Modern poison
I think there 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, spread by quite a few people.
You can reverse 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?
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.
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 #4opens #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.
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 #4opens leads.
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.
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.
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 #4opens 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?
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 #4opens
Folksonomy and categories – bottom up/top down – open/closed
How do we federate metadata flows
folksonomy and categories – bottom up/top down – open/closed
Each has advantages and disadvantages.
Can we be creative and bridge this divide
The OMN and indymedia reboot are both grassroots bottom up projects, so we obviously start with a folksonomy.
Recognising the is some use for categories a draft proposal.
We only have 5 functions 
Allow instances to put folksonomy items into category groups, these can be added as extra folksonomy tags into the flow.
Allow instances to subscribe to this category groups as a flow (basic tool of OMN)
Build it out of based on trust.
4opens review of NHSX track and trace app
WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THIS?
The app is from NHSX with contributions from Apple and Google obvs and Pivotal Labs and Uni of Oxford. All source code for front and backend on Github and open source.
What is the actual polatics behind this?
#4opens review. Think it duse 2 opens as it clearly fails openprocess and likely opendata? Its opensource? And kinda open “industrial” standard. So its at best a bronze 4opens project, try harder?
On outreach of OMN and indymedia reboot
Q. I’m not interested in doing that, as I don’t know what it is you are actually proposing. Apart from using hashtags and talking about #deathcult I don’t actually understand your plan?
What I haven’t heard is a practical way of hosting and distributing alt media.
Visionontv turned into a mess, just as Indymedia did. So what has changed?
A. What happened is a good question. The answer is simple the #Fediverse maybe start here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
Where we are now https://the-federation.info/ or https://fediverse.network/
From an activist tech prospective. The real opening we have is this was built outside activism outside #encryptionist amenders and for the #openweb and is thus #4opens
Our own tech in activism was ripped apart by the open/closed war, indymedia dies because of this, visionontv never went anywhere because of this. Outside activism this war has also been fought, the closed/encryptionists have been dominant for the last 10 years.
Around 5 years ago a handful of people said fuck this crap we need a spade. They created #openweb tools, and it has exploded from there to be a real UI friendly alternative. This is exactly the same outcome of the World Wide Web did to the silos of the early internet.
Am simply bring this explosion of affective DIY creativity into the ossified and dead depression of activism tech. Obviously, meany nay sayers are going to piss and shit all over this move. Activist tech died for very good ressions. This does not have to be a block, as I say this makes good compost so get your shovel ready and let’s plant some seeds. I hope that not to metaphorical
A simple video on the tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57uhCQBEk0 from this it’s clear this #openweb tech works and scales and people like it
What is also clear is that is people are getting seriously unhappy on the #dotcons
YES its going to be a mess of shit and piss and fuckups, that’s activism, and the #encryptionsists pushed “closed” ideas deep into our #fashernistas so it’s a uphill battle.
BUT we do not have a choice to stay in the #dotcons it’s poison and our ecosystem and social syteams are dyeing.
A realistic timeline, a year of dev and small scale roll-outs. During which there will be lots and lots of shit shovelling to stop it becoming a stinking mess that people will not go, nowhere near.
The tech is “easy”ish, it’s the shovelling shit that’s hard, non techs can help with this bit.
Help OMN indymedia reboot
* It easy to keep crossing wires with “media” vs. personal. Media should be open, with clear sources, except when protecting them. Whereas personal data should default to private
* #OMN is not about tech – all code is ideology – the OMN is a social solution to a social problem
* teach people the #4opens and review tools/projects they use/want to use by them.
* on the dev/organising site you can help by asking simple basic questions