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Facebook killed the internet star: reflections on radical media

a one-time SchNEWS contributor | 30.10.2014 19:34 | Indymedia | Other Press | Technology | World

In September, the SchNEWS radical media collective issued a statement saying they had decided to call it a day. Although SchNEWS might publish one-off articles in the future, the direct action newsheet will no longer be published regularly.

This article is a personal reflection by a one-time SchNEWS contributor. It's not a statement from SchNEWS itself, neither is it attempting to be a full post-mortem of it. Rather it is highlighting some key areas which affected it and other radical media collectives...

Schnews stall at Boomtown Festival
Schnews stall at Boomtown Festival


During the years I worked with SchNEWS, while never assuming it would go on indefinitely, only one scenario ever seemed a possible reason for it to cease (apart from being heroically sued out of existence in a spectacular libel case): that it had been usurped or made redundant by something which did the same job, only better. Or something closer to more contemporary networks of activists had emerged to carry on the good work. In 2000 when Indymedia UK started, I remember the general view in SchNEWS was that Indymedia may ultimately make SchNEWS irrelevant, with its open posting format and the opportunity for activist-writers to publish anonymously and instantly. We certainly didn't feel 'threatened' by this, as our allegiances and priorities weren't towards our publication in itself, but firmly with the social and environmental movements. We were united with Indymedia in being part of and supporting. So Indymedia was welcomed, and instantly became very significant. SchNEWS in the meantime thrived anyway, offering a different model to Indymedia – a publication which revolved around an editorial/writing team who worked together in the same office – doing newsletters, info-stalls, books, later films, etc.

What has happened in the years since is that yes, SchNEWS was usurped, but it wasn't made obsolete, it was pushed into the margins. Arguably what did it for SchNEWS (and probably Indymedia in some respects) was the rise of Facebook and Twitter.

'Like' Minds

How did this play out for SchNEWS? We became aware in 2009 that visits to the SchNEWS website were dropping, quite alarmingly. We'd spent ten years since the late 90s slowly building up a solid online readership with sustained, highly regular and (readers assured us) continued good quality writing. There wasn't a lot else on the web like it (Indymedia aside), and it had settled into a niche of being a bit like a sort-of anarchist Private Eye, and a key port-of-call for protest news and info in Britain. Although online readers had long-since far outstripped paper copies, we always continued to print paper, as it was still a valid form of distribution in many circumstances. As the traffic dropped, during that time, the quality of the issues was still up and we barely had a week off (later it was more irregular, but that was a few years after) – so I very much believe that the slide in web traffic was not caused by a drop in quality or frequency of output.

Significantly this slide occurred during the period of time when Facebook and Twitter were becoming ubiquitous. Quite possibly Indymedia was suffering in the same way (though their traffic was usually many times greater than that of SchNEWS). Most other sites across the web were getting on the bandwagon around then, 'like' buttons were appearing everywhere, but Indymedia were not doing so (for reasons mentioned below), and we eventually reluctantly put social media buttons in and started tweeting, albeit probably about 18 months too late by my reckoning.

Some may have wondered if SchNEWS was still 'relevant', but taking it back to that point in 2009 when SchNEWS was still putting out weekly, high quality writing (with not a lot else like it) how on earth can these qualities become passé or out-of-fashion? So what if the two-sides-of-A4 format was becoming a bit of a relic? Most didn't read it that way anyway. It was usually one 1100-word article, plus 6-7 200-400-word articles for 45-odd weeks a year of at-times ground-breaking stuff – read it how ever you like. There wasn't a lot more we could do for our readers, but they were drifting off in droves.

