outreaching ActivityPub to the EU – draft

This was an interesting process playing a role to do the document – outreaching ActivityPub to the EU https://pad.public.cat/p/ngi0-ec-activitypub-liaison-presentation-2021-04-19#/13

Good to get an outcome from this:

#activertypub as a cross-platform standard for #dotcons who operate in EU
funding to further this – we would need democratic structures in the #fedivers style to make this real rather than a Eurocratic/power politics dead-end structures.
Is the path with a good outcome – I have been involved in a number of groups/projects that have received Eurocratic money and the outcome has always been sub optional not to say a compleat disaster. I have seen no/little thinking to mediate this outcome.

So on balance good to do this BUT we do need not to go down unrealistic paths.

Am trying to shift the focus so that the story is more “interesting” and “representative” ActivityPub in the EU sense is a movement as much as a standard – standards by themselves have little/no value. If the story comes from the standard it is easy to ignore, and it will be ignored. A movement, with a bit of jingoism (the ActivityPub speck is maybe largely a European thing?) is an easer story to tell/hear.

Good points, the #fedivers while having a good community, as individuals we do tend to act like cats.

Prepping the presentation is going to be a “herding cats” so best to concentrate on #KISS and focus on the ordnance – what do they need to hear.

The second day we can reveal the all to human delight (and worry this brings)

Like the focus on European as this is true – the #Fediverse mirrors the federated European dream and clearly moves away the US tech imperialism (soft power) of the #dotcons something that is a #EU agender.

My thoughts/feelings are pragmatic on a good outcome.

We have a clash of languages and assumptions for example “surveillance capitalism” and the “social dilemma” both come from inside business and Silicon Valley thinking – so they are not good examples to use for an ActivtityPub presentation which itself is COUNTER Silicon Valley thinking and has its own way of expressing these issues. Just use natural descriptive language instead of quoting the terms.

I don’t have an issue with web01 and web02 yes they are not correct, but they do communicate.

The first question is why – It’s a good fit both strategically, in challenging the big US tech corporations dominance and tactically, in it being simple to implement and open to innovation as it is outside of anyone group control and agendas.

But we are unready as a community if a big institution like the EU takes up ActivityPub you can see this in what happened to RSS when it was taken up by the NYT.

#activertypub like #RSS and the #www came out of grassroots movements, they bring world views with them its WHY THEY WORK. Yes the world view are in part incompatible with #mainstreaming, so the is a strong burocratic desire to hide these world views and then push them out of view/existence.

Why work with big vertical organizations like the EU – The bridges, allow our careerists and wona get statues crew a way to cross over to the mainstream to feed. By doing this they strengthen the bridge by adding mainstream value to the bridges.

Then the refuges from the mainstream shitpile have an easy path to get to alternatives gardens when the stink becomes too much to live with.

The bridge shifts out “problems” and “brings” in resources, expirence and skills to build real alternatives.

We need bridges to the mainstream to build alternatives.

Though the process will likely not go well. When dealing with power politics/vertical orgs in the end the grassroots is ALWAYS shafted – it’s the normal outcome they can’t help this behaver. So we need to keep the bridges in place no matter how bad there behaver is, keep calm and carry on – their behaver is shit to shovel for compost to plant seeds to grow a better world.

Am thinking we need more structears “from chaos comes order” rather than “order over chaos” its trust or control.

In the internal process. It’s interesting that people coming into non #mainstreaming projects and spaces then push “common sense” #mainstreaming ways of working and outcomes can’t see that they are creating a problem.

You then inevitably get Clouds of smoke to cover up the mess. When it clears everyone is covered in soot. it’s not a good look for anyone.

We need ideas on how to mediate this without going down the #mainstreaming paths.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507/179

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/meeting-notes-for-prep-call-ec-webinar-19-april/1567

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/outreaching-activitypub-to-the-eu-are-we-ready/1589/11

We need working home hosting.

Think we currently have a pile of shit for home hosting tech. Might have to break my #nothingnew pledge as the is literally nothing normal people can use/do. Plan/idea/focus?

