Imagining free social networks geared towards freedom

The solution to the social misery caused by social networks will be technological and will involve social networks. Companies that own social networks have cultivated engagement without any ethical consideration, which has led to narcissism, indignation and virtue signaling contests, smear campaigns, sarcasm competitions, etc.

We must imagine a social network capable of reinforcing not these tendencies, but altruism, benevolence and hope.

There is no need to review all the initiatives for a hopeful web. They have been in place for a long time and aren't as convincing as one would... hope. Private social networks are far too powerful in comparison, simply because they support the most basic of human instincts.

Free social networks will not only have to add new features that promote collective happiness but also reassess and rework all the solutions found by capitalists to keep us within their walls lined with advertisements.

The heart, the thumbs up and all those other icons that now inhabit the deepest regions of our brains must not be detoxified (as the neurological description involving dopamine suggests). Love also increases dopamine and no one would consider banning it.

Anonymity, which is used by some networks like Twitter and Reddit (and the dangerous 4chan and 8chan) to stimulate engagement, should not be avoided just because it has generated the horrors described by Angela Nagle. The liberating potential of anonymity is far too great.

Even the algorithmic detection of anger, indignation, controversy is not inherently harmful. It is only harmful if it is not accompanied by other algorithmic detection systems to break dead ends.

All these functionalities must be put at the service of a better conception of the human being, a conception that does not reduce this being to a consumer of positive reinforcements.

Imaginer les réseaux sociaux libres et libérateurs

La solution au marasme social causé par les réseaux sociaux sera technologique et passera par les réseau sociaux. Les entreprises propriétaires de réseaux sociaux ont cultivé l'engagement sans aucune considération éthique, ce qui a mené au narcissisme, aux concours d'indignation, aux campagnes de salissage, aux compétitions de sarcasmes, etc.

Il faut imaginer un réseau social qui serait capable de renforcer non pas ces tendances, mais l'altruisme, la bienveillance, l'espoir.

Il est inutile de passer en revue toutes les initiatives en faveur d'un web positif. Cela fait déjà longtemps qu'elles sont en place et qu'elles peinent à convaincre. Les réseaux sociaux privatifs sont bien trop puissants en comparaison, tout simplement parce qu'ils prennent en charge le plus fondamental des instincts humains.

Les réseaux sociaux libres devront non seulement ajouter de nouvelles fonctionnalités promotrices de bonheur collectif mais aussi réévaluer et retravailler toutes les solutions trouvées par les capitalistes pour nous retenir entre leurs murs tapissés de publicités.

Le cœur, le pouce en l'air et tous ces autres icônes qui habitent désormais les régions les plus profondes de nos cerveaux ne doivent pas être désintoxiqués (comme le laisse entendre la description neurologique faisant intervenir la dopamine). L'amour aussi augmente la dopamine et personne ne songerait à l'interdire.

L' anonymat, qui est utilisé par certains réseaux comme Twitter et Reddit (et les dangereux 4chan et 8chan) pour stimuler l'engagement, ne doit pas être exclus sous prétexte qu'il a engendré les horreurs décrites par Angela Nagle. Le potentiel libérateur de l'anonymat est bien trop important.

Même la détection algorithmique de la colère, de l'indignation, de la controverse n'est pas intrinsèquement néfaste. Elle n'est néfaste que si elle n'est pas accompagnée d'autres systèmes de détection algorithmique permettant de sortir des impasses.

Toutes ces fonctionnalités doivent être mises au service d'une meilleure conception de l'humain, d'une conception qui ne le réduit pas à un consommateur de renforcements positifs.

You know what I would really like?

I would really like to practice #vitaminC #megadoses with other people.

As I'm writing these lines, a timer is ticking to remind me to take my next dose of vitamin C. It's in 12 minutes.

I can understand that it is not for everybody. There are fears. Sometimes it can be unpleasant. But for me, like for many other people, the experience is painless, and actually exhilarating.

#VitaminCmegadoses made me escape from profound depressions. Now is not the time to talk about the tragedy I have experienced, and about the rebound tragedies that keep coming back in my psyche.

And you would find it quite strange that I don't practice more often something that has proven helpful, nearly miraculous (hey, it could even be a huge #placeboeffect, it's still not a good reason not to use it).

Speaking of #placebos and #skepticism, you will not read about the science behind it here. I know how it starts, I know how it finishes. #Conformism is a force to be reckoned with. #Conformity is the art of bringing up objections to #novelty that have no necessary link between each other, and making it look like it's a coherent argument.

I don't feel compelled to assemble with like-minded people who already practice vitamin C megadoses, and have other great stories to tell. Too many anti-conformists who are comfortable in their #vanguard role. I am not comfortable in this role.

