TOTW: Anarchy as a Service (AaaS)!

...but some nights I quickly fall fast asleep and I dream of the laptop catching fire and consuming the whole room, the whole world...and those nights I sleep well.

Most nights, in the moments before sleep relieves me of the day's dread I often find myself in a darkened room, illuminated by the sickly glow of my laptop screen thinking to myself, "how could anarchistnews.org better improve its offerings, functionality, user experience, etc. so that the community of anewsians could more satisfyingly (and anarchistically!) interact with one another and better engage with the always interesting and thought provoking article content?"

So, for this week's Topic I ask: if you were given the charge of improving anarchistnews.org (and/or the constellation of other services in the Anarchy Planet galaxy) what would you do to improve it? Would you add new and exciting features, a fresh redesign? Slick, new B-R-A-N-D-I-N-G? Would you increase or decrease moderation in the comments section to promote more good faith interaction? Would you remove anonymous commenting all together to more easily “deal with” trolls? Would you draft an Anarchistnews Anti-Oppression Policy (AA-OP)? Would there *only* be dark-mode, animated GIFs, a streaming video service, sick merch, like/dislike buttons, or something more?

What say you, creative anewsians, brave anarchyplaneteers, or visitors of all stripes who favor "building" things?

There are 64 Comments

as it is, even if i've abused the comment section because i get tired of being deleted. Trolls are sometimes good faith commenters, or at least they get confused as such

I'd say anarchists facilitating more direct, real-life interaction would be the way to go, and would be one of the best ways to combat the analysis-paralysis caused by the spread of COVID. Doesn't this cost more money and code though? Would that really help you all by doing this?

Nevertheless, i like the framing of this question, how can we be more useful to ourselves and the world around us? It's a wierd task in a service-economy globalist world.

I agree with this first comment, mostly.

One thing I like to change is how the "skip to comments" button functions. I used to be able to skip to the first unread comment, but now it just goes to the first comment.

I actually like anonymous commenting. Except for when there are several anons in one thread, then it can be hard to keep track of who one is replying to. Not sure what is to be done about that.

without facing any legal consequences for you dangerous thoughts. It detracts from the panoptical experience of being online.

but as you allude to, it's easily abused by people who aren't willing to sit down and think about what they're saying or doing. Having everyone be an anon makes communication a little more haphazard and difficult too.

really I don't mind anons spewing thought vomit, that is easy to either ignore or engage with, as you will.

If you ignore the hydra two more hydras will spawn and get your attention!

I know HTML text format stuff is great, but it's kind of a pain. Is there a way to post articles that allow you to select parts of your post and select font size, italics and boldness without relying on HTML? Posting photos between paragraphs, too. I'm trying to think of something to compare it to but I don't do tech stuff, so my only comparison is how google docs let's you do things.

HTML itself is text formatting, it's a programming language read by browsers.

What you seem to want is for @news to use a a word processor instead of html. Open office is a great and free word processor, but as I said before it's not like magic where it can happen automatically, they could change their software like with www.anarchy101.org, it functions more like a word processor when you make a post.

Lol, the limits of the human mind! I originally typed you can't do this on a browser but there are lots of sites that do the HTML for you, like the example i gave, many forums...

html is not so hard, i don't really mind it, just requires a little more learning.

Yeah, that's probably what I meant. I, um, don't have online skills, though. I mean, I don't do the emails well.

Honestly the site is great, I just thought if we're all supposed to be pointing at things, then I might as well try to point at something, too.

having a little programming experience i just felt that your request sounded funny, HTML only takes a little bit more work than using a work processor, depending on your doing of course. You can make some very complex HTML if you are going to program a whole website, but very few people do that now adays. Most sites are created Content Management Systems like drupal.

Please no rating system for comments. These produce cults of personality and bullying

having a rating system for comments would make @news more of a creepy panopticon, if we're gonna insult or bully each other we should have to defend ourselves rather than use this idiotic fan base to back up our behavior.

disliked

I get that it's probably a joke but "anarchy as a service" or anarchy coming from anything online if a huge fucking problem. Social media anarchists have done absolutely fucking nothing. Sharing communiques is maybe the only good thing a website can do for anarchists. All of this shit requires anarchists to be chained to the internet service providers and their fucking devices made by slaves with materials that destroy the earth. No thanks!

