We need projects like the Media Fund as part of an #openweb echo syteam

Published Date 10/23/17 6:50 PM

We need projects like the Media Fund as part of a #openweb echo-syteam. But they need to get a bit upto date to be relevant, currently they are years in the past in their thinking – this is a #fashernista problem that is made worst by funding agenda’s being many more years in the past.

With the fast moving tech agenda in hand with the #geekproblem we have had more than 10 years of fuckups in this area. We cannot afford many more.

“The Media Fund What is the level of awareness among Facebook users that the platform is shifting ever more towards the favour of bigger corporations?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/23/facebook-non-promoted-posts-news-feed-new-trial-publishers?CMP=twt_a-media_b-gdnmedia

We need to get honest on this, guys like the Media Fund used to run workshops on how to use Facebook for campaigning. While the alt media disintegrated, left behind. Now the #openweb is getting close to disintegration, while you have been talking about the problem of the mainstream media for the last few years. Yes #failbook was/is a problem, especially when #fashernista activists were pushing it as the solution.

The real current issue is now the #openweb tools, not year old news about #failbook

Please try to do the right thing

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 #4opens 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, 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 #4opens project as a part of an open media network.

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 😉

Power Politics of the undead left

Published Date 2/1/17 2:07 PM

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.

Starting/Doing the “Risistence Expo project is unsettling for the same resion.

Were is value online

Published Date 1/12/17 6:24 PM

Its interesting to think for a moment about how widely posts on the #openweb and #failbook are seen. On #failbook an average post on my time line might be seen/read by 10 people and a dog, a good shared post a few hundred people. On my blog an average post would be a few hundred people and a good post 10,000’s of people maybe more. its easy to forget that #failbook is a #dotcon in real terms not just in idealogical arguments. The value is on the #openweb – how have people forgotten this?

EC “Cos convenience and the software works”

Yep thats why am pushing the #OMN so the is a space to do something about this.

The OMN an easy project for everyone

Published Date 12/24/16 6:18 PM

The OMN an easy project for everyone

Producer groups have to put in minimal effort only puting a linking sidebar on their site and providing a RSS feed into the network.

These can be:

* Tag based content list “you might be interested in this”

* Tag based site link list “blog roll”

* Tag based video player embed “good films”

Optional: a site can add a badge to say its a member of the network.

What do they get out of it?

Google juice from the wide links back to their website and their content.

Clicks and content audience for all sites of the network rather than just their own.

More commenting from cross site conversations in their CMS comment system

On social media (the #dotcons)

They get a wider sharing of their content to work its way round the FB algorithm restrictions.

More “likes” on their #failbook pages to help boost the 3% organic reach.

Well a warm fashernista feeling of being part of something whole/bigger.

A geeky feeling of doing something real geeky.

We join together to push the “undercurrents” up and into the “mainstream”.

Badging the OMN

Is based on the #4opens to get a badge a site has to embed at least one linking embed somewhere (relatively) prominent on their site to become a member of the network. The Badge will link to the OMN project page, maybe this could have a list of OMN sites, as well as hosting the basic project docs.

Gold – 4opens

Silver – 3opens

Bronze – 2opens

We need some one to design these “badges” its up to site owners if/were they use them.

The OMN is a project of the 4opens and the PGA hallmarks.

You do all know that posting polatics on failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness

Published Date 12/20/16 9:20 PM

You do all know that posting polatics on #failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness. Please stop and do something more usefull.

We have a clective Liberal fantasy in the is an idea that #dotcon can be social useful. Its not what the money (billions) was invested in. They “invested” into a silo/portal for capturing data and capturing users. Letting this “value” free is a liberal delusion in the sense it dues not payback for investment. Your talking an act of enlighten philanthropy or old fashioned nationalization to keep the value for the people who created it – the users.

We now have a problem that most of our best alt media producers are children of the #dotcon and have little or no understanding of the #openweb We need to express positive views of value. #linking #4opens etc all very basic stuff and not hard to do. I wont practical open ideas on were to start on this.

#moveon

Why do I call Facebook a dotcon

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.

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”. That is, “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.

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 thoughts who do not, who will be pushed down out of view.

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

Click, swipe…

Draft user storys

More OMN user stores

Tabs Troughton Richard Hering John Hoggett Thomas Barlow can you guys have a go at writing versions of these that are readable by normal people – then I can geek up the originals so they outreach to both worlds. if you wont to #reboot the media this is one way to play a role.

Here I look at wider uses than just alt/grassroots media.