Nothing is useable – have tried them all. Good to start from where we are we need to stop going round in circles and start to look at why we HAVE FAILED and if the is a path to failing less badly. Or better how to build something that is not fail.

The is endless circulating in our #geekproblem communities – the subject matters, but we do nothing but circal failer. Good to start from where we are.

We are here… we need social tech that works for normal people…

Update

Maybe build a #KISS set of lightweight apps that use tor as the backend communications standard and talk to the tor browser as web apps so you don’t need the app to dip in, but the apps do the work of lifting p2p hosting. Feasible?

UPDATE (from a chat room on home web hosting)

A. calling everyone’s project a pile shit and not apologising even when some of those project devs sit in this room is not ok

Q. But obviously it’s all well shitty otherwise we would not be in the stinking mess we are with everyone (well 99.99% if you nitpick) on the #dotcons if that is not a pile of shit then we kinda need to start calling a rose a rose and a pile of shit a pile of shit… we are not sniffing roses in this chat i can say this as have been here in the chat for a while and here in the alt tech world for a very long time.

Maybe “wishing” shit way is no replacement for working sewers? We need working p2p tech that normal people can use. So lets compost the shit so we can smell the roses 🙂

‎A. 🙄 request for moderation plz thanks bye

UPDATE (from a chat room on home web hosting)

‎A. i concur with *** that the language is neither helpful nor respectful towards people trying to make things. So please mind it.

Q. Fair anufe, though shit in moderation makes good compost and compost is needed for beading seedlings and seedlings grow into everything that feeds life… and https://homebrewserver.club is about grassroots DIY life… some shit in moderation is needed for this cycle 🙂

Let’s water some seeds that “normal” people can grow.

A conversation

The children of Thatcher and Reagan are limited in their world views – they have been brought up and nurtured in the neo-liberal #deathcult and have limited experience in the nurturing and socialisation of anything else. Academic and book learning are a poor substitute for evolving in a non #deathcult era, so it is no surprise that they find themselves trapped in the circle of #stupidindividualism

In this #deathcult era, individualism is stupid and individualism makes you stupid. This is a degrading circle that no “self-help” or “whoo spiritualism” can help you to escape.

This manifests like dark “social magic” in many areas:

In social movement we have the take-over of #fashernistas who push “alternatives” aside in their “commonsense” self-interest, building careers and grasping at the illusionists of fame and “influence” they are slaves to #mainstreaming

In tech the #geekproblem has pushed emancipation into darkness. The #encryptionists have dominated alt-tech and the #dotcons of the #mainstreaming path, both are born of this world view and the socialisation that keeps it from sight.

The mainstream is blind in its worship “there is no alternative” for #mainstreaming agendas in this era. Our words and actions are simply spewing shit while the world burns, our ecosystems die and communities implode in manufactured (for profit) infighting #failbook

It’s actually easy to step away from this mess, the issue is: are you brave enough to fall and WILL your community catch you when you do? (both valid worries i’m afraid).

We need hand-holding and most importantly we need alt-social/tech structures in place to build and bind – all human communities are built/bound with/from these structures.

The #OMN and the #4opens are there as shovel for the shit and binding for the community – neither of these have any power but the power you use them with – the steeping and away and dreaming and digging is all down to you and your community.

If you look at contemporary programming

I don’t think our coders have ANY understanding of the damage they have done and are doing.

The state we live in is full of monsters.

In #closed the monsters can plot and destroy/divide and control because there is no way to make a judgment, you cannot have social “truth” in closed.

With #open, the monster is more obverse and much easier to trip up. As social “truth” is all around you.

Closed breeds monsters/open pushes them into the shadows.

We need to compost a lot of closed crap on the #openweb

If you look at contemporary programming – you will see in theory something that looks like anarchism and in realty something that feels like Stalinist USSR or Nazi Germany. The need for control and security is at the base of our #geekproblem culture, it is an inhumane outcome, code should always be messy as should our society.

