Tag: AP

Thinking about news on the #fediverse

To tackle the challenges of #stupidindividualism and the #techshit it often spawns on the #Fediverse, it’s essential to refocus efforts on balance, collaboration, and meaningful process. Let’s look at one path away from this mess, making, an example of the roadmap for #indymediaback and what do we mean by a #newswire. Looking at the current use of #AP on the #Fediverse with this in mind:

Repeats: Strengthen syndication between instances for better information flow.

Replies: Integrate as comments on newswire posts and8 features to foster engagement.

Likes/Stars: Define their roles to signal endorsements or importance, avoiding redundant or unclear actions.

DMs: Focus these on moderation or editorial inquiries to streamline communication.

Enforce a balance between creativity and structure, use editorial collectives to curate content based on established journalistic standards (e.g., the 5Ws of news reporting).

Apply consistent moderation to maintain the newswire as a valuable resource for grassroots reporting, minimizing off-topic or non-news contributions.

Building a robust newswire for #indymediaback needs clear editorial guidelines, begining with strict adherence to “newsworthiness,” rejecting non-news posts (up to 99% initially) to establish quality standards. Over time, this threshold can relax with user education and feedback. Focus on first-hand reports that embody the 5Ws of journalism (Who, What, Where, When, Why).

Feature process, features synthesize the best grassroots reports into cohesive narratives, combining text, images, audio, and video for impactful storytelling. Develop features through editorial consensus, ensuring diversity of perspectives and adherence to the .

Federation via #activitypub to share content across the network, building interconnectivity without duplicating efforts. Allow comments and replies to appear across instances, fostering dialogue while maintaining editorial oversight.

Dealing with the “Nutter” problem by focus on process, not outcomes. Push the project forward with clear processes built on shared principles, understanding that life and society evolve over time. Avoid getting bogged down by demands for “perfect” solutions—basic, functional systems are a strong start.
Reduce misinformation and #FUD by establish user education paths to combat misinformation and clarify project goals. Use editorial tools to label, moderate, and remove false content.

The OMN vision, strong defaults, hardcoded values. Embed the at every level of the project to resist dilution by #mainstreaming influences. Maintain grassroots, horizontal approach to development to ensure inclusivity and resilience. This will need a cultural shift, to address the reliance on #fashernistas and those who push “common sense” a part of this is emphasizing long-term, principled growth over short-term popularity. This path keeps the focus on trust, process, and grassroots collaboration, building a stronger, more resilient #Fediverse and revitalizing #indymediaback as a platform for meaningful, community-driven media. For more information, resources, the OMN wiki is a good place to start.

You can fund the projects here

#Fediverse, Definitions, and Building Activist Communities

The question of definitions, particularly around the “Fediverse” and its relationship with the ActivityPub protocol (AP), has become messy due to the influx of #mainstreaming people, this has sparked a lot of mostly unhelpful debate. Let’s be clear, there is no real “Fediverse” without #AP. Since Mastodon’s shift to AP, the entire Fediverse has been built around this protocol. Trying to separate the two or debating the definition at this point feels a reactionary and more noise than signal.

One thing that these #mainstreaming people find hard to understand, thus except, is that the Fediverse isn’t an organized movement but rather a disorganized space full of mythos and traditions. The only solid thing, for better or worse, is the badly implemented ActivityPub protocol, and even that is a work in progress, and not without issues. Outside of AP, there are meany different protocols and projects that bridge into this a loose, difficult to define neatly #openweb path. Yes, things are changing, and let’s engage with these changes, focusing on fighting over abstract definitions is not very productive.

Now, onto the tricky topic of the “dominance of white, techno-libertarian guys” in the space. While it’s an issue worth acknowledging, it’s not practically very central, it’s a part of the messy path. The Fediverse is built on and #DIY principles. It is best to ignore if you can or tolerate the presence of techno-libertarian individuals, as these people are largely noise rather than core to the project. The real barriers to entry are basic technical skills and community-building. This space is actually perfect for the #fluffy side of any activist movement, including a potential #BPP (Black Panther Party) reboot that needs to happen.

Then there’s the idea of “protocol supremacists” using ActivityPub to reinforce their dominance. Yes, you can smell a bit of this, but it’s not actually important or widespread as some people push. The Fediverse was built with almost no money and very little power, so there’s not much for people to hold onto in terms of control. The gatekeeping you see is real from a few players, but they’re not too bad (so far). However, you’re right that things are likely to change as more institutional power and #NGO types enter the space.

Our internal fixations on insider language like “Eternal September” and “Eternal November” is just this, insider language that’s not particularly useful for most people. The focus remains on the core issues of community-building and the challenges of maintaining the decentralized, #openweb ethos in the face of outside pressures.

As for the racism and toxicity that exists, in huge amounts in the #dotcons and in some corners of the Fediverse, the key is this: Don’t go looking for the worst people, and if they find you, block them quickly. The community is built on and #DIY principles, meaning you have control over community spaces. Building a supportive network takes time, but once established, you can block out the toxicity effectively. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem—build your community first, then deal with the bad actors as they come.