Lucy has an old inactive blog about horses, since #failbook came along almost all activity has moved to a page on this #dotcon but fewer people are seeing her photos/posts and she is annoyed by the nagging adverts asking her to pay for distribution. She likes going to evening classes and sees one on blogging after her art class. Signing up she learns about this new thing the Open Media Network, during a practical part of the class the tutor gets the students to help each other add a “blog role” sidebar to their sites using OMN tools adding a few tags she soon has a list of local horsey sites and blogs linking off a sidebar widget. From this class she finds a group of new proto-blogers to help each other out, they have regular social meetings in her kitchen and after a few months they setup a local news site/noid linking all there blogs together.

Jim is a librarian who has always been interested in counter culture. He has spent the last 10 years collecting all the leaflets and pamphlet he can find on road protesting, climate change, GMO’s ect. One day he goes to his favorite activist news site and finds it offline. Asking around he find that the has been a problem with the server and nobody knows how to reboot it as the volunteer sys admin left 9 months ago. Because of “security” the is no working backup and the only redundant files are on an encrypted harddrive that nobody remembers the password for. All the work and connections of hundreds of people have been lost as well as the archive of media and articles going back 10 years. He had been to a public meeting about the OMN a few months ago and had been interested in how it could be used to create DIY backups of articles flowing through it. Setting up a noid/site is still complex so he has to get some atavist geek friends to help, after a few days its up and running and actively crating a data base of all articles flowing through the network with the tags he choices. In this if any site goes down he, like anyone, can have the full text backup. As text is small he can hold millions of articles on a cheap server and manages to set-up himself a RSS reading app to copy this taged flow to his local computer just in case he has server issues like his now defunct favorite activist website. From this experience he becomes an expert on open data flows.

Jasper is a fashernista geek looking to make a iphone app, he see news as a growth area, as a programmer he has no knowledge or skill producing news content so he is looking for existing sources he can find and use. Being a talent programmer he quickly knocks together a “cover flow” interface with a tag highlighting linking structure. He fills his app with content from a mainstream OMN aggregater noid and highlights the tags in the text to give a interface on this data flow. As his app is tool which data freely flows through he can sell it for $2.99 on the apple store. After a number of good reviews he sells 100,000 installs which allows him to give up his day job in the local council tax office.

Tabs wrights an opinion news blog with hart-warming storeys covering powerful social issues. Currently she has few readers as her distribution is to friends on #failbook. She has known about the OMN since before it started booting up and her content was added ver RSS by one of the founding aggregaters. Since then she has seen her viewing figures more than double, encouraged by this she puts a sidebar widget displaying OMN content flow that interests her. With this in place a number of prominent sites feature her blog as she is now a part of the OMN, her viewing numbers go up by a factor of 10 and keep growing as the network expands.

Ana loves her cat pixi and wants to set-up a blog with photos and life stories she could set-up a tumbler blog like everyone else, but her friend told her about the OMN so she set-up a wordpress site and adds her RSS feed to the OMN aggregater Catlovers in this her posts are added to the OMN network. To make her blog more interesting and dynamic she adds two OMN widgets to the blog sidebar the first is a photo widget that she configures with tags “black and white” “cat” “fun” so that it has an updating image from the catlovers view of the OMN and the second is the latest articles headlines from this catlovers site view.

Janice has a family history website that she updates regularly. The is a group of history web sites that have setup a OMN aggregater to push out there content to a wider audience, Janice adds her RSS feed to this aggregater and the hits on her site jump immediately each time she publishes new content. She gets help to add a sidebar section on her site with a OMN flow based on the tags “family history” and “research” with this in place she become a member of the OMN and her site becomes more visible to people. She finds her self working with a group of interesting people.

Fabo has a bus in East London converted into a restaurant, he currently has a Facebook page but this only reaches a tiny number of people (3%) who like it. He is a member of London Hackspace were he goes to a workshop on booting up the OMN. Inspired by this he decides to set-up a (OMN) aggregating site covering events and food in East London, he gets a friend to do this for him using drupal and the OMN plug-ins. After spending an evening adding RSS feeds of all the restaurants and venues he can find. The next morning he has a website linking to content that regularly updates. He features his own content on this to promote his business, his site after a bit of design work becomes a place to find out what is happening in fashionable hackney.

Jeff has a band, he used to get contacts for gigs on myspace and more recently on facebook, but this had been drying up. He has a friend who is setting up a OMN aggregater in Manchester linking to the music seen. Jeff helps them out by becoming a volunteer tag moderator of the data flows, from the inside knowledge of these rich data flows he rebuilds personal connections that help to re-spark his music.

