
We use it in ways that we use twitter now (we are not leaving twitter):
• @internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org for events, announcements, and fun things
• Staff accounts (e.g. my account @brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org) for, well, whatever.
Why? We need a game with many winners, not just a few powerful players.
Through our dweb work, the Internet Archive has catalyzed decentralized web technologies through conferences, summits, meet-ups and camps for 6 years. We need new tech to help with privacy, robustness, and work around issues of disinformation and corporate consolidation. Mastodon is built on open standards so others can build alternative clients and integrate it into other systems.
Looking forward to many social media alternatives: Blue Sky, Matrix, and many others.
Personally, I want to see the evolution and combination of features of Slack, Twitter, SMS, Signal, email, Discord, Facebook, IRC, zoom, google meet, and other ways we communicate. While we are at it, how about a more integrated environment of zendesk, jira, wordpress, and google docs. Free and open technologies that invite interoperability while communities maintain control would be ideal. And in my day-to-day I would love fewer systems to monitor that also limit my direct exposure to celebrities, influencers, and politicians. Oh, I can dream…
Twitter
Facebook
Mastodon
Donations
Physical donations
Please help us learn, this time about Mastodon. Thank you, all!
Your Mastodon server doesn’t appear to be listed on the sign up page.
It looks as though it’s specifically for Internet Archive staff and official posts, so account signups are disabled
I don’t know if you guys of the Internet Archive are worried about that, but as few people have mentioned in other comments. I also seriously think that the Internet Archive should build an anti-WW3 defense and a post-WW3 defense in case WW3 starts by the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war, what happened on Poland some moments ago is a signal of that. So, I think that The Internet Archive staff should plan to build a way that the Internet Archive can still stay online during the WW3 and post the WW3. As well as the Internet Archive staff, as well as the Archive-Today staff, should have their own bunkers with data center bunkers in case WW3 just start. Because, even if our world get destroyed by the WW3 (The Nuclear War), the survivors and their offspring would know how the world, at least, the Internet, was before WW3. I just hope that this war does not escalate. And people should forget about political positions and country positions and they should seek for Detencè and for solve the Russo-Ukrainian conflict by peaceful ways, it is not a matter of being a Putin’s/Zelensky’s/NATO’s “puppet”, but rather a matter of the survival of our own species and of our own world/planet.
I agree with this. The fate of the Internet Archive would be incredibly important if the war ended up escalating to WW3.
Mr Kahle, could you address this? Are there any seed vault like backups of the archive located somewhere safe and secure? Your servers/backups aren’t just stored in major cities in NATO nations, are they? Thank you.
Good to see you’ve setup a mastodon presence. It’s good to plan for potential Twitter demise. It also seems appropriate for The Internet Archive to be on a decentralized platform like mastodon.