Tag: twitter

Why do people keep doing pointless self harm – news aggreation

There are hundreds (over the last 20 years likely thousands) of news, aggregation sites. It’s a common #dotcons model to inclose the “commons” people see free content and think I can capture that. The problem is news content looks like it’s free, but that’s because it’s “free” to spread, but it’s VERY expensive in human (and thus money) to produce the content. This side is never addressed in these failed projects.

We currently have #traditionalmedia all round the world pushing to be paid for aggregation and even search of their “product”. At #OMN and #indymediaback, we get round these issues as we add “value” by the #DIY labour of the meany people involved in the shared “commons” space. We are producing rather than “stealing” in the #mainstreaming view.

It’s normal that the top-down news aggregators are seen as parasites, and the bootm up aggregators as adding value. For a few years of #indymedia growth, #traditionalmedia was using #indymedia as a “news” source, this shaped the #mainstreaming agenda, adding value to both paths.

When the #openweb we were building was ripped apart by internal and external pressers and agenders, the #DIY value was captured by the #dotcons such as #Facebook and later #twitter (when it left it’s open’ish path).

The first step away from the current mess is to recreate the “commons” to bring the value back from the #dotcons capture, this should be more possible now as we are building from the #Fediverse where this has already happened. What we do with this recreated “commons” is up to meany different groups/people, but let’s hold the #4opens and #PGA strongly in place to stop “common sense” enclosing attempts, which are constant pointless damage we need to work around.

To sum up, a key part of the #OMN is to recreate the data “commons” then it’s up to meany other groups to find useful things to do with this free to use non-commercial value. And yes lots of people will see the stupid path of enclosing this to capture the value for themselves, this is damage.

In capitalism, any non-owned value is seen as an opportunity to capture, enclosed and profit from. This is why we have copyleft licences in code, which is visibly failing and why we extend this to the #4opens to fail less 😉

This all comes down to the question of what we value. And for meany people, this is a blindness.

Talking to people about #twittermigration

Thinking of stepping away from the #dotcons to the #openweb a conversation with an activist signing up on a big general instance – they kinda all do this.

A. You might be better off on an activism focused instance, https://activism.openworlds.info, but you will be fine on the one anyone, as they all talk to each other. The instance you join is your “home community” so good to join one that matches your interests and mission.

Q. Thank you so much – I am entirely lost here as just arrived and the whole ‘find your server’ bit flumoxxed me! Excuse what’s likely a silly question – but ‘where is my main profile?’ ie: where whatever bit of Mastodon I’m on… I would
be the same me?

A. you have joined a big general instance’s https://mastodon.online/ it’s a fine place to be. You can have more than one account on different instances, I have 3 mastodon accounts on 3 different instances, run 2 of these as a part of the #OMN

Ps. hashtags are your friend, use them in posts and click on them to find interesting people

Q. so if I boost a post on one account – I would need to also boost on other ‘me’ accounts in other arenas/spaces? Thanks so much for your help x

A. you can do that, but you don’t need to. All the instances are kinda one big space. The import bit is that each instance has a community and focus, so it helps yourself and the #openweb if you put our self into a subject instance.

For example, if someone complains about your posts it’s the mods and admins of the instance you join get to decide if it stays up or your account gets closed… so best to have a relationship with the instance admin and mods… This is much easer on a smaller, friendly focused instance than a bigger, more inpersional general one.

It’s much more #DIY and human relationship than #twitter.

That would be a battle worth of a saga

Challenges the #fedivers faces and were next.

The #twitter #bluesky thing comes from #blockchain crap – but don’t think it will end there – they will likely come up with a “new” standard that will #fashernista flash then promptly be forgotten.

Would be interesting if they tried to colonize #activertypub we would see a wholesale selling out balanced with a community fightback – think the selling out would win, but this would kill the value in the standard, so everyone would lose. If #bluesky and the #dotcons go for #activertypub and the community wins the fight for the standard in long bloody trench warfare vs the #fahernista sell outs funded by the #dotcons then you see the possibility of real social change.

That would be a battle worth of a saga and a story to tell your grandchildren siting in front of the camp fire.

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read…”

If you want to have a hope of having a good outcome with a CONTROL battle with the #dotcons you need to build structures that are attractive we have this with #activertypub AND they must have no hard structures that can be captured to take CONTROL, this is counterintuitive as people feel they need harder structures to stop capture. This feeling is obviously a trap and needs to be strongly mediated 🙂

I start outlining a workable path to think about with a good outcome in mind http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2021/03/13/bluesky-thinking-of-a-governance-body-of-the-fedivers/

Cat videos – A “shadow ban” experiment on youtube

Just finished a cat video, it’s an experiment for #YouTube. We have over 7000 subscribers and over 5 million video views on our legacy #visionontv account Our viewing numbers have been dropping over the last few years, and now we get very few views, likely do to do with the activists content not being “ad friendly”. Have recently tried making fluffy content, very few views, so let’s try cats 😉

Am curious if the “algorithm” will pick it up or not. If it does pick up will it feed views onto the other videos on the account, with the suggestions etc.

