🍄About Project Mushroom🍄

Project Mushroom started in November 2022 as a community-led effort to build a safe place on the internet. We are assembling a creator council that will help direct our efforts going forward. This is open to anyone who wants to help build a better online experience — free from harassment, free from bigotry, and one that promotes connection, mutual aid, and transformative action at a critical moment in history.

The name 'Project Mushroom' comes from the ground beneath our bodies. Mycelium is the part of a fungus that gathers nutrients, comprised of web-like threads. Like Rebecca Solnit writes in Hope in the Dark, a mushroom is the visible fruit of the work of billions of connections waiting for the perfect moment to rise up together.

Project Mushroom is a project of Currently, and organized by Eric Holthaus — a journalist and climate scientist who has spent his career focused on climate justice and equity. We're also working with ex-Twitter employees who want to continue their work of bringing a safer, better online experience into the world.

After our launch in early November 2022, Project Mushroom is now the largest Mastodon project with climate justice as a priority — and one of the fastest growing in the English language. More than 10,000 people signed up for our waitlist in our first 48 hours.

Keeping our creators safe is our utmost priority. We will be working with the Project Mushroom community to develop moderation protocols with strict bans on behavior like harassment, racism, and climate denial.

Our goal at Project Mushroom is to center joy and action. We will recruit moderators to enforce our community-led rules and will have a firewall protecting creators from targeted harassment and unwanted attention. We will set up transparent processes to gather input at all steps.

We recognize that climate justice is fundamentally connected to all other forms of justice. Everything is a climate issue now. So join us in remaking everything.

This platform is being built to fit creators' and communities' broad needs for safety and community — not just as a replacement for Twitter.

We will offer at least four types of creator services:

🍄 Newsletter hosting/publishing (including setup, maintenance, discoverability, creator tools via Ghost)

🍄 Live events hosting (audio, video, in person, and creator support)

🍄 A curated Mastodon-based social media network

🍄 Onboarding assistance for your followers to join you

More info on these tools will become available as they are built and passed through our community-led advisors.

Our goal is to build an open-source community of creators that can help each other bring into being the world that needs to exist.

Instead of paying for your blue check, Project Mushroom will ensure creators are paid for their labor. We are contemplating a pay structure that would let creators keep 100% of their proceeds from their paid memberships *and* charge $0 in setup fees or ongoing maintenance. In exchange, we'll fund Project Mushroom by engaging with mission-aligned advertisers (i.e. no Exxon) and host regular membership drives to keep this a community-funded effort. We are doing this for us.

We’ve had enough of the scorched earth policies of billionaires on a warming planet. Project Mushroom will cultivate timely and accurate information that supports community resilience and safety during the climate emergency. It will work to build strong, long-term relationships with people whose stories we share and those who use our services.

If you’d like to help us build Project Mushroom, either as a creator or developer or advisor, please fill out our short survey.

Project Mushroom's Manifesto

The scorched-earth policies of billionaires on a warming planet are undermining democracy. We are building the world that needs to exist because there is no time to waste.

MISSION

To cultivate timely and accurate information that supports community resilience and safety during the climate emergency.

VISION

We help illuminate possible paths toward a liberated, habitable and joyful future for people and the environment alike.

VALUES

• Community: We work to build strong long-term relationships with people whose stories we share and those who use our services.
• Justice: We recognize that the climate emergency, and the inequality it reproduces, is a symptom of capitalism and colonialism and work to help repair these injustices.
• Safety: We amplify community-led systemic change and aim to protect all life, especially that which has been harmed by oppressive systems and left most vulnerable to extreme weather impacts.
• Joy: We embrace our role as stewards of the Earth and center joy, first and foremost, in our reporting and services.

For more information, or if you have any questions, please reach out to us directly: info@tryprojectmushroom.com