👓 MoviePass Rival Sinemia Drops Prices to Dirt Cheap on Weekdays | Gizmodo

Read MoviePass Rival Sinemia Drops Prices to Dirt Cheap on Weekdays (Gizmodo)
MoviePass broke the mold on theater subscription services and broke itself in the process, but the whole idea itself is not dead. Sinemia is carrying on with more modest deals, and it’s now offering weekday-only subscription plans that start at $4 per month.

👓 Gab and the decentralized web | Ben Werdmüller

Read Gab and the decentralized web by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)
As a proponent of the decentralized web, I've been thinking a lot about the aftermath of the domestic terrorism that was committed in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life synagogue over the weekend, and how it specifically relates to the right-wing social network Gab. In America, we're unfortunately used ...
I couldn’t have put it any better myself.

Deplatforming and making the web a better place

I’ve spent some time this morning thinking about the deplatforming of the abhorrent social media site Gab.ai by Google, Apple, Stripe, PayPal, and Medium following the Tree of Life shooting in Pennsylvania. I’ve created a deplatforming page on the IndieWeb wiki with some initial background and history. I’ve also gone back and tagged (with “deplatforming”) a few articles I’ve read or podcasts I’ve listened to recently that may have some interesting bearing on the topic.

The particular design question I’m personally looking at is roughly:

How can we reshape the web and social media in a way that allows individuals and organizations a platform for their own free speech and communication without accelerating or amplifying the voices of the abhorrent fringes of people espousing broadly anti-social values like virulent discrimination, racism, fascism, etc.?

In some sense, the advertising driven social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, et al. have given the masses the equivalent of not simply a louder voice within their communities, but potential megaphones to audiences previously far, far beyond their reach. When monetized against the tremendous value of billions of clicks, there is almost no reason for these corporate giants to filter or moderate socially abhorrent content.  Their unfiltered and unregulated algorithms compound the issue from a societal perspective. I look at it in some sense as the equivalent of the advent of machine guns and ultimately nuclear weapons in 20th century warfare and their extreme effects on modern society.

The flip side of the coin is also potentially to allow users the ability to better control and/or filter out what they’re presented on platforms and thus consuming, so solutions can relate to both the output as well as the input stages.

Comments and additions to the page (or even here below) particularly with respect to positive framing and potential solutions on how to best approach this design hurdle for human communication are more than welcome.


Deplatforming

Deplatforming or no platform is a form of banning in which a person or organization is denied the use of a platform (physical or increasingly virtual) on which to speak.

In addition to the banning of those with socially unacceptable viewpoints, there has been a long history of marginalized voices (particularly trans, LGBTQ, sex workers, etc.) being deplatformed in systematic ways.

The banning can be from any of a variety of spaces ranging from physical meeting spaces or lectures, journalistic coverage in newspapers or television to domain name registration, web hosting, and even from specific social media platforms like Facebookor Twitter. Some have used these terms as narrowly as in relation to having their Twitter “verified” status removed.

“We need to puncture this myth that [deplatforming]’s only affecting far-right people. Trans rights activistsBlack Lives Matterorganizers, LGBTQI people have been demonetized or deranked. The reason we’re talking about far-right people is that they have coverage on Fox News and representatives in Congress holding hearings. They already have political power.” — Deplatforming Works: Alex Jones says getting banned by YouTube and Facebook will only make him stronger. The research says that’s not true. in Motherboard 2018-08-10

Examples

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck parted ways with Fox News in what some consider to have been a network deplatforming. He ultimately moved to his own platform consisting of his own website.

Reddit Communities

Reddit has previously banned several communities on its platform. Many of the individual users decamped to Voat, which like Gab could potentially face its own subsequent deplatforming.

Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart personality, was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting targeted harassment campaigns against actress Leslie Jones. He resigned from Breitbart over comments he made about pedophilia on a podcast. These also resulted in the termination of a book deal with Simon & Schuster as well as the cancellation of multiple speaking engagements at Universities.

The Daily Stormer

Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer was deplatformed by Cloudflare in the wake of 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Following criticism, Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO, announced that he was ending the Daily Stormer’s relationship with Cloudflare, which provides services for protecting sites against distributed denial-of service (DDoS) attacks and maintaining their stability.

