We need to talk about the WhatsApp Activism Complex (WAACLEX?)

WhatsApp runs the world

• How many groups are you in that depend on it?
• What's your work / activism / life balance like?
• Have you ever tried to leave it?
• Are you in any organisation that manages without it?
• Core problem: signal to noise is dreadful

If WhatsApp died tomorrow

マリウス · “The Day WhatsApp Goes Dark” · マリウス.com · 2026

• 3.3 billion monthly active users
• 99% of smartphones in Brazil
• "It’s not just individual organisations, but even whole governments are dependent on Meta. Buenos Aires for example ran a COVID-symptom triage chatbot on WhatsApp, and Lebanon’s public health ministry launched an automated WhatsApp service in April 2020 to disseminate updates on the pandemic."
• "WhatsApp [...] actually is the internet for most practical purposes."

Indymedia to Instagram

Kim · Full Meta Jacket: How corporations colonised queer life · gfsc.community · 2025

• How much does Zuck make selling ads to trans people just trying to find community?
• We used to own our infrastructure - what happened?
• Does anyone remember Indymedia and IMCs?
• Who is still using email lists?
• Where is our daily attention?

Most activists orgs are one shadowban, copyright strike or ToS change from losing their entire audience

This is hostile infrastructure working as designed

• "Enshittification"
• Facebook events don't really work any more
• RSS / iCal deprecation
• Algorithms and hyper targetted ads

The death of third spaces and the privitisation and enclosure of online spaces are two sides of the same coin

Most of us are doing our best

• Conference chat on Signal (a non-profit)
• Lots of people running Wordpress and attempting to use open source when they can
• Anyone using Mastodon?
• What else are people using that's working?
• What have people stopped using that used to work?

... but almost all the software we use is now rented from corporations

... and open source culture can be kinda shit

• We have all-new neoliberal choice capitalism (e.g. lifestyle veganism / anti-flying) and the related guilt and shame politics
• If you're using any FAAMG software you're a bad person
• If you're not using linux you're a bad person
• If you're using X default platform everyone uses you're a bad person
• If you're using AI or LLMs (at all) you're a bad person

• Community venues using AI deserve to go out of businesss

Free as in beer beats free as in freedom when you’re skint.

"Ethical tech comsumption" doesn't work as a sole motivator

We need collective technology for collective organising

People and communities, not users

• The way out isn’t (just) better software
• People have had bad experiences with tech and tech practitioners
• Bridge the gaps between "tech" and "non-tech" culture
• We need to have broader conversations about what social processes we want to make easier
• What do people want to be and do? (Nussbaum)
• Everyone is a "tech person"

Start where we are right now

• Most orgs need help with immediate stuff: email, forms, websites
• Most people need to use less things, not more
• Supporting people with that builds trust
• Reduce, reuse, recycle
• What existing communities are we in and how we can we support them?
• How can we get the resources to properly support tech workers to create this infrastructure? (i.e. me lol)

Develop shared infrastructure

• Like we would share a building, van, or PA.
• Not every org needs to be running its own server: identify shared needs and create common resources.
• Cheaper than ever to have a VPS - Hetzner starts around 5-10 EUR/month
• We're working on ways to do this right now - blog coming soon
• One server can run multiple apps
• Can we site them in community centres and other places?

Questions to ask both IRL and digitally

• Gut feeling: What's the one thing you would like to fix right now?
• People: How do you join or leave your org?
• Community: What ways are members able to connect with each other?
• Physical places: How do these connect to physical spaces?
• Digital places: how do people, community and place map online?
• Impact: how do we measure if it works?
• Economy: how do we pay for it?
• What's one thing that would make everyone's life easier?