theo & theory

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WESTCOAST-IDEALS - FREE 

MEDIA CASE - INTRODUCTION

Ideals ...

While the other movements of the 50s and 60s had produced 

tangible results, the hippie movement did not (if not 

counting the Woodstock festival).

Thus, in the 70s some put their hopes in technology.

They started developing new technologies for the alternative 

press, community radio stations, home-brew computer clubs 

and video collectives.

So...

o Social media is a giant phenomenon, but not entirely free!

o The state of free publishing ... free anywhere, free format?

  like there is a need for basics, charity, nonprofits,

  there is a place for 'free media': the edge, the porn of info

  and yes! good thing if social media can serve as a topic 

  switch board for the cybermind. Always media & bubble aware

With these ideals... Where are we??

2016-04-16

o latest comment, on 'corporatism', in west, on status page

2016-04-20

A leading journalism advocacy group said 

world press freedom (check wiki index 2014 page)

deteriorated in 2015, especially in the

Americas, warning of "a new era of propaganda".

o Read short report on World Press Freedom Index 2015

===

2016-08-08

o latest comment, on auditory hallucination (refuting 

  the leading theory of will by Chris Frith with a synth!)

  on status page

  see status notes 5 and 6

2016-08-12 starting this day

  WE ARE AN UNOFFICIAL SUBSTITUTE

  for worldpress.org headlines Europe

  

  which we call world FREE press headlines

===

skip to more recent

found 2016-09-04

concerning the case of our declining traffic, 

due to our status at twitter, google, and 

the comments on that on this site ...

this changes everything:

dark forces denigrate environmentalists as terrorists

(a practice well-known to westcoast, we ran a website devoted to this naming)

snippet from https://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-test/10959-immoral-maize-definitive-account-of-chapela-affair

The contact person given was Rich Levine, who previously 

worked for Bivings as a Monsanto web-guru. [49] The president 

of V-fluence is Jay Byrne, who has over 15 years experience 

in public relations, campaign communications and government 

affairs. [50] He was also the former chief internet strategist 

and director of corporate communications for Monsanto, where 

he spent a quarter of his time monitoring the web for rogue 

web- and activist sites. [51] In 2001, Byrne gave a presentation 

to a PR conference called 'Protecting Your Assets: An Inside 

Look at the Perils and Power of the Internet'. It gave an insight 

into Monsanto's use of the internet. 'A website alone won't 

protect your brand', Byrne told the audience, therefore it was 

necessary to 'Take Action, Take Control'. Ways to do this 

included: 'Viral marketing and other dialogue opportunities, 

monitoring and participation'. 

One PowerPoint slide showed 'Monitoring' for Monsanto which 

included 'Daily monitoring of over 500 competitor, industry, 

"issues group" websites; Daily monitoring of 50+ key listservs, 

usergroups and chat rooms; Technology monitoring and updates 

including search engine programs and legal monitoring'. 

Another chart on the PowerPoint presentation gave the difference 

before and after taking control of the internet to rig a search 

engine to go from finding hits they did not want to finding hits 

they did want if someone was searching for 'GM foo'’. Favourable 

hits included: 'Glossary of biotech terms; AgBioWorld; AgCare; 

FDA; Biotech Knowledge Center; CFFAR; Food Biotech Center; and 

Biotech Basics'. To the uninitiated these would all appear as 

independent sites, yet we now know that three of these are 

acknowledged Bivings projects BioTech Terms; Biotech Knowledge 

Center and Biotech Basics. Two seem to have links to Bivings 

AgBioWorld and CFFAR. One AgCare is a biotech lobby front in 

Canada, and the other the US FDA is seen by the biotech industry 

as an ally. 

Of these, the CFFAR site is the most worrying in that it denigrates 

environmentalists as terrorists. It is the site that Andura wanted 

the scientists to look at. Once you denigrate someone it becomes 

easier to attack them, both physically and mentally and even 

intellectually. Byrne finished by quoting Michael Dell, the 

CEO of Dell computers: 'Think of the internet as a weapon on 

the table. Either you pick it up or your competitor does 

but somebody is going to get killed.' [52] 

===

is it possible to link companies that promote, finance these practices 

not only to the fate my twitter, google status but also to the 2008 

attempt on my plz swype, the manipulation of google to hide 

violence against green in the EU (nl, uk) as reported in 2014?

