Social media, I think it's safe to say at this point, has been a distinctly mixed blessing. On the one hand, our ability to directly connect with each other has been greatly enhanced by this technology; on the other, these platforms and their algorithms have probably increased polarization and certainly enabled plenty of unsavory behavior as well. Added to this, the fact that the majority of these platforms are owned by people who are themselves a rather unsavory lot has led many people and organizations to make the choice to abandon one or more of them. While that is a perfectly understandable response, it is not one that GEO has (as of right now) decided to take for ourselves.
In one of his Team Human episodes, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff likened making use of corporate controlled online spaces for our own purposes as akin to "smoking joints behind the 7/11," i.e. making use of corporate infrastructure in a way that is not only not desired by the owners of said infrastructure, but also directly adverse to their larger interests, and beneficial to our own. While we've never framed it internally in that way, I think that is essentially what we are doing (or attempting to do) with our presence on these social media platforms - specifically Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. While there are large numbers of people looking at those sites, we've decided that it makes sense for us to dedicate some time to plastering them with our posters, so to speak.
To this end, we have even dedicated a portion of our budget to keeping a steady flow of worker co-op and solidarity economy propaganda going up in those places. And fortunately, we do have one outlet for social media that is not controlled or owned by some unaccountable billionaire - Social.coop, a cooperatively owned and managed Mastodon instance, currently with about 900 paying members. We don't, as of yet, have any plans to add a Blue Sky account to our stable of social media feeds, but that certainly isn't out of the question.
In the meantime, if you happen to be on any of the above platforms, please be sure to give us a follow and boost, like, share, etc. any of our content that you see us posting there, so that our presence can be as effective as possible*. Our goal is to reach people through those platforms who we otherwise might not, and to lead them off of those platforms and into IRL cooperation.
Mastodon
https://social.coop/@GEO_Collective
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/grassrootsecon/
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@GEO_Collective
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/GEOCollective/
X (formerly Twitter)
https://x.com/GEO_Collective
* Our facebook account was hacked several months back, forcing us to set up a new one and try to rebuild it. If you had followed us on Facebook before, please follow the link above and like the new page. Thanks!
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