From arne at zeromail.org  Tue May  1 12:27:04 2018
From: arne at zeromail.org (arne at zeromail.org)
Date: Tue, 01 May 2018 10:27:04 +0000
Subject: <unlike-us> Data Justice conference, Cardiff University,
 21-22 May 2018
Message-ID: <20180501102704.Horde.9UV2M_-3SdcEvNLPSRXj0Ro@webmail.zeromail.org>

Data Justice

An international conference exploring research on, and practices of,  
social justice in an age of datafication.

Date: 21-22 May 2018
Location: Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Host: Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University

Speakers include: Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change, India), David Lyon  
(Queen?s University, Canada), Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths, University  
of London, UK), Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University, Ireland), Sasha  
Costanza-Chock (MIT Center for Civic Media, US), Seeta Pe?a  
Gangadharan (London School of Economics, UK), Solon Barocas (Cornell  
University, US and FAT/ML)

It's still possible to register for this conference and join the many  
sessions and workshops.
Conference fee: ?100 / Student fee: ?75. This includes lunches and a  
reception.
Register here:  
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-justice-2018-tickets-41417523929

Full conference programme: https://datajusticelab.org/conference-programme/
Further information:  
https://datajusticelab.org/data-justice-conference/data-justice-2018/
How to get there and where to stay:  
https://datajusticelab.org/data-justice-conference/conference-logistics/



From geert at xs4all.nl  Tue May  1 21:20:19 2018
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 21:20:19 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> links
Message-ID: <199D7853-F457-4CB0-A075-8992722C28A4@xs4all.nl>

Attention! Read or die. Epic essay on the commodification of attention, the abuses of unpaid microwork and strategies of resistance by 0xADADA.
https://0xadada.pub/about/

Dutch television item on Google after CA Facebook (half Dutch, interviews in English)
https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2229223-ex-medewerkers-google-spreken-zorgen-uit.html <https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2229223-ex-medewerkers-google-spreken-zorgen-uit.html>

Forbes: "Let?s face it, Facebook is back? if it ever went away. There are no signs, as yet, of any lasting damage from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, however tempting it might be to extrapolate. As things stand, and on the available evidence, Facebook is going to be with us for a good while longer??

In other news, to destract the populus: dating with Facebook
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/facebook-is-launching-a-dating-app.html






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180501/6cb00f5a/attachment.html>

From chema at rinzewind.org  Wed May  2 01:23:31 2018
From: chema at rinzewind.org (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Mar=EDa?= Mateos)
Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 19:23:31 -0400
Subject: <unlike-us> links
In-Reply-To: <199D7853-F457-4CB0-A075-8992722C28A4@xs4all.nl>
References: <199D7853-F457-4CB0-A075-8992722C28A4@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <20180501232331.GA12660@equipaje>

On Tue, May 01, 2018 at 09:20:19PM +0200, Geert Lovink wrote:
> Attention! Read or die. Epic essay on the commodification of attention, the abuses of unpaid microwork and strategies of resistance by 0xADADA.
> https://0xadada.pub/about/
 
I understand this would be the correct link:

https://0xadada.pub/2018/05/01/against-facebook/

Commenting on this text: I like the "you're working for Facebook for 
free" better that "you're Facebook's product". The second one implies a 
passive property, while the first one makes very clear that Facebook 
users are part of the engine that makes the whole thing turn.

Cheers,

-- 
Jos? Mar?a (Chema) Mateos
https://rinzewind.org/blog-es || https://rinzewind.org/blog-en



From bbrace at eskimo.com  Wed May  2 19:21:45 2018
From: bbrace at eskimo.com ({ brad brace })
Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 10:21:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: <unlike-us> brad brace books
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1805021021100.16769@ubuntu.eskimo.com>


In celebration of national library week I've permitted free access to my 
(art)photo-ebooks (pdfs) http://bradbracebook.store/000pdfs

---

"Casita Boiler"

an illustrated domestic installment-novel (archive):
an exercise in run-around justification:
residual history:
[truth diaries]

[the difference between results obtained by observation and by computation 
from a formula or between the mean of several observations and any one of 
them]

thousands of 66-inch-long exquisitely designed boiler/filler pages of 
received/random transcriptions from Etaoin Shrdru with near-greyscale imagery 
and three-color body type