It had long ago occurred to us that the direct action movement which originally spawned SchNEWS was no longer what it had been (though many people including ourselves were still active and around) and that for a number of reasons there weren't the big dramatic protests like Newbury, the sort which SchNEWS thrived on. But it had settled into a stable niche – albeit a fairly marginalised one - in the UK media landscape. Its actually quite common for a publication to out-live the milieu it arose in, to stablise around a production team and readership – e.g. Private Eye or countless others. In fact, SchNEWS had made that transition as far back as 1999 when the UK direct action scene gave way to the post-Seattle era and then the anti-war movements following 9-11 and so on. Again, the fact that there was a dramatic drop in readers around the same time as Facebook and Twitter entrenched themselves tells me that SchNEWS suddenly became 'irrelevant' mostly in terms of what the internet was becoming. The majority were turning away from independent sites towards corporate social media, and the battle became how to funnel your material into those now-dominant streams. Also, internet habits had changed – it was now all about 'interactive-ness', comment boxes and anything else that gave the reader the illusion that they weren't just 'passive' – and all this in turn favoured a global network where all it is is comment boxes and opportunities to comment on others comments etc. - it's called Facebook.

That we didn't play this game effectively (at least not until it was too late) is partly because we were a bit behind the times – but primarily we were usually too busy writing and producing issues, and we didn't often have the surplus time to stop and look into the rise of social media; after all, plenty of internet fads come and go. Anyway, even if all this did occur to us, and it did, there was already a lengthy weekly post-writing schedule of preparing our material for the web with RSS feed blurbs, servicing two email lists, two versions of the PDF, three versions of the image, uploading our main article on Indymedia UK, and more, and nobody had enthusiasm to spend further time working social media outlets on a weekly basis on top of this site-update routine.

But at the same time, we quite rightly viewed the rise of social media with the sort of suspicion and critique that we'd have about any other new corporate computer/internet technology. We were already very aware of the paradox and hypocrisy of using corporate-built IT infrastructure, computers and software to deliver an anti-capitalist message, and activist/anarchist techies around us were raising awareness about net security and privacy as well as pointing to a future of anti-corporate information technology like free software, copyleft etc. So while it appeared to be a self-defeating attitude for SchNEWS, we were judging things correctly when it came to our reticence to get involved in social media...

Don't Be Evil

Years - decades even - before the Snowden exposés in 2013, internet-savvy activists knew full well of the surveillance possibilities of the web, and the necessity of online privacy protection for political groups (and indeed everyone). And despite the almost-utopian air which accompanied the arrival of some of the new internet behemoths – eg Google and Facebook – only the gullible couldn't see that these might easily turn out to be surveillance apparatus of the kind Orwell couldn't have dreamt of. Of course suspicions were confirmed by Snowden in case there was any doubt. If you're only using the internet to post pictures of fluffy kittens you've probably got nothing to worry about, but if you're a potential threat to the powers-that-be, then you can easily be monitored.

For a website which has spanned nearly the whole of the period that the web has been truly ubiquitous, it's worth looking at the SchNEWS site's progress alongside that of the internet itself, recalling how the web developed and what happened following the initial 'frontier' period...

During the initial years of the web up until the then so-called year 2K (remember the Y2K bug?), corporate attempts to harness the sprawling, rapidly expanding web and keep users within a prescribed sphere were attempted: AOL comes to mind, where the web experience was filtered through their own interface and portal. Then obviously along came Google who trumped these – and other then-competing search engines - becoming the portal – ubiquitous but yet seemingly benevolent and egalitarian ('Don't be evil' was the corporate motto). And so during the period 1999-2006-odd, generally Google searches seemed to work ok using keyword algorithms, even if it was political: SchNEWS content appeared if relevant keywords were searched – though admittedly the smaller the web, the easier it was to turn out meaningful search results, and this got much more unwieldy as the web expanded exponentially. Google is too deeply embedded in the system now – regardless of its original intentions, the internet is too huge, there are laws blocking search results etc., and discrete paid-for search prioritisation, so it's no longer the level playing field it appeared to be.

But the goal of making 'walled gardens' didn't go away, and from around 2005-6 onwards, we saw effectively a privatisation of the web (or perhaps an 'enclosure'), with a set of new corporations gobbling up and integrating whole aspects of the web into new one-stop-shop fiefdoms.

