This is the largest campaign organized in recent times in Euskal Herria and internationally against toxic social networks and in favor of the fedibertso. From Twitter they want to create an eXodo, so many activists and activists take advantage of the day to say "we see ourselves in the Fediberta" and encourage the undecided to take the step and help in the transition.

The origin of this campaign comes from the environment of the transformative social economy, but it has been extended to people who identify with cooperation, autonomy, sustainability and free digital communities. Trump’s investiture day will be used to appeal to abandon the X in some countries and collectively move to other social networks. These include Germany, the United Kingdom, the French and Spanish States, as El Salto has said, and it is hoped that the decisions of many agents will be known throughout Monday.

ARGIA is on the list of the drivers of the campaign in Euskal Herria. Technological sovereignty is one of the lines of work of this medium in recent years, as shown by the journalistic follow-up to the issue and the practical steps taken in this field.

What is a fediverse?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Open main menu Search for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Open main menu Search for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Open main menu Search On social networks of the Internet, the free and federated social networks of fedibertso are proposed as alternatives based on technological sovereignty.

Goazen’s friends recommend opening a Mastodon account on the campaign website by pressing the Add to the Fable button, “which is the best known fedibertsoro door.” Once decided between two servers or instances mastodon.eus or mastodon.jalgi.eus, they offer a series of tips on how to behave: how to present oneself, how to search for friends and, above all, enjoy. “Here you’ll find real people, a space to interact, without interference from algorithms, advertising or trols and legions. At first you will realize that the rhythm is not as frantic as in commercial social networks, but with a little patience, you will find an excellent community of people and collectives eager to join you,” they say.

Faced with the echo that multinational X eta Meta has given to their hate speeches and the extreme right over the last half a year, many people are mobilizing to leave the toxic social networks and go to the alley to help people. “But that cannot be left to individual personal decisions. Transitions must be considered collectively”, said ARGIA Beñat Irasuegi, one of the drivers of this campaign in Euskal Herria. It is a campaign at the state level, organized on the basis of a language, in which each one has adapted their discourse to their reality and to their specific needs. “We, for example, need networks that manage the Basque community and the Basque community,” says Irasuegi.

Dozens of actors have spoken on this campaign and have made known the decisions taken in this regard. To cite two from Euskal Herria, the Tokikom media network has organized an instance of Mastodon's own with the local media of which it is a member, or the Olatukoop network, which brings together dozens of companies of Transformative Social Economy, also ARGIA, has announced that it has closed its Twitter and Facebook accounts.

"Toxic social networks turn us into products at the service of surveillance capitalism, which devours our time, our attention and our emotions. These platforms are designed to maximise the profitability of some of them through the exploitation of personal data and the promotion of addiction – the members of Olatukoop have written. In this context, it is essential to understand that toxic networks are not an accident, above collective well-being, but a direct consequence of the neoliberal economic model aimed at obtaining benefits for capital. These networks make us passive consumers rather than critical and active citizens. They also promote an agenda that is contrary to our interests, increasing the difficulties in building their own agenda". Having said that, they argue that "we must take control of our digital tools and commit to technologies that respect our dignity, our privacy and our common self-management capacity."

ARGIA is on its way to technological sovereignty

ARGIA created in April 2018 its first account in the decentralized social network Mastodon, when Basque communities still did not exist. Months later, several agents began working to create the Mastodon community of Basque and Basque culture. ARGIA did not hesitate, and participated from the beginning.

Since then, ARGIA has continued to rely on free networks, with "all our contradictions", as the members of the editorial board have stressed. Since in 2020 Iametza, a member of the ARGIA group of companies, founded podcasts for free music and podcast Baleafunk.eus, ARGIA podcasts are also published there. In 2021, this medium created the PeerTube instance: bideoak.argia.eus, and started using the videos uploaded on the web, instead of the Youtube videos that were used until then.

In June 2021 we removed from our website all the services related to Google, and mainly we stopped using Google Analycs, widely used in the Basque Country to manage the statistics of the web, and since then we used free software Matomo. Hello Google, hello Matomo: in the article you can find more detailed explanations about the new measures to protect your privacy.

In March 2023, ARGIA valued as very interesting the clues that the members of Catalunya Fedi.cat and LaLoka gave in the meetings of the Fedibertso Vasca to “remove the visibility of the associative advertising networks”. Thus, on 16 September, coinciding with the international day of free software, the working group took the initiative and decided to remove from the supports of ARGIA (magazine, website, ads, supplements, posters…) any reference to toxic social networks in order not to make free advertising.

On the subject, the media awarded the Internet Argia Prize 2023 to Basque mastodon communities: mastodon.eus and mastodon.jalgi.eus.

Results of reflection on social networks at the Argia Awards

ARGIA has addressed social media issues on numerous occasions in the working group, in order to continue to manage and drive the contradictions that produce us. However, the latest wave is a debate that occurs in the media around the world after the closure of the X account by The Guardian, which reflects on the positioning of toxic social networks within two months.

The failure of this reflection will be announced at the Argia Awards to be delivered on 31 January.