Tag: failbook

A conversation on trust/control in social technology

Q. In a nutshell, my manifesto could be “form your own little communities and federate them”

A. What would be the “common” understanding/agreements/standards that would bridge these communities, or would it Only be code, if only code what standards?

Q. Federation just depends upon the willingness to do so. The code is just the plumbing which makes it happen. And I think nearly all fediverse federation is opt-out, so that you are federating by default but can opt-out (block) if you want to.

A. Interesting to look at #peertube backend for a opt-in federated model, this aproch is the social/technical model for the social/tech of the #OMN project. That is building a human network first, technology is to support and mediate the very strong #geekproblem that is #blocking the human change/challenge we need #KISS

Q. Opt-in is ok if you are trying to build a small federation or an institution with different departments (eg a federation of libraries with particular rules and membership criteria).
I don’t think the fediverse would have been as successful if it had been opt-in from the beginning, though.

A. The #peertube network is an working example of this opt-in for content sharing. Think commenting is opt-out. It’s not got any “social” UX for this, which is why its kinda limited at mo… it suffers from the #geekproblem like just about all coding projects so worth looking at/using but its not core #OMN

Q. The problem with peertube was that the way it was federated initially was pretty bad, and the large majority of the videos being posted were not self-made and were just copyright violations, inviting legal takedowns. Initially, they also didn’t have enough moderation capability to combat disinformation and spam.
Often developers are expecting a twee world in which everyone is nice, but this is never the case for social networks. That expectation has a lot to do with the socio-economic position of commercial software development and its demographic homogeneity.

A. think the resion they did not do good moderation was a question of priorates, we have endemic BAD history for most of our tech, good to keep this in mind.
There are two paths out of the mess you touch on, one is social, one is hard tech. Agen we have only BAD history of thinking about this, good to keep this in mind.
The #geekproblem that writes this bad history is #BLOCK ing the social technology we need, good to think about this.

#OMN #KISS #OPENWEB notice the last hashtag, we DO NOT NEED more #closedweb if we have any hope of mediating the #geekproblem for tech/social progressive outcomes that we so urgently need.

Q. And opt-in is kinda closed. “Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in”. That sort of thing. Exclusivity isn’t really going to move the needle on anything, though.

A. This reply is a #geekproblem view of the thinking.
Good to look at a social view, all society are based on #TRUST and healthy society have more reliance on trust and unhealthy society more reliance on “hard” process/structure.
There are academic bases to this, a sadly right-wing view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies
The #geekproblem fails in building “good trust” based society, it’s an endemic failing of our tech/thinking.
TRUSTLESS is the #geekproblem good to think about this when coding social/technology.
We need to build tech social networks that “fail” so that human beings can fix this “failing” based on TRUST and from this build a real progressive society.

Q. I don’t advocate trustless. You can’t prove trust merely by doing some complicated blockchain math. Trust is earned, or broken, by people. Not by machines.
Also, vaguely related to #chatcontrol. The EU is going to lose a lot of trust by trying to do policing-by-algorithm. The algorithm approach is a sort of abuse of trust.

A. the #OMN is this project: “We need to build tech social networks that “fail” so that human beings can fix this “failing” based on TRUST and from this build a real progressive society.”
No geeks/technologist are building this, let alone thinking like this. The #geekproblem we need to mediate for any outcome.

Leave the #EU to one side on this, as they are well hopeless on social technology, though some of them are looking (with blindfolds on)

Q. I’ve been around the block enough to have seen many online communities fail. I think you have some experience of that also.
When communities fail, there can be a lot of bad outcomes, and sometimes it’s actually fatal. Social networks are a lifeline for a lot of people and when the network fails so do its members.
This isn’t even about narrowly technical failures. Social engineering attacks such as the ones of the last few years can cause enough aggravation and fear that people just lose trust and quit.
So when building this type of software, we need to be mindful of the potential consequences, and not design failure into the system. People’s social lives are not a demolition derby for the entertainment of others.

A. it’s normal, that you are finding it difficult to see the point am talking about. All humane relationships fail It’s what makes us human, the #geekproblem trying to fix this is taking away our humanity. You see this in both mainstream #dotcons like #failbook, and you also see it in all ALT_TECH it’s a (social) systematic problem.
Build stuff that is messy, human. Please DON’T TRY AND FIX problems created by the problem you are trying to fix is basic. Take the #geekproblem blindfold off is a good step.

Reading this book would help https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.101521/2015.101521.The-Sciological-Imagination_djvu.txt

Looking and learning – life on the water on a scruffy boat

What did I learn from my 3-months back in London, cruising the waterways?