Pushed it out quite hard on #failbook #twitter and #mastodon, but it did not pickup views on youtube (37 views in 15 hours) which suggests that the visionontv account is “shadowbanned” not surprising I suppose, will try pushing the video on cat forums  to test how strong the “ban” is.

You can find much more interesting (but not as cute) videos on http://visionon.tv

Some thoughts on the OMN idea

Published Date 10/14/16 2:15 PM

You would have to be very out of touch not to see that echo chambers are inherent to #failbook and historically less on #twitter though they have changed over to a algorithmic time line you have to opt out of. The OMN is only moderated by humans. It has a built in “market” that rewards trust thus actively builds out human networks. Groups that link will grow, thoughs who do not will slide back as others move forward.

Arrogance & Ignorance and how to get past this blocking is the issue. You don’t overcome A&I that’s not an option. But getting round it is well possible. The OMN is built on the human condition of trust and serendipity. Both hard human sells, but both the only values we have if your not up for shooting people dead to get your way.

Echo chamber is just a #fashernesta word for feeding prejudice in this it’s the same as buying a tabloid in the old days or listing to R4 and only shouting at the radio when you disagree. The OMN opens – echo chamber closes. Of course we understand that “open” is not a solution, but it is better than closed…

Its easy to misses the point about “open data” you don’t have any control of the machine network that the #dotcon work with. And if you understand the issues with geeks you will likely never have power over complex digital tools. The way out of this is in the #4opens this “forces” the geeks lose of the power they desire and need to be motivated. In this you have a riddle which is not solved by logic – maybe solved by emotion? The OMN cannot be built with logic, It might be able to be built by emotion. I think this is likely the root of many missing understandings? You can’t stop the geeks/fashernista desire to fuckup but the is hope of mediating it with the #4opens that’s about it.

The are issue’s with algorithmic options in general “who guards the guardians” the #4opens are a safety feature that the #dotcon will remove. You would have to be very deluded to believe that #failbook works in a society sense no matter what individuals say, you should know this.

The Q. Is how to get a KISS project past alt apathy, geek complexity and fashernista… well just fashernista… #fashernesta = “stupid individualism” if your reading my older posts.

Part 2

Am more a #fuckup rather than #conspiracy type of guy but the lack of linking is a clear issue to be addressed.

The data, it’s a soup, the sites are just spoons that dip. You get to choose by linking were the value is. Every one can have a spoon if they like (but talent will out, some spoons will have more value than others) so it’s #4opens to linking and content. A silo is a single site like #failbook and the sites listed in this post. On the web the value is in linking content is just something to link to.

Silos host/horde content, if they don’t link they have limited value.

Where next for grassroots alt media

Published Date 8/7/16 6:07 PM

It’s common knowledge that grassroots media is well F**ed and that #failbook and #twitter are the problem not the solution. Where can we go from here? To reboot alt-media (and play a role in rebooting the open web) we need to create an affinity group to cross the geek/political divide that has demolished our once flowing/healthy alt-media networks.

For a moment let’s look at broad-brush history, The 20th century alt-media was one of offline social movements, where modern (21st century) alt-media is a product of online social networks – the web. Take a moment to think about our years of failed encryption geek projects on the one hand, and, the constant churning of disappearing media silos on the other. The last 10 years have been a wasteland for both the geek and political.

The original internet/web suceeded because it was a stupidly open design, it had no built-in agenda to the network. Lets compare this ”new” for a moment to the pre-internet, the old wired telephone networks had all the smarts at the exchanges and the phones were dumb, it was a centralised hierarchical network. Where the internet had the smarts at the ends, the computers, and the network itself was dumb – a horizontal network.

This turning on the head of 20th century thinking is important to move out of our current lon- running malaise in alt-media. Am arguing the divide between politicos and geeks is feeding a failed fixation on 20th century thinking in that they both want to build systems (both technical and social) where the smarts are at the centre. In contrast we know that in the 21st century it is more powerful to build “empty” networks that connect the smarts at the edges. The word “empty” here gets a lot of negative responses 🙂 This is the touching of the core problem. Take a moment to re-read and think positive thoughts 😉

An “empty” network is a general-purpose network that connects general purpose computers to general purpose people and community. Yes, the tech we need, like the internet/open web has an agenda but it is not sectarian as #failbook and other #dotcoms are, as are our own much smaller alt-media silos. Instead its “open” and “simple” based on “industrial” standards and open working social ideals. This is obvious, but it needs saying, The “dumb net” is completely ignorant of what the user wants to do – just data in and data out. It’s up to the user to decide what the data is. Only “universal languages”, that is data standards, have flow. There is a ridiculous power for change in this obviousness.

It’s not hard to re-boot to escape these 10 years of failure, actually it’s simple. Though it’s not going to happen without a good affinity group who cross the geek/political divide. Message me if you think you have the smarts, skills, tolerance and humility.

hamish@visionon.tv