
Notes (and thoughts) on organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere [thenexusofprivacy.net] is a deep dive on the landscape today, based on multiple discussions with US-based organizers.
There's certainly room for progress!
Notes (and thoughts) on organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere [thenexusofprivacy.net] is a deep dive on the landscape today, based on multiple discussions with US-based organizers.
There's certainly room for progress!
How to make progress? Here's some of the questions I have ... very interested in hearing people's thoughts! If you'd prefer to respond anonymously, here's a CryptPad form [cryptpad.fr] (it takes a few seconds to load, so don't panic).
What examples have you seen of successfully leveraging social networks for organizing and mutual aid? (It's fine to include examples from centralized commercial social networks as well as alternative and/or decentralized social networks)
How could social networks better support organizing and mutual aid?
What do you see as the most promising and/or urgent short-term opportunities?
And if you'd like to get involved, you can leave your contact info in the form and we'll follow up with you once there are some concrete next steps in place. (Although you're also welcome to fill out the form anonymously!)
Easier said then done, but the opportunity is there. As Afsaneh Rigot says in Can We Build Tech That Is Not Oppressive? [substack.com]
"The details of how highly marginalized communities are criminalized are the key to how we can build robust and even scalable tech that is not oppressive. This is how Design From the Margins truly works....
The experience of the most criminalized in the US and globally shows how power really works. This knowledge, the workarounds, can also be translated into stealthy tech design, build, and engineering choices that help navigate systems."
We need to accelerate work on a few things at once:
Find ways to leverage and improve the current prototypes for mutual aid, organizing, and counter propaganda, hate, and information overload
Help people move from corporate social networks - without losing their support networks, ties to communities, and connections with friends and family.
Build whatever comes next. Structurally, and in terms of applications, what will decentralized social networks, designed from the margins using design justice principles look like?
if not now, when? Mutual aid and organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere
https://privacy.thenexus.today/if-not-now-when/
Mutual aid. Organizing. Sharing, contextualizing, and making meaning of news and health information to counter propaganda and information overload. The use cases for alternative social networks – not controlled by techbro white supremacist CEO's working with their cronies in authoritarian governments – practically write themselves in today's world. And with so many talented social scientists, designers, systems thinkers, and developers directly impacted by DOGE, MAGA, et al, there are a lot of people with the right skills for these new networks to make rapid progress.
The good news is there's a lot of promising work happening in the decentralized social media ecosystems known as the fediverses ("federated universes") and the ATmosphere (a fediverse built on Bluesky's AT protocol), including DAIR-tube, Blacksky, the #FreeFediverse, and more.
Still, as promising as these efforts are, there's still a long ways to go.
Fleeting conditions in between squalls often give you little time to react. I was lying in my tent patiently waiting for the light to change. Suddenly, I hear my friend yelling "Morgan! You gotta get out here!" - I quickly got on my feet and practically waltzed over to this composition I found earlier and captured this rainbow in front of Mount Macdonald.
'Rise to Action' (2023)
Saturday 7pm Hip Hop show in #Worcester - #Atmosphere #SageFrancis #MrDibbs $75+
https://www.ticketsqueeze.com/tickets/6788178/buy-tickets
#BostonMusic #BostonHipHop #BostonWeekend 12/x
"Astronomers noted that over 120 Starlink satellites re-entered Earth's atmosphere in January alone. ... While the re-entries produce visually stunning fireballs, they also raise concerns about atmospheric pollution."
Fog envelopes an alpine basin, transforming it into something surreal. Every time I turned my head, it looked different.
Taken on an incredible afternoon in the alpine of #BC.
'Witches Lair' (2023)
So #Tumblr is transitioning to #WordPress in order embrace the #Fediverse (there is still no timetable on when that process will be completed).
Also, despite the popularity of #Bluesky, Tumblr has no plans to embrace the #Atmosphere & will stick with support for #ActivityPub for now.
https://www.tumblr.com/wip/773574776721702912/about-a-year-ago-wordpress-ceo-matt-mullenweg
Ironically, you can easily import your Tumblr blog into WordPress, & then cross post your content upon Tumblr. That’s what I have done.
New TRAPPIST-1 observations with #JWST underscore the complexities of confirming a #planet’s atmosphere.
