Re: social media critique: next steps?

[RRA]

> This is in the end what Silicon Valley tries to prevent at all cost:
> resistance and exodus. How can such a momentum be unleashed?

So aside from the discussion of who listens (or didn't listen) to whose
opinion it can be interesting to have a closer look at action and momentum.

Three projects caught my attention and I think could be an interesting
case for this 'next steps' discussion:

Mastodon (2016) en Conversations (2014) and Peertube (2015) *

All three are projects that during the past twelve months have somehow
reinvigorated (the work on, attention for) their underlying protocols.
Protocols that have been proclaimed dead or unsuccessful for many years.
And probably will be for more to come.

The first one, Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/), you may have read
about or even tried out. It is essentially a twitter clone /
alternative. Technically it is based on Ostatus, which is a protocol to
distribute
status updates across networks. Ostatus is the protocol that powered
early 'alternative 2.0 style' social networks such as Friendica and
Lorea. The latter was a product of and important site of organization
for the Spanish Indignados and 15M movements. Mastodon also supports
ActivityPub which is the likely successor of Ostatus as a protocol for
further ongoing work on so-called federated publishing. The interesting
thing is that Mastodon managed to attract a good chunk of the recent Twitter
refugees. These where mostly voices which aren't white, loud or extreme
right wing and for those reasons felt themselves increasingly out of
place on twitter. Mastodon communities managed to involve so many of
these people by focusing on developing tools for community moderation,
content warnings and the ability to block other instances in the
network. As a result (the english language) Mastodon became a site that
is predominantly populated by the queer, PoC, left and artistic, or
anyone that would otherwise be at risk of being on the receiving end of
the Gamergate-style interactions on twitter. The decentralized nature of
mastodon has created a culture of 'thematic mastodon servers (see
https://instances.social/list) that have become a large part of what
makes the network interesting and relevant to its several hundred
thausand users.


Conversations (https://conversations.im/) is a messaging application
that is based on the very old XMPP protocol. This is a chat protocol
which has at one point also been the underlying technology of both
Google and Facebook chat before they closed it down and made it
proprietary. From the onset Conversations focused on a combination of
user friendliness, security and ultimately visual design to be on par
with mobile messengers such as whatsapp and telegram. The work of
Conversations has reinvigorated the XMPP protocol. Partly because it
focused on implementing the double-ratchett encryption algorithm almost
immediately after it was open-sourced. This is the modern userfriendly
end-to-end encryption algorithm developed by Moxie Marlinspike for
Signal and licensed to companies like Whatsapp. Another effect of the
work of Conversations is that the decades old protocol has been updated
in the span of a few years to work very well for mobile usage. For me
one of the interesting aspects of the development of Conversations is
the role that modern thinking on UIs, design and user friendliness
played in its popularity. This especially becomes apparent in the very
technical and awkward world of XMPP software. The developer has
mentioned multiple times that he 'bases' his design on that of his GAFA
'competitors'. Apropos tactical media, this project's appropriation of
corporate design, yet very clear and
solid political stance (see https://gultsch.de/objection.html) leading
to an increase in popularity and community involvement is an interesting
development.


Lastly, Peertube (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube) is an attempt
at making the hosting of video content accessible to small
organizations. The sheer amount of infrastructure and thus capital
required to set up an alternative to the monopoly position of Youtube,
forces any project trying to replace Youtube to use peer-to-peer
technologies. Peertube does so by trying to implement WebTorrents. Like
the older 'BitTorrent' protocol it is based on, WebTorrent tries to
mitigate the sheer amount of data and bandwith involved with exchanging
online media, by making sure these are streamed from many sources at
once. Unlike torrents, which need separate applications, WebTorrents run
in familiar web browsers. One could say the conceptual forbearer of this
approach was a project called Popcorn Time (2014). An app that convinced
many with its good UI and design to do 'Netflix-like' streaming on top
of the torrent network. Again this is something that lead to a
reinvigoration of the decaying (use-wise) torrenting protocol. (I'd also
argue though, that Popcorn Time was simultaneously the nail in the
coffin for torrenting because of the 

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Morlock Elloi]

FB as HIV:



The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control
machines and machines that control humans.

While the internet has brought about a revolution in our ability to
educate each other, the consequent democratic explosion has shaken
existing establishments to their core. Burgeoning digital super states
such as Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are
integrated with the existing order, have moved to reestablish
discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action.
Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence
is an existential threat to humanity.