"Social media anarchists have done absolutely fucking nothing."
Can you back this up with some evidence that the information transferred via social media has not assisted people from understanding and becoming aware of the beautiful idea of anarchism? No you can't, because you are a libertarian socialistic anarchist into street marching, chanting slogans and throwing rocks at bank windows.

I am really happy with the progress that TaaS (Thought as a Service) has been making as it iterates. I am finding more and more that I need to outsource my thinking and having a convenient endpoint in the cloud to provide me with fresh takes is immensely useful. The machine learning is getting really good at humanizing the language and semantic paradigms for the ideology I selected at account creation. Scraping Twitter has turned out to be a goldmine of useful data in this pursuit. It's almost like real life humans fail the turing test when they talk to me and I am utilizing TaaS! In this modern age a Neural Net is required to evade the neural nets of frail, organic, human ideation.

anarchy as a service? what is the need being served? who are the costumers? how well do they pay? crime pays but anarchy as a service doesn't?

anarchy as a service vs anarchy as charity vs anarchy as mutual aid vs anarchy as attack

as someone used to say, not either/or, both/and

to virga - lol

Should also have an armistice. All trolls that have been banned in the past are to be forgiven in good anarchist faith and equality of all people and species, and be allowed to comment without fear of deletion and authoritarian censure.

Beautiful bubby! The two troll factions meet: the mods and the trolls, everyone shakes hands, shares some magic spells in the form of dark psychology, and all transgressions are forgiven. A new sun falls in the west!

-- migrate the site from drupal to backdrop (a much better, largely compatible alternative to drupal7 AND drupal8).

-- use one of the reliable formatting modules for the body field of posts/comments. ckeditor works well with drupal. backdrop does by default.

-- force pseudonymous posting, and make it easy for users to create persistent pseudonyms on the fly, no account (or some kind of limited account auto-created) necessary. also the ability to chain together one's pseudonyms if desired. posters can still avoid identifying themselves, but at least all their posts can be distinguished from all the other anons.

-- do away with moderation.

-- allow for "community" rating/tagging of articles and comments, along with the ability for users to hide comments from anyone they choose. self-management of so-called censorship.

-- spin up an onion url for it.

-- have a site section for the @-equivalent of classifieds. ride-shares, couch-surfs, land/project help requests, dumpster-dive maps, whatever.

-- have a simple direct messaging facility.

(clouds moving in, i'll see if it clears up again for some more...)

"force pseudonymous posting,"

Nope. Who else does that than authoritarians? Furthermore I remember it's been tried on this site once, and it didn't work out too well.

"allow for "community" rating/tagging of articles and comments"

Double nope. Stay on Raddle or Reddit.

"do away with moderation."

Hello welcome to 2021 which shoudn't be confused with 2002. So, nice plan to get your neonazi, tankie and/or cop buddies have it their way, rite?

"have a site section for the @-equivalent of classifieds. ride-shares, couch-surfs, land/project help requests, dumpster-dive maps, whatever."

Security culture what is that? lol

"have a simple direct messaging facility."

Aplanet already is on Matrix, both for Element messaging or the IRC.

- incentivize having an account on this site with account-only features (avatars, post and comment favoriting, history of recently read posts, etc) but keep anon commenting (or get rid of it entirely)

- more diverse and effective ways of removing posts by trolls - on our end this could include ways of filtering comments, ignoring users, etc.

- more sophisticated posting options rather than the archaic-feeling formatting options and features we have now, allow for visual editing in addition to html

- more features for interacting with comments - the ability to shrink comment threads for example

- gofundme to send our longstanding trolls to the moon

my own free land on the moon?! where do I sign? hope there's not already somebody living there...

ultimate zona remota

nah, you and the fuck off keating troll can stay, you're like helpful bacteria in the body

Don't make me name you again here, boi. You're enjoying mod support elsewhere but that doesn't mean every anarchist site should be a province of your internet empire, domination-obsessed foo'

And dark theme!

Black and blue on white is sooo fucking you-know-what.

There is a dark mode already. Just set your operating system to dark mode like a pro and anews is darrrrk.

No more neo-liberal Idpol trollphobia, it makes everything boring!

With all the struggles going on in the world this is what anarchists are talking about instead of organizing? Maybe if the website was used for organize anarchists it would be useful. What is the point of anarchist online spaces anyway how about some directly democratic processes over how this website is run?

