Tag Archives: social networking

These sites are very useful for tracking the user growth of federated, decentralized social networks as well as their geographic location, site-wide themes, and primary languages. I’m also intrigued by Socialhome, which departs from the “river of statuses” social media layout to use a tile-based layout.

The problem with this fediverse is that Diaspora’s protocol isn’t compatible with OStatus, which is used by Mastodon and GNU social. Friendica and Hubzilla (which forked off from Friendica) are compatible with both protocols via extensions.

I also notice that the most populated servers – https://pawoo.net, https://mstdn.jp, https://mastodon.social (all Mastodon), joindiaspora.com and http://gnusocial.no all have likely hundreds of thousands of users.

Decentralized social media and System 1 Thinking

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Reading this criticism of social media platforms by Motherboard, I had quite a few questions, mostly centered around “does this apply as well to decentralized social media platforms as well as to centralized social silos?”

Decentralizing and open-sourcing the biggest web content services – microblogging sites, video hosting sites, photo sharing/storage sites – would satisfy the goal of reducing censorship. But:

  • would it only reward and accelerate faster System 1 thinking over slower System 2 thinking?
  • Would it help reduce instances of abuse?
  • If this were to be as decentralized as email, would it allow for both big conglomerate-owned and small business-owned hosts to communicate with each other equally?
  • How would this decentralization of social media interface with democracy?

Social media’s interfacing with democracy also been hotly debated for years, with its early centralized instances being praised as liberating to protesters in less-democratic societies, while it’s more recent instances are criticized for having rewarded and armed the ascendancy of more reactive, illiberal politics.

This, of course, has only taken place within the last 20 years. To compare the Internet to the enduring nearly-600-year utility of the movable-type printing press, which has helped propagate movements as varied as the Reformation and the Age of Enlightment, is disproportionate by scale of time. We still have yet to see how far that Internet-based communication systems will take us and accelerate our scientific, academic and political development with similar speed and depth as movable type. So far, it has enabled the development of the largest encyclopedia in human history, a development that would astound the likes of Vannevar Bush.

But what of social media, or specifically of microblogging? Is there a tangential benefit or empowering utility to microblogging? Does microblogging’s river of statuses help spread knowledge? And is there a benefit to decentralizing this tool beyond a few siloed hosts who compete against each other?

What we do know is that it is highly useful to journalists, activists, politicians and those who rely upon real-time, first-hand information provision and reception. However, if the tools also allow for others to poison the river with false information, microblogging becomes a liability. But will microblogging advance us beyond allowing people to report news, pop off at each other and start social movements quicker than traditional posts?

I think there is still some benefit to microblogging of statuses and asides, even decentralized open-source microblogging, but it doesn’t replace longer-form multimedia expressions. There is still a utility for WordPress as there is for Mastodon as there is for MediaGoblin as there is for PeerTube. They can all work together, work in decentralized server networks and talk with each other.

What about more traditional blogging and its benefits? The suite of blogging services which became available in the 2000s with the growth of RSS feeds and media enclosures allowed writers and broadcasters to publish and livestream multimedia works outside of the limitations of print and broadcast media, as well as to reach Internet-based audiences with greater flexibility than previously. Of course, this also allowed for System 1 thinking to take greater precedence than ever before, as filters for self-checking were less necessary than before. However, this blogging landscape was less centralized than the current microblogging scene. Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, Dreamjournal, Typepad, self-served WordPress sites, etc., all serve RSS feeds for those who wish to catch content from all of those sites. Did democracy also decline with this growth of blogging and podcasting sites?

Of course, what has also changed from earlier blogging – in a BIG way – is how people reply to posts. More sites are dropping Disqus or even their own comment systems, delegating to social media silos the job of hosting replies to link-syndicated content. On-site comment moderation and hosting is declining as centralized social media networks host the commentariat and are, through Facebook Connect, sometimes integrated into the on-site comment section.

This may slightly change if decentralized social media networks – enabled with ActivityPub – become the hosts of such embedded comment systems. But Facebook’s closest decentralized open-source cousins in layout structure are Diaspora and Hubzilla, while Mastodon hangs much closer to Twitter’s more haphazard style of treating every reply to a post as an original post in itself (a layout which has been criticized as elevating abusive posters and their replies).