"Some years ago, the elements (ideas, conceptions, practices, people) 
that compose the current (so-called) Free Culture movement were 
appropriated by the bureaucrat and the capitalist. The ones that made 
use of the technologies and available media to the creation of actions 
that provided the debate on new perspectives of possible social 
arrangements (obtained by tools such as free licenses, networks of 
communication, open source software), are today digested by the old 
apparatuses and social mechanisms that once they have used and 
questioned. They participated, many times unconsciously, in a 
"socio-professional training? in order to occupy the same functions 
established for the maintainers of a system that is distant from what we 
imagine as a possible human grouping, even more distanced from freedom." 
submidialogy.


/:b




From ariamag at me.com  Tue May  8 20:10:03 2018
From: ariamag at me.com (Arianna Magrini)
Date: Tue, 08 May 2018 20:10:03 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> #MEMEPROPAGANDA
Message-ID: <DCEBA2B7-C10E-4845-A159-E3EF3E6CA36A@me.com>

To whom it may interest ;)
_A.


#MEMEPROPAGANDA
 <http://greencube.gallery/>A dirty fairy tale about meme, art, politics and propaganda
This is a dirty fairytale about memetics, art and politics.

#MEMEPROPAGANDA is an IRL/URL exhibition project, curated by clusterduck <http://clusterduck.space/> collective and hosted by Greencube.gallery, taking place from the 8th of May to the end of June. The show represents a reflection on the growing role of memes in digital society, critically examining their wide reaching impact on contemporary aesthetics, politics and academia. #MEMEPROPAGANDA is also an experiment in collective memetic production, challenging the public to participate in an online competition of meme character design.

Six selected artists created a set of iconic posters, having as protagonists the fabulous creatures known as meme characters. The posters have been and will be spread in selected locations IRL/URL and contain a call to action, inviting the wider public to visit the exhibition and take part in its interactive, participatory online format, the 4ducks image board. This is structured as a homage to classic imageboard websites, which have been the natural ecosystems in which memes first developed. The resulting interactions and artistic experiments are documented on the gallery?s website and form integral part of the exhibition.

Behold the magnificent world of #MEMEPROPAGANDA: a world where meme characters interact with us, ceaselessly entertaining, provoking, confusing and enchanting us.
They can be frogs, bears, humans, monsters, freaks, or something entirely different: what they all have in common, is their capacity to become mirrors, reflecting our very own desires and fears, our miseries and our dreams. They are precious instruments, and powerful beings; but most of all, they are what we want them to become.

Links
http://clusterduck.space/ <http://clusterduck.space/>
http://greencube.gallery/ <http://greencube.gallery/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180508/65bb5e91/attachment.html>

From Poell at uva.nl  Fri May 11 15:47:27 2018
From: Poell at uva.nl (Thomas Poell)
Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 15:47:27 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> Deadline CFP "The Platformization of Cultural
 Production" - Special Collection of SM+S
Message-ID: <CAFbxz2ACWXRf40qfpz5RbxJGyFzW6SeW4O=r1j7VNMjSbvUtfQ@mail.gmail.com>

The deadline of the call for submissions to our special themed collection
of /Social Media + Society on ?The Platformization of Cultural Production?
is approaching: May 15, 2018. As you can see below, authors of accepted
abstracts are invited to attend a workshop at the University of Toronto <
https://www.utoronto.ca> on October 8-9, 2018; Day 1 will feature
a workshop hosted by the McLuhan Centre <http://www.chi.utoronto.ca/>.