I read #LinusPauling, felt that his arguments were valid, tried the protocol, and confirmed that this non-rate-limited #antioxidant was a proper way to say "no" to the predictable consequences of stress, trauma, tobacco and aging.

You know what I would really like? I would really like you to try it, and hopefully experience this sense of escaping the human condition for a while (forgive the hyperbole... one author has even coined the term "Homo sapiens ascorbicus" (PubMed|Full text|Source), imagine that).

#YouknowwhatIwouldreallylike

#Pastivism

Pastivism (n). (social networks) The art of cultivating past activity, intervening in forgotten conversations that were not finished, bringing up facts that were too soon forgotten. Best practiced in free networks, like #Friendica.

In French: passéfisme (from "pacifisme").
#newword #anewwordforanewidea #neologism

Do NOT #DeleteFacebook

It will come in handy.

How do you think that #freenetworks (#Mastodon + #Friendica + #Hubzilla + #diaspora + #Pleroma +...) will compete with other Facebook alternatives, when it is obvious that the mass media is mostly interested in for-profit alternatives, like #MeWe, ad-supported junk like #Minds, or pyramid schemes like #Steemit?

See this article, that is based on Alexa ratings (and which, itself, ranks high on search engines): Facebook Alternatives: Top Replacements for Privacy or Censorship Concerns. Heavy, March 23, 2018.

The free networks will compete through "organic" means, by word-of-mouth, and Facebook is the main place to do that.

Towards a #FacebookExodus

If you are still on #Facebook or #Twitter, here are some things that you could argue down there.

• Groups that need privacy should own a place outside of Facebook where they can organize and have their safe spaces. Setting up a Friendica and/or Mastodon instance is rather easy (for diaspora I'm not sure). People may feel more comfortable doing their private stuff in a place they own, rather than in a closed Facebook group. With groups that are already constituted, already closely knit, it is much easier to announce that you will create mirror accounts for all your members in a place where the data is theirs. When non-profit and informal groups start to move en masse to the free networks, the game will change.
• We might have to erode the monopoly of Facebook by promoting Twitter, in particular (with a trick up our sleeves). (Some might not want to get their hands dirty, and might feel that recommending Twitter over Facebook goes against their principles. Those people have no problems residing in free networks that are #closedgardens of a different kind, closed gardens where you live in social autarky because nobody knows free networks — I'm not even trying to argue with them anymore.) For the others: amongst the free networks, there is one that is based on a radically different, or enhanced, understanding of freedom, Friendica. It was created to let the user be at the center of all social network activity, all Web activity in fact. It is equipped with several connectors, one of which is the Twitter connector. It's Friendica. (Hubzilla as well, but I can't speak with certainty about this newcomer, which remains a hard to grasp concept.) With Friendica (and probably Hubzilla), you have the possibility to remain connected with your friends on Twitter, you don't have to sacrifice your friendships on the altar of "freedom". The folder, group, hashtag, and personal note functionalities on Friendica make it an interesting place to process your Twitter feed intelligently (plus, you can get billions of updates from the web using RSS, it's as easy as adding a contact). There is one shortcoming: you will not immediately see all the activity that occurs under a given tweet that Friendica presents to you. You'll have to click the link to the source and go on Twitter for that. To summarize, there is one way to promote free networks without promoting the severing of those social relationships that occur on the larger social networks, and its Friendica (/Hubzilla).
• Those friends you have on Facebook who value their friendships may not join you now, but they may help. Something that none of the free social networks is doing well is self-promotion on... social networks. Just try entering the name of your favorite free network platform on Fb. A pity. That's quite ironical, when you think of it. So you're left all alone with your superior principles. Those reluctant friends over on Fb are actually your best allies. They will not actively advertise for a free network, but they will be interested to look at the whole issue of Facebook as an algorithmmic giant, social control force and tax-dodging corporate bum. And that's all we need: we need to keep the conversation going.

Post scriptum

I have said above that free networks will compete through "organic" means, by word-of-mouth, but it doesn't have to be the only possibility. We could create non-profit funds devoted only to the promotion of free networks. Governments who are committed to the social good may also pour money into the adoption of free networks.

Federated social networks need their own algorithms

please share this version of this article, that does not contain this clumsy not safe for work tag, which was not warranted (it was just mentioned as a topic)...

In Facebook Only Cares About Facebook, Ethan Zuckerman, from MIT's Center for Civic Media, presents his team's new tool, Gobo, which allows the users to bypass Facebook's and Twitter's algorithms to filter one's timeline dynamically using complex algorithms, under the hood. Using a set of sliders, one can choose to limit the appearance of brands, political views of your echo chamber, small talk and rudeness, and to promote the presence of more women in the timeline.

This tool is #opensource. You can find it on github.