Democracy is just a euphemism for mob rule! Also, this site is magnificent at honing and fine tuning the wonderful beautiful idea called individualist anarchism.

Hey anarchists, there are things happening - stop talking! Get the first flight to X right now! The direct democracy organizer commands you!

I think that the problem is, we mistook the internet for the rhizome. And what we’ve got now is a situation where we’re all hostages in cyberspace. We’re all held hostage in cyberspace, which is basically a haunted slum. It’s the perfect mirror of capital. This is one of the reasons there’s not a lot of money generate out of the internet but a lot of money goes around it and through it and in it, because it’s not capitalism per se but it’s a mirror of capital. Therefore its reverse and in some sense its image. So we’re all sucked into this, and every radical group in America is essentially a website and nothing more.

@news needs a complete overhaul. Layout, branding, face-lift, nails, manicure, new mission....everything.

Remove all commenting, put on an Internet 2.0 full of Javascripts, submissions based on memberships vouched by the in-crowd, and start a Patreon of course. This is the only way, Anews!

to change this site as there are obvious issues, i was the first to give suggestions, now after reading the comments lol ive realized that yeah there is no way to really improve this site except maybe just remove all the comments and just have the message board and a private messaging system...lol.

The most absurd ideas i have seen here are:

-increase the moderating. Why? Havent you noticed that a lot of comments just dissapear without any ethical framework whatsoever to back it up or justify it??

-have a voting system, so you think it makes a damn bit of difference if a post has 2 likes or 1000 likes? What kind of anarchist are you?

-the assertion that kevin keating and lumpentroll are like good bacteria. Lol, of course they have their moments where they shine a light on something but overall they do a whole lot to improve the comments overall, lol.

One thing i would like to see happen is people to submit better articles, im really sick of the glaring spotlight on leftist and anti-fa matters, but ya know i understand why thats related to anarchists so not much to do about that...

This morning i was thinking about starting an anarchist/individualist forum with my own moderation rules just to see what happens...

do NOT compare me to keatingtroll you bastard! he's like a magic 8 ball at best: recycles the same 3 rants over and over, no passion, no pride in his troll work. you could code a shitty chatbot from the 90s to do what he does!

running a harry potter fan club was pretty freakin' funny, even though it was narcissistic post about his life. achievements which later got deleted.

Onward, lumpen-knight!

he has his comments saved in a document on his desktop. he's been working on the A! one for a while now, redrafting and copying and pasting wherever he thinks people might listen to him, even on people's blogs if they dare mention A!'s name. this is a 60 year old man we're talking about, cyber stalking someone who's dead.

As far as this site goes, maybe a search function? There are some TOTWs that I'd like to be able to find again, and probably plenty of interesting ones that I just missed. In terms of moderation, maybe it would be possible to hide comments, perhaps with a short description of why they're hidden, rather than send them down the memory hole?

if you click the "totw" tag on each totw you can see them all (at least those that came after the great erase)

In fact, there are many poor people learning knowledge on the Internet, but it is not easy to be detected. Most of the time, it's professional knowledge, but for example, Bangladeshi anarchists use the Internet to learn. Here's another disturbing fact: people who are good at using the Internet can gain more advantages. If we make use of our advantages and pretend to condemn at the same time, it will be hypocritical.
Internet control is divided into two layers, one is physical sense, the other is software, information and psychological control. It is the two that together form the necessary foundation for a city planet. No matter which level needs extensive thinking and discussion.

is that the information often just isn't very useful...everything is an ad that fallows you (like in minority report), and often when i have a a practical DIY question for a technical forum, the people on there get so technical about it that they start telling me that it was wrong of me to ask the question, "this is not the right forum", "YOU DIDN'T INCLUDE A PICUTRE!", that kinda stuff. I've noticed that the disconnect between all the different levels of understanding that makes trying to communicate online hopeless to a certain extent.

That's because the technology forum is easy to form management and unique discourse space. On the surface, the Internet is decentralized in power, but as criticized by post structuralism, it repeats the principle of centralized power in microstructure. Every scattered space has a different style, and it's easy for people to find one that suits them. You're just talking about one of these situations. It's a private forum determined by technical form and professional discourse. However, in order to maintain a kind of publicity, it has to determine the legitimacy of the issue through the discourse of technocrats. The so-called publicity is a rule that everyone must abide by according to the needs of governance. For example, the source of alienation comes from the property transfer of ancient Roman law, which must be guaranteed by a number of witnesses, so this is publicity - it needs to ensure the presence of the law.