A previous observation of infrared emission at 15 microns suggested that a thick, CO2-rich #atmosphere was unlikely implying a planet without an atmosphere and a dark surface that absorbs nearly all incoming starlight.
According to the new results, however, an atmosphere with a large amount of CO2 and haze could also explain the observations.
#exoplanets
https://astrobiology.com/2024/12/the-light-of-trappist-1-b-reveals-new-insights-on-the-planets-nature.html
## DDFON / Mycelial Web
Sometime in the early 2010s, I've been using DDFON = Decentralized, Distributed, Federated, Open Network.
In 2022/2023, I reopted the chosen new name for the Fediverse "Mycelium" since in the end no one used it (even after multiple votes and discussions). I now use it this way:
* DDFON friendly name is "Mycelial Web".
* Each network is called "Mycelium network".
Since a "mycelium" is a single network in real life and the plural of it (a collection of mycelium) is "mycelial".
## Open Social / Social Web / Open Social Web
There is also "Social Web" and "Open Social Web", which are the same actually. However, in the mid to late 2000s, it was already defined as any network that uses any technology that promotes openness and interoperability. There was also a now defunct organization called "Open Social" and a W3C effort supporting such technologies that falls under "Open Social".
Two examples of "Open Social Web" are Hi5 and Google Plus. Hi5 and Google Plus are not DDFON / Mycelial Web but are Social Web / Open Social / Open Social Web.
## Personally
I make a distinction between the much larger "Social Web" / "Open Social" / "Open Social Web" versus the more focused DDFON or Mycelial Web .
Underneath the DDFON / Mycelial Web label are the Mycelium networks like:
1. Fediverse (ActivityPub)
2. ATmosphere (ATproto)
3. The Federation (diaspora*)
4. Matrix (Matrix)
5. Jabber (XMPP)
6. NOSTRich (Nostr)
7. and others
Tags: #OpenSocial #SocialWeb #OpenSocialWeb #Fediverse #ActivityPub #ATmosphere #ATproto #TheFederation #diaspora* #Matrix #Jabber #XMPP #NOSTRich #Nostr #Mycelium #MycelialWeb #DDFON
“As a result of this low skill in our forecasts, #SpaceX saw 20 kilometers of position error in their one-day computations. If we’re uncertain in where our spacecraft are by 20 kilometers, then you can throw collision avoidance out the window.”
https://spacenews.com/geomagnetic-storms-cause-mass-migrations-of-satellites/
BlueSky is to the ATmosphere what Goggle is to the modern web. Discuss.
Keen to read arguments both for and against, including within the same post. Reasoned arguments I disagree with get more points than knee-jerk hot takes I agree with. Go!
Hundreds of defunct #satellites plunge through Earth’s #atmosphere yearly, and the count is rising.
The dying satellites, it turns out, don’t just wink out into the ether. Each one leaves a bit of itself behind.
The satellites’ fiery death throes, along with a steep rise in the number of rocket launches, are adding a glut of ozone-destroying and climate-altering pollutants to the #stratosphere.
For instance, aluminum oxides are catalysts for #ozone depletion.
#space
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/satellite-space-junk-havoc-stratosphere
"In the last couple of years, there have been roughly 500 re-entry events per year, and people are talking about 10,000 in the not-too-distant future. That’s about one an hour. So we’d like to understand the implications as soon as possible." (via @ScienceNews)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/satellite-space-junk-havoc-stratosphere
Last Week in the #ATmosphere:
- 20 million accounts on #Bluesky
- #Threads is taking the competition with Bluesky serious; Bluesky might be closer in size to Threads than thought
- experiments with visualising the firehose
- and a ton of links
Read at: https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-the-atmosphere-2411-c/
Crowdsourcing Ionosphere Data with Phones - How do you collect a lot of data about the ionosphere? Well, you could use soundin... - https://hackaday.com/2024/11/18/crowdsourcing-ionosphere-data-with-phones/ #atmosphere #ionosphere #gpshacks #science
That #debate on what to call "posts", if you really want to be accurate it should be based on the name of the network: The #ATmosphere; it's not " #Bluesky network" in the first place. So something like: 1. Cloud 2. Rain 3. Drop (from raindrop) 4. Oxygen 5. Ozone 6. Helium 7. Air 8. Breathe