The overreaches of mainstream social media platforms have been extensively reported and studied. For activist communities, these platforms pose risks of surveillance, censorship, or erasure. Decentralized social networks (DSNs) serve as alternative online spaces that appear to prioritize values such as user privacy, free speech, and community control. However, the decentralized ecosystem is vast and complex, making it difficult for communities to understand how to best use these platforms for their organizing aims. We aim to fill this gap by proposing a conceptual framework for navigating the DSN landscape that defines core activist community needs -- minimal overhead, community building and reach, on- and off-line safety, and operational sustainability -- and links them to concrete platform affordances such as resource efficiency, interoperability, and data ownership. We apply the framework to (1) evaluate and compare the sociotechnical tradeoffs of two contemporary DSNs (Mastodon and Bluesky), (2) understand broader community configurations that emerge across different DSN infrastructures and their implications for collective action, and (3) explore how two distinct activist communities facing infrastructural and political constraints might use the framework to find platforms that align with their needs. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical promises of DSNs and the structural conditions that shape and constrain participation across them.

翻译：主流社交媒体平台的越权行为已被广泛报道和研究。对于行动者社群而言，这些平台带来了监视、审查或抹除的风险。去中心化社交网络作为替代性在线空间，似乎更注重用户隐私、言论自由和社区控制等价值观。然而，去中心化生态系统庞大且复杂，使得社群难以理解如何最好地利用这些平台实现其组织目标。为弥补这一空白，我们提出一个概念框架以导航去中心化社交网络领域，该框架界定了核心行动者社群需求——最小化运营负担、社群建设与影响力拓展、线上线下安全以及运营可持续性——并将其与资源效率、互操作性和数据所有权等具体平台功能联系起来。我们运用该框架：（1）评估并比较两个当代去中心化社交网络（Mastodon和Bluesky）的社会技术权衡；（2）理解不同去中心化社交网络基础设施中涌现的更广泛社群配置及其对集体行动的影响；（3）探索两个面临基础设施与政治制约的不同行动者社群如何利用该框架寻找符合其需求的平台。最后，我们反思去中心化社交网络的理论前景，以及塑造并限制跨平台参与的结构性条件。