Finally, let’s talk about the lack of digital drugs—those addictive elements you find on #dotcons like Facebook or Twitter. The Fediverse doesn’t have these hooks, so getting people to stay when things turn messy is harder than you might expect. This is why community-building is so crucial. Activist communities need to focus on strong process and then support networks and positive action based paths to create spaces people want to stay in, despite the inevitable challenges.

The #Fediverse is messy, yes. But within that mess, there’s a lot of potential. It’s up to us to cultivate it.

ActivityPub and Mastodon from a #closedweb prospective

A #closedweb Critique

  1. Design for Abuse: The #AP protocol is vulnerable to abuse, particularly in terms of Distributed Denial of Service (#DDOS) attacks.
  2. Push-Based Model: The push-based notification model leads to overloading servers, especially when a popular account generates a large amount of activity.
  3. Harassment Concerns: There is a perceived inadequacy in control issues to address the worry of harassment, with issues like the inability to disable replies not being implemented.
  4. Need for Defensive Model: A #geekproblem call for abandoning the working “native” #openweb path and push a “native” #closedweb path, with a complete overhaul of the protocol to incorporate defensive measures from the outset.

The Critique

From an #openweb and perspective, the critique highlights a different mindset that is clearly incompatible with the current path. But yes, there are questions about the balance between openness and security. Let’s not get lost in the #geekproblem and look at them:

Design for Abuse

Critique: The assertion that the protocol is designed for abuse is an overstatement, but it highlights genuine vulnerabilities. The open “trust” based nature of #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse, promotes decentralization and federation, but can indeed be exploited by malicious actors, people do brake “trust”. Transparency in code is crucial. Vulnerabilities should be openly discussed and addressed through community collaboration, most can be fixed by social norms rather than hardcoding. Data sharing is core, there should be as little as possible “private data” to abuse. Protocols should work with slow revisions to improved community feedback. Decision-making processes around security, should be based on social rather than coding, #openprocess is a core part of this.

Push-Based Model

Critique : The push-based model can indeed lead to server overloads. Popular accounts generating a lot of traffic can unintentionally cause DDOS-like situations. This is a normal lossy part of the “native” #openweb, we should work on this. Implementing caching strategies and lossy notification systems should be developed and tested within the community. Efficient data handling techniques should balance ease of hosting and speed of application, with ease of hosting first. Exploring hybrid models (push/pull) with RSS backup can lead to more resilient protocols use. Real time is less important than the app keeps working. Part of this is about ensuring that changes to the protocol are hard and slow, with debate and consensus.

Harassment Concerns

Critique : The constant talking about harassment tools and features such as disabling replies is a concern. Yes open networks are just that open, it’s the social norms of federation that make them a safe space, we need to build up our communes of trust. Developing robust moderation tools and anti-harassment features should balance with building strong social instances, who in the end do the work, be very careful of #closedweb paths in coding these features. Socialise data on harassment patterns helps to improve trust based moderation tools. The stories we tell and the way we work for moderation and anti-abuse measures should be developed collaboratively. Including diverse voices in the social decision-making process for instances is crucial.

Need for Defensive Model

Critique: Starting with a defensive model is the wrong path. Many security and abuse issues can be mitigated with a trust-first approach. A good culture should be built into the core from the beginning, with active community involvement. Developing norms of behaver through community consensus helps build a more resilient system.

Conclusion

The #closedweb path tries to raise points about vulnerabilities and shortcomings of the current #ActivityPub and #Mastodon implementations. From an #openweb and perspective, the solution lies not in suggesting we abandon the native path and implemented protocol but in addressing these issues through open, collaborative, and transparent social processes. By leveraging the strengths of the framework, the community can work to create resilient, and user-friendly networks that are already on the successful native #openweb path.

Talking about #hashtags

We need to think of a serendipity view of how #hashtags work and how our coder kings implement them (#feudalism). Not saying this is a good aproch… i don’t know… but spelling hashtags “wrong” makes their use in categorization and sorting work differently. Might be worth thinking if this could add value or is purely negative? This depends on different views on federation and ideas of a universal truth or messy “truths”. Composting thought on this.

In the #OMN coding project, currently offline (unite.openworlds.info) we add word grouping flows, so you can say one hashtag is the same as another, ie. you can group different “meanings” to build category flows. This makes misspelled hashtags functional, and our current coding broken from the #OMN point of view.

It’s not implemented, is a speck projects so can’t test this. Over the last year I have put 5 #FOSS funding applications in to try and get this built, 3 turned down so far 2 more to be turned down (cross fingers and toes not) soon. Our #AP #openweb reboot is being destroyed by our #fahernistas and #geekproblem nothing new here, but we do need to do better.

That’s what we set out to fix 20 years ago, with the #OMN still digging, but my shovel has no handeal nor a head… says the man on his knees hands covered in shit… composting worthwhile however you do it, I could not make this shit up… but we keep making more #techshit

#SSB splintering a “commons”

Another link that is pure #geekproblem but interesting for #OMN in that #SSB is splintering https://www.manyver.se/blog/2023-04-05

@rabble is involved in another splinter #nosta

How protocols die… #SSB was a protocol that they all reallyed round, a “commons”, we now have 3 “commons” on the table. The rabble one which has hidden #VC money behind it, then this individualist one https://www.manyver.se/blog/2023-04-05 which will maybe rally the grassroots, and the original #SSB which might or might not carry on.