(this is NOT what WE're about, of course)

===

	

Google seems to focus on more friendly

news, projects, info when it comes 

to green, and avoid govt. criticism

(info on green activism, victimization

 both physically and in words, status)

update 01

Google Openly Advertizes Power to Kick

Sites off the 'Open' Web in NewsWeek

Our sites were first affected 2013 ...

but wait, what's the news (2016-01-25)

ISIS sites are next - yeah right

[ non ironic

 so they weren't already? - we bet they were! ]

ANALYSIS - A WEB 3.0?

google in the news

o cnet - AI is important to them

o newsweek - recently showed of plan to kick sites off the 'open' web

o zdnet - they plan to put a cross at side of non https sites

o zdnet - they will enforce safe ads through chrome browser

o last years brazil, s-am has left the ggl dns universe

o last month [jan16] govt requested silval to work against rad

o last week in nyt international - ggl is anti nonprofit

google's credos

o dont be evil

o if you dont want anyone to know, 

should you be doing it in the first place

terminal thoughts on 70s publishing ideals

We think for google the end of non-profit Web

has a certain logic, because it connects

information to people, or vv.

It's related to current 'end of audience'-media...

It's no use to publish non-profit information

because in this media world people will never 

hear from something they have not already set 

up their devices to hear about - the info consumer 

has 'sourced choice' (fixed sources, choice therein)

The 70s westcoast ideals of publishing for all has 

grown to be more about connecting one to one, 

using search.

Search and web is often about facts or context, not an 

extensive attempt at persuasion - that can happen 

on facebook or twitter and for the big social issues, 

like those listed on wikipedia article 'social issues'.

So, there is no free audience for all,

not provided by google at least:

  Google is not in business for the

  publisher's dreams or some 70s

  westcoast ideals...

We're dead, the Web's dead ;-)

Long Live the Internet [wired.com]

Greets!

Westcoast Ideals

westcoast-ideals.com

===

Continued

(yes, now on 1 page :-)

June 1st 2016

the EU initiative 'online civil courage'

is now being enforced - corporate justice

as i wrote, has arrived. Twitter punishes

and seeks purpetrators with a crude algorithm.

We estimate that in the first two weeks

a whopping 250.000 europeans had their right

to free speech violated. If 1 in 10 would have

counted on social media to promote a company

and sued for 500.000 euros, we lost 12.5B 

in potential economically, but intellectually

for certain. After this black day of censorship

and corporate execution or justice ... we

(at this site) lost 3 months of tweets and

traffic to the site. 'Because' we were part of

its social discussion ... or 'on the panel'

before clock struck 12 ;). 

Thanks for the promise of 'reach', twitter!

Or can we say, hey twitter is as basic as 

a telco or ad company. So ...

this is EU totalitarian media control.

UPDATE 1

FINAL CALL - SAVE THE WEB! AVOID A BRAVE NEW ONE

tweet (with common dreams article 2013 and our podcast (mp4)

(2m48s) on dutch 'google manipulation' starting january 2016)

Common dreams vs Google's #controlstate software 2013 

https://commondreams.org/views/2013/05/01/googles-spymasters-are-now-worried-about-your-secrets 

AND my podcast 2m48s january 2016 

https://westcoast-ideals.com/report_feb16_mercy_of_the_beast.mp4

===

UPDATE 2

IT's HAPPENING, BB AWAKENS - IT's CALLED "HISTORIC"

neuromancer - we linked our minds to phones, web, 

social media, fb, twt, ggl+, ggl search

cyberpunk & cyberculture - we lost our selves in 

new images of and for our selves - body, cities

gothic

cyberia - in the 80s and 90s we grew up with 70s 

westcoast ideals, open free press, media, tech

2005 half of ppl in west have broadband, always on 

internet access - 2009 twt and fb take off - the wall

2014-2016 bb - companies, legal persons, start 

acting for ... for the govt in west - m's case dig, 

yelp: ggl "kierewiet", bbc does experiment w fb 

'community standards' that fb enforces, laywer 

feb16: "historic step" in internet, media history

===

Met Police considers scrapping 1,000 neighbourhood 

PCSOs By Nick Beake Home Affairs Correspondent, 

BBC News - 9 September 2015

Read

Aantal strafzaken bij rechtbanken gedaald

(The Number of Criminal Cases in Holland Decreases)

Read

Gevangenissen in Nederland blijven maar leegstromen

(Jails in Holland keep getting Emptier)

Read

Sociale netwerken en jeugdcriminaliteit: netwerk 

jongeren (Optimistic Feature on Social Networks 

and Youth Criminality)

Read

alternative

druidry & restorative justice

Read

------------------------------------------------ +

KEY Q - The Q is... will the internet save society

from crime when it is answering directly to govt

or has a one-size-fits-all 'community standard'?

===

[more recent, written somewhat less chaotic ...]

Digital Media Firms, Government & Freedom Nov2015-Jun2016

An Account of coming to terms with, and documenting, the loss of 

freedom & 'classic' justice in EU since 2013 and Paris Attacks

22 issues discussed here ...