#CRT have learned from their failures in the past and the long history of British Waterways. They are going slow, 3 steps forwarded 2 steps back in their removal of “nuisance” boaters. That’s us, the CC boaters without a home mooring.

A strategy that #NBTA has no solution to “slow change” that is immune to classical campaigning. The old #LondonBoaters which came from the direct action #RTS days could have challenged this, but it has long since moved with the shift in culture to #NGO friendly #failbook agenda to put a friendly face on this change.

We live in the time of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling and yes this is an unpleasant apt metaphor, for anyone who is not fighting hard and dirty for our boater life in London.

Fear and loathing on the river lea is killing rare flowers and plants.

The issue on LondonBoaters #failbook sparked this post off.

The root of the problem comes from the institutions that have duty of care in each case. #CRT and #leavalley are not providing bins for the increasing numbers and diversity of boaters to dispose of their waste.

A new generation of people are moving onto “smart” boats as a first step to buying a flat on land, this is leading to much bigger boats that are badly fitted out for CC life due to excess energy usage in terms of electricity and soiled fuel stoves.

A underclass of boaters is moving onto scruffy boats as a “last step” to the London housing crises, this is leading to an increase anti-social behaver due to alcohol and drug use as coping mechanisms for social exclusion.

Both of these groups are externalizing the ecological/social footprint onto the towpath and surrounding land near the canal. This is coursing a building ecological and social impact that need mediating from all sides. This mediation in the end needs to build the resources, traditions and social cohesion for a better outcome.

Instead, we have all of these groups externalizing their bad behaver by scapegoating the others. We have blocking of mediation that can only escalate the problem. The ending is strongly pushing the privatization of the spaces and the removing of the majority of the boaters, taking commons and making them “pay” is the strong world view pushed as a “solution” to the failing of the organization’s duty of “care” to provide proper waste disposal in the first place.

Working on this problem in the LondonBoaters #failbook group

An example of the #geekproblem

An example of the #geekproblem

Everything we do is built on “standards” though we do have a problem of the defining bodies.

Some people like building sandcastles, it is what you are doing if you just make shit up in tech.

Actually this is fantasy as ANYTHING you are already building is already on top of a whole pile of standards.

I think people are expressing tribalism and not talking tech in practical sense at all.

What do you think?

#openweb #4opens

“open industrial standards” nebulous and problematic things, but everything in tech is built on top of a pile of them, It’s where the value is.

Nationalism is a nablus thing as well, and its where the violence is.

Tribalism can be beautiful, it can also be a problem.

Some #dotcons are bigger than nations, so maybe it’s a good metaphor?

The geek “problem” is a 20th century dysfunctional part of a tribe that is damaging to us all, think #climatechaos think #failbook think #diaspora

Talking about real issues I have been fighting for 20 years… The #stupidindividualism that treats this as personal is what am sadly talking about much of the time.

Yes, it becomes a boring circle, but it’s always about the importance of the #geekproblem as a block on the change/challenge that we need #XR

I wrote this in 2005 what has changed:

“Its going slow but we are getting there… One of the main problems seams to be a dysfunctional idea of a division of labour – ie. Every one seams to think I should do everything – as I am pretty useless at many things its no wonder it is going so slow… If you wona see something miracles happen you gota wave year arms around a bit and mutter some arcane words… Go on you can do something… Just look at the blog page to see what”

Http://HamishCampbell.com

Social media is a drug, we need to stop the self/movement harm now #OMN

Facebook is nothing to do with anarchy, it was set up to sell people’s attention to advertisers, so it’s actually about social control as are all #dotcons
 
#failbook algorithms are defined to create divisions and arguments, so best not to talk about core activist things on here.
Just give the clear, simple outreach messages with links to the #openweb and tell people to ask questions in on the #openweb posts.
 
It’s crazy that many activists still think this is a good place and that people still keep creating new #failbook activist groups.

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.

The #hashtags tell a storie

Dot for profit for few con for the rest – took over the #openweb during the #dotcom era.

#stupidindividualism is our internal poison that we breed from the #deathcult

#failbook will/has failed us as individuals and as a society.

#openweb is a good view of what we had and what we won’t.

#4opens is a path out of the #geekproblem

The #geekproblem is a humane failure of trust and its replacement with control.

The #hashtags add up to tell a story and thus build a way out of this mess.

The #deathcult is the last 40 years of neo-liberalism.