We don’t have a cross culture “common” any more. A clean separation of the #mainstreaming and the #grassroots. To make this relevant, the same is likely going to happen to #ActivertyPub when the #W3C “formal consensuses” is captured by the #dotcons

The enclosure of commons is always a bad path. And yes not saying #SSB was a good protocol it was not, it came from the encryptionsists, but it was a rare “commons”.

#AP is a good/bad protocol, we don’t need to do the same path. Thus, the message to #socialhub, 95% chance they will ignore it or more likely see it as weakness and attack harder, cats…

“The is currently an undeclared battle going on between the rebooted #WC3 and the grassroots (#fashernista dominated) #socialhub for power. If the libertarian cats can’t herd themselves to do something useful, like we managed with the #EU outreach – currently they cannot do this, have a feeling socialhub will lose.

Not a big problem, but a dangerous outcome for #ActivityPub as #WC3 is formal consensus which is easy to capture and control for the #dotcons – where socialhub libertarian cats have failed messy consensuses so less open to capture.

But from my view the libertarian cats are being prats as cats are… so WC3 is stepping back in to CONTROL… how to herd cats – should I try? Or keep focus on #OMN codeing is a question am asking my self?

@xxx @xxx@xxx, have tried building bridges, but no foundation stones laid on this building work. Honest question are we helping or hindering in this grassroots space?”

There is a small chance they act, we did herd cats on #socialhub for the #EU outreach. This is why I bring it up, though, think people can only see the power politics and not what am saying when doing this. Agen 5% chance of a good outcome…

Maybe this helps to make the “mess” metaphor clearer. For the #geekproblem they likely have no idea about the damage they do. Because in their terms they are mostly right. Step back to look at the wider picture, and it’s obviously adding to the mess to be composed.

The #geekproblem

Storeys of our tech http://hamishcampbell.com/2023/04/05/ssb-splintering-a-commons/ a post that give background on #SSB and its splintering as an example.

Why this matters, the #openweb is the most powerful tool for change/challenge. The mess we are in The moral depravity of virtue signalling solidarity at this time of mass murder – Roger Hallam The moral depravity of virtue signalling solidarity at this time of mass murder

 

Examples, peertube and OMN

An example of how to do media with #AP https://visionon.tv/videos/local?sort=-trending&c=false&s=3 the content (video objects) comes in by federation https://visionon.tv/videos/recently-added trust links. Sadly the are no moderation link flows, I asked them to add this, but they have not done this yet. You can subscribe to any user account/channels etc as an AP actor, then each object (video) can have a AP native comment thread, likely as posts and reply’s. So it’s a pile of data objects (videos) feed by (trusted) flows. These objects and flows are native to the Fediverse, where you can share and interact with them. This approach is based on white listed ie trusted flows only to create the shared database.

Interestingly you can choose in the admin to share hosting as the streaming is done p2p, so each instance can manually choose to host video seeds for other instances.
The is technically a good example of what we want to build, BUT socially it’s a disaster, being too fixated on copying YouTube and the #dotcons. Currently, almost nobody sees content or interacts with it on the wider Fediverse.

Just about all the current Fediverse projects work fine as source flows and to a limited extent as comments/discushern. The #OMN want to build code that is social web native, based on historical working models, the is quite a bit of thinking needed on how to technically implement these, but the social side is well thought through and mostly documented #nothingnew. We are building code for trust groups this is obvuse and #KISS BUT it is strongly agenst much current thinking. Thus we get a lot of back pushing from people as we are pushing “open” as power for social change/challenge to the mess where many people are trying to hide from the current mess by pulling on the clock of “closed” to feel safe.

In this, feeling safe is not our project 🙂

Offering a real alternative to the dotcons world

Published Date 10/17/17 4:59 PM

This is a quite #reboot of the #openweb going on. This project has nearly 1 million users https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) It’s one of the use it or lose it moments for life outside #failbook. It would be a bad time for progressive funders to start to prop up the #dotcons world if we don’t try to change direction, this sad outcome is invertible.

A funding application to set up/boot up both an “NGO” and an “Activism” instance of Mastodon. Each could have different “terms of service” but would both talk to each other and the wider #AP networks. It’s time and not a #dotcons and works #OMN

Would need a crew of 3 people part-time for 6 months roll out then 6 months sustaining after this year the project should be self-sustaining due to low running costs. Can use patron and occasional donation drives.

Crew
Hamish – lead fixer and Activist outreach
Sys admin – to set up the servers and keep them running
NGO Outreach – to outreach to NGO’s and get them to buy into the #openweb project.

Funding
5-7K funding for the first year. From Lush and Edgefund
This would mostly be part-time wages, with some server and outreach costs. A monthly donation would go to the development https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

The project would be organised on Github as a project as a part of an open media network.