Feedback please.

Human beings are by nature social creatures, we link

“The Ring slowly but inevitably corrupted its bearer, regardless of the bearer’s initial intent. For this reason the Wise, including Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, refused to wield it themselves, but determined instead that it should be destroyed. The corrupting power of the ring was apparently stronger on individuals more inclined to evil and selfishness: it took almost immediate hold of the greedy Sméagol as soon as he saw it, and corrupted Boromir after a few months of near proximity, while its effects were only starting to be seen in the well-meaning Bilbo after his 60 years’ possession.”

On the #openweb the creation of blogging makes personal sites with in reach of a majority of people, the balance between community and individual began to shift. Blogging was about empowering the individual, many geek/fashernista attempts to rebalance this failed, as each tended to be an island, mirroring the individualism of the blogging network they were trying to link. Blogging declined into silo/portals with the growth of SEO and the resulting failer of linking that resulted from this.

In the openweb nothing stayed static, the first to secsede in bringing the social (community) back into this world were the first #dotcon ‘s and the most powerful grew from the worst parts of human nature:

“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

This is the shadow of the role of #failbook currently on the #openweb

How to recover from this “capturing of the commons”? One step would be to #reboot the last steps of the #openweb by fixing the balance between individualism in blogging and the community of the human condition. This is surprisingly simple to do, we need to fix the failed geek/fashernista linking and thus #reboot blogging as a core to the #openweb. Almost everything we need to achieve this already exists, it’s a question of an affinity group kicking it into motion. Who is up for building links?

Let the web of trusted links grow (as this is ALL THE OPEN WEB is) and let the data (#4opens) flow over these links. From this trust building, community comes back into both the online and offline worlds.

And if a Dark Lord (Mr Zuckerburg) and his minions (Mr Trump) offer you a shiny ring – don’t take it.

Some thoughts on the OMN idea

Published Date 10/14/16 2:15 PM

You would have to be very out of touch not to see that echo chambers are inherent to #failbook and historically less on #twitter though they have changed over to a algorithmic time line you have to opt out of. The OMN is only moderated by humans. It has a built in “market” that rewards trust thus actively builds out human networks. Groups that link will grow, thoughs who do not will slide back as others move forward.

Arrogance & Ignorance and how to get past this blocking is the issue. You don’t overcome A&I that’s not an option. But getting round it is well possible. The OMN is built on the human condition of trust and serendipity. Both hard human sells, but both the only values we have if your not up for shooting people dead to get your way.

Echo chamber is just a #fashernesta word for feeding prejudice in this it’s the same as buying a tabloid in the old days or listing to R4 and only shouting at the radio when you disagree. The OMN opens – echo chamber closes. Of course we understand that “open” is not a solution, but it is better than closed…

Its easy to misses the point about “open data” you don’t have any control of the machine network that the #dotcons work with. And if you understand the issues with geeks you will likely never have power over complex digital tools. The way out of this is in the #4opens this “forces” the geeks lose of the power they desire and need to be motivated. In this you have a riddle which is not solved by logic – maybe solved by emotion? The OMN cannot be built with logic, It might be able to be built by emotion. I think this is likely the root of many missing understandings? You can’t stop the geeks/fashernista desire to fuckup but the is hope of mediating it with the #4opens that’s about it.

There are issue’s with algorithmic options in general “who guards the guardians” the #4opens are a safety feature that the #dotcons will remove. You would have to be very deluded to believe that #failbook works in a society sense, no matter what individuals say, you should know this.

The Q. Is how to get a KISS project past alt apathy, geek complexity and fashernista … well just fashernista… #fashernista= “stupid individualism” if you’re reading my older posts.

Part 2

Am more a #fuckup rather than #conspiracy type of guy, but the lack of linking is a clear issue to be addressed.

The data, it’s a soup, the sites are just spoons that dip. You get to choose by linking where the value is. Every one can have a spoon if they like (but talent will out, some spoons will have more value than others) so it’s #4opens to linking and content. A silo is a single site like #failbook and the sites listed in this post. On the web the value is in linking content is just something to link to.

Silos host/horde content, if they don’t link they have limited value.

Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt grassroots media

How meany sites link to another alt/grassroots media sits. From this list of 38 UK sites, only 2 link to another site.

Many people find it hard to understand the underlining understandings that push projects based on flow and linking, such as #OMN and #openweb. Here is a short list of activism projects.

