@louis my not-so-secret agenda is to make it easy for anyone who wants to to be able to run their own internet services and federate with others, bypassing privacy problems and providing greater independence. The internet doesn't have to be a centralised data silo, and !gnusocial is perhaps one part of fixing the brokenness of the current web. On marxists, anarchists et al, all of those people had ideas about liberation from centralised control. I think in the long term we need a strong internet liberation movement to take back our freedoms. Learning of the struggles of the past can help inform those of the future.