What do you mean by “mainstreaming”

Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.

A. we all worship the #deathcult (neo-liberalism) in polatics, economics, most of the food we eat, our jobs and social lives are all mediated/mostly created by this invisible world-view. In progressive terms #mainstreaming is pushing this agender to build carriears and social structures to further the personal #stupidindividualism created by the #deathcult we live in. This is a circle that is going to kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years from #climatechaos and the social feedback loop of political #fascism

#stupidindividualism is created by the social disintegration of the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, fascism is an outcome of this.

Examples from the UK groups @NovaraMedia while producing fab content its all distributed through the #dotcons and in the end they aspire to be the new @guardian to take the role of #traditionalmedia This is fair anufe but the wider “we” need to balance this with #grassroots media which is a non #mainstreaming mission.

Most #NGO agrenders are #mainstreaming this is an easy to see view.

I played a role in training thousands of grassroots “journalists” over the last 25 years at #undercurrents, #indymedia, #visionontv and now #OMN the majority that are still creating media went onto build there carriears in the mainstream and #NGO sectors few stayed in non #mainstreaming production missions. Cant blame them for this, though no alts were sustained from this which was why we did the training.

In each case grassroots/alt structures were devoured by the #deathcult pushing the need for mainstreaming survival – cant blame people for this.

BUT we need a working alternative if we are going to change the world that does not kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years #XR

learning for expirence the #OMN is a political/tech tool to mediate this issue.

Security concepts tend to be from the conservative ideological viewpoint

With the #OMN building progressive alt tech we cannot repeat the behaver of the #dotcons as it’s a different environment, we need different amenders.

“The security context is the relationships between a security referent and its environment. From this perspective, security and insecurity depend first on whether the environment is beneficial or hostile to the referent, and also how capable is the referent of responding to its/their environment in order to survive and thrive.”

Approaches to security are subject of debate.

For example, some argue that security depends on developing protective and coercive capabilities in order to protect the security referent in a hostile environment (and potentially to project that power into its environment, and dominate it to the point of supremacy). The #geekproblem strives for this outcome without putting it into words.

The #OMN argue that security depends principally on building the conditions in which equitable relationships can develop, partly by reducing antagonism between actors, ensuring that fundamental needs can be met, and also that differences of interest can be negotiated effectively.

Some traditional view of security

* Access control – the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource.

* Authorization – the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources related to information security and computer security in general and to access control in particular.

* Countermeasure – a means of preventing an act or system from having its intended effect.

* Defense in depth – a school of thought holding that a wider range of security measures will enhance security.

* Identity management – enables the right individuals to access the right resources at the right times and for the right reasons.

* Resilience – the degree to which a person, community, nation or system is able to resist adverse external forces.

* Risk – a possible event which could lead to damage, harm, or loss.

* Security management – identification of an organization’s assets (including people, buildings, machines, systems and information assets), followed by the development, documentation, and implementation of policies and procedures for protecting these assets.

* Threat – a potential source of harm.

* Vulnerability – the degree to which something may be changed (usually in an unwanted manner) by external forces.

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

If we are building projects for progressive ends, we need to balance the conservatism in these ideas with #4opens approaches, this is a little understood simple path.

Why use the hashtags?

The #OMN is based on “nothing new” as a core project process. Though we do describe things in different ways than they are normally described, we use everyday metaphors for the language of computing and coding where necessary, we use nature metaphors where possible.

We have lived in a deeply damaging era for the last 40 years in economics we have neo-liberalism (metaphor #deathcult) in thinking and education post-modernism these two have created many bad effects (metaphors #geekproblem #encryptionist #stupidindividualism #dotcons #fashernista etc) that have shaped how people act and think, we have internalised these post-truth into normal everyday worldviews. These are going to undermine our cultures, society, and most impotently destroy our ecology (metaphor #XR)

We change the language to brake out of this “normal” world-view to build an opening for people to see a different view (also am dyslexic and can only think by making up ideas so its a good fit for me). The current “normal” thinking and expressions are too damaged to be of much use in real social change.

