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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Occupy / Teh Internets Facebook, Occupied

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 2:27 PM

Slog tipper Greg alerts us to the news that people are working on a Facebook for the 99%. Wired reports:

A move away from mainstream social networks is already happening on several levels within the Occupy movements — from the local networks already set up for each occupation to an in-progress, overarching, international network project called Global Square, that Knutson is helping to build. Those networks are likely to be key to Occupy’s future, since nearly all of the largest encampments in the United States have been evicted — taking with them the physical spaces where activists communicated via the radically democratic General Assemblies.

The idea of an open alternative to corporate-owned social networking sites isn’t novel — efforts to build less centralized, open source alternatives to Facebook and Twitter have been in the works for years, with the best known examples being Diaspora and Identica...One challenge that all of the new efforts face is a very difficult one for non-centralized services: ensuring that members are trustworthy. That’s critical for activists who risk injury and arrest in all countries and even death in some. To build trust, local and international networks will use a friend-of-a-friend model in Knutson and Boyer’s projects. People can’t become full members on their own as they can with social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

One of the things I've been very surprised about with the Occupy Wall Street movement in general is that they have an awful web presence. Sure, they're pretty good on Twitter, but their sites have been total messes since the very start. The idea of a social network strictly for activism, with certain posts opened up to the general public as statements and other posts made very private for strategy purposes, is a necessary one. As Occupy hunkers down for the winter, I'd urge them to work on their web strategy so that when spring comes around, they'll be better at providing a more coherent internet face to the general public.

Comments (16) RSS

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Diaspora always sounded neat.

"ensuring that members are trustworthy"
This may be a fool's errand, though. I don't quite understand how they wish to "fix" all of these social problems.

Posted by undead ayn rand on December 29, 2011 at 2:58 PM

Yeah, a far left wing digital ghetto. Great way to make this fart of a movement even more irrelevant.

Posted by Sugartit on December 29, 2011 at 3:03 PM

"ensuring that members are trustworthy"

Well, you can use the usual tools of the far left: reeducation camps and/or neighborhood spies.

Posted by Sugartit on December 29, 2011 at 3:05 PM

This might be promising -- one of the problems with upstart social networks is reaching a critical mass of participants.

Occupying the Occupy niche could be the key to getting something like Diaspora to that necessary & sufficient level of ubiquity.

Posted by Timrrr on December 29, 2011 at 3:10 PM

@2 the internet is a far left wing digital ghetto. genius

Posted by aardvark on December 29, 2011 at 3:11 PM

We speak for the 99%. But the 99% isnt allowed to join!????

How they going to afford the servers when the 99% does sign up? Wikipedia is resisting ads and its killing them, one little banner ad and presto, servers paid and then some, but they refuse, so they resorts to begging. Same thing for Freerepublic.com, every other month is a beg drive to cough up 100k to pay for the servers.

Posted by Kinison

on December 29, 2011 at 3:15 PM

The thing that makes corporate Facebook work is that it's open to everyone, and everyone is on it. That's what killed Google+ -- it's too confusing and off-putting for your grandma and your crazy cousins and those boobs you knew in high school but, shockingly, still want to have some level of communication with. They're not on Google+, and they're not interested in Occupy.

This is yet another example of people who don't understand the key ingredient of the wheel (it's round) trying to reinvent it again.

Also: no one involved in Occupy has the slightest interest in "providing a more coherent internet face to the general public". That's the LAST thing they want.

Posted by Fnarf

on December 29, 2011 at 3:18 PM

"The 99%" is pretty much everybody. Including a lot of corporations.

Posted by The CHZA on December 29, 2011 at 3:41 PM

@7: I see the appeal of a noncommercial and privacy-respecting alternative, though not much funding.

I just don't see what they're looking to leave out, undercover Feds? Mainstream journalists? The black-hoodie crew? The LaRouchies? The people with niche political concerns that glomp onto anything to give them the (negative) attention they so richly crave?

It seems like an overbroad idea.

Posted by undead ayn rand on December 29, 2011 at 3:42 PM

@8: Why would anyone discourage small business and small business owners?

Posted by undead ayn rand on December 29, 2011 at 3:46 PM

"Facebook for the 99%" and "Facebook for activists" would be two very different things. Only a small percent of the 99% would actually be activists.
So which is it?

Posted by onion on December 29, 2011 at 3:53 PM

I don't see why they can't just use Facebook groups for this purpose. (American protesters, that is - I know that in REAL police states like Iran, something else might be necessary.) You have to be approved to join a group, and if you have to provide the name of someone already in the group, I can't see that being any less secure than a "friend of a friend" check that they're proposing.

Posted by Matt from Denver on December 29, 2011 at 3:54 PM

I hear MySpace is empty.

Posted by bedipped on December 29, 2011 at 8:21 PM

"One of the things I've been very surprised about with the Occupy Wall Street movement in general is that they have an awful web presence."

Geez, you're a complete idiot, Constant! You've ignored ALL the links posted here regarding the various Occupy groups around the country and planet, moron?

You neocon gaytards (poseurs all, especially when Humphrey is posing as a troll named 1958 or some such crap name) have either trashed or ignored the premier free press subject of 2011, Wikileaks and the illegally lengthy incarceration of Bradley Manning.

http://www.thetechherald.com/articles/An…

Jerks, clowns, trashtards.....

Posted by sgt_doom on December 30, 2011 at 10:54 AM

@14: http://globalcomment.com/2011/why-does-t… how kind of you to use "gaytard" while still continuing to use her old identity.

Not that your links aren't always amusingly out of left field, of course. Relevant*, but not to the topics at hand.

*except for your crazytown antifluoridation rants, of course. The civil liberties stuff is sensical.

Posted by undead ayn rand on December 30, 2011 at 1:20 PM

The 99% already have a Facebook. We call it "Facebook."

Posted by robotslave on December 31, 2011 at 9:21 PM