@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ The federated nature of the protocol allows you to try, play and experiment with
Hosting your own infrastructure allows you to scale your communication in a way that is the most meaningful for the group or community you belong to. It is also a way to make sure your system matches your own threat model[<sup>?</sup>](http://homebrewserver.club/beginners-guide-to-xmpp-speak.html#threat), while simultaneously allowing you to deal with trust that is not mediated by an app. It also allows you to experiment with economic models other than those linked to large-scale infrastructure involving surveillance and capturing of your social graph for financial gain. Maybe you want to share the cost of the server or the responsibilities of administrating it, maybe you want to collectively learn how to run all this stuff, or maybe you want to start meetings to exchange tips, etc. However, this does not mean that you need to cut yourself off from the rest of the world and this form of localism should not be misunderstood for a hipsterist and reactionary form of escapism. Instead, such an approach is quite the opposite as it provides a possibility to actively engage with societal issues. It allows groups to collectively think, in the sense of defining questions and hypotheses themselves, acquire skills and knowledge and respond to issues that are both relevant to their own situation but that can also resonate globally, enabling others to start a similar process.
The goal of this article was to provide some tools and insights which not only allow to contextualise the technology we are using and supporting, but also help making sure that the instant-messaging you and your friends use happens in a trusted and secure environment, as much as possible outside the economies of surveillance. For this reason our motivation for writing this article was two-fold. On the one hand we wanted to show that the issue of privacy is more insidious than institutional eavesdropping and not merely solved with the use of end-to-end encryption. On the other hand, and as a consequence, we wanted to suggest not a different app, but a different approach altogether on the basis of XMPP federation and collective action. Therefore we've written two guides. [One on how to configure a server](http://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server.html) and [one on how to choose and use clients](http://homebrewserver.club/picking-modern-xmpp-clients.html) that can go along with it. These allow you to put a self-hosted approach, an approach that brings aspects of trust, scale and implementation to the forefront and into practice. Once again, such guides should not be perceived as definitive answers but more as tools to keep us, and hopefully you too, busy formulating the right questions and building networks of mutual help.
The goal of this article was to provide some tools and insights which not only allow for contextualisation of the technology we are using and supporting, but also help making sure that the instant-messaging you and your friends use happens in a trusted and secure environment, as much as possible outside the economies of surveillance. For this reason our motivation for writing this article was two-fold. On the one hand we wanted to show that the issue of privacy is more insidious than institutional eavesdropping and not merely solved with the use of end-to-end encryption. On the other hand, and as a consequence, we wanted to suggest not a different app, but a different approach altogether on the basis of XMPP federation and collective action. Therefore we've written two guides. [One on how to configure a server](http://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server.html) and [one on how to choose and use clients](http://homebrewserver.club/picking-modern-xmpp-clients.html) that can go along with it. These allow you to put a self-hosted approach, an approach that brings aspects of trust, scale and implementation to the forefront and into practice. Once again, such guides should not be perceived as definitive answers but more as tools to keep us, and hopefully you too, busy formulating the right questions and building networks of mutual help.
So while we are unable to recommend you the next big app that will solve all user surveillance and financialisation once and for all—as we are pretty sure no such app will ever even exist—we hope to at least help shed a light on the confused and confusing discourses that surround crypto-sound alternatives which may obfuscate less obvious problems.