In all free social networks, the #timeline is strictly chronological with no algorithmic filtering. The only ways to filter things on free networks are:

* to search for hashtags (which over-targets one specific content to the detriment of other related stuff),
* to find your home on a pod or instance where most people filter things like you would (which is an echo chamber),
* to create groups, where users will be clustered according to what you believe is their main characteristic; you basically group people as if they were one-dimensional representatives of a topic, political view, gender, style, or whatever (generally, those who are that much unidimensional also get less interesting after a while),
* to enforce rigid and prohibitive content rules using filters analogous the n s f w filter (Friendica does that),
* to display the timeline with last commented posts first, to get an indirect idea of what's "trending" and possibly interesting,
* to exclude some languages (but of course, beyond the practicality of filtering languages you'll never learn, it's quite xenophobic to filter a language you'll never understand because it is more likely to express thoughts you'd rather not think!).
(not all of these options are available on all platforms)

Basically, none of the filters we have on free networks is satisfactory, and we must realize that algorithms are not just those big bad machines that format us into products. Without algorithms, people who are very active will invade your timeline. People who are less active likely will be drowned. If you share this person's passion for, say, Japanese cinema of the 1940's, you'll have to tolerate his intense passion for ferrets.

People on for-profit social networks might adopt Gobo, or not. Facebook, true to its nature, does not let Gobo do its magic. Twitter, as usual, is more welcoming. There might be a Gobo+Twitter trend some day. But whatever happens to Gobo as a MIT experiment and live criticism of the algorithmic giants, its code will be there to make free networks more attractive -- and welcoming to those who are #newhere.

The free network community is full of very competent developers who could integrate the Gobo code into their favorite social network. Because of our ethos of participation and openness (and basic awesomeness), we -- developers and regular users -- could build together new algorithms.

Federated social networks need their own algorithms

In Facebook Only Cares About Facebook, Ethan Zuckerman, from MIT's Center for Civic Media, presents his team's new tool, Gobo, which allows the users to bypass Facebook's and Twitter's algorithms to filter one's timeline dynamically using complex algorithms, under the hood. Using a set of sliders, one can choose to limit the appearance of brands, political views of your echo chamber, small talk and rudeness, and to promote the presence of more women in the timeline.

This tool is #opensource. You can find it on github.

In all free social networks, the #timeline is strictly chronological with no algorithmic filtering. The only ways to filter things on free networks are:

* to search for hashtags (which over-targets one specific content to the detriment of other related stuff),
* to find your home on a pod or instance where most people filter things like you would (which is an echo chamber),
* to create groups, where users will be clustered according to what you believe is their main characteristic; you basically group people as if they were one-dimensional representatives of a topic, political view, gender, style, or whatever (generally, those who are that much unidimensional also get less interesting after a while),
* to enforce rigid and prohibitive content rules using filters analogous the n s f w filter (Friendica does that),
* to display the timeline with last commented posts first, to get an indirect idea of what's "trending" and possibly interesting,
* to exclude some languages (but of course, beyond the practicality of filtering languages you'll never learn, it's quite xenophobic to filter a language you'll never understand because it is more likely to express thoughts you'd rather not think!).
(not all of these options are available on all platforms)

Basically, none of the filters we have on free networks is satisfactory, and we must realize that algorithms are not just those big bad machines that format us into products. Without algorithms, people who are very active will invade your timeline. People who are less active likely will be drowned. If you share this person's passion for, say, Japanese cinema of the 1940's, you'll have to tolerate his intense passion for ferrets.

People on for-profit social networks might adopt Gobo, or not. Facebook, true to its nature, does not let Gobo do its magic. Twitter, as usual, is more welcoming. There might be a Gobo+Twitter trend some day. But whatever happens to Gobo as a MIT experiment and live criticism of the algorithmic giants, its code will be there to make free networks more attractive -- and welcoming to those who are #newhere.

The free network community is full of very competent developers who could integrate the Gobo code into their favorite social network. Because of our ethos of participation and openness (and basic awesomeness), we -- developers and regular users -- could build together new algorithms.

Un blogue sur le réseau libre

Je suis tout content de me lancer dans l'écriture d'un blogue, comme si c'était la première fois. Pourquoi? Parce que cela se passe sur le réseau libre, avec le meilleur (ou un des deux meilleurs) serveurs de ce réseau, Friendica.

Bien entendu, personne ne connaît Friendica, et bien peu de montre connaît le réseau libre (#FreeNetwork (= #Fediverse + #Federation )). Mais cela pourrait changer, grâce à l'immoralité des géants de l'industrie et aux vagues de #deletefacebook et autres #deletetwitter.

Rien ne m'empêche de copier ces contenus sur des plateformes non-libres. Pour la pérennité, je vais même prendre l'habitude d'archiver ce blogue sur archive.is.

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