Amazon put online shopping into one place, YouTube had video, Apple did their best to suck and lock-in users into their hardware and media streams, Google expanded their empire in all directions, and so on. As we know it was Facebook who won the battle to become the primary platform for that brilliant concept of social media. (The companies I just named are all leading large-scale tax-avoiders in Britain, but I digress). Arguably only one of the new behemoths functions in a genuinely benevolent way - Wikipedia – but even still, it has the effect of making itself the reference site, threatening to consign others to the hinterland outside itself. There is now a mass of internet users – possibly the majority - who seemingly rarely stray from these half-dozen sites.

For SchNEWS – and countless other independent and autonomous sites (you have to exclude sites here which are on one of the major blog providers like Blogspot) – it found itself outside these glass cities – like vagrants in the wastelands of a Brave New World-style dystopia. Indymedia – which was designed with the specific aim of protecting users' identities – couldn't simply 'like button' itself into a co-existence with social media, because doing so would expose its users' IP addresses to the surveillance-net of sites like Facebook. Indymedia can't allow embedded YouTube videos, or other cross-platform multimedia, for the same reason. I'm sure that Indymedia people debated long-and-hard whether or how it might change to accommodate the new paradigms, but to jump on the social-networked multimedia bandwagon would have probably been at the expense of its principles and raison-d'être.

SchNEWS was never as 'on-the-case' as Indymedia in this regard, though it was not interactive like Indymedia, and 'protecting sources' came in the form of being completely anonymous, and keeping its sources once-removed from the website. Yes there was a naivety about this – but when it was mostly distributed by paper, this was not such a problem. We now know, of course, that the activity of everybody on the web is relatively transparent to surveillance anyway: individual user IP addresses are traceable at many points including the ISP providing the internet connection, and there are logs of IP addresses on practically every site you visit. Facebook goes one better and puts huge chunks of web activity onto the same monster server, allowing easy key-word-searching and cross-referencing between users. What you're saying, who your friends are, and what they're saying, and so on.

Surveillance – and not just on the web – has made a lot of activism in Britain so much harder – and sky-high paranoia levels about surveillance here in Britain around political activity has caused a big stifling effect in itself. The ubiquity of mobile phones is another giant security leak – they are very handy, but we're using the corporate infrastructure and it's not in our control who eavesdrops on this. The atmosphere at many demos these days can be characterised by the feeling that it's a big information gathering exercise for the police: they group protesters together and furnish their files on individuals with new photos and data. CCTV cameras are everywhere, and the spectre of undercover police is yet another devastating problem. Then there's the rafts of draconian legislation and policing tactics which make events like mass demos much less possible. These are all huge topics and outside the scope of this article, but quite ironically most individuals and many activists have chosen these paranoid times to move their web activity to sites which expose them to surveillance more nakedly than ever.

A 'tipping point' (to use the jargon) was reached – leaving SchNEWS 'usurped' - when advertising a demo on Facebook was more likely to yield results that posting it on SchNEWS Party & Protest or the Indymedia calendar. As if Facebook is a great tool for this, or a forum for open and frank political discussions. Yes – if it was a totally encrypted network run by a scrupulous and benevolent independent non-profit group – it could be brilliant for these purposes. But it isn't, is it? On top of that, it's not like Facebook simply shares posts across users in an even-handed way – it filters with algorithms because of sheer volume, and is rife with hidden agendas promoting some posts, and deliberately filtering out others – commercial and ideological forces are never far away. Yet it's as though the mass of people have been so mesmerised by the convenience of social media – or that a critical mass was reached where all their friends and associates were there so they must reluctantly join or miss out – or they were seduced by the fact that they were offered a way to 'be someone' on the web - that common sense goes out the window. Stripped of the full reality, social media often gets 'normalised' as simply the next logical stage for the internet, and like most aspects to technology, of course it necessarily needs to be driven by innovative corporations in league with free-market governments.

(As an aside: different people have reacted in varying ways to the new era of surveillance paranoia. Many 'politically engaged' folk are on Facebook and speaking their mind defiantly, but these are probably mostly people who aren't doing anything that takes their counter-hegemonic activities to the point of illegality – unless they are being reckless. Perhaps many people see the trap they are in, and their 'activism' narrows down to signing online petitions or 'liking' political posts. It has also occurred to me that it's possible that in this climate people have become reticent to show political commitment or activity on the web, and perhaps they feel that regularly visiting and posting on Indymedia or looking at SchNEWS and other direct action campaign sites might risk flagging them up).

