EcoGather's Digital Ethics

EcoGather is committed to practicing the values we hold and teach. Our operations are mostly relegated to the digital realm for the time being, so it is especially important for us to choose, when possible, the tools, platforms, and practices that align with a set of principles that guide and help to harmonize our Digital Ethics.

Guiding Principles

• Leverage digital technology to:
  • Expand and increase access to knowledge;
  • Promote cosmolocal exchange and engagement;
  • Support networked communication and movement building; and
  • Eventually make people less dependent upon advanced technologies.
• Resist dominant-culture tendencies to enclose knowledge or turn it into “intellectual property.”
• Favor technologies that are appropriate for human-scale use that are, in the words of E.F. Schumacher, “cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone; suitable for small-scale application; and compatible for man’s need for creativity.”
• Reduce reliance on technologies, tools, and platforms designed to futher accelerate or consolidate capital accumulation and fuel profit-centric growth economies at the expense of the living world (from which capital is extracted).
• Turn away from technologies that monetize and harvest users’ data as the product.
• Prioritize privacy and security, while balancing useability and remaining within our non-profit project’s means and maintaining our ability to reduce financial barriers to participation.

Platform-Capitalism, Data-Harvesting, and Attention Driven Algorithms

We are well aware of – and quite averse to – platform capitalism and attention-driven algorithms. These have seriously negative effects on our focus, mental health and well-being, and the quality of our relationships. We prefer and seek to support platforms and tools that better accomplish their purported purposes of connecting people, solving problems, and meeting real needs. We’re most interested in technologies that are not organized around growth imperatives, distributed by design, and do not seek to turn users attentional fields into sites of extraction. We sense that these alternative platforms have the potential to provide meaningful, fulfilling work to the people who develop and maintain those technologies.

For these reasons, we are making an effort to transition from the default platforms we have been using to those that are better (if imperfectly) aligned with these values. We hope to express clearly the philosophy behind this decision and model how to make this transition to our participants without sacrificing the functionality and productivity of online activities.

We recognize that “the devil is in the default,” (hat tip Jay Cousins), so we hope to exemplify critical consideration of the (seemingly benign) ways we interact with damaging technologies and systems in our everyday lives. We are trying to make simple moves to live into solutions that align with our values, all while balancing:

• ease of use
• reasonable affordability
• open source technologies

We are also in the process of moving the materials we have collected, created, and curated into a Digital Garden and Learning Commons with fewer digital and financial barriers so that we can make our essential paradigm shifting education more widely accessible.

For transparency and accountability, we share some of these shifts. We have recently shifted from using SquareSpace as our website host to WordPress, which is a non-profit, open-source platform. We are also in the process of migrating our digital media library of original content from YouTube to PeerTube, which is also an open-source, non-profit platform in the Fediverse. To collect information from participants and faciliate sign-ups for and enrollment in our offerings, we are using a WordPress plugin called Gravity Forms instead of Google Forms. Instead of Google Docs/Drive we are more frequently using Craft Docs, which is a paid but highly transferrable platform, and as such we are not the product whose data is for sale. To communicate asynchronously, we use Signal, as opposed to Messenger, Google Chat, or WhatsApp. For the time-being we will continue to use Zoom for usability and familiarity for users to decrease friction in our synchronous spaces, but we are exploring other options like Jitsi Meet as well. We have disabled as many of the AI and tracking features of Zoom that we can.

EcoGather has several partnerships with groups that primarily use dominant platforms, such as Spotify and Instagram, to share their content. We understand the restrictions of collaboration on such platforms, but given our partners’ reliance on them, we are limited in our ability to move these collaborative efforts to alternative platforms.

At the same time, we also understand that many people who are skeptical of modernity and looking for community like ours currently use dominant platforms like Instagram and Spotify. Because we still want to reach people on conventional platforms and offer them acces to our learning commons, we will still uphold a presence indeed aimed at catching – but crucially, also respecting – people’s attention, even in the midst of a continuous scroll. We don’t post for the sake of posting, to hop on the latest trend, or to curry favor with a mercurial algorithm. We really aim to avoid contributing to the extractive, addictive, and abusive processes that underlie so much of the digital space. When we post on these platforms, we are intentional about honoring attention, not wasting it.

Extraction for Connection: Inherent Contradictions

Contradictions are inherent in this effort. In addition to the the generally applicable assertion that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, we must frankly acknowledge the fact that materials used to power digital networks and create the devices that enable us to connect online are, at present and for the foreseeable future, inextricably bound up with deeply unethical and forms of extraction and oppression. Vast ecological and human harms permeate the lifecycle of any technology, from production to use and maintenence to disposal. Nevertheless, we recognize that simply opting out and refusing to use or engage with digital technologies and devices on this basis does very little to support the shifts in consciousness, networked movements, and cosmolocal transition strategies that we believe to be necessary to organize in the present and survive the future.

We also recognize that the severe extration digital technologies require extends beyond Earth’s physical ecosystems to the metaphysical realms of our attention, identities, and relationships. Dominant technology companies and digital platforms reap immense profit by curating constant dissatisfaction and then selling the remedy of shiny new upgrades and echo-chamber validation. Our goal is to run a digital program that resists predatory, attention-grabbing practices such as short product cycles, polarizing content, constant cheap hits of distraction, manipulative algorithms, and addictive dopamine-dosing stimuli. We crave and try to cultivate online communities that engagement with meaningful ideas across many lines of difference without the distracting and demanding bells and whistles many people have grown accustomed to on existing platforms.

On the use of Artificial Intelligence

EcoGather has carefully considered the many actual and potential costs of AI compared to its uncertain benefits, and currently has no plans to purposefully incorporate AI into its digital spaces.

EcoGather takes measures to secure our digital spaces and prevent the intrusion of AI-Powered Tools and Bots, which we deem incompatible with the kinds of relational, trust-based spaces we aim to convene, as well as with our teachings on the ethics of appropriate technology. We suspect the AI industry will contribute to continued surveillance, job replacement, and accrual of wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful more than it will contribute to significant benefits for human beings and the living world. The immense and increasing ecological cost of AI – including energy, water, mineral, and land consumption – further contribute to our skepticism that AI is an appropriate technology worth incorporating into our digital spaces.

We also recognize that some people are enthusiastic about and benefit from the use of Bots and similar technologies. At some times and under certain conditions, some bots (AI-Powered and otherwise) can be useful tools, especially for those who may benefit from some assistive technologies to bridge accessibility gaps.

At the same time, EcoGather and many of our participants have significant concerns regarding the unregulated and often undisclosed proliferation of these novel technologies. In particular, we are concerned about how AI-Powered Tools and Bots may:

• extract and subsequently use, publish, or sell data and information
• record, digest, and (possibly incorrectly) summarize content
• (mis)represent our ideas and work.

We are also very concerned about the negative and degrading impact that the presence or specter of AI-Powered Tools and Bots can have on our participants’ privacy interests, actual and felt sense of safety, ability to focus and learn, and inclination to engage in courageous conversations. We do not wish to subject our personnel to these same risks and discomforts. Further, we are troubled by the fact that these Bots often appear without any of our participant’s knowledge, intent, or consent to bring them into our shared digital spaces. As such, we have adopted a detailed policy on Limiting the Presence of AI-Powered Tools and Bots in EcoGather. This policy, along with our Community Expecations and Agreements, Code of Online Conduct, Online Étiquette act as load-bearing walls of the containter for courageous lifelong learning that is EcoGather.