Stickers promoting a Hungarian social networking siteFollowing a pattern amongst East European APC members, from 2008 to 2010 Green Spider has gradually restructured its activities to focus on more policy and content-based cooperation with their users rather than providing hosting and access services. The motivation was to seek more active engagement and to react appropriately to the changing landscape of ICTs, now that internet connectivity is widely available.
Green Spider’s activities were once pioneering efforts on the technological front, empowering activists with mission-driven tools that rivaled corporate alternatives, but they felt that their hosting options had become scarcely distinguishable from commercial offers.
So they returned to the vanguard, using Drupal to build a blogfarm to enable effective networked movement building.
“In the face of the overwhelming monoculture of corporate social networking tools that nourish narcissistic individualism, the service has taken off amongst grassroots activists, community organisers and charities in the Hungarian social and environmental movement,” says Green Spider.
Green Spider is now focusing on connecting their digital community with live events and working with video production and distribution. “As a side benefit we have become more closely involved with the Hungarian free software movement,” they report.