The full call is pasted below or available online here <
https://goo.gl/AmZcGn>. Please contact the editors with questions  at:
cfp at platformization.net <atcfp at platformization.net>

_____________

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special collection of Social Media + Society (Open Access Journal)

The Platformization of Cultural Production

Abstract submission deadline: May 15, 2018

Full paper submission deadline: September 15, 2018

Editors: Brooke Erin Duffy/(Cornell University), /David B. Nieborg
/(University of Toronto), /Thomas Poell /(University of Amsterdam) /

This thematic issue explores the platformization of cultural production
against the backdrop of wider transformations in the technologies,
cultures, and political economies of digital media. Platformization
describes the process by which major tech companies?GAFAM (Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) in the West, and the so-called ?three
kingdoms? of the Chinese internet (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) in Asia?are
reconfiguring the production, distribution, and monetization of cultural
products and services. The logic of platformization is impacting
traditional cultural industries (e.g., music, news, museums, games, and
fashion), as well as emergent digital sectors and communities of practice,
such as livestreaming, podcasting, and ?Instagramming.? Accordingly, new
industrial formations and partnerships are constantly being wrought; for
example, newspapers increasingly host their content on Facebook, and game
developers offer their products in app stores operated by Apple and Google.

Given the acceleration and intensification of digital platforms in the
cultural circuit, there is a pressing need to interrogate the stakes of
platformization for content producers and for the cultural commodities they
circulate among digitally networked audiences. We invite theoretical and/or
empirical contributions addressing platform power and political economies
vis-?-vis cultural production. Owing to the relative recency of research on
platformization, this topic warrants an interdisciplinary focus including
scholarship from such fields as media and communication studies, platform
studies, software studies, political economy of communication, (media)
production studies, and business studies. Platformization exacts widely
variable costs across different spheres of life, and regional and sectoral
boundaries. We therefore invite scholars to contribute papers which advance
our understanding of how the platformization of particular sectors and
practices takes shape within specific geo-national contexts, as well as how
this involves new modes of content moderation and algorithmic curation,
evolving forms of labour exploitation, and app-based systems of
distribution and monetization.


We are especially interested in articles that shed new light across these
themes:

   * Theoretical approaches to platformization and the social, cultural and
technological contexts of platform-dependent modes of cultural production.

   * Intersectional approaches that are sensitive to the gendered, classed,
and racial specificity of platform-dependent modes of cultural production.

   * Political economic approaches to platformization, including the
implications
for cultural producers and labor relations, as well as relationships among
different institutional actors in platform ecosystems.

   * Regional approaches to platformization. For example, the impact of the
platformization of cultural industries in particular countries, or regions,
such as the European Union.

   * Sectoral studies of specific industry sectors and modes of
cultural production and circulation such as journalism, game and music
production,
museums, or emerging ?platform-native? practices such streaming and
vlogging.

   * Historical approaches to platformization. Contributions that investigate
the transformation of specific production practices as they become
integrated with, or dependent on digital platforms.

   * The policy implications of platformization on a local, national
or regional
level, or studies of policy interventions.

   * Formal and informal efforts to resist platformization, such as
the development
of platform independent subscription-based distribution and monetization
models.

   * Infrastructural approaches that are sensitive to the material dimensions
of platform-based modes of cultural production.

   * Methodological interventions, which reflect on the methodologies employed
when researching cultural production in platform ecosystems.

Timeline

   * 750-word abstracts should be emailed to cfp at platformization.net by *May
15, 2018*. The abstract should articulate: 1) the issue or research
question to be discussed, 2) the methodological or critical framework used,
and 3) indicate the expected findings or conclusions. Decisions will be
communicated to the authors by *June 1, 2017*.

   * Full papers of the selected abstracts should be submitted by *September
15, 2018* to be discussed at the workshop.

   * On October 8-9, 2018 (right before AoIR2018), the special
collection editors
will organise a 2-day event hosted by the University of Toronto. Day 1 will
feature a workshop hosted by the McLuhan Centre <http://www.chi.utoronto.ca/>.
Workshop participation is not a condition for being included in the special
collection. The workshop provides all thematic issue contributors an
opportunity for debate and an initial round of feedback on the papers.
Accommodation and catering during the event will be covered for
accepted contributors. There
is limited travel support for junior scholars.

   * The deadline for submitting the revised paper for double blind peer-review
is *December 1, 2018*.