The Internet relies heavily on a tree structure, even though it may be decentralized and seemingly equal. Power works in a micro way. Language, programming, relationship, culture and information flow, control is everywhere.

But I'm talking about open classes or something. They are also professional and public knowledge, poor and obsolete, but they need to use this knowledge to ensure political stability. Nowadays, few philosophers like Foucault or Deleuze teach in public, and the lack of struggle reduces the activity of thinking. New ideas are often controlled by institutions. The space for "private thinkers" is getting smaller and smaller.

Socialism tends to ensure a kind of publicity so that it is not eroded by private capital. In this way, it has been generated and the interests of the masses are guaranteed, but it is based on the central power. In the age of the Internet, it disguises itself as the absence of power. However, all governance is going on in an orderly way.

In this kind of publicity, communication is never effective. Because the soul of the majority becomes the norm of users' thoughts and activities. It is always an empty interaction, or a comment on a hot topic.

Real communication can only be carried out at the level of individual soul, rather than pretending to replace publicity with a kind of commonality. It is such a struggle and the practice of ideas that provide the basis for communication. I think if we solve this problem, we will have a new understanding of the Internet.

The biggest improvement would be to have a clear policy about what sorts of comments are allowed.

The randomness of your policy pretty much ensures bad faith trolls.

Of the things suggested: new branding seems unnecessary. Increased moderation or no anonymity would likely deter posters and make the site even more dead. Reduced moderation: I'd prefer because I want to be able to tell bad-faith commenters to fuck off. No moderation: probably not viable with all the spambots. My feeling ATM is mods should remove irrelevant posts but not try to nudge, tame or limit the discussion or police the tone. AA-OP would be a wedge in the door for idpol censorship efforts. Definitely no "likes", that encourages pile-ons and playing to the crowd. I like the video streaming idea, preferably with a chat to encourage people to interact more. Possibly several streams like cytube (but anarchist). By the same token, an anarchist games hub would be good, with things like 3 sided football, kriegspiel and tripura transfer.

I've made suggestions before about possible innovations in anarchist online content. One of these is, it would be good to have an uncensored site on Tor. Another, it would be good to have a simulated or game world where people interact through avatars. Something like a news aggregator would also be useful. I'd probably make the news more comprehensive, and include more worldwide stuff and especially coverage of riots and protest movements everywhere.

People come TO anarchy through side-channels such as single-issue campaigns, drug/rave culture, punk, squatting, etc. The more effective dissident groups today tend to proactively channel people from the most basic sympathetic positions to the full dissenting position. We can't do this in the same manipulative way, but it would be good to have similar channels: things which appeal to people who aren't anarchist but are anarchist-sympathetic. I'd suggest doing this via new sites with links to this one, designed on an anarchist model and serving specific communities like FLOSS, crypto, rave, piracy, DIY/drop-out, punk, gaming, etc - set up without any of the idpol or corporate bullshit that's usually there. So for instance, make a permanently running anarcho-punk online radio with embedded chat and a "latest news" panel which goes to Anarchist News. Or a site with how-to's for FLOSS programming, a discussion hub for programmers, and no fucking conduct code... and again some kind of link here. That kinda thing.

BTW apologies I periodically disappear, then reappear with textwalls... It's nothing to do with whether the TOTW is interesting, it's all to do with life chaos, work (ptup) and periodic burnout.

but wtf is AA-OP?

yeah, i overall agree that anarchists should always be trying to encourage free expression. A lot of people think that we have to suppress the racists/right-wingers but I would personally rather just find a way to argue with them or leave them alone. Living out in a a very conservative part of the US, overtime i've gotten used to being creative and not getting too upset when somebody says something very ignorant. Human relations are rife with drama and conflict, i've appreciated LBC's literature because they make it pretty clear it's up to anarchists to find ways to deal with this without always resorting to the cops, censorship, regulatory agencies, courts, etc. Institutional suppression generally leads to institutional oppression, "if you can't accept existence then expect resistance", i saw that second one in a coffee shop bathroom once!

Add new comment