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Fanworks: Contact: Email: List
If you would like to join a group connected by email, please contact me at:
astercontrol at proton dot me
Let me know the email address you'll be using. I very much recommend making a new email address for this, so that your regular inbox won't get flooded with messages from this group, and so that you can easily change your address later if you need to.
ProtonMail is a good free service for this, if you don't have an email address on your own domain.
About the List
This is a group of people connected by email, following the plan laid out in this post.
Email can achieve most things that a group of people communicating online would need.
There are other ways to do these things, which range from much more simple technology (IRC chat) to much more complex technology (standard social media sites). Simpler forms of technology tend to require more learning and more work from the users, while complex technology requires less.
I chose email for this group because
1. the technology is at a level most people still know how to use-- but
2. it allows us more personal control over our communication than any of the big social media sites currently do, and
3. therefore, it also forms a good place for people to discuss other communication options, share knowledge on how to use them, and eventually migrate elsewhere if desired.
This is important, in a time when people are being allowed less and less personal control over their own lives.
If you haven't communicated at this level of control before, you will probably need to learn some new skills. Mostly, they will involve:
1. Finding the messages you want to see
2. Avoiding the messages you don't want to see
3. Communicating with people you want to contact
4. Avoiding people you don't want any contact with
On a small level, these are fairly simple tasks.
But they will start requiring more time and more organizational skills, when you get into a setting with a lot of people sharing a lot of data.
Big social media sites have tools to automate some of this. But the social media company has control over those tools, and is probably using them in ways that make the experience less good for you.
Email also has tools to automate some of this. You get more control over those tools. But they may take more effort to learn to use.
If you think that's worth it, this may be the group for you.
All people in this group have equal "moderator" privileges. You can't moderate anyone else's experience, but you have wide control over your own.
Each "post" in this group is an email sent to multiple email addresses, by including them all in the "To" field or the "CC" field of your email window.
You will receive each post as an email, as long as the creator of that post has included your email address. You can reply to all of the addresses it was sent to, or just whichever ones you want, by editing the "To" field in your reply.
Your email account should have options that allow you to:
1. Choose which email addresses to send each message to
2. Filter incoming messages to avoid seeing any that include particular topics
3. Filter incoming messages to avoid seeing any that include certain people's email addresses
4. Block certain email addresses from sending mail to you at all.
You can leave the group at any time, by blocking all the email addresses in it, or by deleting the email account you use for it.
Or, if you prefer, you can branch off to form a different, maybe overlapping group, keeping some of the addresses but not all (and adding new ones as you please).
And you're welcome to leave and go explore some of the more simple-tech forms of communication, like IRC chat, if you decide that's what you want.
This group is meant to be a branching-off point to help people become a little more free from corporate social media. Where you go next is up to you.
Fanworks: Contact: Email: List
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