Social networking for activists - PHP programmers needed!

Jon | 25.10.2008 22:56 | Technology

A social networking website specifically for anti-corporate activists is looking for volunteer PHP5/MySQL programmers willing to donate time and effort to the project. A prototype has been built, and the ideas pages this has generated has proved the need for several technical collaborators! A detailed document is available that discusses the background and presents some screenshots, and a discussion forum is now live.

This social networking system presently revolves around campaign groups, who register on the system, and can then advertise their events and actions. Each group is also able to link to the companies that they campaign against. Company profiles shall be editable by any user, since many companies will have several campaigns interested in their conduct. A searchable and location-aware events browser is intended to offer a simple way for activists to find out what things are happening in their area.

There are two basic purposes to this system. Firstly, it is hoped it will help campaign groups discover imaginative collaborations for their protest organising (such as environmentalists and anti-war campaigners working together on oil/energy issues). Secondly, company data - bolstered by large-scale datasets such as Companies House XML Gateway - can be subjected to network analysis, thus unravelling the often complex and hidden relationships between various firms. For example, we would be able to answer questions like: which corporations profiting from war are the subject of the greatest number of British protest campaigns? It could be used to target second-line providers, with questions such as: which bank is most heavily financing the destruction of the environment?

A prototype codebase exists for this system, as does a fairly comprehensive introduction document with background information and screenshots:

http://activistlab.org.uk/projects/grassroots

A discussion forum has been set up to discuss this project (and other social software projects, if you like):

http://chatter.activistlab.org.uk/

The project (presently code-named "Grassroots") is seeking skilled, progressive, volunteer PHP developers interested in a novel social networking approach to anti-corporate activism. The project is based in the UK but international respondents are welcome. Sadly, no pecuniary rewards are on offer, but nevertheless you'll be able to bask in the satisfaction of having a damn good go at making the world a better place. More information on the requirement for programmers is here:

http://chatter.activistlab.org.uk/read.php?3,6

If you want to get in touch via email rather than on the discussion forums, use the email address on the project home page:

http://activistlab.org.uk/

If you've any questions, or if you would like to volunteer, get in touch!

Jon
Homepage: http://activistlab.org.uk/

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Crabgrass

25.10.2008 23:15

Is this related to / working with riseup.net's Crabgrass effort?
Are there significant differences between the 2 projects?

Re: Crabgrass

25.10.2008 23:49

Hi CH, thanks for your comment.

It's not related to or working with Crabgrass, although Crabgrass techs would be welcome to join the discussion. I'll probably get in touch with them in any case :o).

In my introduction document (

http://activistlab.org.uk/projects/grassroots) I mention Crabgrass, but I do think there are substantial differences between the projects. The primary differentiator is arranging campaign groups around companies/corporations - with an emphasis on setting up relations between people (e.g. a specific CEO), campaigns, corporations, government departments and so forth. Analyses of 'degrees of connection' between 'reputable' companies and the ones we love to hate will then be able to be made very easily. This makes the system useful for the muck-raking journalist as well as the activist building an action.

I've not logged onto Crabgrass for a while but it seems that much of it is accessible only when the user is logged in - thus I have understood it as a tool to organise groups as disconnected entities, rather than a network of groups who potentially could interact with each other (I apologise in advance to them if I have got that wrong!). Crabgrass offers CMS functionality such as wikis and galleries, which I am not intending to offer. In my project, much of the data is available openly (e.g.

http://grassroots.activistlab.org.uk/campaign/caat) without logging in (which is necessary only for editing).

Jon
Homepage: http://activistlab.org.uk/

vulnerable to animal rights style repression?

26.10.2008 13:08

Sounds like a good idea, but it should be prepared for the sort of repression that has been used extensively against animal rights groups. Many are banned by court order from publishing any details of the companies they are targeting, including publicly available information, such as company records. And legal campaigns can be branded as "blackmail" if they become too successful, whether or not illegal direct action has also been used by unrelated activists.

The long term strategy needs to be to move to truly anonymous networks. For now, Tor (

http://torproject.org) can be used by people accessing this system, but it still leaves the central server vulnerable to attack.

Re: vulnerable to animal rights style repression?

26.10.2008 14:29

Yes, this is a difficult one. My view of the Kirtley case (admittedly based on my limited knowledge of it) is that he was found guilty on the basis that he was an animal rights activist himself. However if the same information had been published to Indymedia (and I am guessing it was) then there would be no legal action against Indymedia, since the people whose names appear on the Indymedia server bill may not be AR activists themselves, or directly connected to the AR group in question. Hence, they would be treated by the authorities as a service provider, and would not be easily prosecutable.

Jon
Homepage: http://activistlab.org.uk/

ta

26.10.2008 18:02

Thanks for your response Jon. I asked before I went to the site to look myself. (lazy me :) )

As for the anonymity thing, perhaps hosting the service as a Tor hidden service would be an option. But I agree that its not so much the holding of this data but being the "wrong" sort of person holding the data. (e.g. Keynote are safe from prosecution)

security

27.10.2008 09:58

I like the way you hid you DNS info on activistlab.org.uk You should do the same for your new one.
you should try to make https the default.
Double check for MYSQL poisoning attacks.
see also

http://hackthissite.org

data for you-

http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf

http://www.crocodyl.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defence_companies_of_the_United_Kingdom

http://wiki.global-elite.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

php-

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Nicola

Re: security

27.10.2008 15:01

Thanks for your comments, Nicola.

Can you explain what you mean by "hiding the DNS info"? I haven't come across this phrase before and I didn't hide anything deliberately :o). I presume the domain that you mean is not "hidden" is chatter.*?

Thanks for the links -- I will have a read. I encountered Crocodyl whilst I was researching this project - the quality of their research is very good indeed. As a result I intend to offer an optional "Crocodyl research" link on Grassroots pages in the future. In fact the existence of high quality resources like this is the reason why I think coding a corporate research editor for Grassroots will not add any extra value.

Jon
Homepage: http://activistlab.org.uk/

SSL forum now available

28.10.2008 23:18

Following Nicola's suggestion, the discussion forum has been set up to run on SSL. In due course an SSL version of the application demo will also be available. For the time being I have used a free SSL certificate from CAcert.org - add the Root Certificate to your browser and you can browse stuff like my site (and Indymedia) with much greater security.

http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3

New secure forum link is here:

https://chatter.activistlab.org.uk/

Jon
Homepage: http://activistlab.org.uk