While still in its infancy, the geometric nature of this trend is
clear. The phenomenon differs from traditional attempts to shape
culture and politics by operating at a scale, speed, and increasingly
at a subtlety, that appears highly likely to eclipse human
counter-measures.

Nuclear war, climate change or global pandemics are existential
threats that we can work through with discussion and thought.
Discourse is humanity’s immune system for existential threats.
Diseases that infect the immune system are usually fatal. In this
case, at a planetary scale.

(from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTtKh84X4AEkC0j.jpg via 
https://twitter.com/JulianAssange )


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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Richard Barbrook]

Hiya,

> From where I sit, Momentum looks like the most interesting political 
> thing happening in the dreeeary Western World. Noting the role that the
> revived situationist War Game is playing in the Labor Party, and 
> recalling the role that the "California Ideology" has played on
> Nettime, I would like to say "Kudos to Richard Barbrook!" Maybe somewhere
> in Richard's notes on futures past, there is still an unsprung future lying
> in wait for the twenty-first century.

Many thanks, comrade! 

John McDonnell - Jeremy Corbyn's second-in-command - is speaking at a
May Day rally in our 2009 Class Wargames movie. He was proud to be 
identified as a revocable delegate of the workers' councils.

Here's the link:
http://www.classwargames.net/?page_id=149

Richard

===

Dr. Richard Barbrook
Dept of Politics and IR,
University of Westminster
32-38 Wells Street
LONDON W1T 3UW
England

+44 (0)7879 441873

Skype: richard.barbrook
Facebook: Richard Barbrook
Twitter: @richardbarbrook

http://www.gamesforthemany.org
http://www.cybersalon.org
http://www.classwargames.net
http://www.politicsandmediafreedom.net
http://www.imaginaryfutures.net
http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/other-works

'Clause 5: That as the laws ought to be equal, so 
they must be good, and not evidently destructive 
to the safety and well-being of the people.' 

The Levellers, The 1647 Agreement of the People 
for a Firm and Present Peace Upon Grounds of 
Common Right.

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the thing with Europe

[Morlock Elloi]

Or maybe it's time to put down our phones, pick up shovels and start laying 
fibre.
I don't know.


This, of course, is the only solution. If all other arguments fail, 
consider that this gets you to the jail fastest. QED.


---

Europe was mentioned several times recently as alleged potential for 
doing good stuff, breaking MAGAf, regulating, taxing, creating communal 
infrastructure etc.


If Europe resembled anything from the 1983 Stuttgart Declaration, then 
this would be a reasonable hope and actionable direction.


It doesn't.

It's a 2nd class neoliberal financial cartel, dominated by US directly 
and via proxies (DE, UK.) Pipe dreams notwithstanding, this is not 
changing any time soon. The smartest ones  gravitate to US, because 
becoming rich CEO or semi-rich CTO is more attractive than championing 
community issues. Most Europeans have foreign cellular and landline 
providers - they couldn't even fix that, and they are going to 
communalize and regulate Internet?


"Europe" has, in the progressive circles, the same sinister role that 
Democratic Party had in the US: capture, coopt and subvert anything that 
endangers the system. It is no wonder that right-wingers are doing so well.


Forget Europe. If anything happens, it will happen in the heart of the 
Empire, where shovels and the shoveling drive exist.



-


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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Morlock Elloi]

If this is the only solution, we are in trouble.

1. The current (and foreseeable) political climate will not have any 
monopoly-breaking anti-trust mechanisms applied, period. This is the 
20th century thinking, a non-starter. The opposite actually happens.


2. Curated vs. censored problem was never solved, and there is no sign 
of emergence of a new theory or a model that can solve it. What I do is 
curating, what you do is censorship, and the number of members in 'I' 
and 'you' doesn't make any difference.


It is as possible to fix Facebook as it was possible to fix slavery.


On 1/16/18, 05:55, AllanInfo wrote:

The only solution to the Facebook problem is breaking it up the way any
monopoly has been broken into smaller components. Curated (not censored)
social media fulfils an important and necessary social function. It’s
not going to disappear; it’s integral to the digital world we live in.