Of course, like the above social abominations the real #geekculture hides COMPLETE insecurity and SECRET control by both the #openweb and the #dotcons it’s a mess, but not in a good way.

#OPEN is a way to step away from #CLOSED

We never END in this social balancing, you would be an idiot or a Nazi or more often suffering from unexamined #geekproblem to think that we could or should be building towards ending the mess.

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/

Censorship on the fedivers is different to censorship on the #dotcons

A lot of people talk about censorship on the #fedivers without much understanding how this is different to censorship on the #dotcons The fedivers instances voluntary federate to other instances of the fedivers, its part of the open network that you can choose not to federate with some instances. This is not censorship as each instance has its own TOS and ethos and is happy to share information with other instances that share this world-view and not to share federation with instance that don’t, this is the point of a voluntary network.

Users who do not feel happy with the instance they are on can simply move to an instance that shares their world view. The is no “censorship” in the American sense of blocking #freespeech the reposabilerty is placed onto the user to find a place where their speech fits. If they cannot find such a place they have the freedom to set up their own place. Then instance can choose if they will federate with them or not.

It’s kinda annoying that the #rightwing #trolls and the “progressive” conspiracy crew CRY #censorship without this understanding as it take up space and focus. I mostly just end up blocking them or de-federating from their instance if they cannot understand and keep throwing shit thinking into my spaces. On the #openweb its simple don’t be a troll please.

hashtag storys #4opens

Q. While I agree with everything you wrote in that post, I don’t get how that illustrates the geekproblem. Is the #geekproblem the same as the #encryptionists?

A. The #geekproblem is illustrated here http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2021/03/06/over-the-last-10-years-we-have-been-told-a-lie/

Q. In one post you wrote that the geek problem is replacing trust with control. That immediately communicated clearly to me.

A. The #geekproblem is a general issue of misunderstanding of “total control” and what it is to be human. The #encryptionists are an example of this, that have been dominate for the last 10 years, the solution to everything is “privacy” “lock down” isolated individualism, me only me “no such thing as society only individuals and their family’s”.

The hashtags have different meanings if you look at them from different directions – but always #KISS and radical at base. Metaphors, soft knowledge. The are no hard definitions – but add them together and they tell a story of “control”. The opening is that YOU have the opertinertly… maybe its a bit Qanion, first time I thought about that one 🙂

Q. I assume open data, which is good in some contexts but shades into surveillance in others.
Open processes? Which again I like in most of the contexts I work in,
What else?

A. The is a few pages http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/projects/4opens its a radical “social” definition of the open-source/free-software process. #4opens can be used to judge any tech/social project. It’s needed to lift the lid on what #dotcons and #NGO say and what they actually do, always different. If people make judgments it’s likely to put to one side 95% of the current tech crap and concentrate on real #openweb projects that get lost in the churning of #fahernista and #geekproblem agenders.

With #opendata currently we have a control issue. All the #dotcons data is open to corporations who pay and government agencies who spy, it’s just closed to us. What is the role of data in society is a complex issue that we do almost nothing to talk about in any real sense.

Social (data) ideas to think about:

What is a “free-market”

A. Ain’t no such thing and never has been nor will be

What is a command economy.

A. Any capitalist supply chain.

What are humane relationships.
A. longer conversation…

Q. But this is such a thing as a “free-market” in inverted commers 🙂 it’s the data we have on the things we “value” which we exchange for “data” that is created and guarded by our “states” with lots of guns and bombs.
A command economy is what the soviets tried and failed and china is trying to recreate with a state “manoalay” on data and metadata.
The “humane data” is the interesting one for #4opens and #OMN which are planting seeds for.

Over the last 10 years we have been told a lie

The is no security in CLOSED – The is security in OPEN/social

The is no security in individualism – this is only security in community.

The is no security in “trustless” – The is security is in social trust

Over the last 10 years we have been told a lie. A thought to set a spark – this is easy to see in tech – look at #opensource and think if there is any CLOSED in this?

