Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)

Destry · 2018-03-25 13:44:08

In case you missed these, I recommend you find the time later. Good reading.

Cloak and Data: The Real Story Behind Cambridge Analytica’s Rise and Fall, Mother Jones
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing, Doc Searles

Doc’s is one to put in your feed reader.

Destry · 2018-03-25 13:47:33

Btw, how can we, as friends, peers, confrères, etc of the Txp community share links like this among/with ourselves without the forum, which seems ill-suited, and without having to designate a centralized suck hole for the purpose?

That seems to be a thing people would like but lacks. Or do I not know what it is (probably)?

colak · 2018-03-25 14:11:42

Destry wrote #310334:

Btw, how can we, as friends, peers, confrères, etc of the Txp community share links like this among/with ourselves without the forum, which seems ill-suited, and without having to designate a centralized suck hole for the purpose?

That seems to be a thing people would like but lacks. Or do I not know what it is (probably)?

Hi Destry,

The General Discussions part of the forum was made for these kind of posts. I do not believe that we should have any other way as decentralisation damaged this community in the past.

>ps… I’m following the Cambridge Analytical case as closely as my time allows me…. I am also interested in the distinction on the treatment of Christopher Wylie by the press and public versus that of Edward Snowden back in 2013.

Furthermore I am following the news as they unfold on Shahmir Sanni, the Brexit whistleblower.

Finally Snowden’s Message on Facebook’s data leak scandal with Cambridge Analytica might be of interest.

Last edited by colak (2018-03-25 14:20:22)

Destry · 2018-03-25 15:42:55

colak wrote #310337:

The General Discussions part of the forum was made for these kind of posts.

Fair enough.

One thing I’ve considered doing at the new blog, maybe, is a weekly round up of ‘top reading’ as curated by yours truly. Other people have been doing this for a long time, Bruce Lawson comes to mind, as example.

It’s a fantastic way to get a print NYT substitute for the morning coffee or weekend brunch. When you get enough people doing that kind of thing, so know where to look for reading lists on different subjects areas and/or topics your interested in, it can be useful.

Ideally we could get a copy of the reading itself filtered through an ad-tracking stripper so we wouldn’t have to visit media sites at all. ;)

colak · 2018-03-25 16:07:17

This is what paper.li is doing. ie architecture news. Although I know that external links are inevitable and many times (ie in citations) very necessary, I would always encourage original content. We all try to harvest the info in the net, be it via news sites, web-zines, blogs, etc. You wrote a post in this forum some days ago about the hopeful decentralisation of the web, away from social media. I am so much looking forward to that day but I am not at all optimistic as most of the younger crowd do not even know the difference between the internet and facebook for example.

My penny’s worth. I believe that you are a good writer and your posts here are always engaging. Keeping your visitors in your site is always better…

michaelkpate · 2018-03-25 16:31:10

If the topic is the use of Big Data and Social Media in Elections, I would also recommend:

bici · 2018-03-25 17:44:05

Time to once again use a Text-based web browser on unix

Last edited by bici (2018-03-25 17:44:24)

colak · 2018-03-25 17:49:15

bici wrote #310352:

Time to once again use a Text-based web browser on unix

?

Destry · 2018-03-25 19:50:17

colak wrote #310347:

most of the younger crowd do not even know the difference between the internet and facebook for example.

My understanding of that is opposite, actually. Most young people are abandoning FB, or have already. It’s the parents and grandparents that still stick with Facebook. The “kids”, OTOH, all went to Snapchat. But even that’s not going to last long. My kids are savvy of all this, but then I make them that way. ;)

I’m slightly more optimistic about a decentralized revival of some sort, but it’s unclear how it might emerge. It likely won’t be personal blogs, though I do hope we see a some people returning to that. More likely it will be an ever-growing interest in alternate social media tools that are decentralized. This is actually starting to happen, though you may not see signs yet if you’re not actually using those tools.

As people know, I’m in Mastodon, which is a decentralized alternative to Twitter, and it’s steadily growing, while also being a source of information about other alternative tools. For example, there’s a lot of talk about existing, decentralized chat and video platform alternatives, among many others. I’ve been hearing about a decentralized Slack alternative, but I forget the name.

Ever since news broke of Cambridge Analytica, Mastodon gained a big burst of new accounts. This article helped too, I think: The new technology that aspires to #DeleteFacebook for good

I believe that you are a good writer and your posts here are always engaging.

I appreciate that. You will like my blog even more, then. ;)

michaelkpate wrote #310349:

If the topic is the use of Big Data and Social Media in Elections

Uh, no. The topic is about how focked up centralized social media is. ;)
Though, granted, this turd floats around the bowl of politics.

In fact, a little quote from a long article I’m working on, coming at you soon via The Full Point。:

No greater proof is needed for this claim than the 2016 American elections. I’m not talking about the results, because the entire duopoly system is a complete disaster. The GOP (Grand Old Party, seriously) and DNC (Democratic National Convention) can both get stuffed. I’m talking about the corruption and mindlessness made easy through centralized social media — high-lighted by those elections — and the surreal shit-show that plays out every day in such platforms, like Twitter, ever since.

