Month: October 2020

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Rich compost in technology

Think of the fedivers as a flowerbed in a big (#openweb) garden surrounded by concrete. We are interested in the garden and bracking up the concrete (#dotcons) to make room for more flower beds and wild forest.


 

#Activertypub is a part of the flow, as is #RSS and maybe #Odata etc. The apps are the pipes. The human community produces and mediates the flow, in a metaphorical sense is the flow.

The fedivers is lovely healthy’ish flower bed, a small part of the #openweb garden that we are caring/nourishing in our work. When we are down and dirty working in tech it is important to remember this. In the end the garden is the human community’s living as part of a wider natural ecosystem.

The current priority is to get the flow working in a small and sustainable way – thus the hyperlocal test rollout and #epicyon.

This is why i use “mess” “shit” “compost” and “spades” as communication metaphors. The stinking mess we are in is a fertile time for change. For the last 10 years the #encryptionists agender and the #dotcons have been a sterile time, in this shit is a good thing, to live in stinking times 🙂

We have to keep focus on nurturing the seedlings with nutrition rich flows otherwise they wither and die. “Priority is to get the flow working in a small and sustainable way – thus the hyperlocal test rollout and epicyon.”

Looking at wordpress (WP) as a option, would like to try this out on my blog (http://hamishcampbell.com) thus the desire to get it working better. We have already mastodon and peertube. With out a bigger crew we should concentrate on creating a flow with epicyon as this is work anufe. If we can join WP to this flow a bonus.

Remember we are ONLY planting the seeds in the cracks and nurturing them. The roots of the plants (community) bracks the concrete. If we spend time trying to break the concrete we will soon be exorsted and achieve little.

So our mission is to find cracks and plant seeds. Of courses gathering the seeds (crews/code) is a first step – thus outreach and the messiness this brings – we do live in stinky times.

Then think of #searx (http://openworlds.info) as the map to the garden and as a way for people to find out of the concrete paths to the fresh #openweb grass fields. It can all grow up slowly if we keep a nourishing flow going. If we forget, it dries up and dies as it has done meany times in the last 20 years.

You would be surprised how fast nature reclaims concrete given a chance 🙂

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DRAFT of indymedia reboot UX

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Modern poison.

I think the is a deep modern poison in not seeing the world from wide ideological views. It leaves people dangerously pointless and thus breeds fascism.

As the is poison in the rejection of open media as a solution to social issues. An example of this is the current thinking that communication is responsible for the current mess we are in spared by quite a few people.

You can revers this poison with the understanding that the repression was there to overcome so the violence was “openness” fighting “closed”. It’s dishonest to see only “closed” as natural thus without violence, what do you think? Is this a fair view?

An antidote?

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Living through a open/closed war in the indymedia years.

What can we learn from the battle over metadata?

The closed side were only looking to strengthen their silo by centralizing power in the name of privacy and security. This with mostly no understanding of the problem on a personal level, it was the right thing to do – total control was what they needed.

The open side were for the Dublin core as it was a standard in this they were right. But it was so far from human scale #KISS and so top down as to be utterly pointless for grassroots projects.

With this ripping inside “open” and a block from “closed” outside. Nothing good could or did come out.

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Should we use tech or social to verify a news source/flow.

Looking at the indymedia reboot

It’s verified by the crowd/community as you will have text, photos etc from the event from different views with some of them by known actors. The event happened.

A single post from a unknown source needs verification. Its journalism 🙂 from a grassroots prospective based on community and trust in that community.

Of course what we lack in the contempery world is these very things. In this it’s the chicken/egg problem 😉

The indymedia reboot is the egg, we the affinity group are the chickens?

As in everything in this project we look for the solution in the social first. Then look for tech that helps to build this social.

Focus on the #PGA hallmarks and try and solve the issue with the 5 functions.

Ha! This is startling to sound like a religion. Where in reality it’s about #KISS and keeping focus on this.

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Why move away from both the #dotcons and the #encryptionists now?

Lets look at trust/community building as this is what the OMN is about after 20 years of failed tech “solutions”.

 

* Link – am interested in there content flow for my community.

* Trust – i have a relationship with them, no questions.

* Moderate – we are building a relationship.

* Whoops – rollback

* Unlink – am annoyed, this is shit, waist of time.

* Bolyon logic hashtag flows – a conversation on what is important between the two groups to fine tune flows.

So for flows from a single source that dominate the instance flow. First stage moderation, more work for site crew. Second agree on a hashtag group based flow with the fast source and put them back on trust. Rinse and repeat

If it messes up rollback, if communication bracks down unlink.

An example of this would be the canary news site. Lots of low quality clickbate with acational good posts. Talk to them and get them to use a hashtag for quality post and subjects and only bring that in as flow. If they abuse this talk to them if you can’t come to an agreement then unlink or moderate. The is advantages for everyone to get an agreement and this will not affect the SEO games they play with the #dotcons

The outcome is the up quality of there SEO games getting grassroots content into the #dotcons And our communities we don’t have to see there SPAM. Grassroots news is spread wider, the communities that produce it are empowered. (And sadly likely co-opted, but that another problem for a different step)

 

Were is security?

Yes to security, people have to be who they say they are and content has to come from a place and its path has to be recorded.

Am going to joke and say we need a blockchain 😉

Trust has to have a foundation.

Stuff can’t just be made up at any level, this would brake trust.

Down the road the is a place for strong p2p identities and personal/group data stores. But not in the ” balancing” roll out of the OMN its good to plug in this stuff as the network grows. The growth stage is as #KISS as possible.