Do Something About It

SchNEWS was one of many significant projects which arose in the nineties (in Britain), coming out of the then-strong direct action movements, which sought to put in place 'infrastructure' which was by us for us – and part of a more-of-less common project to build or consolidate another world or society, which we believed was necessary if we were to get beyond social/environmental/financial collapse. Do-it-yourself – DIY – don't wait for the government or the never-arriving revolution to make the changes, do it yourself - was the attitude which drove a lot of the nineties activity, and definitely kick-started SchNEWS. Constantly being mis-represented by the media? Let's make our own. Jello Biafra's quote 'don't hate the media, become the media' was a catchphrase heavily used by Indymedia, with SchNEWS, Squall and others on the same path. There were many others types of 'infrastructure' which either came from these movements or were strengthened by them – from the housing co-op movement to many other social and environmental protest and research groups. Individual campaigns may come and go as issues arise, but for some of us, it was always about a longer haul than ephemeral temporary autonomous zones or short-term efforts.

But while many of the 'infrastructure' efforts I'm talking about are happily thriving (some not), the radical media side of things has taken a battering. My point is, I don't object to newer generations abandoning what we built – referring here to SchNEWS and Indymedia – but it's a long-term social transformation we're talking about, and independent, unbiased and counter-hegemonic media is part of the future we need; yet this seems to be lost in an ocean of chatter, where political commitment is reduced to pressing 'like' buttons and signing online petitions. Meanwhile the corporate media is in control as ever, pumping out mis-information and celebrity gossip.

Yes, there's a flood of tweets and more information than ever whizzing around the internet, but in the past few years I can't say that suddenly I have access to all the information sources that I need. I personally think that it's the job of a good publication, like SchNEWS, to – within their subject matter or remit – do the research, and write and edit it into something that's accessible, making it all less of an effort for the reader to keep informed. In time a reputation as a 'trusted source' builds up. At the moment there's a feeling that this notion of a 'publication' is looking obsolete, but countless streams of atomised, context-free bulletins from a range of arbitrary, unknown or outright-dubious sources is not a substitute.

This article was written immediately after SchNEWS announced it was ceasing, so it is with a tinge of sadness, and it may be seeking to blame anything other than itself for its demise. Yes, sometimes projects have a lifespan, and that's it. My complaint isn't that it ended, it's more that it – and Indymedia for that matter – weren't replaced by something equivalent or better, or a brilliant new form of disseminating information for social and environmental movements. It's that they were more or less steam-rolled by huge corporate behemoths and most people went along with it.

We need a whole other way of using the internet – Snowden put the matter out of doubt. I don't know exactly what that is – possibly mass-scale VPNs (virtual private networks) - areas of the internet which are completely away from scrutiny, or other ways that a user can be on the internet in a cloaked or untraceable form. This already happens amongst the tech-savvy amongst us, but these tactics need to be widespread enough that whole political movements are using them. At the moment we've got the opposite to this – most people sleepwalking their way into a surveillance state. I don't even know how something like Indymedia could re-emerge and be as strong as it was a decade ago, in this current climate, but sadly and ironically it's even less likely to happen than ever seeing as people are too seduced by the convenience of Facebook to go to the trouble of engaging in the further efforts required to get privacy. Maybe the Snowden revelations are sinking in, and will eventually cause a sea-change in web behaviour, but I can't see too many signs of it yet.

In the meantime, good luck finding the news you're after, and if you're sufficiently pissed off, do what the many volunteers at SchNEWS, Indymedia and others did – don't just sit around waiting for someone else to do it – get off your arse and do it yourself.

a one-time SchNEWS contributor
- Homepage: http://corporatewatch.org.uk/news/2014/oct/28/facebook-killed-internet-star-reflections-radical-media

Comments

Hide the following 15 comments

On the other hand...

31.10.2014 08:07

There's a lot of interesting stuff here but it doesn't really represent the views of the whole collective.

Firstly overall web hits may have declined and there is no doubt that the movement that spawned SchNEWS (the 90s direct action scene) really doesn't exist anymore. However what really handicapped SchNEWS was the inability to be first with the news on a regular basis. When we were first - or had something really original to say then we would get thousands of readers, right up to the moment we shut the site down.

The article really fails to distinguish between various forms of social media. Twitter is quite a different beast to Facebook. In fact the criticisms of social media throughout the piece are largely only applicable to Facebook. Twitter is definitely a corporate format – yet it provides an avenue (via links) to other less well visited parts of the web.

With the new SchNEWS website we were able to see how many web hits each story received. One strange phenomenon that was observed was that re-tweets would rise in rough proportion to the number of hits received to the actual story itself. Facebook 'likes' on the other hand would often bear no relation – it became clear that many Facebook likers weren't actually clicking on the link and reading the story – all they were doing was using the fact that they publicly 'liked' the piece on the EDL or badgers to bolster their own profile as a militant anti-fascist or a dedicated bunny-hugger. It is this insidious aspect of Facebook that was the most worrying – individuals are hopelessly subsumed into becoming their own brand. Some of this might apply to Twitter users but there's just not as much 'personality' invested in a Twitter account – and so less pressure to play to the gallery.

The other main bone of contention I have with the piece is the vein of paranoia running through it. The idea that “The atmosphere at many demos these days can be characterised by the feeling that it's a big information gathering exercise for the police: they group protesters together and furnish their files on individuals with new photos and data.” is a thoroughly disempowering one.

Is that really the case? Is that the final message from SchNEWS? Don't go outside – sit safely behind your Tor browser. That would be a shame coming from the organ that used to work under the slogan 'Information for Action'.

Surveillance is very powerful tool in the hands of the elites, no doubt. And yet there is a question of how useful it is to them in the face of mass social movements. If we think of ourselves as a tiny handful of renegades in a dystopia then we are doomed to fail.

Jo Fakepeace


Views

03.11.2014 07:58

SchNEWS and IMC have both ignored the elephant in the room. They both failed because of their desire to control the news rather than allowing Open Publishing. One of the hardest jobs in media is to allow and even promote views you don't agree with.

This was less of an issue for SchNEWS who never tried to hide their desire to do this (and have suffered as a result) but the IMC project was founded on Open Publishing which was under threat for most of the early years and finally collapsed at the time of the fork when the majority of the collective were pushed out and the site moved to a publishing model that revolved around the political views and targets of a small group.

Even though I am a former moderator, member of the collective and have given thousands of man hours to the project I know this comment will be hidden as a perfect example of what I have been saying.

Ben


A far wider issue and problem

03.11.2014 08:39

The abandoment of Left and radical politics in this country (and much of Europe) by the majority of the population has probably contributed more to the decline of not just the readership here and the demise of Schnews but left of centre media and political parties in general.

Liberal Capitalism, in part because of its support by the mainstream media and industry has become the dominant political force however we on the left must share the blame. Constant infighting, splits, misogyny and a desire to oppose rather than build has resulted in our support base not only being small but continuing to decline. Perhaps only the Greens have a hope of achieving change ?

Ian ( political theorist)


Nothing learnt since 2009

03.11.2014 09:18

In June 2009 Yossarian of London Indymedia wrote an excellent article on what Indymedia and radical media in general needed to do. It's clear the message remains relevant today.

Why Indymedia Sucks - Thoughts From Conference09

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

During the Anarchist Conference this weekend, some of us from Indymedia London took the time to ask people what they thought of Indymedia, what our job is in relation to the anarchist movement, how well we're doing it, and so on. Here's what we found out.

In a surprise move, one person (shockingly) told us that he thought the site was pretty good and had no problems showing it to friends, work colleagues, etc. Obviously this is not the majority view :). Once things got settled down, here were the criticisms of Indymedia in a nutshell. My suspicion is that people don't distinguish much between Indymedia sites, since from outside we look like one organization - so some of these criticisms may apply to the London site, some to Indymedia UK, and some to far-away Indymedia sites who we only hear about because their moderation collectives are dead and the sites are full of totally insane content.