We have spent the last few years despairing about how the centralized social networks have unleashed an abusive commentariat or maybe a more abusive, combative aspect of ourselves, or even both. Maybe this has a lot to do with the design of the system – with haphazard layout giving high visibility to every single reply to a post, with centralization of social media around a few massive hosts and their apps, with not allowing the full capability of filtering who sees/shares/replies to one’s posts, with prioritization around a constant river of media rather than a more deliberate layout, with a reliance on self-serve advertisements as a source of financial sustenance.

There’s a lot to “unfuck” about social media now that we have decentralized, customizable alternatives which don’t have to exactly replicate the designs of the silos. The silos were designed and programmed to keep users using the sites as much as possible in order to keep advertisers flush w/ cash, no matter how combative and toxic that many of these users became against each other within close digital proximity. A decentralized, federated social media shouldn’t have to rely on replicating the “addictive”, constant-river designs of Facebook and Twitter in order to attract users, although I understand that this is what we have to deal with in making or using open-source alternatives to anything that’s corporate, proprietary and popular.

Decentralized social media – basically, going beyond mere (micro)blogging to sharing/favoriting/quote-linking posts between servers – has an opportunity to serve a greater purpose to humanity and come under a more democratized governance than what we have seen in the last decade. But it also has an opportunity to be moved away from faster, more combative “System 1” thinking to slower, more thoughtful “System 2” thinking.

Twitter/Medium/Blogger co-founder Evan Williams told NYT that he’s sorry if Trump wouldn’t be president without having a Twitter account. His profile in the NYT dwells a lot on how the promise of mass media freedom offered by the largest corporate-owned social media/microblogging sites turned quickly into the toxicity we now know of.

I don’t know if the tech is to blame, since there are an insane number of factors which play roles in how this transition happened. I can cite how the ability to share posts allows users to irresponsibly traffic content which appeal to our base emotions. I can cite how corporate, centralized social networks – driven by advertisement-based profit motives – are the primary couriers of such disinformation and misinformation. I can cite how privacy and self-protection tools have not caught up with the exponential growth of these services.

The opinion from Cliff Watson in the article that these micro/blogging tools, even Williams’s current venture Medium, are relics from the apex of the Obama era, and are not ready for the post-Obama world, is a sign of the transition from the content freedom which was embraced for the last decade to an era of content responsibility to protect ourselves from psyops and abuse.

Mastodon

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Reading on Mashable about a new free and open-source social networking platform called Mastodon.

There are quite a few platforms like this: Diaspora, Friendica, GNU social, Hubzilla. They are software which you can install to host your own social network server but also allow you to connect, share, mention and tag other users on other servers.

This would make social networking more like how email works: Gmail, AOL, OutlookDOTcom/Hotmail, and Yahoo users can all email each other without having to be on the same host.

This is the opposite of how Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn​ don’t connect to each other. I imagine federated social networks becoming much more used if the big proprietary networks bottom out.

TV and Twitter Have a Hold on Trump’s Mind

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#MediaStudies

Which medium matters more for this admin: TV or Internet?

The camera-addicted chattering class is addicted to every bit of drama from this admin like crack cocaine. But the Republican president is more native and addicted to ad-driven TV than he is to his Twitter account. TV cameras helped him thrive from a “wealthy” troubled reality TV host to a Twitter-abusing fiend to a joke presidential candidate to our 45th presidency, all within a span of 13 years.

This admin feeds upon the live broadcasting cameras in the press pool. This admin subsists on the cameras at his “campaign” rallies. This admin feeds on subservient one-way peepholes projecting his aura to the receiving, angered “audience”.

Cameras are designed to receive an image at one end and expel a simulation of that image out the other end to an audience who can’t talk back to the image they see.

And cameras, like the most “objective” reporter who merely quotes power verbatim like an automaton to the masses, are projective things. They don’t talk back to power as it is happening.

Social media microblogging is a backchannel for replying back to a simulation of power. It is reactive to power, and has exponentially “democratized” the chattering class through a few key gatekeepers. A reactive backchannel masticates and mangles the simulation, but is not able to project itself back to the front end of the camera.

Imagine a two-way camera apparatus which would project the backchannel’s reaction in real-time to the eyes of power while the power is being broadcast.

Imagine this admin watching social media’s reaction in real time while giving press conferences.

Or imagine if there were no cameras present at these events. No gatekeeping ad-driven cameras projecting power in one direction, no gatekeeping ad-driven reporters.