We are strongly refocusing on groups and flows and away from individuals and silos. We are not fundementism on this instead are balancing if that dose not sound to hippy… The #deathcult world is all #stupidindividualism and controlling #dotcons our mission is to rebalance this. Were the balence ends is up to the groups involved. I like the DIY anachronism of party and protest, some people like gardening, other are content with other things.. what ever rocks your boat the is space for meany paths – but the current #deathcult is not a nice one at all.

The is no securaty in tech, ecology or just about anywhere. Its very inhuman world we live in says the man sailing away in a lifeboat – as i keep saying that’s not a metaphor.

On the subject of people being who they say they are – this can be sudo anonymous if they feel like it but that “anonymous” person still has to fit into the trust web

Thus the sudo bit.

End thought

If data is the new currency, then opendata is the new communism, jumps to mind, lets see were leads.

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DRAFT – contemporary look and feel

The “newswire” used to be open publishing we now add a switch trust/moderate to this wire. The UK indymedia site did something similar latter in its life. Its up to the “editorial collective” to flip this switch for site/accounts/tags etc

The central “fetures column” is newswire articals promoted to a feature. These are written by the “editorial collective” from text and media resources from newswire posts.

Both are news flows.

In journalistic terms the newswire is “breaking news” that flows past fast. It might or might not be true/accreat in real time but will be relatively accreat over time. Its “citizen journalism” in that horrible liberal term. Grassroots reporting maybe better term.

The “feature column” is more like tredtional journalism. Facts are checked, spelling correct, sound in audio good, videos stable etc its the best of the newswire collected and put into context by a group of “citizen journalists” this moves slowly so articals stick around for days/weeks.

The moderation stream is not visible to non “editorial collective” people.

The value in the OMN idea is a social feedback loop to push federation to a lowest level, grassroots. The 5 functions: link/trust/moderate switch is key to this social outcome.

The OMN use of these 5 functions as a strong political/social protection against political infighting/tribalism and mediating the #geekproblem by removeing the levers of control from the programmers/admins and giving them to the producers.

From my long experience in the delight and mess of grassroots media/tech, with out the last two “social tech” paragraphs the project has zero chance of working.

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How should the hyper local indymedia rollout

A sideways look at the death of UK indymedia and things to learn for its reboot.
With federation, we don’t have to go down the path of a “virtual silo” this issue was one of the reasons indymedia was ripped apart. The desire for security, privacy and control of having it all on one server controlled by the “elite” geeks compared to having lots of different servers controlled by different groups. The final rip that killed UK was this very issue.
The fediverse is the reboot of the loose network based on trust and clearly against the centralized silo based on control 🙂
Not sure if the is a good history on this, most indymedia history is crap so best to go back to the original source. Think a lot is on archive.org
Q. Should IMC self-hosting be based on something like freedombone – easy to install, maintain, etc
A. Yes… though to seed it as a testing roll out we can host a few before passing um onto the community’s. But the idea is the same as freedombone which is a fab project. BUT as a outreach tool has real imitations due to ISP’s and crap routers in peoples homes, me and me brother tom (who is proper geeky) spent 3 days trying and failing to get it running, a little to do with freedombone and a lot to do with his rooter refusing to do port forwarding reliably.
As with everything OMN we take all paths, for the hyperlocal:
* Home install fab (but likely complex)
Bashrc is likely to add the indymedia server to freedombone so that’s the home install covered
* Community local install, good but could fall for the #geekproblem
Is for the geeks, so they can sought it out for themselves from the sourcecode.
* Easy VPS script – good anufe likely it will work
This one we have to make easy, but this is not a priority till after the test rollout.
* us hosting it on a central server bad but probably the right thing to do for the test rollout.
Is actually the second one just done badly 😉
Todo for the test rollout
* Get the peertube (@RCS currently AWOL) and searx (@jolek78) with @sanders making it happen back online and updated.
* Get a test instill of hyperlocal code to give feedback (@bashrc)
* find small community’s for test rollout, have lifeboats IMC, and a few others in mind (Hamish)
Give us a shout if you have ideas or connections on these.
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Q&A what is a fashernista in the hashtag way.

Q. I’ve read a lot of your stuff but I’m hoping you’ll clarify something. What’s a “fashernista”?

A. A large part of society who do what’s fashionable. Not what’s right/wrong/best. In the era of the #deathcult of neo-liberalism this has always been the wrong path to take. It’s a simple idea.

men-make-their-own-history-but…

#fashernista is a feedback loop of #stupidindividualism at mo.

The hashtags are designed to make the mainstream as dirty as possible so people see the need to pick up #openweb tools “spades” to clear the stinking shit and pools of piss #climatechaos is increasingly going to show we live in (consumerism/alienating work/greed is good) Make compost (decay of death) to plant seeds (fertile life) to grow flowers (lifecult). It’s a convoluted metaphor 😉

Its a hard to understand, simple thing. In the era of the #deathcult the fashernisas are almost always wrong and a part of the problem. In the era of the #lifecult fahernistas are mostly right and a part of the solution, does that make it more simple?

What would a #lifecult look like in this era?

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The encryptionsists – the last 10 years.


Security theater you should ask who we are hiding from. The sad and bad outcome of just about everything is only our friends – our enemies, the state and the #dotcons can almost always look behind the curtain. The rare exception of this is p2p encryption, never client server. Though the issue that makes most of security into a thin layer of cloth is the hardware and firmware our ”secure” apps run on. So many holes in these that it’s all academic, what we do next with social technology