Over the last 20 years there has been a battle between OPEN/CLOSED and over the last 10 years CLOSED has come to dominated with #dotcons and their shadow puppet the #encryptionists Both are CLOSED- both put on the cloth of OPEN and say the words, but words are wind, look at the ground #4opens we live in a closed world. Please do not add to this mess.

Thinking about #OMN from 4 years ago

I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the “undead left” during the London Social Forum many years ago – lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top “taking the power table” to highlight the uncomfortable “undead left´s” grasping for power.

Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked… but the splits of “not thought of here” took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.

The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow – no alt was built.

The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower “power politics” but it’s a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in “power politics”.

The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were “disrupted” by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook

The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and #4opens. But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.

In activism when you have a shitty stinky process situation due to control freekery. You have two options:

Open
Closed

If its a open process project, the closing things down and hiding the crapness/mess will not help at all. The stink will leak out of every bit of the project from relations of core personals to the compromises involved in every piece of design/interaction during the project. This “low” misama might not to be immediately visible but it will cling to everything the project touches.

Open projects become dysfunctional when controlled by closed process, this is a feedback loop that this dysfunction is solved by more closed working/thinking till you are running a closed project.

If it’s a closed to start with then kick the people out – information can be controlled – power kept – and agendas pushed through till the funding runs out or people lose wider goodwill. Opening up a closed project without a revolutionary explosion is nearly impossible – all the repressed and hidden crapness that is needed to keep a closed project going will feed on itself when let loose.

Almost all NGO and activist groups are a mixture of open/closed.

The NGO´s falsify openness in consultations and meaningless focus groups. But always work closed at the core to continue funding and careers of the benefiting group – those who control the closed – not the community the NGO is setup to serve.

Activist by their nature tend to start out open then grow closed as they grow bigger – it’s a human scale thing. Interestingly affinity group organizing is trust based and another subject.

Hopefully we get an idea for the “dogma” of open and the clear rejection of “closed”.

Churning of pointless tech projects

Almost everything made in alt-radical tech is obviously pointless and only feeds #fahernista churn.

Why #indymediaback is not a pointless radical tech project.

#nothingnew mediates the churning of pointless tech projects by building things that already work.

In the #fedivers we use this tradition to replace existing #dotcons projects as new #openweb projects

This replicating the #dotcons with #openweb versions has its limits. All code is “ideology” so bringing in the #deathcult to the #openweb by direct copying has its own issues to work through.

We mediate this problem by recreating a widely used radical tech project #indymedia with good existing workflow and embedded in wide radical social networks/agreements.

The value balance in #indymediaback is not in the tech though that is needed. It’s in the #nothingnew social side of the project, without this continuity we have a pointless tech project.

Food for thought.

The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult

Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.

The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.

Rolling out the test #indymediaback projects

https://indymedia.hs2rebellion.earth

https://roadstonowhere.openworlds.info

https://indymedia.openworlds.info

We have a #activertypub codebase ready for testing, we have two campanes that asked for instances. We have stable hosting paid up for the next few years.

What we don’t have is any on the ground outreach/training/networking due the covide shutdown. We have limited tech dev needed to update the code from user feedback as a part of the roll out.

With this level of commitment we would be in danger of taking focus away from their current #dotcons outreach and taking up energy rather than helping with good outcomes for the campanes.

What do you think we should do next?

#indymediaback #OMN

The #OMN is built from the experience of 30 years of working at the coal face of grassroots media and tech.

Just about all tech and political projects are pointless “A river that needs crossing political and tech – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

A solution to this churning is “nothing new” as most of the issues we face have already been solved or at least mediated. #nothingnew and #4opens is a way of stepping away from the current tech mess. Politics is a bit more complex.

What is not pointless is an interesting challenge for tech and politics. To start this conversation you HAVE to use the #4opens to remove 99.9% of the #dotcons #NGO and #fashernista fluff.

The is NO conversation before you do this. When this is done you need to look at the #geekproblem which is both a curse and a delight.

The #OMN is built from the experience of 30 years of working at the coal face of grassroots media and tech.