A conversation on #OMN issues around metadata

* Capitalism wants to privatise metadata to the #dotcons and the capitalist then control the government – fascism is back into fashion.

* Chinese communism, wants the state to control the metadata, so they can control capitalism, we are back to the command economy just digitised.

* Liberalism want to privatise metadata to the individual to return to a mythic free-market past, a better outcome than the first two but clearly not the one we are building with the #OMN

* What does anarchism want #4opens #OMN is an attempt to answer this last one.

https://wp.me/p9Vw7k-oA

CB. My thinking here is that Anarchism wants the social conditions for free association. The implication for metadata is autonomy over how that’s shared and used

HC. Am thinking about power. Metadata has power in aggregation so bad power is about hoarding the aggregation to use for your power agenders. Good power has to be a diffrent outcome.

CB. So fragmentation of metadata (decentralized storage and tactical use of aliases) is a way to defeat accumulation of power through accumulation of metadata. An interesting quality of power is that it is relative, rather than absolute. So an entity doesn’t have power *over* you unless it has more power to wield constructively relevant to the situation.

HC. ‎in the #OMN we are using metadata to replace the market – the only interesteing question is who has the aggregated metadata power. The capitalists, The state or the Commons – if we divide and privatise the metadata we have nothing to replace the market with. Its all about building a post capitalist economy. We need to replace the “free-market” and it’s police man with a commons and its community – the metadata replaceing the “invisible hand” with visible knowledge in #4opens commons.

CB. Here’s a thought about how a knowledge economy works that may be relevant to the metadata issue. You have transparency and trust building at the local level.

HC. We using social/tech to replace capitalism, not just do social networking the #4opens is a VERY political project that is soft/strongly ant-capitalist. Yep the #OMN is a trust based network of flows (community/subjects/people). We do need a good explanation of the political nature of the project, but also do not wont to terrify the NGO crew, tread softly. Thinking about this, we are pro “power” just wont to horizontalize it. Were meany people, asperly #geekproblem are against power and wont to minermise it (while having total power of there code).

CB. For a press release? “It’s about promoting individual and community autonomy”. For me, the #geekproblem is trying *too* hard to have a perfect system, a way that the bad thing never happens.

HC. Yes but that’s unbalanced, and rebalancing individualism/community in a world of neo-liberal individualism…

CB. That’s unrealistic. You want to make the bad things selected against statistically. Emphasizing autonomy (including community autonomy) is transient.

HC. being less human – its the blemishes were buty lie and its the users saying your code is unusable that make it better etc. if you don’t have any users you can do any code you like – almost all open-source projects are built this way.

CB. We have situations that are unbalanced currently, and the way to achieve balance involves building force in opposition to the current power.

HC. Autonomy comes for stable/trust based society – not from isolated (control) individuals – but yes we talk about the same thing just different processes.

CB. Yeah, I phrased our shared value “for a press release” and you said that’s “neo-liberal individualism”. Well, yeah. 😀 But it introduces the idea of community autonomy, which isn’t quite anarchy ready, either, but it’s a step towards free association and away from thinking about autonomy as strictly an individual value, which is my *estimation* of the most that words can accomplish tactically in that situation.

HC. OK “community autonomy”… am trying to expand my whole composting metaphor to cover this stuff, shovels.

CB. There’s shovels, spades, pitchforks, and dung forks. You can do everything with a shovel, but your back will thank you if you don’t. Either way, it’s the worms who do all the heavy lifting. I’ve been tackling the metadata issue with a friend doing some tech work for a Native American resistamce movement, and who’s very interested in making dirt. The most important aspect of metadata for em (pronoun) is being able to reliably communicate intent. It’s not sufficient or practical to say who should read it and who shouldn’t. There’s aspects of communicating approach to the topic and assumptions about sharing and replying that social networking, including Activity Pub, doesn’t address. These are communicated by a language like Lakota in introductions and closing on speeches, like formal practices in business correspondence.