   * The planned publication date of this special collection of Social Media
+ Society is in the *second half of 2019*.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180511/ce932217/attachment.html>

From geert at xs4all.nl  Fri May 11 16:47:12 2018
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 16:47:12 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> please support the first global facebook user strike
References: <20180511120448.mfsri7scpdzp5fjo@reflex>
Message-ID: <61F7B3FD-4E72-467E-A62B-66A2F241C758@xs4all.nl>


> From: Jaromil <jaromil at dyne.org>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Please support the first global facebook user strike
> Date: 11 May 2018 2:04:48 pm GMT+2
> To: nettime-l at kein.org
> 
> dear Anni,
> 
> On Sat, 05 May 2018, Anni Roolf wrote:
> 
>>   Thank you for the pros and cons. Did you guys also read the
>>   medium article? [1]bit.ly/facebreak2018 In my experience it?s
>>   hard to consider such a campaign in advance. To join it can only
>>   be a piece of the puzzle, is an experimentation process and will
>>   always have unintended ? positive and negative ? results.
> 
> thanks for this initiative, I really agree with you this
> experimentation process is important and shouldn't be seen as a
> "reformist" approach to the problem. We are dealing with a complex
> body of organisms whose vital functions have never been mapped, rather
> concealed from us and for which I believe angiographic experiments as
> this one are also a possible intervention, besides euthanasia, and can
> inform and inspire future developments.
> 
> I have been reluctanctly on FB for years, connected with many people,
> interacting mostly via bitlbee (messenger to IRC gateway). These days
> is becoming obvious to me (just from a sixth sense no need for
> metrics) that FB has been already abandoned by many people over the CA
> scandal and other campaigns. Interactions over potentially interesting
> topics have shrinked a big deal. Things are changing.
> 
> Greetings from Dakar, where in the OFF part of the Biennale we had a
> mindblowing debate on "decolonising internet" hosted by Ker Thiossane,
> with Marion, Oulimata, prof. Tonda and others. In this context of
> "non-aligned utopias" and Afropixel festival to me is also clear noone
> believes in the services coming from the so called FANG conglomerate
> and there is big potential for new, ethical, decolonialised media
> platforms.
> 
> ciao
> 
> 
> -- 
>  Denis Roio a.k.a. Jaromil  http://Dyne.org think &do tank
>  Ph.D, CTO & co-founder    software to empower communities
> Book keynotes, lectures, workshops: https://jaromil.dyne.org
>  ? crypto ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ??????? ???????
>  GnuPG: 6113D89C A825C5CE DD02C872 73B35DA5 4ACB7D10
> 
> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180511/8c360381/attachment.html>

From geert at xs4all.nl  Sat May 19 08:29:39 2018
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 08:29:39 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> links
Message-ID: <8644EE1E-B89B-45A7-9A7A-9242B035F6EF@xs4all.nl>

Why Silicon Valley can?t fix itself
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/03/why-silicon-valley-cant-fix-itself-tech-humanism

Join Facebook User Strike (May 25-June 1) #facebreak2018
https://medium.com/@paulbrillinger/facebook-users-of-the-world-unite-7552610c52be

New initiative from Barcelona: Commonscloud (via Gert)
https://en.goteo.org/project/commonscloud <https://en.goteo.org/project/commonscloud>

Evening on Facebook addiction in De Balie (in Dutch)
https://www.debalie.nl/agenda/podium/verslaafd-aan-de-likes/e_9783405/p_11771385/

Dave Winer: The internet is going in the wrong way
http://scripting.com/2018/05/10/133513.html <http://scripting.com/2018/05/10/133513.html>









-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180519/623e1865/attachment.html>

From pit at bootlab.org  Fri May 25 04:38:44 2018
From: pit at bootlab.org (Pit Schultz)
Date: Fri, 25 May 2018 04:38:44 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> Pit Schultz: Towards a Non-facebook (from nettime)
Message-ID: <CABaP6=P=BFJFzqZStCFRvns3OQA8UkfBXzGDP5Bb8mYXXUzQ-A@mail.gmail.com>

Towards a Non-facebook
a pretext

The current facebook debate is a chance to get your act together and
get organized - just a little.

What does it mean to get dis-, re- or co-organized? To the worse, or
to the better? A further 'balkanisation', a migration to the
cryptoanarchist waste of resources, blockchain-nations as a refresh of
the independent cyberspace myth or the various academic art
conferences giving a place for certain representative counter
movements in order to map and neutralize them. The culture war is
probably a trap, allowing single career paths instead of lifting up
the standards on a larger scale. This counts especially for the branch
of critical media art, which has buffered away criticality from the
rest of the art world for too long. While often fruitful and
interesting on the lower layers, it gets thinner and weaker the higher
you get. The neoliberal call for self-diversification is a part of a
parapolitical neutralisation effort to keep away resistant forces from
where they could do real harm and lead to systemic change.