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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Brian Holmes]

On 01/16/2018 05:44 AM, David Garcia wrote:
I continue to put some cautious hope in the rise and rise of an 
increasingly tech savvy Momentum (the UK Labor Party’s Corbyn supporting 
outfit) that could become a forum for addressing the power of platform 
capitalism. As Momentum appears to be squaring the circle of evolving a 
DIY mediatized politics with an understanding of the importance of also 
doing infrastructural politics.


From where I sit, Momentum looks like the most interesting political 
thing happening in the dreeeary Western World. Noting the role that the 
revived situationist War Game is playing in the Labor Party, and 
recalling the role that the "California Ideology" has played on Nettime, 
I would like to say "Kudos to Richard Barbrook!" Maybe somewhere in 
Richard's notes on futures past, there is still an unsprung future lying 
in wait for the twenty-first century.


impressive, Brian
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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[AllanInfo]

Hello,
 I’m coming at this discussion from another direction, sorry about that…

The problem with Facebook (for me anyway) is not its social media functions in 
so far as IT ONLY works as a virtual bulletin board, town crier or even as 
vehicle for sending messages. These aspects were part of the original game plan 
(more or less). And, from its earliest days, even in its most militaristic 
iterations, www fostered various social media qualities; especially if you 
consider (or accept) that  humans are inherently social animals; and, if one 
can imagine that any quasi-public social space (and Facebook is a social space) 
facilitates or breeds various forms of social interactions.

The problem lies squarely within the Facebook business model  which is not 
simply monopolistic but ravenously so… variations of this rabid form of 
monopoly capitalism are quite the norm these days and likely to be more so (if 
that’s possible). Successful businesses, on the hegemonic scale of Facebook, 
don’t simply compete; they devour the competition. Its the same for any 
commercial entity that manages to achieve the operational scale of such 
enterprises as Facebook, or Google or Amazon, etc…

Facebook is free it exploits the illusion that is benign; because Facebook 
seems to be free, people cannot imagine it as a monopoly; they cannot conceive 
of its insidious nature. Its most cannabalistic insidious qualities are opaque.
Small scale alternatives to Facebook are well-intentioned but are basically not 
sustainable without constantly replenishing the financial lifelines (via public 
or private sources).  The only solution to the Facebook problem is breaking it 
up the way any monopoly has been broken into smaller components. Curated (not 
censored) social media fulfils an important and necessary social function. It’s 
not going to disappear; it’s integral to the digital world we live in.

Additionaly, beside breaking up the Facebook monopoly, what is also imperative 
is the introduction of a digital literacy curriculum in secondary schools. 
Because one can navigate YouTube or Facebook or a word processing programme 
does not mean one is digitally literate.  It only suggests that one has managed 
basic skills but usually and very sadly minus the critical skills to evaluate 
the information that flows endlessly over the internet.

And in the land of Trump and beyond politicians rely on a vast digitally 
illiterate population and the likes of Fox News…

But all is not lost...

best
allan


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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[carlo von lynX]

I forward this post from Michael because I not only appreciate
being acked, but because everything else in it is just so
absolutely right.

- Forwarded message from Michael Rogers  -

On 14/01/18 16:36, Geert Lovink wrote:
> How can we scale up and democratize all the
> debates and proposals of the past 5-7 years of those that worked on
> alternative network architectures? Is the reasonable, noble and moral
> appeal a la Tim Berners-Lee the only one on offer?

I think Carlo von Lynx will say we need new privacy laws, and he's
right. Heather Marsh will say we need new structures for finding and
managing collective truth, and she's right. Douglas Schuler will say we
need new community-owned network infrastructure, and he's right.

All of these things take us outside the realm of social media, which is
appropriate because we've recognised that the ills of social media are
symptoms of bigger problems in society, including an inadequate framing
of privacy as an individual issue, a breakdown of consensus reality even
within the institutions whose function was once to produce it, and the
capture of the means of communication by a capitalist machine that
excels at the manipulation of the social self.

So perhaps the function of our critique at this point might be to lead
the people who've just started to criticise Facebook to engage with
these broader issues.

Or maybe it's time to put down our phones, pick up shovels and start
laying fibre. I don't know.

> Antisocial media: why I decided to cut back on Facebook and Instagram
> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/01/antisocial-media-why-decided-cut-back-facebook-instagram?CMP=share_btn_tw

Without meaning to pick on this particular article, it seems to me that
there's an emerging social media wellness industry, which probably
already has its detox plans, self improvement seminars and blogs with
affiliate marketing links. Is it possible to lose 25 pounds and get
better sleep by cutting out Facebook? We're going to find out. So
another problem for us is how to avoid becoming part of an increasingly
popular but empty pseudo-critique.

