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Let’s talk about the journalism

How do we move the #indymediaback project forward.

lets start with history. The editorial workflow of #OMN is based on #indymediaback which is based on basic grassroots journalism growing from radical anarchist traditions.

The newswire is made up of original content published to the site and aggregated flows from a trust network of #4opens sites built out of a community of interest/affinity groups.

Using the #5W and #4opens we start the step away from “post truth” by grounding this flow in a community of action bounded by physical locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

The “news” value of “this happened” Who,What,When,Where,Why.

From this a feature flow is built by the core affinity group to show the #5W storeys from different views as a “consensuses” center column articles.

These articles are then aggregated to other subject/geographic instances newswires.

In this the small streams/flows build a strong river of “social truth” that feeds into seeding a more humane world.

The wider #OMN network, using the fresh newswire and aggregated features to build wider features – these “social truth” networks links the humane world from a grounded real grassroots action/communities.

We build society from the bootem up rather than the old top down of #traditionalmedia/governances.

This itself shifts and moves solutions by aggregation and drives social economics to #4opens humane agenders. In the end we play/build a new more humane/ecological world.

To move this part of the project on:

We need “news” a flow of subject/geographic 5W newswire posts on the 3 test instances – then we need to cross-link these by turning the instance based flows into feature articals.

These are aggregated across to the other instances and pushed out to the #fedivers for comments and feedback which then flows back into the #indymediaback instances to the newswire. This new flow needs to be cross-linked into articals, all linking back to the source.

From this we can flesh out the training resources and start the outreach the project properly, build power of different voices.

The #hashtags tell a storie

Dot for profit for few con for the rest – took over the #openweb during the #dotcom era.

#stupidindividualism is our internal poison that we breed from the #deathcult

#failbook will/has failed us as individuals and as a society.

#openweb is a good view of what we had and what we won’t.

#4opens is a path out of the #geekproblem

The #geekproblem is a humane failure of trust and its replacement with control.

The #hashtags add up to tell a story and thus build a way out of this mess.

The #deathcult is the last 40 years of neo-liberalism.

Need to work in shovels, shit and compost to the story. Hashtags a tool for #openweb organizing ideas/stories/community’s. The is obviously a balance with self-expression. At the moment this “balance” is pure #deathcult being pushed by our shared #stupidindividualism

We have a #shoval, common storied #hashtags we have piles of #techshit to shovel for #compost to build up fertile soil for planting flower and vegetables to nourish our soles and actions.

Why talk in “soft” metaphors?

The issues are soft as are the explanations/metaphors. You can’t have a hard explanation of the social world without building it up from an ideological foundation. As most people are in denial of the possibility of different world views/ideologies this makes “hard” conversations a largely pointless way of communicating. People asking for them have not taken the first step so talking their hand to help them will soon lead you down a different/ideology path. As the project is about #KISS and focus this is something we have limited time/focus for.

If you can glimpse the world from different views/ideologies than the soft/metaphor will talk to you and the attraction for hard will be less strong. These people have a hope of building a different/ideology world/process so can help in real ways.

As we need to focus, it’s not an issue to talk to the first and more important to consolidate around the second… question is finding people that have not been “broken” by #mainstreaming agenders.

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia as a lot of the most shitty behaver was taken offline as a part of the ripping that tore the project apart. For the #OMN this is a problem that we strongly need to mediate when implementing “individualistic” rights/workflows. We need to keep metadata flows intact to build trust and history. This challenge raises questions on the balance between privacy and transparency.

The were internal and external forces… I tend to concentrate on the internal as it’s the area that we actually have power/responsibility to make work. The external is a harder task that we then have to fight to challenge/change.

A good (non-neutral) write up of the #death of #indymedia https://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2011/04/478397.html

The start of the end for #indymedia with the project splitting into open/closed and the growing intolerances on both sides https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391384.html

How do movement die. Some #indymedia crew trying to unblock the ossification and growing open/closed conflict https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/02/391385.html

We need to not repeat this mess for the #indymediaback project.

What should #indymediaback look like?

For some of my views from living/working through this mess

A look at the internal mess of the uk indymedia project

A brief history of activism

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project

We live in a “post truth” world where our everyday life is shaped by “cults” on one side you have the air we breathe #deathcult of neo-liberalism on the other you have blocking the bridges and languishing in jails the #lifecult of #XR both in their ways are “cults”.

I am struggling to articulate what a non “cult” world would look like – the 19th century view, while useful and powerful (in a dangurus way) has holes in it. the 20th century way of ecological suicide no matter how meany washing mashions we have, the 21st cemetery way is the #deathcult

Today am enacting the 19th century view, while building the 20th century view to fight the 21st cemetery view.

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project that needs water and compost and lots of shovelling to move the current tech shit piles to the compost to grow the seed we water with our daily work.

You have a watering can?

All “standards” are social agreements/consensuses

Q. I am looking for the definition of open standards, and it’s quite foggy. I found on opensource.com something useful, but it’s still a candle in the dark

A. it’s an under resourced process for the #openweb that need input. It’s at the heart of the #OMN project. How we define it at the #OMN is a standard produced with #4opens process which is a bit circler as open “industrial” standards is one of the #4opens 🙂

#nothingnew is a guiding light in this project to mediate the #geekproblem #stupidindividualism and the #deathcult (understanding comes from fallowing flows to their source #4opens)

All “standards” are social agreements/consensuses thus they CANT BE built form #geekproblem #stupidindividualism and the #deathcult we have wasted and will waste more time if we keep pushing this shit.