Alex Jones/Infowars

Alex Jones and his Infowars were deplatformed by Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Facebook in late summer 2018 for his Network’s false claims about the Newtown shooting.

Gab

Gab.ai was deplatformed from PayPal, Stripe, Medium , Apple, and Google as a result of their providing a platform for alt-right and racist groups as well as the shooter in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in October 2018

Gab.com is under attack. We have been systematically no-platformed by App Stores, multiple hosting providers, and several payment processors. We have been smeared by the mainstream media for defending free expression and individual liberty for all people and for working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served for the horrible atrocity committed in Pittsburgh. Gab will continue to fight for the fundamental human right to speak freely. As we transition to a new hosting provider Gab will be inaccessible for a period of time. We are working around the clock to get Gab.com back online. Thank you and remember to speak freely.

—from the Gab.ai homepage on 2018-10-29

History

Articles

Research

See Also

  • web hosting
  • why
  • shadow banning
  • NIPSA
  • demonitazition – a practice (particularly leveled at YouTube) of preventing users and voices from monetizing their channels. This can have a chilling effect on people who rely on traffic for income to support their work (see also 1)

👓 What We Learned from Studying the News Consumption Habits of College Students | Dan Cohen

Read What We Learned from Studying the News Consumption Habits of College Students by Dan CohenDan Cohen (Dan Cohen)
Over the last year, I was fortunate to help guide a study of the news consumption habits of college students, and coordinate Northeastern University Library’s services for the study, including great work by our data visualization specialist Steven Braun and necessary infrastructure from our digital team, including Sarah Sweeney and Hillary Corbett. “How Students Engage with News,” out today as both a long article and accompanying datasets and media, provides a full snapshot of how college students navigate our complex and high-velocity media environment.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

Side note: After recently seeing Yale Art Gallery’s show “Seriously Funny: Caricature Through the Centuries,” I think there’s a good article to be written about the historical parallels between today’s visual memes and political cartoons from the past.  

This also makes me think back to other entertainments of the historical poor including the use/purpose of stained glass windows in church supposedly as a means of entertaining the illiterate Latin vulgate masses.
October 22, 2018 at 08:07PM

nearly 6,000 students from a wide variety of institutions  

Institutions = colleges/universities? Or are we also considering less educated youth as well?
October 22, 2018 at 08:08PM

A more active stance by librarians, journalists, educators, and others who convey truth-seeking habits is essential.  

In some sense these people can also be viewed as aggregators and curators of sorts. How can their work be aggregated and be used to compete with the poor algorithms of social media?
October 22, 2018 at 08:11PM

❤️ EatPodcast tweet: Proposal for the book of Our Daily Bread is on its way to publisher.

Liked a tweet by Jeremy Cherfas | Eat This PodcastJeremy Cherfas | Eat This Podcast (Twitter)

Reply to Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher

Replied to Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher by Staff Staff (Alhambra Source)

Jon Thurber, a veteran journalist whose long career at the Los Angeles Times included serving as managing editor of the print edition, has been named publisher of the Alhambra Source.

Thurber held a number of other management positions at the Times, including news obituary editor and editor of the book review, and he was also a leader of the paper’s reinvention committee as the Times transitioned from a predominantly print product to refocus its efforts on digital publication.

“Jon has the experience and vision to move the Alhambra Source forward to an even more dynamic civic institution in Alhambra and the larger SGV,” said Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Professor of Communication and Sociology Emerita at USC Annenberg School for Communication and one of the founders of the Alhambra Source.

Congratulations both to and on the new publisher!

I’ve recently begun reading a variety of more local news sources, most of which are built on the WordPress CMS, as is your publication. As a digital native, I often prefer reading my news via RSS feeds, but I find it surprising that many local SGV sources have (accidentally?) broken or are mismanaging their feeds.

I notice that the Alhambra Source’s main feed only contains the “News Round up” articles which primarily feature news in other outlets. While this type of advertising for and promotion of others’ work is nice, I’m subscribed to many of them already and would prefer a single feed with all of the Alhambra Source’s own original work instead! In fact, because I automatically subscribed to the AS’s main feed without looking at the site first, I was under the mistaken impression that it only did aggregation rather than original reporting, an impression which is obviously the opposite of reality.

