An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
Are you the one saying “now is not the time” If this is you, get off your knees and lift your head and look at the mess you have made.
Open-Source Security: How Digital Infrastructure Is Built on a House of Cards – Lawfare” https://www.lawfareblog.com/open-source-security-how-digital-infrastructure-built-house-cards
Can you see the underlining problem assumptions in this #mainstreaming agenda? Pushing ideas to “protect the commons” almost always ends up distorting the commons, there is a history in nature to this.
As the article says in a round about way, the problem is the irresponsible failure of the market mechanisms that try and exploit the commons. There is a long history to this.
Now ask the question of what needs fixing?
Q. A lot of evil stuff happens via the cyberweb, no doubt. But I would encourage anyone who still knows how it works not to give up on it. Instead, try to work around the BS and design systems which are resilient to adversaries. As conditions of life get harder and the oligarchy turns the screws we need channels of dissident communication, even if they are no longer mainstream ones. Even retro stuff may go under the radar.
A. This is a social tech problem, a #geekproblem and the solution is social tech that steps away from the #geekproblem we cant just keep doing the same #techshit it’s time for composting #indymediaback #OMN are example of this that are currently blocked.
Q. As far as I could understand from what you said, what would then be exactly the social related problem to solve ? Are you referring to the way spying agencies like the CIA that is dominating the hacktivist scene, are creating “trends” on how to be safe online, which have most of the time no true impact regarding the possibilities of such agencies to continue spying and having social control? So you mean it’s a matter of being good at creating counter propaganda to cancel
A. You are describing the problems, then adding a layer of self-destruction to the problem, that’s not helpful. The #openweb has been “destroyed” by some forces you name. But we have also played a role in destroying it ourselves in refection to the real problems you highlight. We have little power over the first and more power over the second. It’s hopeful to think about this #geekproblem
Q. The #openweb wasn’t destroyed exactly. If you look at the numbers of websites over time, the open web is still there, but what happened is that almost all of the attention got captured by a small number of enormous corporate sites. The corporate sites made themselves critical conduits for search and discovery of news and views, such that the notion of “web surfing” has become almost obsolete. Google search increasingly won’t show much of the open web, because it’s not within the targeted ads business model.
A. yes my point, the #openweb is under a thin veneer of corporate crap. The #fedivers is a tiny break out of this that seceded because it was “accidentally” anti #geekproblem we need to be hardcore anti #geekproblem is the is to be HOPE 🙂
Q. The success of the fediverse did have a very large element of luck to it. Before 2017 it was doing very badly, and I remember unsuccessfully trying to persuade people to try GNU Social instead of going on Facebook. Even people who hated Facebook were reluctant to try the fediverse. Also my interpretation is that ActivityPub was originally a corporate idea but that the corporates lost interest, leaving its development to a few remaining grassroots activists. If the corporates had stayed that ActivityPub would probably be something quite different.
A. Yep, gave me hope, though it’s failing now – we have to stop fucking up this grassroots tech. A start is #4opens talking about the #geekproblem and using these to start composting #techshit
Q. The fediverse isn’t failing as such, but is becoming an established technology and so is no longer shiny or something which a clueless tech journalist would want to breathlessly scribble about as a new phenomena. Like XMPP and other previous protocols it is getting into the “plateau of productivity” where it mostly “just works”. There are complaints about lack of spec development, and some of those are justified. But ActivityPub doesn’t need to do all the things, it only needs to do one job well – that of being a social network protocol.
A. yes, it’s not failing in its own terms. But it is not heading to success in the bigger picture of being a alt to the #dotcons I should know being involved for the last few years outreaching it to the #mainstreaming that understands it has a #closedweb problem. The #EU outreach is interesting in this and likely also going to fail in the wider mission. It’s hard to push #openweb in a era controlled by #stupidindividualism and capitalism/alt diesper.
Q. It depends on what the EU’s wider mission is, but I expect that it’s not really a grassroots type of mission anyway. Whatever the machinations or motives of the EU, we do need to maintain a viable space for people who actively don’t want to be stuck in the corporate hellscape. And we shouldn’t assume that the EU will continuously bankroll some projects.
A. At the #EU it’s a power politics fight between the need for #open in a organization that is all about #closed people know they need to change but are only brave to pretend to do this. Am interested if a little crack of #open might be enough to undermine the monolith. Problem is everyone is up for selling out #open to grab a bit of #closed so only weak #open PUSH is all we have, needs to be sharper and harder push. Think stake and vampire level of PUSH with a few blows of a mallet to drive the point home. #open has power over closed, just like light over darkness.
It’s good that people try not to push pointless tech projects… And the majority of new tech projects are obviously pointless. To get an idea of what to push do a #4opens review and publish this, let’s build a community of useful tech together. We need to do better.
#techchurn has made so much #techshit over the last 10 years. There are piles of #mainstreaming and alt tech that needs to be composted to grow a more humane world. Focus on what we CAN change and what we do have directing (social) power over, our mess.
From a grassroots prospective, we don’t have alternatives as they have been devoured and turned into shit by #NGO #fashernistas and social #deathcult worshipping (40 years of neoliberalism)
Thus, your/our lack of motivation, in my lifetime there were meany anarchist/ecological/socialist alternatives which kinda worked in imperfect ways.
Let’s use federated #4opens tech to reboot these from before they were killed and eaten by this mess, and innovate om this.
#4opens #OMN #indymediaback
For the last 20 years, everyone in the ruling classes has failed you
Our governing glasses of every colour has failed us
Our media and entertainment elites have failed us all
Our NGO and their leaders have betrayed us all
Our business and academic classes have grasped and dithered
We face the #climatechaos naked and disjointed at war and in the shopping centres
We have failed ourselves, it’s pastime to step away from this mess.
Don’t drink from the #mainstreaming
Go with the flowing #undercurrents
Compost this mess
In the lives of our current generation, we face the world sliding into eco-chaos, both social/political and directly climate related. It’s a truism that if we can’t radical change society now in 10 years, we face a world of BIG DUMB UGLY MEN WITH GUNS telling us what to do. The money we are now poring into “defence” in reaction to the Ukrainian crises will be buying weapons that will then be used on “us” as social chaos grows to shape our society.
Q. Interesting, was getting nothing from alt sources, so finally looked at #mainstreaming media today, and it’s all inside #Ukraine propaganda. So after a day of that I looked agen for on the ground sources but found nothing, so looked at RT but all streaming blocked.
Ok #RT native player works, let’s see the other side’s propaganda https://www.rt.com/on-air/rt-player/
Good to look at data and metadata for what it is, social glue that holds society together.
Our #deathcult worship separates and atomise people, as does privacy and security coded by the #geekproblem
Take a moment to step back, our contemporary coding is shaping https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism
It’s obviously true that society/ecology is sick from this blinded worship.
From this dogmatic liberalism, one thried is our society’s moving to corporate socialism. That is “law” and norms are shaped to value a tiny number of the nastiest people at the “top”.
Data and metadata is privatised, increasingly “National socialism” is the “common sense” #mainstreaming we code for and agenst.
To address this #geekproblem some of us need to step away and code outside “liberalism” and not in reaction to fascism.
#OMN #OGB #indymediaback are #openweb native projects.
A. Getting across the channel was an adventure https://youtu.be/gHpyuw8evBM
Now am starting to get impotently angry with the London boating community as it’s just not here any more and the boats are all full of fearfull hipsters. Kinda expected this but still kinda annoying. Way to meany “boaters” doing crap mooring and leaving piles of trash everywhere…
I left on my boat to get away from it 5 years ago, I arrive back to find it everywhere. Not surprising but kinda hard.
Q. I’m not familiar with the boating world, but my guess would be that as houses become impossible to buy and almost impossible to rent – especially in places like London – more people may be trying to live on the water instead. Free from a landlord.
A. yes the aspiring classes were sold this in meany #mainstreaming articals over the last 5 years. BUT living on a boat is NOT living in a flat… You need a community to be a part of to live on a boat with out this, non boaty people end up miserable poring money down the drain and then sinking when the boat is left empty after a few months of winter.
Its been like this the last few years, xmus is the time of huge run of boat breakins, Both the boats behind me are empty, one of the boats In front has a non comungative hipster types the other is empty. Likely 2/3 of the boats I have moored up next too the last month have been empty. Meany of the rest have fresh faced or scared hipsters.
London boating has not only lost its community, swompted and pushed out of town, but it’s now a slow train reck of abondond to decay dreams.
On a positive side the “policeman” of the waterways #CRT are incompetent, this slows their neo-liberalism based privisation of the remaining inland commons. And the is a relatively affective grassroot’ish counter force in #NBTA who “react” to slow/mediate the privatisation.
BUT this slowing might not survive the inrush of non boaty types who won’t cheap flats on water and happy go with the #CRT agenda as then they can pay to keep their boats static to get the relatively cheap flats on water they desire.
CRT will continue pushing out vagabond boaters by selling off the mooring spots and closeing stretches of canal by development. More “common sense” restrictions are on the way, the community to push back is scattering and srinking.
The #deathcult is killing one more of our few remaining commons.
A. Activist video https://visionon.tv/videos/local?sort=-trending&allVideos=true&c=true&s=3 on the #Fediverse
Or they might have done it on purpose to keep the new feature private…
Did you know they intended to implement the feature you requested, and did you ask to work with them as they did so?
(P.S. if you keep calling them geeks all the time they might not feel like you would be warm and fuzzy to work with…)
Good codeing, bad social – kinda the #geekproblem
Basically funding alowes the geeks to be geeks when the funding comes from geeks.
If you think that’s bad, though, it’s even worst when it comes from academics 😉
Lived and worked through 30 years of this tech shit. Composting, we need some composting 🙂
End thought
Note, I generally only use the “stick” after offering carrots quite a few times. Then alternate between carrot and stick with no plan for a good personal outcome.
Doing this for 20 years, in the medium/long term social change is generally visible. Yes you are right it’s a thankless task but somebody needs to do it and I live on a boat and can sail away, I half joke with the last bit.
This approach has only mediate the problems in my expirence though.
The #fedivers was booted up on grassroot #openweb passion and crowed funding, it was sustained in the early growth by crowed funding and expanded (in an often not helpful way) by #geekproblem passion. Over the last 2 years we have seen this shift sharply to “institutional” funding, some of this has been behind the seanes “think-tanks/academia” but over the last years the #EU though #NGI and more specifically #NGIzero have taken a central role in funding just about all fedivers #mainstreaming projects and much background technology.
In this, we have moved from meany 1000’s of people shaping the direction in a radically #4opens transparent way to handfuls of people controlling the levers of influence in a more opaque process. This is a clear and very obvues failing of #openweb governance, kinda normal and very obvuesly fail.
Now the wider #NGI project pour funding directly down the drain, which is a normal outcome so not an issue for us as the money is wasted anyway. #NGIzero are doing good, they are funding grassroots #openweb technology, so they are people we should work with.
How do we start to mediate this issue “In this we have moved from meany 1000’s of people shaping the direction in a transparent way to handfuls of people controlling the levers of influence in a more opaque process” And more importantly rebalance the #mainstreaming agenda that flows with this funding https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects this second part is a BIG problem, this first part is about democracy, the second part is hard politics, and is more nasty.
Think this is too strong a stick to wave around now, but it might be needed down the line. Let’s explore how we might root out or mediate corruption within the #EU, particularly in relation to processes like the #NGI funding programs.
Some recent examples from an #EU #NGI meeting:
Meeting link: NGI Next Steps
You can find similar behaviours in most NGI and EU-funded project meetings.
A horizontal public #BBB (BigBlueButton) online meeting was held. While BBB by default allows all participants access to a shared notepad, in this session the organizers had disabled access. This was likely done by a moderator acting on the assumption that it was “the right thing to do.”
Result: All public contributions were lost in the transitory chat. The only lasting record of the meeting was the hidden private notepad, invisible to the public by design.
In a breakout session, the chair (who is likely a perfectly nice person outside this context) took notes solely based on her own agenda, completely ignoring input from participants. I was (non-directly) rude about this. She became confused and attempted—poorly—to integrate other input, but it was clearly not part of the plan.
Q: Should we have remained silent and allowed her notes—and those from a few other #mainstreaming figures—to become the only official record of the session?
A: Absolutely not.
We need to compost this crap, not add to it. Most of the time, people don’t stop this kind of corrupt process. We need to start doing that more.
What’s at stake? The #NGI has tens of millions of euros at stake in its upcoming funding rounds.
It’s clear that subtle manipulation of meeting records can easily shift the outcomes of who gets funded. Yes, this is basic corruption.
This is basic journalism, and while it’s unlikely anyone would be prosecuted—since most participants are so arrogant they don’t realize they are engaging in corruption—public exposure could damage careers and act as a brake on systemic abuse.
What should be funded? NGI should be funding a tech platform or group specifically tasked with transparency monitoring like this. It’s a powerful stick to wave—and even if we don’t use it immediately, we should have it ready.
I’ll be drafting a project outline soon here: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Corruption
With the growing influx of #EU funding into the #openweb we will see an increase in #techchurn due to the #geekproblem being feed by #mainstreaming #stupidindividualism of most of the #fashernista who can jump through the bureaucracy gatekeeper hoops.
Hoping for a balance of good Vs damage, though the shear blinded arrogance of the vertical crew push us to the damage side. #NGI do not won’t to see this problem, we as a community need to push back on this for a better outcome
Example, a horizontal public BBB meeting where the organizers are the only one who have access to the share notepad space. Note in BBB this is open by default, so a moderator closed it on the assumption that this was the right thing to do.
The result, all the public input is lost in the transitory chat.
Let’s look at a second example from the same meeting, the chare (who is likely lovely in person) took notes that were ONLY her agenda, ignoring the meeting input. Yes, I was non-directly rood about this. She was confused and started to try and take the agenda of the meeting badly.
Q. Should we have been silent and let her agenda and a few other #mainstreaming people been the only thing recorded in the minutes, thus the next round of funding?
A. we need to compost this crap, not add to it. Most time people do not STOP this crap process, we need to do this more.
As it said on the side of my blog for the last 10 years:
“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”
Orgs such as #NGIzero are unwitting feeding the “geek side there is naivety and over complexity” where the #mainstreaming #NGI are pushing the political side “arrogance and ignorance”
As I have been at the heart of this garden for more than 30 years, I think I have a better voice on this than most. That’s not arrogance, that’s truth 🙂
If you feel like talking shit please read this first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_homin
I think the #EU guys find it hard to see how low our apion of the #mainstreaming mess they work in. The #EU people at these events are clearly incompetent on the subject of #openweb (and meany argue life on the planet in general) we all understand this in the grassroots.
If you wonder why grassroots people see the #mainstreaming as children. An example, due to the crap behaver of voting for piss poor politics, we have this boat land to look forward to. To call #mainstreaming incompetent is a clear understatement of the issue, talking to the wide #ngi project here.
We should talk about this survey https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects and some of the more scary issues it brining up:
NONE WOULD DO FEEDBACK IN PUBLIC, this is important. The #EU funding has some “terrorism” in the cliques that run it, as people are actually afread that they will lose their livelihood if they speak out about these issues.
Me am “chaotic governance” so I ignore this, but you guys maybe need to take this onboard if you have not already.
A carrot and stick approach is a good path. I see @ngizero as the carrot and us the “community” as the stick. With this leverage, we can push harder for a better balance of good/damage from the funding influx to the #openweb from the #EU
Good to remember here, I am seeing @NGIZero as the solution and not as the problem in what am talking about #NGI
In the end, my difficulty is that I see the #openweb funding from the #EU being pushed by a “childish” point of view that is hard to respect and that it’s likely to do more damage than good, this we need to fix somehow, if anybody wants to help with child care.
Some things to think about:
It’s interesting how the truly aporling behaver of vertical minded people is excused by power (majority vertical) when they act in easy to understand crap ways in horizontal situations. And on the other hand, how the horizontal people are vilified at every point often for simply pointing out how bad the vertical behaver is. We need to look at crap behaver in vertical organizers, as they often do not see themselves shiting over the preceding. Though this act comes ever so naturally to them.
You can see this with the suffrages, the hunger marches, the Spanish Civil War, the Greenham women, the miner’s strike, corbinisam and just about anywhere you look where the two groups meet.
It’s crap that we keep letting this happen, take note I have near zero tolerances for this!
Positive projects for a better outcome:
* One practical idea is that we do need “chaotic governance” to have a voice https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Med
* Better focus on social tech https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki
And more…