HC. What do you think about replacing capitalisms free-market with a metadata “commons” as the free market is based on selfishness and access to exclusive knowledge, were the data commons is based on sharing the “open” knowledge for “community” ends. Both are based on “invisible hands” just one is human fucking each other over for a mythical good outcome and the other is more “democratic/diversity” that word “community autonomy” 🙂

CB. The most important aspect of metadata for em (pronoun) is being able to reliably communicate intent for both individual and social communication and trade. I do agree with that. I’m also working with some old school coop-style communists on adapting economic vocabulary to Activity Pub. It’s not sufficient or practical to say who should read it and who shouldn’t. There’s aspects of communicating approach to the topic and assumptions about sharing and replying that social networking, including Activity Pub, doesn’t address

HC. We are purposely not doing social networking for the #OMN only news and archiving as it has a much less privacy issues. News is done in the open/trust by default and sources are protected when needed. And archiving is history, you can choices to add information or not.

CB. And, assuming that you’re talking about locally generated data being propagated through networks of relationships (as opposed to being global by default), then you have a situation where parties local to one another can reliably leverage the advantages of openness, without centralized accumulations of metadata for fascists (or capital) to capture and leverage to exert control. That’s economic activity, which also has differences as well as similarities relative to OMN

HC. Its open data and open license by default so the enemy can take all the metadata by working there way into the syteam. We don’t recommend doing anything hardcore in #OMN or online in any way. The project is about assuming the world CAN change then building in that direction.

CB. But the general shape is that metadata linkage is unavoidable (geek problem), metadata accumulation is undesirable (capital), “metadata is evil” lacks necessary nuance, and communication of metadata is a necessary part of the model and likely a certain amount of verification.

HC. The whole project is built by adding a metadata tail which you can queryed to build trust and serendipity as well as organize in an affective way. You would be right to point out it has NO power to resist the repression of the state if they turn fascist. Though its is a fabulous tool set to build a tool to have power against the state if that happens. So its a race of human creativity vs the “invisible hand” backed up by police with rubber truncheons… the key word is race, if push comes to shove.

CB. Authenticity of metadata in that case is primarily establish through the trust network. It’s hard to corrupt metadata *if* you get a lot of copies distributed quickly.

HC. Metadata is going to happen no matter what you do, to think the geeks can solve this is a fantasy. The ONLY question is who controls this open/closed. Some basic certification to each addition to the tail based on user accounts. The are lots of widely used standards based ways of doing this.

CB. For the example of a state actor trying to control the narrative…. there’s maths to describe the circumstances under which that can occur. And situations where you’re distributing stories to 3 or more peers look bad for the state if they don’t shut it down in the first 2 generations.

HC. Then as you say use this “trust network” to quray the tail. For example how meany people do i know who trust this adition to the tail. You can do the same to get an idea if the tail is trusted over all ect. But the question has to be asked who let the state actor into the trust network… they lose lots of trust (links/flows) etc then rerun the query and you are back to trust. Its all lossy, but this is a how trust works. In this we get away from the #geekproblem ideas of trust.

CB. For the state to suppress a story, they need to identify the source then trace known associates (metadata) to shut down those repeating it. If police don’t discover the story until there are 10+ stations replicating it, that’s not likely to happen.

HC. The network is built up of trusted actors – how dose the state have a voice inside this grassroots level project.

CB. So policing involvement *after* the story breaks is unlikely to be effective in suppression, which is what you want

HC. Yep you are talking strong AI based state manipulations- we don’t have a defence against that.

CB. You actually have the best defence possible.

HC. Yep it will spread widely across the bottom in uncontrollably directions after the first few jumps the is practically no censorship with out visible repression then non effective then as it will bubble back up from the darkweb.

CB. Even if police infiltrate a peer to an activist cell, they still don’t necessarily have enough knowledge to prevent replication through other peers.

HC. But they can pre-empt and kick you door down based on metadata… will happen. We have sudo-anonimerty to mediate this issue. Somebody would have to trust your account with no tail… then the police kick there door down…. Notice the us an escalating level of door kicking.

