"4-H clubs but for fediverse development" is probably a good basic explanation of what we're attempting to do with Pleroma

you're probably wondering what clubs intended to teach people how to farm vegetables and raise livestock have to do with Pleroma or the fediverse.

it's actually quite simple: both of these things have to do with promoting self-sufficiency and self-determination through learning useful skills.

in our case, our goals are:

- to produce tools which enable self-agency of users' own personal social web experiences

- to participate in the design and implementation of related technology for the above purpose

- and most importantly, to train an entirely new generation of free software developers who are equipped to tackle the social web

- and ideally, to help the people we train find employment working in the field of rebuilding the libre social web

we’ve always said that Pleroma is a long-term play. but we’ve never really elaborated on why this is, I think.

the end game for us is to teach you (yes, all of you) how to build a resilient and safe federated Social Web. we don’t have all the answers, but we have a basic roadmap for getting from here to that point.

for us, ending Big Tech’s control of the Social Web is only the beginning.

the real goal is to ensure we never return to this situation.

and so, this is why our position has historically been that Pleroma users are expected to participate in it's development. participation does not necessarily mean writing code: helping out in the IRC channel, writing documentation, reviewing and copy-editing other people's contributions to make them better, all of these tasks also count as participation.

we can teach you, but you also teach us. that's how this works.

and I think that's what makes us different from other libre social web platforms. we're building this thing, together. it's a shared adventure.

we don't have a BDFL that says "i really don't think we should do this."

we don't have a CTO that writes fan fiction about hunting down and "fucking up" ethnic minorities.

we try to raise money for projects that share our goals, processes and values.

instead, we work together to determine our own future. and if you ever believe we have quit playing straight with you, you'll be able to pack your bags and fork. no skin off our backs!