May

Riseup’s History

“What can we do to create the world our hearts yearn to live in?” Some birds asked themselves this, after living an exhausting and exhilarating week of protests against the World Trade Organization almost 25 years ago. There was, and still is, so much work to do that the answer became crystal clear: put our knowledge and skills to help build justice movements around the world. That was the start of riseup.net.

In the beginning it was simple, hosting e-mail and mailing lists for groups and friends. We wanted to fight corporate power, not depend on it. To do so, we created our own autonomous communication services, so our communities could use them to agitate. New birds joined our flock during this time, bringing their individual strengths as they joined in our collective struggle.

We weren’t the only ones doing this kind of work, grassroots tech collectives were present in different parts of the globe with movements embracing the beautiful process of creating power. We had conversations regarding the role of technology in movement building, on how technology should have systems that are based on protecting and serving people’s needs — rather than exploitation.

We joined new endeavors and started to develop software, Crabgrass was our take on the “web 2.0” trend, a set of tools to help groups with their tasks. We started hosting “pad”, a very easy to use collaborative writing tool. We tried, and failed, to create an easy to use end-to-end encrypted tool using mail. During this time, our flock grew way beyond the boundaries of the city of Seattle.

We were now facing the question, what’s next? The internet had changed vastly since the early 2000s. Big Tech started to provide features we were never able to, at the same time we were able to provide Big Tech’s worst dream — no user tracking. Snowden leaks brought an increase of users and demands for our systems. Reflecting on these support requests we started to focus our effort on improving services. We enabled larger mail storage that can only be read with your user password, and with the help of LEAP now it’s more easier than ever to use our VPN service.

Over the past couple years, we have been dealing with growing pains and the need to understand and overcome technical debt that has built up over time. Maintenance work is not as exciting as launching something new, but it needs to be done. Behind the scenes, we have been working non-stop on making our services more reliable, improving our mail infrastructure, and making our user support as useful as possible. As always, we continue fighting spammers and trying to push forward the new world our hearts still demand.

If you can, please contribute to support the work that riseup does - https://riseup.net/donate

Help us get ready to celebrate a quarter of a century!

In about 7 months riseup is going to turn 25 years old! We aren’t sure what exactly we are going to do – but we’d love to hear your ideas! How would you like to help celebrate a quarter century of autonomous communications?

We’d especially like to hear things that you have been able to accomplish that we helped make possible. Or your own history with us – how did you hear about this project? How have our services been useful to you?

Maybe there is a story that you would like to share with other users? Perhaps you have a scheme you want to see replicated across the world. Maybe you have the best anti-capitalist joke anyone’s ever heard, and want to tell it? If there is something you’d like to share as we prepare to celebrate 25 years, please send it our way via email to outreach@riseup.net or send it to us through the mail.

As always, you can also make a financial contribution to support the work that riseup does: https://riseup.net/donate