Why do people keep doing pointless self harm – news aggregation

There are hundreds (over the last 20 years likely thousands) of news, aggregation sites. It’s a common #dotcons model to enclose the “commons” people see free content and think I can capture that. The problem is news content looks like it’s free, but that’s because it’s “free” to spread, but it’s VERY expensive in human (and thus money) to produce the content. This side is never addressed in these failed tech projects.

We currently have #traditionalmedia all round the world pushing to be paid for aggregation and even search of their “product”. At #OMN and #indymediaback, we get round these issues as we add “value” by the #DIY labour of the meany people involved in the shared “commons” space. We are producing rather than “stealing” in the #mainstreaming view.

It’s normal that the top-down news aggregators are seen as parasites, and the bootem up aggregators as adding value. For a few years of #indymedia growth, #traditionalmedia was using #indymedia as a “news” source, this shaped the #mainstreaming agenda, adding value to both paths.

When the #openweb we were building was ripped apart by internal and external pressers and agenders, the #DIY value was captured by the #dotcons such as #Facebook and later #Twitter (when it left it’s open’ish path).

The first step away from the current mess is to recreate the “commons” to bring the value back from the #dotcons capture, this should be more possible now as we are building from the #Fediverse where this has already happened. What we do with this recreated “commons” is up to meany different groups/people, but let’s hold the #4opens and #PGA strongly in place to stop “common sense” enclosing attempts, which are constant pointless damage we need to work around.

To sum up, a key part of the #OMN is to recreate the data “commons” then it’s up to meany other groups to find useful things to do with this free to use non-commercial value. And yes lots of people will see the stupid path of enclosing this to capture the value for themselves, this is damage.

In capitalism, any non-owned value is seen as an opportunity to capture, enclosed and profit from. This is why we have copyleft licences in code, which is visibly failing and why we extend this to the #4opens to fail less 😉

This all comes down to the question of what we value. And for meany people, this is a blindness.

What is the #openweb

While the commercial web is dominated by large corporations, the #dotcons are what most people are familiar with, there is another side to the internet – the #openweb. In this article, we will explore what the #openweb is and why it matters.

The #openweb refers to the part of the internet that is not owned by corporations. Unlike the commercial web, where large tech companies like #Google, #Facebook, and #Amazon dominate the landscape, the #openweb is a decentralized space where people can create, share, and access content without restrictions.

The openweb is built on #4opens standards and protocols, which means that everyone can develop software or services that work seamlessly with existing tools and platforms. One of the primary benefits of the openweb is that it fosters humane creativity. Because we can all contribute to the open web, it encourages a diverse, liberal, range of voices and perspectives. Openweb technologies like blogs, wikis, and federated social networks have enabled people to connect and collaborate, leading to the emergence of new norms and social movements.

Another important aspect of the openweb is its commitment to transparency, it is a critical tool for promoting #freespeech and #democracy. Because it is not owned by any single entity or government, the openweb is a place where people can express themselves without fear of censorship or repression.

In recent years, the openweb has come under threat from the rise of the dominating #dotcons of the commercial web and the growing power of big tech companies. The commercial web is dominated by a few large corporations that control vast amounts of user data and use it to extract profit. This has led to concerns about, social control, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech giants and their agenders.

Despite these challenges, there are many organizations and individuals working to preserve the #openweb. From #grassroots groups such as #OMN to #NGO’s like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) an international community that develops open standards for the web, while #mainstreaming organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Google funded #Mozilla Foundation are dedicated to promoting a liberal #mainstreaming open and accessible internet.

In conclusion, the openweb is a critical part of the internet that promotes, creativity and free society. It is a space where anyone can contribute and participate without restrictions, and it has played a vital role in social movements and democracy. While the openweb faces many challenges in the face of the commercial web and big tech, it is essential to work together to ensure that the internet remains an open and accessible space.

Talking about grassroots media as a step away from the current #techshit

Hamish Campbell on the #openweb and rebooting indymedia

Hamish Campbell, a veteran of radical media for more than 30 years, argues that mainstream technology and culture are failing us. The rise of the #dotcon platforms has commodified our lives: closed silos like #Facebook and #Instagram harvest our attention and data, locking us into systems that serve profit, not people.

Attempts to build alternatives around an #encryptionist agenda have gone nowhere. As a result, the tech giants dominate. For Campbell, the answer lies in the #openweb – once born open, but now slowly suffocated over the past two decades. His solution is to reboot grassroots media.

Drawing on the example of Oxford #IMC, Campbell shows how a simple federated network can thrive: content is shared through trusted link flows, moderation happens collectively, and mistakes can be rolled back. Unlike the #closedweb, the beauty of the #openweb is its free-flowing links, its openness to serendipity and collaboration.

For Campbell, the #OMN project is most powerful not for what it does, but for what it refuses to do: it rejects capture, centralisation, and gatekeeping. Change begins with small, practical steps, rebooting grassroots media as a living example.