The idea of the #OMN is that it does NOT host any/meany of projects it incubates rather it is the “holder” of the standards that glues the projects together. Some of these will be “standards body” some will be defacto by use and consensus. In the end we need to look beyond #nothingnew and create new standards #4opens body’s – go slow on this as concessions are hard and only worthwhile if you do the hard work to achieve them.

Shovel and compost comes to mind.

Over complexity is fixed by trust and #KISS

Q. Still trying to fix permissions issue for peertube ‎why is there always some piddly little issue (that will likely eventually have an easy fix)

A. Over complexity is fixed by trust and #KISS the problems we face now are complexity built on top of complexity. This is largely pushed by ‘security’ which is a direct result of the failure of ‘trust’. To mediate this we need to balance this, it’s the core process of the #OMN and were the social value grows.

Our instincts are #deathcult we build tools to serve “the is no such thing as society only individuals and their families” everything to do with social tech pushes this. These “piddling little issues” are the need for TOTAL control that comes from this world view. Thinking about it, it’s a theology as ideology tend to be.

Trust or fear is left/right or open/closed or life/death. Today everything is the second… tomorrow if we are to live we need to balance the first/second.

History’s of indymedia are full of academic wank

Q. I wish the hacker culture connection to anarchism was more thorough and consistent. It looks a lot more like privileged fuckery and pet insurrections. It could be that the academic scene wasn’t representative of the movement as a whole

A. I would largely ignore the existing academic history of anachronism and tech as it is extreme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism

In my view a good place to start a project like this would be look though the indymedia email archives for a “original” anarchist workflow. I would not take much notice of the “official” history’s of indymedia as they are full of academic wank. The theoretical analysis of the time is all pushing agenders that ripped the project apart and killed it – these are interesting to see this process but less useful as exacting history of what actually happened. The who internal process is saved in open email lists now hosted on archive.org no other anarchist project is this well documented.

Best not to add to the activist “mannerism” in our history if we are to have hope for “anarchism” fluffy and spiky playing a role in saving a humane/ecological world.

Thinking about #OMN from 4 years ago

I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the “undead left” during the London Social Forum many years ago – lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top “taking the power table” to highlight the uncomfortable “undead left´s” grasping for power.

Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked… but the splits of “not thought of here” took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.

The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow – no alt was built.

The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower “power politics” but it’s a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in “power politics”.

The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were “disrupted” by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook

The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and #4opens. But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.

In activism when you have a shitty stinky process situation due to control freekery. You have two options:

Open
Closed

If its a open process project, the closing things down and hiding the crapness/mess will not help at all. The stink will leak out of every bit of the project from relations of core personals to the compromises involved in every piece of design/interaction during the project. This “low” misama might not to be immediately visible but it will cling to everything the project touches.

Open projects become dysfunctional when controlled by closed process, this is a feedback loop that this dysfunction is solved by more closed working/thinking till you are running a closed project.

If it’s a closed to start with then kick the people out – information can be controlled – power kept – and agendas pushed through till the funding runs out or people lose wider goodwill. Opening up a closed project without a revolutionary explosion is nearly impossible – all the repressed and hidden crapness that is needed to keep a closed project going will feed on itself when let loose.

Almost all NGO and activist groups are a mixture of open/closed.

The NGO´s falsify openness in consultations and meaningless focus groups. But always work closed at the core to continue funding and careers of the benefiting group – those who control the closed – not the community the NGO is setup to serve.

Activist by their nature tend to start out open then grow closed as they grow bigger – it’s a human scale thing. Interestingly affinity group organizing is trust based and another subject.

Hopefully we get an idea for the “dogma” of open and the clear rejection of “closed”.

Churning of pointless tech projects

Why #indymediaback is not a pointless radical tech project.

#nothingnew mediates the churning of pointless tech projects by building things that already work.

In the #fedivers we use this tradition to replace existing #dotcons projects as new #openweb projects

This replicating the #dotcons with #openweb versions has its limits. All code is “ideology” so bringing in the #deathcult to the #openweb by direct copying has its own issues to work through.

We mediate this problem by recreating a widely used radical tech project #indymedia with good existing workflow and embedded in wide radical social networks/agreements.

The value balance in #indymediaback is not in the tech though that is needed. It’s in the #nothingnew social side of the project, without this continuity we have a pointless tech project.

Food for thought.

The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult

Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.

The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.

The sins of #openweb chat

Q. A bridge for #matrix to #XMPP this is the most important “political” bridge they could build and support so not to look like a #meto #NGO project. Look at what groups do, not what they say.

A. The moment that both communities manage to provide a seamless, first-class, stable integration of #Matrix and #XMPP without finger-pointing each other for the responsibility to do that, the very moment it doesn’t matter anymore which of these networks you initially signed up to, we could see a huge leap forward for open decentralized messaging.

Q. Think the needs to be a carrot and stick aproch to making this happen. Both supporting the coding and hitting them with the shaming stick. #Matrix as a #meto project likely has to make the move.

A. What if for a moment we gave up on blaming each other and started accepting that #matrix started rather late, tried to learn from experiences and tried to fix some things #xmpp folks weren’t able to address for roughly two decades, for whichever reasons? I see stubbornness on both sides as a main cause for this messy situation. 😑

Q. Its completely understable why we are in this #openweb chat mess.

A. Exactly. The only way to resolve this probably is not to let technical people come up with final product decisions. This overemphasizes the importance of technology and downplays the need to solve actual problems. We end up designing better mousetraps while never even trying to actually catch mice.

Q. The #matrix project being a #NGO has reason not to build the bridge, but more power to build it if they are pushed to do so. The #xmpp folks being a disorganization have less power to build the bridge but more reason to do so. Neither wont to do it and feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Thus, both are actually feeding off the dying #openweb looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.