CB. Takes time to knock down doors, even electronically. With every door they knock down, there’s 3 times as many doors as there were before – potentially. Then you’re crossing lines in jurisdictions and there’s no putting a cork in that

HC. In this it will be censorship resistant. But we make no #geekproblem lies that the “security of the network” will protect you. But you can protect yourself by sudo anonymity and the use of tor. And whispering in the forest to your friends to share the content from the sudo anonymous account. In this way we move security from hard to soft. From #encryptionists to social trust.

CB. Right. Making the network less efficient by routing it over Tor or otherwise requiring cryptography defeats the plan.

HC. Yep, this removes the tail so no trust, no community, no social change. But how to persuade paranoid activists and control freak geeks that having your door kicked sown is socially useful 😉 Also the is no way to root the media objects, no need for federation, no need for community. With one to one encryption you just have isolated individuals and no media

CB. Crypto solutions are fine for first hop in highly sensitive situations, but once you hit a peer that’s outside of your opsec control, infosec is a moot point and you need to go for speed.

HC. Mixed with trust.

CB. I may have overstated “speed”, but yeah. Reasonable assumptions of trust. You only need absolute assurances in specific situations (that you are better off trying to avoid)

HC. With the #OMN we do both the open and the closed path. But we change the balance to 80% open and 20% closed. Yep, best whisper in the forest, second best use the p2p encryption tools in the 20%

CB. That’s a ratio that pops up a lot in various contexts and I agree with it here.

What does anarchism want #4opens #OMN is an attempt to find an answer

Q. “We’re supposed to think of #metadata as less than #data, but it isn’t: often it is more. . .#govts that want to control their people & crush #dissent want #metadata.” #privacy #Whatsapp #BigTech

This is an interesting point, but it only makes sense if you see people as isolated individuals and the being no such thing as society. No alternative to the capitalistic free markets and no hope of changing the death spiral we are on – you might be right. BUT this is a deeply reactionary #deathcult point of view and need to be called out as such – LOUDLY.

For the last 10 years we have had a movement to banish metadata on one side and to hoard it on the other. To banish our humanity or to control our humanity. Nowhere is the celebration of humanity to be found… it’s pastime to put our feet back onto the ground and think about this for a moment. Metadata, data about data is what gives humanity its power in both an individualist sense and at a social scale.

One thing we know for sure is that ideas about privacy change, in the feudal era the village priest know everything and policed everyone, the king had sex in front of the counters to prove his line etc. The current capitalist idea of privacy which we all internalise is set to change, what it becomes we do not know.

What is the free-market? it’s a signalling device based on knowledge of metadata. For people who know little about the “free-market” is a flow of horde metadata as is “money”. In meany ways you are made up of metadata, the words that come out of your mouth are the made up names of things, likely the “things” are made up from words handed down through the ages. When you look at it all HUMAN civilization is a flow of metadata.

If we are to have meaningful social change – let’s look at anarchism as an example. How will we replace the “free-market” where will the signals come from to distribute the goods in complex society? And yes we might end up with “simple society” by killing billions of people from #climatechaos that’s true, but that’s a different subject.

Q. Metadata is the currency of surveillance capitalism. Traded as behavioural futures, and used by the military to perform situational spectroscopy upon whole nations. We can try to minimize metadata, but it’s always a tricky problem. When we generate metadata we hand cash to the likes of Google, who call it “behavioural surplus”. And to shadier organisations to use it for disruption and control. In the past there were entire academic conferences about using social media metadata to prevent “contagion” – by which they meant social movements opposing autocratic governments.

Am not in any way disagreeing with the above, I am pointing out that it is actually not the agender you think it is… raising the question of which side are you on. If nothing changes then you are right, but if nothing changes we end up with billions of people dyeing from #climatechaos and the state control/fascism that comes with this. As I outline this is a #geekproblem world view that of only thinking of tech and not social – hope I can help to balance this.

This is a #geekproblem

We HAVE TO CHANGE we can’t keep doing this same old shit. Privatizing metadata for a tiny number of geeks is not a social change project. Cant put this any simpler.