Some how, we can give less passive acceptance to the one-way, helpless acceptance of the image of power – and its inherent authoritarian tendency – upon which this admin thrives.

The backchannel, as troubled and violent as it is, must become the frontchannel.

That “#Ni**erNavy” Meme

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That hashtag based on a mistake by Yahoo Finance was saved by Black Twitter, but only Black Twitter can touch it with humorous pincers, like it’s a radioactive substance.

I think we’re damaged enough by our past exposure that it doesn’t hurt us as much when we hold it and treat it this way. In the hands of non-Black people, it’s either a nuclear fallout waiting to happen or a weapon of mass destruction to be used with extreme prejudice.

Most of the stuff under that hashtag are cultural references which relate specifically to the Black Southern-descended ex-slave working class experience. I volunteer that they are cultural references which non-Black people with more privilege would find objectionable or distasteful when done by their own people (e.g., “redneck culture” and it’s distaste among more privileged, urbane White people).

There are references to chitlins and collard greens as MREs! Why would non-Black Southern-descended ex-slave working class people celebrate that (IMHO) nasty-ass shit? That’s as real as it gets!

This is why the hashtag is heavily self-policed. For classist reasons, nobody really wants to esteem or positively support any of the contents of this hashtag in another culture.

Sub-par Campaign Websites for Sub-par Candidates

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If you’re going to run for a legislative office here in GA as a Democrat, you better get your communications straight. In fact, DON’T DO YOUR OWN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE, as you’ll probably screw it up anyway. Call/txt me if you need a comms person.

Angela Pendley ran this year as a Democrat for Lynn Westmoreland’s old seat GA-3, which includes northwestern Muscogee.

Her website, http://apendley4house.com is a damn joke, likely self-created on Wix. Her “About” page proudly proclaims thus:

“Angela Pendley does not use social media such as Facebook, twitter, or instagram.
​
Angela Pendley communicate with people in person, on the phone, through email, through United States Postal service, and through text messaging.
​
Supporters of the campaign are encouraged to share Angela Pendley’s message with friends, even if they are republicans who will vote as independents in November.”

Like, what the hell is this? If you’re not where the people and their eyeballs are, you’re ruling yourself out. You’re also doing damage to other progressives and liberals who want to run for that seat after you fail so needlessly.

No wonder she was beat by Drew Ferguson 68%-32%. She had it coming. Her communications looked like absolute “trash can juice”, to quote Nick Decker.

Same with Ben Anderson. Lost 64-35 to Josh McKoon. No website, just a Facebook page Anderson for Georgia.

Democrats out here in the country areas don’t know what they’re doing. Ugh.

Don’t be Angela Pendley 2016. Don’t screw up 2018. Call/txt me. #gapol

Drag Performance, Brand Pages and Personal Identities

LGBT, Tech, To Export, , , , , , ,

The issue of the “Real Name” policy, whereby users are told to use “real” names (not necessarily actual names, but “real-sounding” names), is problematic for social networking services (SNS). It’s especially problematic when SNS operators refer users to use brand pages – profiles which are maintained and moderated corporately by one or more users for organized purposes such as promoting a brand or a movement –  as alternatives to using pseudonyms on their personal profiles. The reason is that such a solution is half-baked on the sites which most emphasize the use of “real names” for users’ profiles, particularly Facebook (and formerly Google+).

Functionality issues

The suggestion by Facebook for preferably-pseudonymous users to use their pseudonyms on brand pages ignores the fact that pages on Facebook offer less interactivity than personal profiles. Facebook pages don’t allow pages – which are built to serve organizations rather than pseudonymous personalities – to form or join groups. In relation to this, Facebook also does not allow brand pages to automatically invite other users to events; compare this to Facebook groups, which allow for automatic invitations of all members to event pages.

Google+ Pages, in comparison, offer a bit more interaction, with the ability to create and join “communities” (equivalent to groups) as your brand page. In addition, G+ Pages can also add user profiles to circles (a more advanced version of Facebook’s “adding friends”) and invite followed profiles, circles of profiles and whole communities to events.

Presentation issues

However, in the case of pseudonymous users being “nudged” to create pages for their pseudonyms, G+ and Facebook both suffer from a high learning curve and a lack of tailoring toward personal identity pseudonyms.