What You Can Do

In recent years, events in the US, Portugal, and Madrid have explored the idea of #rebooting #Indymedia. So far, the history of Indymedia has been told mainly by academics, often through a narrow, American lens. To truly revive it, we need to retell those stories more widely, and more honestly.

A successful reboot means returning to Indymedia’s open and serendipitous roots, not the bureaucratic, closed structures it later became. The good news is that most of the technical tools we need already exist, from federated protocols like ActivityPub to peer-to-peer networks like dat.

To keep its radical, grassroots character intact, any reboot must follow the #4opens: open data, open process, open access, and open source. These principles ensure transparency, accessibility, and trust.

If you want to get involved, search for #indymediaback or “reboot Indymedia” to find links, projects, and discussions around the #OMN.

Don’t trust the fashionista

Published Date 9/25/17 4:24 PM

Thinking about #Uber and the dysfunction of #Facebook.

It’s time to #reboot many parts of the #openweb With the “visibility” of the failing of #dotcons such as #failbook privacy/obscured agronomic control of you, #uber and the race to the bottom culture.

The will be a plausible “class” of people who come up with convincing sounding solutions, these #fashionista are not part of any solution and are a clear and historical core to our failers in the past.

I understand it’s hard to see the differences of tech projects, what is worth supporting and what not. We have issues from two different directions that have to at least a little understood to have a hope of supporting projects that have the possibility to be part of a real LINKING alt.

* #fashionista thinking/working

* the #geekprobelm

These are opposite side of the same coin.

“A river that needs crossing – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

A good first step solution to both is the #4opens

They will dis-empower the worst of the #fashionista thinking by shining light on their actions and mediate to a better outcome the “closing push” of the #geekproblem by keeping the LINKING in place.

Simple and sweet, a first step solution in a hashtag 😉

One more step OMN

Published Date 3/15/17 8:20 PM

The OMN will allow you to find good quality alt\grassroots content. It’s a way of getting distribution outside #Facebook and #Twitter to push up the use of the #openweb. It’s a stupidly simple social project using existing basic web technologies.

The OMN is an open network, so we call each of the sites “nodes” as they are small parts of the wider World Wide Web (WWW). Openworlds is the test node/site of the network, currently with links to 10 embeds on sites as an initial soft roll out. We are aiming to expand this out up to 100 sites over the summer for the hard launch.

If you have a website and want to play a part in this “soft roll out” go to openworlds

Step 1: If you are interested in only some subjects or groups, click on group tags (with @ in front) and/or subject tags. You can choose as many as you like and then only these will show up in your river embed. Then click the RSS link.

Step 2: Take the URL of the RSS feed, in the new window that opens. Go to your CMS/site/blog and install an RSS display/widget and add the RSS URL to it. You can use the formatting options to change the number of items and what info to display to make it look nice.

That’s it for now, your site is now a part of an open alt/grassroots media network. Playing a role in linking and cooperating to build a progressive worldview, empowering people to build a better world.

Why do I call Facebook a #dotcons

Our #mainstreaming current online tools (for example #Facebook) were built out from the worst parts of human nature. The challenge facing us is can we build our tools from the best part of human nature (an example would be the #OMN) I think this is a nice challenge to have.

It’s interesting to think about what shapes the small part of the social flow you see on #failbook and see how other agenda’s dominate what you see as a “personal” experience.

2) The ego of the CEO and heads of engineering and marketing at Facebook.

3) The agenda’s of the investors in Facebook – this includes front company’s for the intelligence services of the US and many very rich people. (#nastyfew)

4) The agenda of the advertisers that pay Facebooks bills. The agenda’s that all the above do not want to push – this is semantically hidden by “we can’t sell adverts next to your content”. And they sell this to us as: “this is not social engineering”.

5) Anything published outside Facebook silo/portal is pushed down and things published inside Facebooks walls are pushed up. An example of this is that Youtube videos are not always embedded any-more, and that #failbook videos are and autoplay. (URLs are now down rated)

6) The people you friend on Facebook. But this is not unmediated the people who are a better fit to the first 5 points will be pushed more visible than people who do not, which will be pushed down out of view.

7) Your likes and interactions will help the algorithm chose from the “advert friendly content” in your wider feed and push these posts into your (personal) news feed.

8) Facebook is clever evil, the algorithm is elastic, you can push it and it will bend. Of course, evil cleaver wants you to do this because it learns how you push and how to push you back to shape the above first 5 points.

9) Clever Evil 2 that Facebook will also push though content that it cannot necessarily monetize, but has the intent to addict you to taking the phone out of your pocket to check every spare moment.

10) It’s not only about cats and family photos, it about reshaping the world so that #Trump and #Brexit can happen, and we are powerless to do anything about this. All we can do is empower the enemy by feeding it knowledge on how to empower Trumps and Brixets. Shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat.

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