Synchronize and Change Facebook from Within

It is understandable to leave facebook because it is dull, depressing,
boring - but the same probably counts for your workplace, for the
compromise you had to make to rent an affordable flat and for the
places you need to go shopping or studying. Even if there are
alternatives in the physical urban world, the eco system of myriads of
websites, linux distros, apps you never have seen and tracks you never
will listen to is part of the long tail myth of consumerist choice.
Culturally, the unification under one media platform, such as the book
or the internet, has been revolutionary in terms of "consciousness
building". Today you are told that somewhere else, with a different
type of media, speech will be authentic and free again, just to stop
you from waking up and stating the obvious.

The existence of pluralism and diversity depends on the conditions of
the surrounding it derives from. The current platformization is adding
new application layers on top of the web. One can dream and fight for
a niche in between, or fight for the change and opening of these
platforms in fundamental terms of democratic design principles. Both
approaches have pros and cons. Since we have no better political
system architectures available, we could stick with embedded democracy
and discuss the specifications, when looking at the complete lack of
these features in todays online infrastructure.

Democratisation or Exodus as Hegemonial Choice

To run away from facebook headlessly and to leave it before being
censored, kicked out or shut off, is ill advised from a radical
democratic point of view. Maybe it would be possible, in a Gramscian
way, to doubt the absolutistic public sphere that facebook has
erected. But going along back to the alternatives, such as to the
municipal level of creative, digital and global cities, or to
speculative cryptoanarchist blockchain based currencies, or to the
ghost towns of abandoned homepages in the dark net, or to countless
masculinist linux projects which reinvented the wheel, as well as to
various counter-platforms that clone and modify the UX of facebook in
one or the other way, it turns out, that they have been proven as
dead-end devolutions. Compared to the mass consumerist wasteland of
facebook, they are still interesting tactical forms of excess. Due to
their false promise of offering a strategy and not just an
individualist tactical sidestep, these outside positions are certainly
not inherently better ones. Neither they are inherently bad - they're
just no solution. And they are certainly not politically or
theoretically smarter than trying to change facebook on facebook.

From a media theoretical point of view it seems blind to
#deletefacebook, since the deletion confirms, that facebook reduces
you to an effect of the medium. You can accept tacitly not to be able
to change the channel from within the channel, being in it debating
it, critiquing it, protesting against it or subverting it, or taking
any distanced meta position from within the medium. From a political
point of view, the spectrum of protest forms includes to excercise the
right to delete yourself (#loeschdich), and there are various existing
channels to discuss strategic common goals in the aftermath of the CA
scandal. Not to confuse the means of change with the goal itself, we
need to achieve more rights, more, or at least some, democratic
freedom, to transform this powerful platform in an exemplary way.
Instead of dispersing the platform into micropolitical niches which
ultimately risks to neutralize it?s potentials, we could form new
brilliant alliances of productive alienations.

Remain Strategy

By taking a virtual outside position, that can be e.g. excentric,
external, artistic or theoretical, one cannot neglect, that even the
most underprivileged and precarious existence will be impossible
outside of todays capitalist realism. Trying to escape the network
effects of facebook in an exemplary way will only be a symbolic move
of self-alienation and 'dark' independency. Leaving facebook weakens
the resistance against the platform on this platform. As a
representative function of the powerlessness and passivity in society,
flirting with the exodus, a hipsterist escapism or cocooning into the
digital diaspora will never make oneself less vulnerable, or free,
without forming collective agencies of real resistance: running
archives, sharing strange interests and hobbies, collecting and
filtering what has been easily neglected or forgotten. We seek
strategic alternatives for a planetary order, branching points and
possible future forks. Of course they can be developed on or off the
platform. But as an individual strategy, better don't fool yourself
believing that there's a safe zone of a pirate utopia reserved for you
in cyberspace.