Silo

Is a place for holding/hoarding closed data – this is used by the #dotcons to extract funding from “free users” when mainstream/alt silo projects finish, as 99.9% do, the data varnishes and is lost, and in this the effectiveness of any alt building is diminished. Silos do not use open licensing for content re-use. Just about every alt/grassroots media project is a silo. It’s about capturing data. It’s obvious that this is a unthought through issue of “churning”

Portal

It is an idea that you can be the big one, all the small fashionista websites aspire to be the big one and by doing this they are working to the logic of the #dotcon and working against the logic of the openweb. They are building a project to lock their users into their project. Portal and silo are overlapping (but different) ideas for building web projects. In the mainstream, Apple is a prime example of this working. In the alt/grassroots, almost all alt/grassroots media projects are portals. It’s about capturing users, just as silos are about capturing data. For a left wing group this looks much like “recreating the Soviet Union” the one party to rule the state.

Dotcons

Are for-profit data silos in the old days working as portals, more recently they are building out siloed networks as a pseudo networked portal. It’s both sad and bad that many alt media projects unthinkingly aspire to be #dotcons

Link

It is where ALL the value is, on the open web. Without links, content has NO VALUE. This is an obvious statement, its hard to understand the lack of understanding around this simple thing.

RSS

Is a grassroots web standard that is still at the base of many of the #dotcons world but is being pushed into the background of the #openweb by building silos/portals in the grassroots/alt. RSS is like an open LINK with added data, thus adds value to the web. Its a powerful open tool that we still have. An API is like a geek control freak superpower of RSS – the problem is in the complexity/control freak bit…

Geek

A subculture that is control/obscurity and more recently technical solutions to trust (wraparound right) this has always been a closing force on open projects. This helped to strangle the original successful alt/grassroots media projects and is pushing for the shrinking of the open web.

Fashionista

The unthinking desire for new/innovation/conformity. A wider subculture that churns the growth of alt/grassroots so little can grow beyond seedlings.

NGO

Are greedy dispoling of resources, both human and money. The liberals that use bureaucratic funding to push out the geek/fashernista agendas over alt/grassroots projects. These are uneasy friends and clear (invisible) enemies.

Network

It is both a technical thing of wires and frequency and an understanding of mutual aid and of “diversity of strategy”. It’s native to the openweb and should be at the base of any alt/grassroots media project. In the closed #dotcons the widespread use of A/B testing is a pail controlled shadow of this.

4opens

Wikipedia is an example of this. It’s basic stuff, open source project stuff. LINK

Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt/grassroots media. Do sites link to other alt-media projects? Do they support/display openweb standards (RSS)

First DRAFT (please message me with corrections/info)

the canary

http://www.thecanary.co/

Has a RSS feed, regular updates, copyright group silo, it has no outside linking

Reelnews

http://reelnews.co.uk/

UPDATE: site back online, no visible RSS but can find a hidden one. It’s likely copyright and a silo.

(Their website is hacked/down, so posted the #failbook link used to have RSS and regular updates. Anyone know what’s happening? Update they hope the site is back online soon.)

Real Media

http://realmedia.press/

UPDATE: website back online copyright, no visible RSS feed, but you can find ones. It’s a bit of an aggregator but has been suffering from poor spam control. It’s pretty much a portal/silo – but could be more.

(They used to have an interesting website for the tec used, but it ended up being just a silo, they look like they are rebooting? Maybe a another silo? We shall see.)

Update they are rebooting as a linking site, let’s hope it’s not a silo.

Novaramedia

http://novaramedia.com/

Has regular good content, RSS, they are a product of the #dotcons social media wave and good at it. Copyright/CC is not stated. The site is a silo with no outside linking

Counterfire

http://www.counterfire.org/

No RSS feed, starting to look a bit “old left” regular updates, no copyright/CC notice. A silo with no external links

The Bristol Cable – Bristol

https://thebristolcable.org/

No visible RSS feed, it kinda probably tries to obey the #4opens, maybe. It’s a WP blog site, in this it’s a media silo with no external links.

Port Talbot Magnet

http://www.porttalbotmagnet.com/

No visible RSS feed, it mostly fails the #4opens due to copyright, data and organising. It’s a WP blog site, in this it’s a media silo with few if any external links.

New Internationalist – based in Oxford

https://newint.org/

Has RSS feeds, it kinda passes the #4opens using a CC licence for its content. It links to the #visionOntv project.

The Ferret – Scotland, based in Edinburgh

https://theferret.scot/

Looks like the old media transitioning to the new media. No visible RSS feed or copyright/CC notice. Is trying to be “open process” looks like a WP site.