important announcement
it is neither new nor a secret that big tech organisations such as meta are doing more harm than good to our communities, mental health, environment, and many other aspects of our daily lives. we are taking the small, but significant step of leaving instagram.
after wishing for a music industry, cities, and scenes without the harms of big tech companies for countless moments, pos will pull the plug and explore new possibilities. an important catalyst for this decision was the unfair removal of frxctose’s instagram account, as well as the profiles of their co-founder and many artists within their community. these types of censorship practices, especially targeting queer/trans and feminist, communities and initiatives, are known, and they keep worsening at a fast rate.
we won't allow the frustration and powerlessness resulting from examples like these to paralyse us. the uncomfortable truth is so transparent, not only from large-scale social media platforms, but from the entire digital infrastructure we inhabit. we are taking action, even if it's a relatively small gesture: deleting one account amongst many. but this is just the first piece of the puzzle.
we are tired of living inside an internet that leads us to anger and exhaustion, and we know we are not alone in this feeling. unfortunately (or is it?), we have to build our own internet spaces from the ground up for a sustainable future. after making the decision to leave around pos' dinner table, a sudden but intense sense of relief was clearly felt. why are we still giving time and attention to these dynamics? why do we choose to continuously participate? we need to take agency through the slow, uncomfortable process of (un)learning and creating a new strong foundation, sustainable for the long term.
the good news is that there are plenty of people actively working on this for a while. as we’ve been exploring these themes further, we’ve discovered a passionate network of people and organisations investing in creating different structures and more meaningful ways of connecting, and this is all much closer to us than we think.
what's next?
with all the time and intention invested in these platforms that do not align with what pos is, we will instead invest in growing the community through the website and newsletter. we will continue to give space to projects that spread the open-source & knowledge-sharing mentality we already develop in our other projects. for us, these are not buzzwords; they are concrete steps towards a future that places people and nature over profit.
additionally, with this decision comes a sense of responsibility to bring the community along. we see an opportunity to empower each other by nerding out, finding ways to self-organise, create archives, self-host, code and interconnect our networks, just as much as we do off screen. we will dedicate even more time to creating spaces for these conversations to take place, through talks, workshops and research groups. in other words, it's time to start creating different structures. we need each other, and your contribution and learning process is important too.
this is not a foolproof process, we still have a lot to learn, and so many other structures we cannot realistically detach from (yet). whatsapp is unfortunately still part of the channels for communicaton, but we are actively making moves to use other open-source solutions for our website, cloud services, messaging and more.
how to find pos in the future?
we will continue creating and sharing more playful content, ranging from lighthearted and easy, all the way to more intricate and complex deep dives. instead of searching for our instagram profile, you can type our website into your browser and find out what we’re up to and even share with your friends if you wish. or better yet, you can get all this information straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter. this is now the easiest channel to share ideas, infos and updates with you so we strongly encourage to subscribe! it's really that easy.
unsurprisingly, there are many people around us who have been thinking and creating around these topics for a while in more sustainable ways. if you are one of those people, please get in touch with us at platform@possibilitiesopenstudio.com. we would love to hear about all the ways you are thinking and creating with the internet and manifesting it offline as well.
as of now, the pos profile is fully archived, and it will remain online and inactive until the end of year, to give time for this move to properly land, since the connections we made along the way are also very valuable.
so, please subscribe to our newsletter! think along! join us?
resources:
article: you can export all your information out of instagram and save for archiving
book: the rulers by cecilia rikap
interview: cecilia rikap on how tech giagints wield their power against us all