Across the stack

Lets face the facts. Facebook is providing an application layer on top
of the web. It has a horizontal monopoly position when it comes to web
usage, as well as in the messenger and mobile social media space. To
propose free alternative solutions is politically and technically ill
advised. Alternatives that are based on a free and open clone approach
are rather doomed, due to the network effects. Diaspora, ello, vero
and various comparable approaches tried to operate next to facebook,
but there is not even a niche left for them. You need to expand to
specialized social networks such as linkedin for CVs and job related
stuff, and academia-edu or soundcloud etc. to pick up the crumbs. In
terms of surveillance features and data vampirism the business models
of these alternative platforms are rarely better than the one of
facebook. To tap into new network effects, either one is able to
vertically go down the stack to expand into physical appliances (smart
home) and/or protocols (p2p), or is able to go up the stack (ai driven
agents). With a new abstraction layer which will lead to the breakup
of the monopoly of facebook in terms of an open api as an opened
infrastructure, a democratized facebook fork can serve as a common
backend for new services. Like in Tim Berners-Lee solid project, for
autonomous bots and scrapers, as a social media layer to build new
stuff on top. Lately even google has given up to build a competitor to
facebooks quasi monopoly for instant messaging, going down and
sideways in the mobile stack to use SMS and no-internet messaging as a
base for a new app.

Interoperabilities, Design Change and Open Data Sheets

Even if the regulation will achieve some changes of the api?s,
interoperability will not be able to replicate the complexities of one
system onto the other without a more radical approach.
Interoperability as the lowest common denominator of regulatory
efforts represents the misunderstanding of today's infrastructures by
the "other" culture, using railway or telephony metaphors. Only in
combination with an underlay of an open architecture that provides
open source, open data and open datasheets, forks will be possible, as
well as federated spin-offs. Unfortunately it is precisely the
api-based third party eco-system which will get restricted after the
CA case. Interoperability as a means of capitalist appeasement is used
in industries such as the military industry, to have heterogenically
existing systems work together. In computer hardware, such as the PC,
the interoperability is achieved by open standards. In software
architecture it is called legacy and a migration or a replacement is
often easier to achieve. The same counts for the keyword "algorithm".
Algorithms do not make much sense without data structures, and the
property relations they construct.

The way our data, attention, and labor online is defined is much more
presented in the specifications of data sets, the modelling of
input-output relations, and not merely visible in the implementations
of running code, e.g. the algorithms. by demanding access to the
documentation of the design process, the iterative, agile but
nevertheless non-democratic development cycles within social media
companies become debateable. the strategies, and use case modelling
will be much more revealing than merely fetishizing the code itself,
countering the assumed power, with a fetishisation of jurisdiction.
both law and code are not the most effective levels of control. in
order to change the companies one must try to understand their
organisational models, their design process and decision structure
first.

Demanding transparency for algorithms alone, just presents the
limitations of digital literacy today. 30 years after the internet has
been introduced and 70 years after the computer has been invented. So,
instead of talking about acceleration one must talk about education.
Besides the documentation of a systems architecture and of it?s
specifications and source code, as well a full documentation of it?s
"datasheets", the metadata describing the datastructures on all levels
of the architecture are necessary demands. Without them the
interoperabilty as well as a regulatory approach to algorithms are ill
fated forms of cross-cultural intermediation, which rather establish
bureaucratic bodies of agency, that are open to lobbyism and
obstruction of all kinds.

Embedded Democracy

Facebook combines as well a few known design patterns, such as
"portal", the good old "collaborative filtering", as we called it in
the old nettime footer, as it is taking thread based use cases that
are known from usenet and compuserve to provide the annotated web that
has been promised in the 90ies. The problem behind the current privacy
debacle is the property issue: 'no commercial use without permission'
is as problematic as the complete lack of democractic functionality
within the platform. A deindividuation of social media, as Benjamin
Bratton has proposed, would be accompanied with new options to reset
the priorities.

