A culture that thinks like an algorithm also “projects a future that is like the past,” James Bridle explains, because “that which is gathered as data is modelled as the way things are, and then projected forward — with the implicit assumption that things will not radically change or diverge from previous experiences.” In a world reliant on computation to make sense of things, “that which is possible becomes that which is computable.”
I don't know if online forums and stuff are really gonna be any kind of crazy new platform that will change anything more than it is now (it's changing a lot of stuff right now though).
However (as a programmer) I do think it would be cool to build alternative services to ones that currently rely on software designed around commercial use cases (and I keep saying this over and over on here), but instead specifically tailored to more organizational left wing use cases. For example, most websites hosting left-wing content are probably being hosted on the same big web hosting platforms, using regular software like WordPress for content management. I think that's perfectly fine for the most part, but it would be nice to build up more of a knowledge and resource base for making entirely custom and potentially self-hosted websites. hexbear.net is like that, although it isn't really "secure" because it uses Cloudflare as a content delivery network. Of course it's also probably easier for feds to infiltrate and mess that kind of thing up since big software projects have more professional scrutiny over code that gets integrated.
I think news websites and messaging applications could be more independent. Stuff that would be useful to socialists/communists in other countries would also be good. Not really to change people's behavior or anything, but to create internet tools that left-wing movements rely on more, and make them easily auditable and modifiable. I don't think they need to be radically different. Hexbear.net/Lemmy is a good example. It's basically a Reddit clone that uses more modern web features and can be self-hosted. Self-hosting is the most important thing, not that it's like "distributed" or something. Although for messaging platforms you'd want better end-to-end encryption and so on. Stuff that could basically be useful to DSA chapters and things like that. Websites that are good over low-bandwidth and metered connections would also be good.
Agree with all of your points. Just to elaborate though, when I was talking about radically different systems, I was thinking of better, more transparent, ideally user-operated platforms for the short-term, but for the long-term I was thinking more about stuff like Urbit; radical re-imaginings of how a computer and an internet could function.
I've really got no deeper understanding of Urbit and I don't mean to hinge this point on that one implementation of this OS+Meshnet-thingy, but it does look like something that could grow to be something significant.
That Urbit thing looks pretty unique. It seems very esoteric though and kinda suspicious since it involves Ethereum stuff and it sounds like you can sell your urbit stars or whatever. It also sounds like the original creator is one of those weird right-libertarians or something weirder lol.
Yea, it's not really what is needed, but it certainly is something different - and I think it's at least going in the right direction.
That's the thing with all these crypto peeps; some of them certainly try to actually do cool shit with the tech. Still, it's often misguided, and it often is just an expression of how they think capitalism isn't capitalistic enough; free market radicalism and all that shit. But they're certainly building... something. It's often disgusting, usually outright predatory grift and not exactly towards any form of emancipation - but it is something. It's there, it does end up becoming something real sometimes.