Q. This goes back over a decade to the “Freedom in the cloud” talk. What if internet users were to run their own services, and keep the logs (metadata) ? Simply moving the logs from Goog and Zuck to the users would be one of the biggest improvements to the internet. It would pull the rug out from under their business model.

That’s the plan with the #OMN and we go further (but only if the users/producers flick the switches) we have an expanding metadata commons that has two powers – one negative in that it destroys the business model of late capitalism one positive that it expands commons that gives us growing space for creativity and expression.

Summing up the choice we face:

* Capitalism wants to privatise metadata to the capitalists #dotcons and the capitalist then control the government – fascism is back into fashion.

* Chinese communism, wants the state to control the metadata so they can control capitalism, we are back to the command economy on steroids.

* Liberalism want to privatise metadata to the individual to return to a mythic free-market past.

* What does anarchism want #4opens #OMN is an attempt to answer this last one.

To recap I understand our current push for privacy from the #dotcons BUT am asking what are we to replace this with? The closing/privatizing of metadata to individuals ” is a deeply reactionary #deathcult point of view and need to be called out as such – LOUDLY!”

Ideas?

The senate “insurrection” and the media

We are seeing a stinking mess of shit posting from the left and the right on the role of tech big and small in the senate “insurrection” . The voice of the centre right #traditionalmedia will push us back to the #dotcons gatekeepers they have started to criticized over the last 10 years.

The opening we have is this mess is, light, transparency building trust. What we do not have is darkness building fear as an option. In the battle of open/closed the sides to fight on are far from obvious on the surface – we have a tool the #4opens to lift the lid, and we have a shovel to shift the shit to the compost heap #OMN

We need you, the crew, to build this out to change the world for the better.

https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/organizations

#4opens #review Threema GmbH Seriously Secure Messaging

#4opens #review

Threema GmbH Seriously Secure Messaging

https://threema.ch

The #4opens:

Are a simple way to judge the value of a “alt/grassroots” tech project.

* Open data – is the basic part of a project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data without this open they cannot work.

– you can likely download your chats and metadata, seams to be there so that a open

* Open source – as in “free software” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software this keeps development healthy by increasing interconnectedness and bringing in serendipity. The Open licences are the “lock” that keep the first two in place, what we have isn’t perfect, but they do expand the area of “trust” that a project needs to work, creative commons is a start here.

– its maybe be technically open-source but it is the most restricted open-source you can get so give it half a open

* Open “industrial” standards – this is a little understood but core open, it’s what the open internet and WWW are built from. Here is an outline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard

– it looks like it uses no open standed for chat? Not sure for encryption so no open for now

* Open process – this is the most “nebulous” part, examples of the work flow would be wikis and activity streams. Projects are built on linking trust networks so open process is the “glue” that binds the links together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process

– looking at the github the process is locked down and not excessable to normal people, the company structure is a #dotcons so no open.

– so its 1 and ½ opens and is thus not a #4opens project so do not recommend using it.

It’s easy to become a 4opens project and join the #openweb family:

2 opens a bronze badge

3 opens a silver badge

4 opens a gold badge

The is a hierarchy of good/evil in chat

EVIL – At the stinking end you have the #dotcons with full on technicology and privacy nightmare. Facebook messenger, whatsapp (facebook) and telegram (who lies) imessage (just trust us)

NEUTRAL – At the next stage you have the ethical, good technologically working, socially problem apps like signal (king who dose not federate) and matrix (a non-industrial #NGO standard)

GOOD – Then you have the usable, but complex good tech like modern jabber/XMPP that ticks the boxes but still suffers from the #geekproblem

Then you have the #geekproblem with IRC and blockchain spam.

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Or for a less “moral” view on the same subject, a post from the #openweb

You could have a chat compass. Centralized/decentralized on one axis, Open/Closed on the other.