An individualist liberal movement comes with tactical sidesteps and
preferes issues of smaller group identification before larger common
goals. It is not that the bias of algorithms is not a problem, but it
is embedded into a larger analysis of power including the data
structures, the system architecture, flaws in laws and regulation,
exploitative business models and various forms of discriminatory bias
in the engineering process, often due to a lack of governance in terms
of transparency and accountability. On the other hand, a new
universalism even if proposed by facebook is the plane on which today's
earth problems need to be understood and solved globally. The promise
of equality this platform offers and a certain degree of neutrality of
the interface layers are a cultural potential to build on, to change
from within, modify and fork, and politicize against. Dreaming about
building your own little world on the side is fruitless if it is not
connected to a larger political fight of changing the architecture of
power and property mediated by the internet. Nevertheless, tacit forms
of protest, as isolatory, antiproductive or escapistic they might
appear, should not be condemned. As the change of these platforms is a
long term goal which can be fought for on and off these platforms in
various ways.

Facepedia

A more object oriented social network is possible, where subjects
group around issues, goals, projects, events and the individual is not
just the ultimate product in the center of the social graph any more.
A combination of models known from wikipedia and mozilla, non profit
coops with more democratic functionality in iterative design cycles,
such as bug trackers, eternal logs, transparency of documentation.
Democratic design principles known since a long time need to be
formulated, discussed and implemented. The discourse of regulatory law
as well as ethical commissions will not prevent the next levels of
alienation, surveillance and oppression that are coming with machine
learning and big data driven AI. The economic inequality and the
property relation should be the first common issue beyond all minority
based struggles, to connect various fights and not obey to the
framings and neutralising offers of centrist liberalism.

Recently it has been calm around a defense of the commons. The
liberalisation of open data has lead to a pipeline of structured data,
going directly from the foundations of wikipedia to google graph and
deep mind. Wikidata, a project funded by google, is not combined with
a new license which would compensate for the billions of dollars worth
of human labour. These are now used to train AI, and structure and
enhance search results. The social factory of facebook, as well as
amazon, google, and any other larger commercial online platforms will
turn to a model of commodifying and monetizing data by feeding it
value extraction methods that are run by machine learning algorithms.
The underlaying proprietization of data is the central strategic point
to attack.

The french AI proposal by C?dric Villani is a great chance for a
radical defense of open data, not just along the values of Diderot and
Alembert. All training data for machine learning should be put under a
new kind of data-GPL-license which is free for non-commercial or
scientific use. But forces companies which make profit to recompensate
the commons, probably using blockchain methods, and become accountable
in terms of reproducible trainings that are lacking methods of
debugging and controlling AI.

Press Pause, Get Organized and Strike!

It has been a few years ago now, that Tizinana Terranova has proposed
the red stack. Burak Arikan has proposed a formalisation of unpayed
online labour. Tomazo Tozzi has proposed the netstrike in 1995.
Richard Barbrook and me have written a manifesto for the digital
artisan. There are plenty of people who are concerned and interested
in possible and exemplary changes of facebook here and now.
Theoreticians, activists, journalists, artists... Until now there is
hardly a place where they join, filter and exchange relevant texts and
get self-organized a little more.

A strike or #facebreak might be still a valid form of protest, of
demanding forms of governance on facebook and as a manifestation of
not wanting to be governed in such a way. As proposed above, I will
suspend my account from 25th of may to 1st of june 2018.

In the meantime let's work on a list of demands, as in democratic
design changes, to facebook and other platforms.

Lets call it #non-facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217513475509054/

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:






From geert at xs4all.nl  Mon May 28 08:57:24 2018
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2018 08:57:24 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> links
Message-ID: <92495F89-6A98-4C05-B85F-645CAB1D1557@xs4all.nl>

The backlash that never happened: New data shows people actually increased their Facebook usage after the Cambridge Analytica scandal
https://www.businessinsider.de/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5 <https://www.businessinsider.de/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5?r=US&IR=T>

How to Design Better Social Media
https://medium.com/s/story/how-to-fix-what-social-media-has-broken-cb0b2737128

From Gert van Velzen:

Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuckerberg-set-up-fraudulent-scheme-weaponise-data-facebook-court-case-alleges?CMP=share_btn_tw <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuckerberg-set-up-fraudulent-scheme-weaponise-data-facebook-court-case-alleges?CMP=share_btn_tw>

