_Lorea_ is a seedbed of free social networks linked by federation protocols that allow them to communicate. These networks run on software designed and built by and for non profits, members of the public and groups involved in social change. _Lorea_Lorea_Lorea_ is not just software, but also a technical and political tool for the federated web, bringing back autonomy, freedom and total control over our data and our memory to the hands of the users of social networking sites themselves. The federation knocks down the walls of the panopticon 2.0 run by corporations and political interests, and defends the neutrality of networks as a fundamental architectural principle. 

_Lorea_ arises from an informal collective of people concerned about security and privacy issues on the social web. Since 2009 this developer community has grown and is now formed by virtually all kinds of people inhabiting various online networks. Hence, amongst _Lorea_ developers we don't speak about service "users" but of "inhabitants" of a transformative project: several thousand people who knowingly use our networks, many of them active in IT development , server maintenance, error reporting and solving, documentation, project support and dissemination. _Lorea_ survives daily via the work of a community which organises by means of an online version of a democratic people's assembly. It is based on mutual cooperation, promoting free culture and social innovation.

The project is aimed at civil society as a whole, i.e. citizens and social collectives and political change organisations that are motivated by the desire to interact, share, change things together, devise solutions. We seek to address all people and groups who value their online identities and their security and privacy . We value the right to freedom of expression, and the right to share information and knowledge and do so within a free and neutral social web. _Lorea_ offers a non-profit alternative to regain our technological sovereignty in the world of social networks.

Links: www.lorea.org

**Lorea**. The team was launched during the Hackmeeting, the annual gathering of hackers in Spain, in October 2009. At this meeting groups administering the _Lorea_ based Arte Libre Digital (ALD) and the social network N-1 converged and decided to join forces to further develop free, secure, federated and self-managed social networks. Our technical team is composed of more or less 10 people but that number is variable. We have 3 people who are more concerned with documentation issues, translation, presentation and workshops.