Centralized/Closed: WhatsApp, Telegram
Centralized/Open: Signal, Jitsi, BBB, RocketChat (maybe)
Decentralized/Closed: Pre-Microsoft Skype
Decentralized/Open: Matrix, XMPP, SSB

The #openweb is a space for both progressives and reactionary groups

One thing we need to address now in a constructive way is that the right-wing has been better about co-operating around #openweb media than the left-wing for the last 10 years. We have been worse than useless on simple things like linking between radical media projects. The few successfully left media groups have abandoned alt tech solutions and built careers inside the #dotcons

Where we progressives have seceded, in terms of #openweb, has been outside politics and more in lifestyle subcultures with mastodon and the fedivers, these tools have been political natural and focused on privacy. We start to see the use of these tools for radical and progressive agenders with #visionontv and #indymediaback with the radical anarchism of #kolektiva and the #openweb framework of #OMN

With the #mainstreaming move away from the #dotcons we will see more activity in this area from both progressives and reactionary groups – make your voice heard – its pastime for you to #stepback to the #openweb

https://activism.openworlds.info

The banning of trump and gab on #dotcons

We are talking on the #openweb about what to do with the waves of shit that will flow onto our projects from the perging of the far right in the #dotcons

We have widely spread moderation – the instances with committed crews will grow and the ones with flaky mods or large number of users and few mods will be swamped. This is a normal outcome, we can help to mediate this by brining in more mods into the instances we care about and value.

Having clear communication tools for mods to support each other will help, would setup chat rooms and maybe start a BBB weekly meeting for sysadmins and mods to compare notes and best practice.

The tools to solve this wave are human, we need to build “trust” links that bring the “good” #fedivers together, so it is strong anufe to shead off the shit, in this, shit makes good compost, lets take this time to plant flowers and grow vegetables.

Are you depressed with the world – A VERY positive world view for you

(For the complex crew, hold the shit and mud throwing as this post is not speaking to you)

You might be wondering and feeling depressed from all my posts talking about YOUR responsibility for creating the current mess. And yes I do point my finger at YOU as you clearly are responsible, you empowered the current social and political shit heap we live in. Why is this a positive statement you might be wondering, in a negative depressed sought of way. The ansear is clear and positive you had the power to create this mess, thus you have the power to clear up this mess, a better world is up to YOU.

The example I always use is the growth to globle domination of the #dotcons such as #failbook and its siblings, YOU feed this domination by posting cat pics and memes, all the “user generated” platforms have nothing and no value without YOU feeding this value to them. YOU gave them control of the media that shaped Trump and Brexit.

Its important to separate course and affect, the effect is Trump and Brexit, the course is complex and on the level am talking about here goes back 40 years, though has seeds deeper.

Worth the time to watch a few times as this is the history of the mess we are in and how our current technological/social shitheap was built to shape this agender.

Liberalism, fascism and the neo-liberal #deathcult share a NEGATIVE view of the human condition, of human nature. Socialism, communism and anarchism share a POSITIVE view of human condition/nature. Of course there are meany who throw mud and shit onto this simple view/divide but its useful to clear this mess off to look at the human scale #KISS ideas that these complex views are based on.

My thinking in this post is that YOU get to choose the POSITIVE or the NEGATIVE and are empowered to do this, in my example above, by stepping away from the #dotcons and back onto the #openweb the main thing you have to do is choose and stick to that choice, keep it #KISS, and clean the shit and mud off the simple things in life, compost, grow flowers in the digital realm as well as in the soil that shapes us all.

POSTITNOTE: And yes, for the complex crew, I am feeding #stupidindividualism to itself, eat and grow, plant and sow, build and prosper, be happy, keep it simple.

Seeing were the problem is and acting on it.

What we are pushing at the #OMN is x10 to hard for normal people to use. When we outreach meany people come aboard to try and push onto the project 10x harder to use tools than what we push – this is the #geekproblem expecting people to user tools that are x100 times harder to use than the tools the #dotcons offer them for “free”

This destructive behaver has to stop.To have hope of a #openweb reboot., lets try and be human as we have piles of shit to shovel all ready without adding more.