Cheers,
Michael

- End forwarded message -

I also totally agree with Morlock in asking to stop
calling it "social media" and in regards to 34c3 would
like to state that I clearly felt an atmosphere of
"doing something" not only because it was the motto
of the year, but because the defocusing that happened
at 31c3, leading people back to broken federation models
has mostly been overcome. It just took three extra years.

Patrice mentioned the eternal problem of 'scaling up'.
I held a side event talk on scalability which will come
out on media.ccc.de towards the end of the month, but
it isn't all that different from what I said at unlike
us in 2012. Maybe now the time is ripe to make more
sense in people's heads.

Other than that I am still trying to get the notion
out into the general public, that an Internet with all
its cool apps and convenient thingies is possible while
at the same time regulating away the surveillance economy
and its threat to whatever is left of democracy. As long
as a picture is painted, by which totalitarian big data
is an inevitable drawback of technology, societal ner-
vosity is not going to lead anywhere. The lure is just
too powerful. We must get the message out there, that
THEY CAN HAVE THE CAKE AND EAT IT. We just need to
regulate this beast appropriately.

Just yesterday even Italian state television conveyed
the message that democracy is heavily at risk by the
large monopolies of Silicon Valley, but when it comes
to talking of alternatives all they do is interview
blockchain entrepreneurs who would promise anything
although they have no clue on how to fix the Internet
for real. Most of them haven't even understood distri-
buted networking of which blockchain is a limited and
primitive subset.

So, here's my plea to the nettime visionaries:

- If you can influence the media, tell them that an
  Internet that does not undermine democracy is
  possible. It won't be cheap, but it can be done.
  People should take to the streets demanding it,
  because it is just as foundational as storming the
  Bastille, and it will cost them nothing. In fact,
  it will reopen the digital market for local industry,
  strengthening Europe.
- If you are angry, yet sitting on your hands, consider
  taking a look at our legislation initiative and tell
  us how to improve it. Force me to put it onto a git-
  like platform for easier collaboration - I am willing,
  but I don't have any gitwiki at hand. Since 2013 it is
  lying around at youbroketheinternet.org, conveying a
  political demand in just the necessary level of detail.
- If helping self-appointed lawmakers hurts your anarchic
  conscience, you may want to join a project to bring more
  anarchic culture into the democratic system and reduce
  representation. See structure.pages.de for that.

Let's #tuwat.

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Alexander Bard]

I hate to look like a self-promotor here - sorry - but Jan Söderqvist and I
analysed "attentionalism" as the deeper and even more complex continuation
of "capitalism" in our Marxist digital age manifesto "The Neotocrats"
already in 2000. The full scary pyramid of networks (class divisions are no
longer between individuals but in between the networks themselves), "you
are those you are allowed to communicate and exchange information with" in
Chapter 9. And as Slavoj Zizek among others have pointed out, the
resistance against the new unfairnesses and injustices of the
attentionalist system is laid out for "eternalist activists" in Chapters 4
and 5. Don't focus too much on the algorithms themselves but rather on who
has access to them and know how to exploit them (those with 400,000 rather
than 40 twitter followers and with higher positions in Facebook's dreaded
sociogram etc). A keyword here is "imploitation" and "imploitative power".
The pwer of information is namely one of exclusivity and timing. It is when
you access and can extract information, not if you do, that determines
power in an attentionalist world. Which we empirically showed had shifted
in 2012 (attention outscored any other forms of capital value precisely in
the search algorithms by then, even the ad had become a sign of
desperation. The benfit of our analysis is that you can establish three
rather than just one netocratic class category. Information owners (say
current Silicon Valley) after all only possess the means of (re)production
within the system. Like nobility and factory owners before them. But power
also needs a truth-producing vector (previously priests and academia, now
both powerless) and an imaginary power (previously kings and politicians,
now increasingly ironic and powerless, we predicted "a TV celebrity would
become U.S. President soon for ironic reasons",16 years before Trump
happened). It is where these two further netocratic elites pop up that we
are working to find out now. And it is dirty, we need not only Hegel and
Marx but increasingly Freud to understand how mortido and libido clash and
preversely interact in digital culture today. Think Frankfurt School
revival. Which is our next, fifth book.
All the best intentions
Alexander Bard