Yes, I’m going down like King Leonidas, with a hundred arrows in me.

Kjeld · 2018-03-26 23:01:58

I wasn’t aware of Mastodon yet, Destry. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Destry · 2018-03-27 05:45:11

You’re welcome, Kjeld. I see you’re in Japan. Japan happens to be the biggesst user of Mastodon so far, followed by Europe, France and Germany, especially. Though US is catching up now, I think.

colak · 2018-03-27 05:54:22

Hi Destri,

Did you create an instance of Mastodon in your site? What kind of traffic does it generate? Would a shared server with limited bandwidth be able to cope with it? As I understand it, the instances communicate between them which means that there is constant traffic, if anything just to get a 200 response. Tell us more…

Destry · 2018-03-27 15:22:53

colak wrote #310394:

Did you create an instance of Mastodon

No. I do not run an instance. I thought about doing it for CSF, but CSF is no more.

But you can regulate how many accounts you want to allow on your instance, from 1 to any greater number, which should make it feasible to run on a shared server if your accounts allowance is low.

Hardcore privacy/security (P/S) proponents run an instance for their own use (1 account). For example, if I did that it might look like:

@rootsbeard@masto.wion.com

Where the instance is setup as a subdirectory at masto.wion.com. Aral Balkan, a big P/S proponent, is one such person who runs his own Masto instance like that:

@aral@mastodon.ar.al

But you could have an instance for, say, your friends, or a local club, where the account limit might be 10 to 100 people. Or even just a general interest topic like Lovers of Sparta, but restrict the accounts to the first 300 Spar… er, users accounts.

As for fediverse networking, you can keep it open so your users have free access to any and all instances on the Fediverse, or close your instance off to be private, or block any number of other instances if they don’t jive with your code of conduct. There’s a large degree of flexibility about how an instance admin can manage things. The understanding between admin and accounts on that instance is that whatever is decided is usually decided as a group or community decision after the initial creation of the instance. Nobody likes a tyrant admin.

And that’s the beauty of decentralization. You are not stuck to one instance. Any person can close their account on one instance and create a new one on another. Just like moving in real live.

You can also create multiple accounts across instances using the same nick, or create multiple accounts across instances (or on the same instance) using different nicks. The thing to realize here is that you do not own your nick in the fediverse. In a decentralized system, you only own your account on a given instance. That’s why decentralization is so nice, IMO. Marketers and brands can’t dominate it. Not only is there no incentive in trying to create a brand account on every existing instance, it would be a fools chase anyway because they come and go like the tides. (This harkens back to the notion of picking instances wisely.)

Here’s a fact: the bigger the instance you join, the quicker you have access to more of the fediverse. The inverse is also true.

But, what I’ve found is that just like any other socmed platform, there are a lot of pointless shitposters. They may not be as hateful as on Twitter, but they’re still just as irrelevant and time-wasting. Memes, cat pictures… the usual shit. They exist on Masto too. And the bigger the instance, the more of these people flood the instance stream.

So, my advice is to find an instance that limits accounts to 1000 max. That’s plenty to get you interacting with people and connected to the rest of the fediverse.

People on your instance will have three views/streams:

Their own toots (Home)
Toots of everyone on the instance (Local)
Toots of everyone in the fediverse that are followed by people on your instance. (Fediverse)

The last one is key, of course. Just because your instance may be open to all the fediverse, your instance users will only see fediverse toots from people who are collectively followed by your users. This is important because it reduces a significant amount of shitposting. And if you think about it, if the entire fediverse was allowed to stream through your instance’s “Fediverse” stream, it would move so fast you wouldn’t even be able to see toots, let alone read them.

So, answering your initial question, I think you can setup an instance on a shared server if you limit the user accounts to something low. But if you want to go with an open-ended instance, then you should find a dedicated server and upgrade resources as needed along the way. Or find a feasible balance in between, whatever.

As admin, you can even set how long toots last, whether or not people can post image files (a resource hog), and so forth. There’s a lot of customization at your control for how to initially start.

I mentioned this before, but I can easily imagine an open source project on a Masto instance, where accounts must be requested or validated against an existing community of users. For example, you have a proven forum account with more than 100 posts? You can join the Masto squad

@you@textodon.textpattern.io

I.e. make it something to achieve, and desirable.

bici · 2018-03-28 00:22:38

Please help this 2009 interview of Facebook’s CEO get seen by people who don’t use Twitter. Here’s a download link so you can pull and repost it: https://www.sendspace.com/file/wqwtq5

zero · 2018-03-28 11:18:52

Thanks for the Mastodon and other info, Destry, and thanks for the Zucked over file, bici. Will share.

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#1 2018-03-25 13:44:08