Facebook’s “Create a Page” has six main options: “Local Business or Place”, “Company, Organization or Institution”, “Brand or Product”, “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, “Entertainment”, and “Cause or Community”. The closest to a means of controlling a personal pseudonymic identity is “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, which is limited alongside other Facebook pages in its interaction abilities.

By comparison/contrast, G+ only has “Storefront (Restaurant, Retail Store, hotel, etc.)”, “Service Area (Plumber, pizza delivery, taxi service, etc.)”, and “Brand (Product, sports team, music band, cause, etc.)”, which is even more confusing from the outset by the grouping of so many options into just three categories.

The ideal page

The ideal brand page system which would work perfectly for personal pseudonyms at the intimacy perhaps most desired by drag performers in an SNS, IMO, is a combination of Facebook’s presentation and G+’s functionality and interactivity:

  • Having at least 6 page-creation options including “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, or even a 7th “Character or Pseudonym” option.
  • Having the ability to follow/be followed by users and create/join groups “as” the brand page.
  • Have the option to switch to a preferred brand page identity upon login to one’s personal user identity.
  • Have the ability to restrict access to one’s personal profile while simultaneously operating a brand-page identity.

In such a system, performance artists such as drag performers would have the full ability to interact with their fans as their pseudonyms or public personas, to organize their fans into discussion groups (both public, private and secret) under their personas, and to easily invite fans to events (or even games and apps), all without revealing or exposing any of their personal profiles to the public.

When the brand pages are not fully baked, not fully conceptualized as alternative identities for both individuals and corporated groups, the ability to control your presence is hobbled. Performers like Sister Roma offer an opportunity for Facebook, G+ and the SNS sites of our era to not only listen more to their users, but to make their brand pages more useful for more people. The “Real Name” policy (as well as the restriction against multiple profiles on sites like LinkedIn) only hurts privacy, doesn’t help the quality of conversations on Facebook, and is not remedied by half-baked brand page tools.

On the #IndieWeb

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I have recently discovered the #IndieWeb.

The #IndieWeb is a decentralized means of bloggers replying to other bloggers without having to be logged into a corporately-owned, centralized social network (or “silo”, like Facebook or Twitter). It doesn’t make use of single log-ins, it doesn’t make use of having to put your “real name” on your profile.

It departs a bit from other existing initiatives of decentralized social networking services, such as Diaspora and Friendica, which try to retain a Facebook/Twitter-like user experience without the lock-in (by allowing you to install the software to host a social network site on your own server and allowing users to connect as friends and talking to each other across servers).

Instead, IndieWeb is even more decentralized than that. Technically, it relies even less on a common user interface, and it doesn’t necessarily provide for a means of “friending” or “following” another blogger on another server. Instead, the focus is on receiving notifications of replies or likes/faves from other blogs, especially those which are self-hosted.

The more that I read about it, the more I find the idea of the IndieWeb to be fascinating. It can keep much of the sort of connectivity that is sought by bloggers (say, on WordPress.com or on self-hosted WordPress sites) through social media site users without the sort of reliance upon logged-in comments or shares through first-parties such as Facebook or third parties such as Disqus and Livefyre.

But it’s pretty next level. I don’t think I can use it on WordPress.com, but if I ever move the posts from here onto a self-hosted WordPress site, I would install it just to see how many IndieWeb users would be interested.

I also wish I could import my public Facebook and Twitter posts over to a public personal blog, at least to have a backup of much of that data.

Questions from Inexperience

Can the emphasis of IndieWeb on “personal blogs” conflict with those blogs which expand into full-on “news sites” or “community blogs” (i.e., Huffington Post, TPM, Gawker, etc.)?

The latter type of blog often features the registration of users who submit post comments or lower-tier post content, while the bloggers remain separately credentialed in their ability to post first-tier content. Most news blogs may have a large community of users who are registered simply for the purpose of keeping their own comment histories lined up, or faving each others comments.

I wonder if the traffic and authorship growth of a blog from “personal” to “community” affect the functionality of an IndieWeb-capable blog.

With Google+, Facebook and Twitter all doing brand pages now, I wonder if it’s now time to create a “follow/like/add our brand page” icon that is agnostic to all such services like the Feed icon and the Share icon.

Right now, the more popular symbol is the + sign (on FB and Twitter). Problem is that I don’t know which agnostic word I would use to describe the action of “follow/like/add”. “Subscribe” is already taken by feed readers.