It may seem like a strange thing to many younger Americans now, but there was a time when the internet was about people connecting to people, directly, without big corporations getting in the way.
There was no Facebook, no TikTok, no Google feeding us the content they decided we should see. These big platforms didn’t interfere with the flow of information and ideas they way they do today.
Back then, people made their own web sites, and they connected to other web sites. People linked to each other directly. They found new voices, and new ideas, and forged networks on their own.
Since the growth of the platformed internet, most people have stopped creating their own web sites. They’ve become dependent upon big corporations to find people and to send people their way. These corporations have exploited this power to make online connection difficult, pressuring people to spend money to break through to others.
Corporate platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Google have become obstacles to communication and connection, not enablers. Any activist project that wants to reach people needs to grapple with this problem.
I propose this solution: Let’s get back to an internet that people create for themselves. Let’s walk away from platform posting. Let’s bring back the links.
Here’s an example: Atheists at Texas A&M University are currently in platform silos, separate from each other, and struggling to break through.
It’s a hard life for atheists at Texas A&M, because although their school is a state university, it is controlled by the state government of Texas, which is thoroughly controlled by Christian Nationalist political networks.
Academic freedom is severely constrained at Texas A&M. Professors are afraid to step out of line and teach anything that doesn’t conform with the extremist right wing ideology of Texas Christian Nationalism. If they teach true Texas history, if they challenge Christian Nationalist mythology, if they speak about ideas that don’t fit with a regressive world view, they get their funding slashed, they get fired. Sometimes, entire departments are eliminated as punishment for failing to conform to Texas A&M ideological expectations. Undergraduate students are expected to join in with public prayers and professions of faith.
There are some people at Texas A&M who are trying to organize safe spaces for atheists on campus, but they’re very low profile.
One simple way to help out atheists in this citadel of religious intolerance is to shine a light for them from the outline, to create links to make pathways for non-religious A&M students to find each other and organize in the physical world.
It’s as easy as this: Note and link to the Secular Students Alliance chapter at Texas A&M University. Link to the article in the student newspaper, The Battalion, about the Secular Students Alliance group.
Every time a person creates a page that mentions the existence of non-Christian students at Texas A&M, the conceptual space for these students gets a little larger. While a post on a social media platform is soon filtered away until it’s nearly non-existent, a web page away from the platforms remains visible.
It’s all too easy for tycoons like Elon Musk to step in and corrupt popular platforms.
Rebuilding online secular networks away from the platforms is an essential step to creating independent activist networks that can persist even when Christian Nationalists seize control over corporate and public media infrastructure.
This article creates one more node. Another one can join it, and an independent network begins.
Will you take the next step?
Create. Discover. Link. Independently.