Need to work in shovels, shit and compost to the story. Hashtags a tool for #openweb organizing ideas/stories/community’s. The is obviously a balance with self-expression. At the moment this “balance” is pure #deathcult being pushed by our shared #stupidindividualism

We have a #shoval, common storied #hashtags we have piles of #techshit to shovel for #compost to build up fertile soil for planting flower and vegetables to nourish our soles and actions.

Why talk in “soft” metaphors?

The issues are soft as are the explanations/metaphors. You can’t have a hard explanation of the social world without building it up from an ideological foundation. As most people are in denial of the possibility of different world views/ideologies this makes “hard” conversations a largely pointless way of communicating. People asking for them have not taken the first step so talking their hand to help them will soon lead you down a different/ideology path. As the project is about #KISS and focus this is something we have limited time/focus for.

 
If you can glimpse the world from different views/ideologies than the soft/metaphor will talk to you and the attraction for hard will be less strong. These people have a hope of building a different/ideology world/process so can help in real ways.
 
As we need to focus, it’s not an issue to talk to the first and more important to consolidate around the second… question is finding people that have not been “broken” by #mainstreaming agenders.

 

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”.

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.

Cat videos – A “shadow ban” experiment on youtube

Just finished a cat video, it’s an experiment for #YouTube. We have over 7000 subscribers and over 5 million video views on our legacy #visionontv account Our viewing numbers have been dropping over the last few years, and now we get very few views, likely do to do with the activists content not being “ad friendly”. Have recently tried making fluffy content, very few views, so let’s try cats 😉

Am curious if the “algorithm” will pick it up or not. If it does pick up will it feed views onto the other videos on the account, with the suggestions etc.

Pushed it out quite hard on #failbook #twitter and #mastodon, but it did not pickup views on youtube (37 views in 15 hours) which suggests that the visionontv account is “shadowbanned” not surprising I suppose, will try pushing the video on cat forums  to test how strong the “ban” is.

You can find much more interesting (but not as cute) videos on http://visionon.tv

Report back on #XR peertube/youtube video posting experiment

Report back on peertube/youtube video posting experiment. #XR video posted only to peertube got 18 views in 48 hours. Video posted only to youtube got 26 views in 24 hours so far. Both videos were nice fluffy #XR shared widely in meany #dotcons groups with 1-10k subscribers so in theory to 20-50k people based on “simple” subscription count.

Posted to peertube

Posted to youtube

Let’s look back for a moment. Last year posting similar video you #youtube would have received 100-250 views

10 years ago 2000-4000 views would be normal.

Thoughts on this the #dotcons algorithm affectively #BLOCK straight grassroots video reports – only by shaping your media to #SEO games can you get any views in the #dotcons. This behaviour has shifted popular radical messages/media makers to #deathcult agenders to have any hope of achieving personal “success” and will continue to malform our media if there is no working alternatives for them to use.

I think our “digital addictions” explains the failure of the videos to organically spread inside the #dotcons with views not being feed by the algorithms which prefers #clickbate and people have been trained to push #clickbate so no longer see the need to push straight content – “vanilla” radical grassroots content does not feed their digital addictions or the hole mainstream culture leaves inside us all.

On one hand, if we keep going down the #dotcons path our media will become more and more malformed to #deathcult agender simply to get views and attention.  on the other “straight” grassroots coverage will be affectively BLOCKED.

A note here for the #fashionistas “Gaming” the algorithms is just SEO under a new path. Let’s worship the “cargo cult” mentality and not a helpful comment/reply please have a think on this point.

For the last 10 years I have been pushing anti-algorithm content to amplify the exclusion affect. Looking at these numbers I think we are starting to get peek exclusion as our visionontv youtube channel has 7k subscribers so to get only 26 views in 24 hours is notable bad, just on this subscribe base not to mention the #failbook groups embed postings etc.

Talking about the #deathcult is not advertising friendly no matter how fluffy some of your content is 🙂

To conclude. Two points for #openweb media we need to remove “advertising friendly” as criteria. Second we need to actively detox people from their digital addictions. We do the first one, but we have no real plan/implementation/ideas on the second.

The #OMN has PGA and #4opens as concrete foundations, so we have firm ground to build the second needed part down the line.

Yes. Lots of #NGO’sh people will want to add “common sense” #dotcons ideas and process to #openweb projects as they take off. There will be a pile of shit shovelling need to get past this “common sense” issue. We need good shovels #OMN

The reason we are building out the wide #OMN network to provide a space for our messages and to make compost out of our current shit pile;)

UPDATE: the youtube video got to 42 views in 2 days the peertube stayed at 19 views both are very poor numbers but the #openweb one is growing and the #dotcons one visible declining which is positive.