2018-01-16 13:46 GMT+01:00 Sean Cubitt :

> that should of course have read:
>
> the ruling algorithms are in every epoch the algorithms of the ruling class
>
> From The German Ideology to German Media Theory (and you’re right Patrice,
> via Therborn . .  and Lefebvre and Stuart hall)
>
> have algorithms taken over the role of ideology? Clearer if posed in
> Foucauldian power-knowledge-institution terms of discourse: has the
> construction of truth passed over to algorithms, whose operation favours a
> class that owns the means of their distribution?
>
> subordinate question: is this the work of a distinct class that owns the
> means of production, or is distribution now more significant in the age of
> financialisation? Or, have the algoithms extended the work of
> autonomisation Marx saw happening in the factory system,  from purely
> productive to reproductive sectors, no longer therefore under the control
> of capitalists but rewarding them with obscene bonuses as a form of benign
> parasite that helps them survive and grow - capitalists as symbionts, the
> gut flora of algorithmic capital.
>
> If any of these hypotheses are true, the forms of struggle against them
> take very different shapes.
>
> s
>
> > On 16 Jan 2018, at 12:20, Patrice Riemens  wrote:
> >
> >
> > Sounds like "What Does The Ruling Class Do When It Rules"
> >
> > https://www.versobooks.com/books/292-what-does-the-
> ruling-class-do-when-it-rules
> >
> > Ciaoui, p+7D!
> >
> >
> > On 2018-01-16 12:27, Sean Cubitt wrote:
> >> The algorithms of the ruling class are in every epoch the algorithms
> >> of the ruling class
> >> --
> >>> Message: 1
> >>> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:16:59 +0100
> >>> From: Florian Cramer 
> >>> Cc: Nettime 
> >>> Subject: Re:  social media critique: next steps?
> >>> Message-ID:
> >>> 

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Sean Cubitt]

that should of course have read:

the ruling algorithms are in every epoch the algorithms of the ruling class

From The German Ideology to German Media Theory (and you’re right Patrice, via 
Therborn . .  and Lefebvre and Stuart hall)

have algorithms taken over the role of ideology? Clearer if posed in 
Foucauldian power-knowledge-institution terms of discourse: has the 
construction of truth passed over to algorithms, whose operation favours a 
class that owns the means of their distribution?

subordinate question: is this the work of a distinct class that owns the means 
of production, or is distribution now more significant in the age of 
financialisation? Or, have the algoithms extended the work of autonomisation 
Marx saw happening in the factory system,  from purely productive to 
reproductive sectors, no longer therefore under the control of capitalists but 
rewarding them with obscene bonuses as a form of benign parasite that helps 
them survive and grow - capitalists as symbionts, the gut flora of algorithmic 
capital. 

If any of these hypotheses are true, the forms of struggle against them take 
very different shapes. 

s

> On 16 Jan 2018, at 12:20, Patrice Riemens  wrote:
> 
> 
> Sounds like "What Does The Ruling Class Do When It Rules"
> 
> https://www.versobooks.com/books/292-what-does-the-ruling-class-do-when-it-rules
> 
> Ciaoui, p+7D!
> 
> 
> On 2018-01-16 12:27, Sean Cubitt wrote:
>> The algorithms of the ruling class are in every epoch the algorithms
>> of the ruling class
>> --
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:16:59 +0100
>>> From: Florian Cramer 
>>> Cc: Nettime 
>>> Subject: Re:  social media critique: next steps?
>>> Message-ID:
>>> 

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Patrice Riemens]

Sounds like "What Does The Ruling Class Do When It Rules"

https://www.versobooks.com/books/292-what-does-the-ruling-class-do-when-it-rules

Ciaoui, p+7D!


On 2018-01-16 12:27, Sean Cubitt wrote:

The algorithms of the ruling class are in every epoch the algorithms
of the ruling class




--


Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:16:59 +0100
From: Florian Cramer 
Cc: Nettime 
Subject: Re:  social media critique: next steps?
Message-ID:

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[David Garcia]

> Florian wrote: One could argue that today's mainstream social media critique 
> has finally caught up with the critical media theory of 10-15 years ago. 
The difference is that 10-15 years ago the unprecedented popularity of the 
social media platforms coupled with mobile 
devices was a long way off. Though clearly important digital cultures had not 
yet been mainstreamed by being 
universally integrated into every aspect daily life and thus a Durheimian 
“total social fact”. 