A Belgian Legislator Berates and Scoffs at Mark Zuckerberg
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/a-belgian-legislator-berates-and-scoffs-at-mark-zuckerberg/560960/?single_page=true <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/a-belgian-legislator-berates-and-scoffs-at-mark-zuckerberg/560960/?single_page=true>

EP Conference of Presidents with Mark Zuckerberg
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/other-events/video?event=20180522-1820-SPECIAL-UNKN&ms=1527013200 <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/other-events/video?event=20180522-1820-SPECIAL-UNKN&ms=1527013200>




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180528/a4d6449a/attachment.html>

From dss at secureid.net  Mon May 28 13:19:27 2018
From: dss at secureid.net (David Stodolsky)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2018 13:19:27 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> links
In-Reply-To: <92495F89-6A98-4C05-B85F-645CAB1D1557@xs4all.nl>
References: <92495F89-6A98-4C05-B85F-645CAB1D1557@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <DC16B356-A620-4F99-A430-227F34BD9919@secureid.net>



> On 28 May 2018, at 08:57, Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
> The backlash that never happened: New data shows people actually increased their Facebook usage after the Cambridge Analytica scandal
> https://www.businessinsider.de/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5 <https://www.businessinsider.de/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5?r=US&IR=T>
This appears to be unavoidable with the current media structure .
After Sokal hoaxed Social Text and the editor was fired for publishing articles with no review,
its readership increased. 

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/ <http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/>

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/27/beyond-hoax-alan-sokal <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/27/beyond-hoax-alan-sokal>


dss


David Stodolsky, PhD                   Institute for Social Informatics
Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
dss at socialinformatics.org          Tel./Viber: +45 3095 4070




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/unlike-us_listcultures.org/attachments/20180528/64a3ded6/attachment.html>

From lists at roelroscamabbing.nl  Tue May 29 10:06:48 2018
From: lists at roelroscamabbing.nl (Roel Roscam Abbing)
Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 10:06:48 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> =?utf-8?q?Welcome_to_the_=EF=BF=BD_Federation=2C_1_en?=
 =?utf-8?q?_2_juni_in_Varia_in_Rotterdam?=
Message-ID: <6237c4a0-0612-05f4-460a-50fbf4cd975a@roelroscamabbing.nl>

beste Unlikers,

Naar aanleiding van recente discussies en bijeenkomst in de Waag over
alternatieve sociale media zou ik jullie graag willen uitnodigen voor
`Welcome to the ? Federation`. De eerste in een reeks ontmoetingen
waarbij we makers van open source gefedereerde sociale media uitnodigen
in Varia in Rotterdam om te komen praten over hun project.

Niet alleen dat, maar we organiseren ook aansluitend een werksessie om,
samen met de maker, concrete bijdragen te leveren aan het project. Dat
willen we doen op het gebied van taal, vormgeving of
gebruikersvriendelijkheid.Dat vanuit het idee dat een congressional
hearing facebook ongemoeid laat maar een plotselinge wijziging in het
ontwerp van gebruiksinterface de koers van snapchat heeft doen kelderen.
What design can do zeg maar dan voor alternatieve sociale media. Kennis
van programmeren is geen vereiste, aangezien we vooral gaan werken aan
het taalgebruik en een nieuw ontwerp gaan schetsen voor de
groepschatinterface.

De eerste editie vindt plaats op 1 juni (19:00 tot 22:00 in Varia) en
zal gaan over instant messaging. Hier hebben we Daniel Gultsch, de
ontwikkelaar van Conversations uitgenodigd. Conversations is een vrije
software chat applicatie voor het gefedereerde xmpp netwerk.

Zaterdag 2 juni (10:00 - 18:00) vindt de hands-on werksessie plaats.
Lunch wordt verzorgd dus gaarne aanmelden via info at varia.zone

Beide evenementen zijn onafhankelijk van elkaar te bezoeken.

Meer info over het eerste event:
https://varia.zone/wttf/conversations-gultsch.html

Achtergrond over gefedereerde instant messengers:
https://varia.zone/wttf/have-you-considered-the-alternative.html

Meer info over het project alhier:
https://varia.zone/wttf/welcome-to-the-federation.html

Meer info over varia:
http://varia.zone/pages/about.html