Big Tech platforms make it easy to start a group, but hard to build a community that controls its own infrastructure. Their priorities can change overnight, features stagnate or vanish, and your collective knowledge ends up locked inside someone else’s system. Different tools have created different community cultures. Mailing lists invite slower, more reflective interactions and build up an email archive over time. Forums like Discourse organise conversations by topic, categories and tags, making it normal to return to older threads and turn discussion into shared reference. Real‑time chat tools like Slack, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp and their open source alternatives create fast, conversational spaces where people feel close and responsive, but where decisions and insights often vanish into the scroll.
During “Strengthening Online Communities” online workshop happening on Wednesday, July 29th 2026 from 15:00–16:30 UTC / 17:00 CEST (UTC +2), participants will explore how to design digital spaces that balance these cultures while aligning with the values at the heart of Rise Against Big Tech (aka RABT) coalition: open source, collaboration, transparency, and community empowerment. We’ll look at how forums, mailing lists, group chat, and open source tools can support communities that want their conversations and decisions to be searchable and findable years from now, not just until the next scroll.
During the workshop, participants will be able to explore:
- How relying on proprietary platforms like Google Groups and commercial chat apps can undermine long‑term community memory and autonomy.
- How mailing list, forum, and chat cultures shape what gets remembered, shared, and lost.
- Practical ways to design your infrastructure and norms so your group’s knowledge is easier to find, reuse, and grow over time using open‑source, community‑controlled tools.
The workshop is for anyone running mailing lists, mutual aid networks, campaigns, or member spaces who wants their digital infrastructure to help their community get smarter together and not to reinforce Big Tech’s surveillance and profit models.
-> RSVP Here: https://rabt.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=3
Please share with anyone who might find participating useful!.
