wikileaks – An Autonomous Agent

Bye Facebook… Here Come the Decentralized Social Networks

anautonomousagent — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:35:09 +0000

Wikileaks recently claimed that Facebook censored their post on Hillary Clinton’s email dump. This suggests that users of Facebook are in no way guaranteed the right to post whatever they want. At the end of the day, it is Facebook Corporation (Quote: FB) which has the final say on what should be publicly allowed on Facebook. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, this is the expected outcome of a free service existing as a centrally managed set of servers owned by special interests and shareholders.

The solution, not without its own disadvantages, would be to create and migrate all users to a decentralized social media network. I think this would be possible with Namecoin in combination with WordPress (think BuddyPress) where all users would have their own local servers or rent machines with services like Heroku, Namecheap, Openshift, Amazon EC2, etc.. The process should be simple:

User rents machine on Heroku, Namecheap, Openshift, etc…
Install WordPress on this machine
Add WordPress social network plugin
Create Namecoin domain
Create user profile
Publish posts, socialize and message friends

Here are some current examples/ideas of people creating and implementing P2P social networks:

Diaspora – Working version of a private decentralized social network

Synereo; visit their blog to keep up with their progress.

The Pandora. P2P Social Network

Vole: Peer-to-peer social web

Masques: an invisible social network

Samsara Social Network

Kálmán Graffi

Student’s brilliant idea: A peer-to-peer social network

PeerSoN: Privacy-Preserving P2P Social Networks

Empire Files – Abby Martin

anautonomousagent — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 03:01:59 +0000

The growth of a society into an Empire; how does this occur? is it desirable? if not, how can it be avoided? is it possible to create a set of cultural institutions which makes the probability of this transformation near zero?The study of this transformation is vital for future generations.

Abby Martin has created a series of episodes on YouTube called Empire Files which investigates the American Empire. Perhaps with more study we can answer important questions about this emergent cultural phenomenon which is bigger than any one person.

When Google Met WikiLeaks – Julian Assange

anautonomousagent — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 21:17:00 +0000

When Google Met WikiLeaks transcribes the conversation between Julian Assange and Eric Schmidt. Their discussion of WikiLeaks’ story, governmental control and persecution, revolutions, connectivity, and internet publishing is an important, powerful, and insightful source for anyone who wants to understand the current controversy of WikiLeaks. Their conversation provides a glance at the relationship between governments and their citizens in the Internet Age.

Assange also includes a few essays in the book which were published after the interview. He is a talented writer and clearly expresses his ideas; worth the read.