Loomio
Wed 23 Mar 2016 2:50PM

Using P2P Social Media to Promote Libre Commons Projects

DS Danyl Strype Public Seen by 177

Just wondering if CommonsTransition and the P2P Foundation, as well as members of this group, are active on GNU Social, Diaspora, and of the other newish decentralized social media networks? A lot of people interested in the ideas these projects promote are active on these federated networks now. GNU Social is particularly useful because as with it's forerunner StatusNet (run by Identi.ca which now uses Pump.io), a GNU Social account can be linked to a Twitter account, allowing users who follow you on Twitter to receive the messages you post on your GNU Social server.

The network effect ("viral marketing") is an important concept to grasp in understanding how social technology emerges and declines. Check out the CCC talk on this by Katharina Nocun.

DS

Danyl Strype Wed 23 Mar 2016 2:53PM

So far, my federated social network accounts are:
* GNU Social: strypey [at] quitter.se
* Diaspora: strypey [at ]joindiaspora.com
* Pump.io: https://identi.ca/strypey (haven't used this much since they switched to Pump)
* Tent: strypey.tent.is (still not idea how to use Tent yet though)

JH

Jake Hansen Wed 23 Mar 2016 3:51PM

Good one. My attempts:
- GNU Social, Identica and I believe a few comparable federated microblogging networks: I have attempted to get this working several times in the past, failed and gave up. Except once I succeeded in getting an account on GNU Social I think, failed to get it connected to Twitter, found a desert there, left it at that with the thought "In the future when I have more time, I will do this right" (haha)
- Diaspora: I was very interested in this when I first heard about it, when I found out the sysadmin can read all content and nothing is encrypted on the server, I lost interest

I do not know Tent. I have (had?) high hopes for ind.ie.

ST

Stacco Troncoso Thu 24 Mar 2016 12:47PM

Yeah, I've got profiles on Minds, Diaspora and GNUSocial/La Matriz (search for Stacco). I'd love to have something similar for the P2PF/Commons Transition but most of our Social Media content is automated, we simply don't have enough people-hours to have someone posting. If there's a solution for P2P-SM (IFTT or something) that'd be great.

MB

Michel Bauwens Fri 25 Mar 2016 12:24AM

personally, I am not .. .I have tried at various times before and each time there was no one there ... I am using the mainstream networks to reach a wider audience and am not very interested to use the new networks in that context ..

self-organizing would be another matter, but we have Loomio for that,

However, I would strongly encourage other members of CT and P2P-F to do that, and to join for example GNU Social as we should not all be on the same networks ..

Perhaps we need someone who can coordinate such a social media strategy,

Michel

DS

Danyl Strype Mon 28 Mar 2016 3:50AM

My past experiences have been similar... tumbleweeds. However, this appears to be changing, for a number of reasons that I won't go into here (I'm preparing a blog post on Disintermedia where I can go into them in detail). The point I want to make is that as this progress accelerates, it's going to become less work to use them, not more, and more rewarding to do so. Take GNU Social. As I said, a Social account can be set up to automatically repost on a Twitter account, thus addressing both the audience on the Social network and the (currently) larger audience on Twitter in one sweep. There is already a WordPress plugin that automatically sends a Social post for every blog post, and adds any replies sent via Social as comments on the blog, and I'm sure similar plug-ins are in the works (if not already available) for other free code blog engines (not sure what software the P2P and CT blogs use).

Perhaps we need someone who can coordinate such a social media strategy

I think every group of people who want to influence popular opinion needs at least one of these, but I think they need to be political strategists who understand the "Organic Internet" concept of the net as a social movement, not just a set of pipes ("the medium is the message"), and interact in ways that help that movement become more progressive (for lack of a better word). Many organisations have social media specialists, but too often they are political marketers chasing maximum eyeballs with clickbait and trying to reshape the organisation's discourse to meet the perceived demands of the audience (group narcissism as a communications strategy). No offence intended to present company :)

AM

ann marie Mon 28 Mar 2016 12:43PM

Well said, @strypey re: political strategists vs. marketers. Very much something for us to keep our sights set on.

JI

John Ingleby Mon 28 Mar 2016 1:05PM

Strypey, are you familiar with the work of Dave Winer? He's a "hacker" (in the true sense of "hacking" code, not "cracking" cybersecurity) who's committed to the open internet. So far as I can figure out Dave has built mechanisms of the kind you're describing, like a river of news (RIP Google Reader) and a blogging system that automatically feeds links to Twitter and Facebook.

MB

Michel Bauwens Mon 28 Mar 2016 3:22PM

Anne-Marie,

is there anyone in the p2p-f who could give some time to devising a media diffusion strategy that would hit the more 'technologically correct' alternatives .. and is there anyone who could keep an eye out for the comments etc.. that such a automated feed (as suggested by Stripey) would generate ?

Michel

DS

Danyl Strype Mon 4 Jul 2016 6:38AM

"is there anyone in the p2p-f who could give some time to devising a media diffusion strategy that would hit the more 'technologically correct' alternatives"

Having a communications person who is fluent in free (as in freedom) and federated social networks would be a great asset for the P2PF. But to experiment with free and federated groupware tools,what's really needed is a group of people. Such a group can try out different tools together, give feedback to developers, and publish periodic ratings to guide potential adopters (eg "experimental", "ready for individual use", "ready for use by small/ medium/ large organsations"). This would include testing text-based social media, but also live chat tools, group platforms like Loomio etc.

The reason for this is the catch-22 situation we've been in because of network effect. There's low motivation for developers to work on alternatives that have very little uptake compared to their proprietary counterparts, and low motivation for users to adopt alternatives that are not technologically mature and widely used. If we want a free and federated internet, instead of an "open web" dominated by proprietary social media platforms owned by corporations, we need to think strategically, and actively organise to bring that free and federated future into being.

My plan at present is to move much of my blogging/ wiki activity into the P2PF and CT platforms, and move Disintermedia towards being such a beta testing group, both trialling platforms hosted by others and experimenting with setting up our own nodes in federated networks, and sharing the results. If anyone here would like to take part, please feel free to set up an account on CoActive.org, and join the Disintermedia project.

AM

ann marie Mon 28 Mar 2016 3:37PM

Of course it's a great idea, and once we have the funds to bring a community manager on board who has facility with both the "popular but not ideal" and the "technologically correct and more progressive" alternatives, this will be a large part of their position. As it stands (as you know) we are too few and too overloaded to commit to a new avenue of exploration without the time or human resources. That said, it's a big necessity, so we're going to export some of this thread to the job description in the wiki, for our future team member.

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