Because a “main” feed is not available, I’m forced to subscribe to 8 separate feeds to attempt to get all of the great work coming out of AS. This feels like a bit much and could be easily fixed on your back end. A better solution would be to have your main feed include all of your articles (perhaps including the News Roundup), and then still provide the separate category-based feeds for those who are only interested in the subsections of news. (This would typically be the default for an out of the box WordPress installation.)

Finally, I’ve noticed that your feeds don’t include any of the photos featured in the articles, which is a shame since the site has some generally nice photography (particularly in comparison to competitors) to go along with the stories.

If you need any technical help, I’m happy to assist as I’d love to see better local news and events coverage in the Pasadena/SGV areas.

Congratulations again!

👓 Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher | Alhambra Source

Read Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher (Alhambra Source)
Jon Thurber, a veteran journalist whose long career at the Los Angeles Times included serving as managing editor of the print edition, has been named publisher of the Alhambra Source.

🔖 Accelerated Reader Bookfinder

Bookmarked Renaissance Accelerated Reader Bookfinder (arbookfind.com)
Searching for books with a corresponding Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360® quiz is easy with Accelerated Reader Bookfinder®. Students, teachers, parents, and librarians can search in English or Spanish using criteria such as ATOS book level or a Lexile™ measure, interest level, title, author, fiction/nonfiction, subject, award-winners, state lists, CCSS Exemplars, and more
An interesting site with a wealth of information and details for children’s books.

👓 It’s About Time! | ColoradoBoulevard.net

Read It’s About Time! by Wafic Khalil (ColoradoBoulevard.net)
ColoradoBoulevard.net Print Edition will be published monthly, on the 2nd week of each month, covering the Greater Pasadena area (South Pasadena, San Marino, Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre). We are a grass root movement (opposite to the trend of hedge fund companies gobbling print newspapers, laying off their staff and practicing “cutting and pasting”). And if you choose to subscribe or advertise, rest assured you are helping true local journalism thrive and a local institution. Your money will go to help sustain the future of our community based newspaper. Our monthly print Edition will be different from our online daily edition. Each will have differing content, sharing as the need arises. It’s about time we clean out local journalism from imposters and big money interests and make print hip again.
Wafic buried the lede a bit here since it wasn’t in the headline… Congratulations though!

👓 How a Pasadena Book Publisher is Helping to Keep Books Alive | Pasadena Magazine

Read How a Pasadena Book Publisher is Helping to Keep Books Alive (Pasadena Magazine)
The demise of the physical book may well be exaggerated, thanks to the efforts of dedicated publishers like Pasadena’s Colleen Dunn Bates, founder of Prospect Park Books.

👓 Trump, no longer ratings gold, loses his prime-time spot on Fox News | Politico

Read Trump, no longer ratings gold, loses his prime-time spot on Fox News (POLITICO)
In a crucial period with the midterms less than a month away, some in the White House are worried that the president is losing a prime-time megaphone to his base.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but in the past I don’t recall any of the networks carrying full coverage of any rallies like these except perhaps the nominating conventions; even then they did it somewhat begrudgingly or only with partial coverage? At best, the coverage of these was small individual soundbites of candidates. Fox news has obviously and sadly been using them more for entertainment value than for any news value they might have had. Could this new coverage be coined liefotainment? There certainly isn’t any journalistic value in full coverage. I wonder if they’ll be carrying flaming-cross to flaming-cross coverage of KKK rallies next?

Reply to WordCamp: Publishers

Replied to a tweet by WordCamp: PublishersWordCamp: Publishers (Twitter)
Leo [@postphotos] are you thinking what I’m thinking?
#Route66 #FromChicagotoLA

👓 Agent, Auburn native subject of Wall Street Journal feature | Auburn Citizen

Read Agent, Auburn native subject of Wall Street Journal feature by David Wilcox (Auburn Citizen)
Matt DelPiano is used to being a step removed from stardom, but a Sept. 24 story in The Wall Street Journal finds him front and center.
Ha!

👓 Bloomberg's TicToc is starting to build a brand beyond Twitter | Digiday

Read Bloomberg's TicToc is starting to build a brand beyond Twitter (Digiday)
Begun as a Twitter network, TicToc now includes a podcast and newsletter and is developing a website.