The following observations are based on a collection of conversations with multiple activists in various conference meetings and social spaces.

Indymedia sucks because it's:

ghettoized
not accessible outside of a highly politicized activist elite
good for leftist anarcho-educated people
too navel gazing
too dominated by actions and protests
not addressing the reasons why people are protesting very well
crappily designed
[note: this list is probably not exhaustive, see below]

Indymedia works best as:

a whistle-blowing forum
a general information source for activist news

Indymedia would be better if:

it could bring a more political perspective to things instead of having a laundry list of actions. The "why" of an action is often left out of reports.
it would shut down sites which had no moderation collectives immediately. Some of the people we talked to had experiences where people were basically slandering their political groups (or them personally) on Cleveland Indymedia (or some such godforsaken place) but the moderators wouldn't do anything about it.
the comments didn't suck so much
it had more not-political stuff
the sense of whining victimhood which shines through in most of the posts

While some people thought of Indymedia as a valuable resource, other people let us know that people in their movements basically refused to use it, due to the moderation problems already mentioned and the general craziness of some of the stuff in the open newswires. Their feedback was that if you're trying to organize people who could potentially lose their jobs or their homes due to their involvement in your movement, pointing them to a news source which has conspiracy theories, unmoderated slander, and so forth is not a way to make them more comfortable about the risks they're running.

Moderation problems and also the extremely low quality of comments in general were singled out as a huge turnoff. Groups get slandered on Indymedia with no moderator response and obviously people get extremely pissed off [note: this was in reference to some crazy guy who publishes outrageous articles about people in an international anarchist group on a U.S. Indymedia site and the moderators either don't respond to their complaints or just aren't there].

People said that they'd like Indymedia to be more accessible to people, various anarchist groups would probably be willing to take over quite a lot of the work of running local sites but the whole site is so uneven that it's hard to feel like it'd be worth getting involved. There was a feeling that many people have heard of Indymedia but when they actually go on the site it seems as though you need to know a whole lot of stuff in order to read the site.

Some ideas for future coverage which we could pick up on in London:

Allotment struggles against the olympics are really interesting and they are much wider than just being against the Olympics.
It would be cool to get someone in immigration detention to write stuff from inside the wire.


One tip which people thought would vastly improve the quality of the site: Indy should be contacting people and asking them directly to write issues-based articles when they have an action-only article.

Does anybody have other ideas for improvements? How can Indymedia best act to help people report their own struggles? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

One time Indymedia London collective member


User power

03.11.2014 10:18

What both Schnews and Indy people have failed to grasp is that they are producing a product that people do not want to use. We all know the downsides of Twitter and Facebook as do the users and despite that they still prefer to use it. What does that say ?

I have pointed many of my students toward IMC over the years and the feedback is nearly always negative. The irony is it has taken vast corporate, advertising funded systems to truly offer open publishing. The last battle is over and we have lost the war. One generation walked away from us and the current one hasn't the faintest idea we even exist.

Paul


We're doomed

03.11.2014 10:28

"The battle is over - and we have lost" Think I might start running workshops exploring the theme of how to age gracefully as an activist. Do you think the late 80s Class War, Stop the City lot didn't say exactly the same about us?

Grumpy Old Manarchist


@ Paul

03.11.2014 12:38

Not sure where you get your ideas from - the Class struggle has never been stronger or more widely supported. We have a new vibrant commited generation of AR workers for example ready to take the fight to HLS and other scum, we have recently had thousands on the streets for a TUC march against austerity cuts. The Tories and on the run, the LibDems are nowhere and the wheels will be coming off the UKIP bandwagon any day now. You may have gicen up but many of us are looking forward to the workers victory !

Viva the working class !
Viva Cuba !
Viva Palestine

Proud Socialist


What ???

03.11.2014 13:07

"the Class struggle has never been stronger or more widely supported"


You're bloody cracked mate. Neither of those two statements are true and if you really want to see why organisations like schnews are out of the game it's because very few people give a flying fart about 'socialism' or 'marxism' or any other 'ism' that died a death about 20 year ago. Hate it all you want but capitalism went home from ther party with the pretty girl while the Left got stuck with the washing up.