As Noortje Maares describes in (Digital Sociology) examples such as the 
Samaritan Radar debacle are just one of many instances 
of what happens when the the temporal boundaries between knowledge and 
intervention evaporate. The epistemic 
consequences of this particular boundary being eroded is profound and still 
poorly understood. We are going well  beyond Wendy Chun’s 
(admittedly very important) Control & Freedom interpretations (particularly -if 
I remember correctly- as this book now seems overly skeptical about 
the potential of Big Data analytics to exercise genuine control). 

Bruce Sterling is I think right to champion of high stakes Margaretha Vestager 
(times a thousand) institutional juridical/political interventions. As only
contiental scale attacks are capable of rattling the cages of the Silicon 
Valley Behemoths (thats why I am hostile to the position left wing 
Brexiteers in the UK -“Lexiteers"-). Again I agree with Bruce Sterling that 
making the alternatives “more glamerous and appealing” than
the existing platforms is vital or making them “Keuwle" in the Patrice argot. 
This will only happen if the dynamism and authenticity of on-line sub-cultures 
are part of 
the mix. When Patrice questions whether 'Scaling up' is the eternal dream of 
actionism is it realistic? I reply yes! As was so disturbingly well 
demonstrated by the success of the alt.right. So in that sense Patrice is bang 
on when he argues that “Good old political struggle in a new shape" is the way 
to go and thats why I continue to put some cautious hope in the rise and rise 
of an increasingly tech savvy Momentum (the UK Labor Party’s Corbyn supporting 
outfit) that could become a forum for addressing the power of platform 
capitalism. As Momentum appears to be squaring the circle of evolving a DIY 
mediatized politics with an understanding of the importance of also doing 
infrastructural politics. 

David Garcia

On 15 Jan 2018, at 19:16, Florian Cramer  wrote:

> One could argue that today's mainstream social media critique has finally 
> caught up with the critical media theory of 10-15 years ago. The major 
> arguments have already been made in, among others, Wendy Chun's "Control and 
> Freedom" from 2005. Today's social media critique is a simplified, moralizing 
> version of that earlier theory, much like Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves 
> to Death" was a simplified, moralizing, popularized version of McLuhan's 
> 1960s theory of electronic mass media.
> 
> Still, I see the need for a renewed critical social media critique; one that 
> shifts its focus from the politics of algorithms to what I'd propose to call 
> the condition of civil disengagement. No matter the algorithms and no matter 
> whether we use mainstream or alternative social media (such as diaspora, 
> Mastodon or Nettime), social media's ubiquity and unavoidability have created 
> a toxic and often dangerous environment for any kind of personal engagement. 
> Anyone who is involved in social or political activism, or even just blogging 
> (as the current case of German blogger Richard Gutjahr shows - 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZiwRk1yLQ), faces severe personal risks, 
> among others through trolling, doxxing and cybermobbing. "Gamergate" set a 
> precedent that has become the standard. Most existing, available criminal 
> justice systems have proven to provide inadequate protection. (Both Zoe 
> Quinn's and Gutjahr's cases are textbook example; on Gutjahr, see his 
> [German] writeup: http://www.gutjahr.biz/2018/01/hatespeech/).
> 
> It means that no Chinese "social credit" algorithm is necessary to discourage 
> social engagement or political resistance. It is not even a question of 
> "better" algorithms - whether "better" algorithmic governance within existing 
> social networks or through the creation of "different"/alternative social 
> networks -, since the issue will remain, being one of an 'apparatus' or an 
> 'actor network' transcending binary distinctions of machinic and human 
> agency. (The question whether a troll is a human or a bot, isn't very 
> relevant.) 
> 
> Articulation of positions [including artist's positions outside self-chosen 
> safe spaces] is rapidly becoming a privilege of those who can afford their 
> defense. 
> 
> -F
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 11:18 AM, Alex Foti  wrote:
> so should facebook pay us basic income? i think some ft editorialist argued 
> as much. but that would 

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Sean Cubitt]

The algorithms of the ruling class are in every epoch the algorithms of the 
ruling class



--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:16:59 +0100
From: Florian Cramer >
Cc: Nettime >
Subject: Re:  social media critique: next steps?
Message-ID: