Should there be a publicly supported social media network as an alternative to all these private silos?
Should there be a publicly supported social media network as an alternative to all these private silos? Both Medium and Wikipedia have discussion on this subject. [ https://medium.com/@maciekbaron/social-networks-should-be-publicly-owned-1d296b9432c7 ] and [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_utility ]
https://medium.com/@maciekbaron/social-networks-should-be-publicly-owned-1d296b9432c7
https://medium.com/@maciekbaron/social-networks-should-be-publicly-owned-1d296b9432c7
Yes! And while we're at it, let's make Internet access a publicly owned utility too. Access to global information as a human right.
ReplyDeleteThom Thomas I agree, but don't know how to go about it. In the meantime, would the Fediverse be an acceptable alternative?
ReplyDeletefediverse.party - Fediverse
Jeff Diver By publicly supported, I guess you mean government run. Not even a remotely good idea.
ReplyDeleteJeff Diver You're on more solid ground when advocating Fediverse.
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes Yeah - because our Interstate system has been such a failure. And fire and police departments could never work as government run.
ReplyDeleteGovernments and corporations are pretty similar - people organize together to accomplish things. One is for the public good, the other is to line the pockets of the con men smooth enough to talk others into selling their time and talents for less than they are actually worth.
Thom Thomas Privacy and censorship concerns alone should tell you this is a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteThom Thomas 21:00 civil liberties
ReplyDeleteyoutube.com - Bill Evers: How to Convince a Socialist to Become a Libertarian
As opposed to "privately pwnd"?
ReplyDeleteSarah Rosen I choose to avoid Facebook, and Google+ made that choice viable. Now I think I've found a better option in federated sites using ActivityPub.
ReplyDeleteA government solution is one size fits all with no choice. No thanks. I'll pass.
Thom Thomas Actually I think you'll find that that some entities and countries already consider the internet a "human right." And who really asked for political views anyway?
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes When I say "public," my imaginary model is along the lines of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Corporation for Public Media?), not the BBC as a government service (sounds like you would be able to tell us more about that, British Bob) or RT, the Russian Television network.
ReplyDeleteThe Fediverse may indeed be a more desirable alternative and I'm making a note to myself to investigate that further. In any case, it has one advantage: it is there for us to explore now.
I am concerned about exposure of social media to hacking, too. I wonder which type of network would be less vulnerable. Perhaps there is no difference. Maybe smaller "silos" would be less attractive than Facebook.
You mention using ActivityPub, Mike Noyes. Their page mentions "API," which as a brain frozen user I don't understand. It seems like ActivityPub, whether it "rocks" or not, is aimed at the intermediate user, whereas Facebook, etc. is fine for those like me who despair of ever understanding what's going on in the background.
I'd be interested to hear what folks think about any of these topics.
activitypub.rocks - ActivityPub Rocks!
Every computer has the ability to be a server... the protocols were developed decades ago... the human population is not technologically educated at this point to use their own machines in this fashion... hence, facebook like entities host your data on their machines not your own... the electrical power used to run and cool servers of facebook. Google, amazon or the like requires massive power consumption... think nuclear power plants and solar fields of tens of thousands of acres... as user request demand on a server increases so does issues of power and scalability increase... these are fundamental technological issues... free hosting of your data has a real power cost... a model like mastadon uses a peer to peer distributed server network (remember napster)... i remember the old internet as democratic in the '80s... i remember bbs, gopher and ftp protocol... it is already invented, it is used in what is now called the dark web... commercialization of http hides the fact that the internet backbone is by default already a government utility... history... history... history...
ReplyDeleteJeff Diver This article may help you understand why ActivityPub is significant.
ReplyDeletelwn.net - Federation in social networks [LWN.net]
Trelotrick IceNine wrote: commercialization of http hides the fact that the internet backbone is by default already a government utility...
ReplyDeleteTrelotrick, Since around 1991 that statement is incorrect. Watch NANOG.org in operation.
https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/working_papers/oppwp32.pdf
As with domestic interconnection arrangements, backbone providers negotiate international interconnection terms in a competitive environment, and base their decisions on whether, how, and where to interconnect by weighing the benefits and costs of such interconnection. As the Internet industry evolves in the United States and abroad, competitive market forces continue to influence the nature of interconnection agreements between U.S. and foreign backbone providers.
en.m.wikipedia.org - Internet backbone - Wikipedia
Just from the question... what springs to mind is the "publicly supported" (i.e., condoned and allowed) Internet in places like Russia and Turkey. Lots more to discuss, of course, but this it top level IMM.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fenichel My reference was to the Public Broadcasting System here in the USA, not a government controlled bureaucracy. China, Russia & Turkey would not be the model.
ReplyDeleteJeff Diver Hm. OK. Assuming we ever re-establish the importance and support for PBS/NPR, it might make sense for some sort of "network" - assuming there is no adequate distribution/access system for "public interest", "educational" programming etc. ("Well, there's Facebook!" a voice says. Twitter, etc.)
ReplyDeleteSo while I'm fine with increasing access to PBS-branded "content", I'm pretty sure many would argue both about the need to re-invent the wheel and the results of continuously morphing the definition and role of "public interest".
I think, also, many would cringe at the thought of "public" programming "under political control". If there was a mandate for factual, scientific, educational content (only) and it was overseen by, say, Trump, do you think he'd "get the memo" (much less be able to read or understand it)?
Just thinking out loud... about both the practicality, need, and possible outcomes. Ideas and discussions are great things!
Jeff Diver To assist you in your analogy...The BBC (or Auntie Beeb) is funded from government subsidy and license fees. Before anyone comes down on that, think how you would like your television with no advertising and no pandering to ratings.
ReplyDeleteBritish Bob Still government controlled censorship...
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Censorship in the United Kingdom
Mike Noyes No you are not wrong but misinformed and the page you show (I've just glanced over) refers to something that happened decades ago.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly happened was that a government law was introduced specifically (note the use of the word) to deny terrorist organisations "the oxygen of publicity.."
This was introduced to prevent Irish terrorists pushing their agenda on news and documentary programs after a terrorist incident.
Did those programs report the incidents? Yes!
All that happened is the organisation that carried it out couldn't come on tv and radio to brag about it after.
Generally, British media is less censored than it would be here.
Nudity and violence are allowed on free channels (after 9 pm to protect children) for instance and complaints are adjudicated by a publicly appointed "watchdog."
About the only censorship the government insists on is that news programs on "free air" are fair and balanced. Not like Fox News is but in the way of enforcing a "no bias" coverage of politics etc
A publicly-funded distributed network? France successfully did this over a decade before the internet took off.
ReplyDeletespectrum.ieee.org - Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web - IEEE Spectrum
Mike Noyes And just to clarify...The government does not exercise any harsher controls on the BBC than it does other channels.
ReplyDeleteBritish Bob You do admit there is a filter, and giving control of content to a government body almost assures it will do something you dislike in the future. To top it off we haven't even considered outright bad actors like China, Iran, etc.
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes The filter is "unbiased" the rest is your right wing showing because it doesn't assure anything. And what have other countries have to do with the specific article you showed?
ReplyDeleteYou are arguing a point based solely on your vision of how things should be not on what may or may not work which is what this posting is about.
British Bob Your last comment just proves my point.
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes Actually, all it proves is my aversion to politics on social media
ReplyDeleteBritish Bob That being the case, why did you bother commenting on an obvious political post?
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes Thanks for a very helpful article! I think it explains very well the standard we're attempting to emulate with federation:
ReplyDelete"In a federated system, multiple independent services use standard protocols to exchange data so that you don't need to use the same social network that a friend does in order to communicate with them. Email is a federated system, where many independent mail servers interact via SMTP, but so far no clear "SMTP for social" has emerged. There are a few contenders, though, and one is on track for W3C standard [ as of Dec. 2017 ]."
"ActivityPub entered W3C "Proposed Recommendation" status on December 5, 2017. This is the last step before full W3C Recommendation status..."
As a novice, I have had no luck deciphering the outcome. I've been to the Social Web Working Group and tried following subsequent leads. It's all too technical for me. What's the latest info on "SMTP for social?" How close are we to arriving at a single standard?
w3.org - Socialwg - W3C Wiki
Jeff Diver My quick search ended with similar disappointing results. Maybe you can contact jcrawfordor in the LWN article comments, and ask him what he is referring to.
ReplyDeleteJeff Diver Alternately, you can contact the working group on IRC.
ReplyDeleteI suspect J. B. Crawford was using SMTP as an analogy, and referring to ActivityPub as the future standard. The LWN article was written before ActivityPub was recommended as a standard by W3C in Jan 2018.
irc.w3.org - W3C Public IRC Web Client (qwebirc)
Mike Noyes Thanks for your help!
ReplyDeleteMike Noyes you act like corporations don't censor people. That's willful ignorance. And free speech? If people find out I'm an atheist or as leftist as the Jesus of the canonical text Christianity, I'd suffer at work up to being fired (for some other trumped up reason of course.)
ReplyDeleteYour blindness regarding the nature of organizational power in relationship to individual rights is one of the main problems I have with Randian libertarianism - the nearly religious belief that somehow corporations are magically pure and guided by some invisible hand (scratch the 'nearly' - it is faith based and detached from the empirical - so indeed, religious.)
Institutions, whether governmental or corporate or faith based, have a tendency to see the rights of individuals as secondary to the perpetual continuation of the institution.
For that reason, we've witnessed historically that the more 'sunlight' into the machinations of the institution the more it serves interest of the community and individuals.
In a democracy, private institutions have much less public governance and are typically, overtime, more influenced by corruption, though less visibly so.
I'm fond of communal, federated, modes of organization and I think on this we may share some level of agreement.
Thom Thomas wrote: +Mike Noyes you act like corporations don't censor people.
ReplyDeleteThom, I do not. I admit they do. There is a difference between a corporation censoring and a government. Can you name it?
Mike Noyes actually I was clarifying an obvious misperception. As I was invited to do.
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