You sound like some old supporter of the Cuban revolution who turns a blind eye to the fuck off big palace that dear old Fidel built on the Miramar coast and thinks the working people live in a paradise.

In the words of Gorbachov, "we can't keep fighting for what the people do not want"

having a good old giggle at that !


Changes in media and attitudes

04.11.2014 15:33

What drove the formation of Schnews and IMC doesn't really exist anymore. The large activist community that blocked the Newbury By-Pass, that opposed the Poll Tax, the blockaded Greenham Common etc etc has grown up,moved on and never really been replaced. It says a lat that two former protesters at Greenham Common women's camp are now Labour MP's for example !!!


What is bigger than that however is the massive changes in media that have taken place in past twenty years. 'News' is today more or less free, the paid newspaper is finished and as News International has shown the number of people prepared to pay for online access is close to zero. Now because everything is free the days when people would put up with homemade projects like Schnews are long gone. Twitter, facebook and the rest are slick, corporate websites with immediate updates, convenient platform choices and realiability. What is on offer here is not good enough to attract large numbers, it's as simple as that.

Rupert Murdoch


Link to social media

07.11.2014 03:17

Websites like Indymedia should have sharing buttons for social media to draw people in, otherwise people now might not find out about it. Even if creators of websites don't want to support the big corporate giants like twitter, facebook then at least have a sharing button for the Diaspora network which at least tries to be a bit different - more decentralized, no requirement to use your real name, even if your IP address can still be tracked. It's also less commercial.
I know people can easily copy a URL and paste it somewhere, but it might encourage more sharing of articles if people see a sharing button. It's also just a smarter way to do things now.

FAQ for web developers
 https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/FAQ_for_web_developers

About Diaspora
 https://diasporafoundation.org/

Brian B


https

07.11.2014 03:22

I wonder if a site like Indymedia should default to using https addresses somehow. The current behaviour on Facebook now I think is to take you to https:// as soon as you are logged on, so if it is supported so much on the mainstream then maybe Indymedia can as well (but maybe somehow allow http if that is really needed for some people).

Brian B


re:https

07.11.2014 04:04

Or just disallow standard http:// access as it will probably not affect many people (if any).

Brian B


Put Indymedia on Diaspora!

07.11.2014 05:10

I just came across this website that takes an RSS feed for a website and posts the information onto a Diaspora account. I think that is what it does anyway. It would be a good way to promote Indymedia UK on Diaspora and also helps Diaspora because it needs 'content' to draw users to it as well.
 https://paperbod.com/
Maybe you could put the feeds on there for Featured articles and also the Promoted/Open 'newswires'.

Brian B


more

13.12.2014 14:41

Severe Winter Storms
 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R43802.pdf

Earthquake Hazards Reduction
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43141.pdf

Bee Health
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf

Arctic
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41153.pdf

Renewable Energy R&D Funding
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22858.pdf

Spectrum Needs of Self-Driving Vehicles
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10168.pdf

geothermal power
 http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/geothermal.pdf

patents
 http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/former-so-2014.pdf

Smartphone Data Encryption
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10166.pdf

Deploying 5G (Fifth Generation) Wireless Technology
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10110.pdf

Conflict Minerals and Resource Extraction
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43639.pdf

Specialty Metals
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33751.pdf

Hydraulic Fracturing
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43152.pdf

Defense Surplus Equipment Disposal
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS20549.pdf?

Department of Defense Support to Law Enforcement
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43701.pdf

Can Body Worn Cameras Serve as a Deterrent to Police Misconduct?
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10142.pdf

China’s Economic Rise
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33534.pdf

Domestic Terrorism
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/IN10137.pdf

Synthetic Drugs
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42066.pdf

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R43584.pdf

Combating Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42931.pdf

Clinical Tests
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43438.pdf

Mental Illness
 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43047.pdf

k


Schnews got owned by facebook

16.12.2014 22:34

Lets face it - facebook is better than SCHnews and indymedia

tall one


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