SUMMARY - THE PROBLEM WITH THIS ARGUMENT

So, what are we trying to tell you?

o the westcoast ideals of open and free press, media

  are in danger. the govt is putting direct requests

  towards silicon valley internet giants to make

  the web more polite and avoid radicalisation

o google by ways of its position (search, dns, and 

  its plan to enforce safe ads and https) could

  create a safe, but NOT OPEN web 3.0

  (and they'll call this: kicking sites off the

  /open/ web, strangely enough)

The trouble is that the facts around which the story

above revolves is in a way a media story, and partially

quite technical, and more a digital security story.

So, we think, hardly anybody sees the story, or

perceives the story this way (but it's more than

merely a matter of perception, the web is changing!).

So, finally (for now), say you are a cnet tech news

reader... what are signs this is happening?

o check out the red and blue underlined stories

  in this bookmark screenshot of cnet stories dec15-feb16

  there are 4 or 5, plus 3 stories about pages getting

  kicked off facebook, in which it enforces its

  community standards regulation, which are very vague

  and strange in principle, considering facebook is

  used by a global audience without one-size-fits-all

  'community standards'.

o you could, it's up to you, see that MORE stories

  than in the 3 months before dec15 (sep-nov15)

  have this 'let us (automatically) purge all

  aggression, unpoliteness (and terror) for you'-ishness

THE PROBLEM - A LITTLE PURGE? ANY SIZE A PROBLEM!

Concerning the web 3.0, we admit it's a small problem.

We estimate that roughly 10-30 million personal

freeform paid webpages exist (some webstats), These are mostly 

well-paid, well-positioned individuals. They have been or

will be hit by google's https enforcement, but they can

afford to solve the problem and get a certificate.

The worrying part is the freeform, mostly paid 'activist'

part of the websites, which we estimate to number 300

thousand. These are probably profiled to be 'amateur'

by twitter and probably suffer from both this authority

profiling and google's https enforcement. A third, 90

to 100 thousand, might even have been included in the 

125 thousand deletion of radical accounts on twitter.

A BIG PROBLEM? - WELL... IT'S CONTROL!

The fact that just 2 suffer minor measures against 1

who are deleted would indicate the harshness of such

a 'politeness purge'. It's an estimate. But the number

only depends on a chosen degree of acceptable speech.

And speech /should/ be very free. Only direct threats to

safety should matter. The rest /is/ state control.

Govts in the west went from ...

"hiding behind private companies for

digital snooping, says UN" tweet

... to (stealthy) control

To be continued...

===

Already here - 'govt->ggl twt->control' in the news again

2016-02-27

Facebook wants to crack down against hate speech on migrants

2016-01-19

Facebook confronts online hate in Europe-wide campaign

Trying to find a balance ... ;)

Zuckerberg said: "There's not a place for this kind of content on Facebook. 

Learning more about German culture and law has led us to change the 

approach," he said.

AND

"Equally important are the support of counter speech, the promotion of 

grassroots movements that fight extremist views

SO ...

What's exactly, of people's input is left on fb to... 'counter'??

To be continued ...

2016-03-27

First i kept thinking 'govt is obsolete', trying to grasp

power like this. Then a switch, i thought that... /is/

corporatism at work! Does anybody see it this way too?

Yes, this is a March 27th opinion article in The Guardian

by Evgeny Morozov ...

The state has lost control: tech firms now run western politics

Heavy implications for justice, democracy, society!

"Many httphosted zeldas and zorks vanished forever in the meantime!"

Society irreversibly affected. Personal afterthought

(originally on twitter)

To be continued ...

2016-04-20

A leading journalism advocacy group said 

world press freedom 

deteriorated in 2015, especially in the

Americas, warning of "a new era of propaganda".

Read short report on World Press Freedom Index 2015

To be continued ...

2016-04-24

STOP ERDOGAN

blijf met je klauwen van onze schrijvers

Since EU's Tusk violated refugees' human rights on 03/03

by telling people in wars to "stay home", we ...

don't care much about the EU anymore. Making concessions

to Turkey doesn't help its image much either

o france24 reported Turkey as sending refugees back,

  moving them, jailing them, where some suffered abuse.

  - basically a nation as unwelcoming to some as the EU itself

o while turkey is suppressing free press, 

  so how can EU know what it is dealing with it? 

  - that's for sure, isn't it?

you can go ask around, but the situation is such that

strong language maybe can't be avoided in all cases

so such an observer either excludes suppression

or excludes turkey all together

2016-04-29

a formal analysis ...

why i am so critical

To be continued ...

2016-05-10

Facebook accused of leaving out CONSERVATIVE 

posts (not radical right, but directly right 

off-center) in trending, by an employee

Facebook accused of leaving out CONSERVATIVE posts

Facebook denies, for now - (read here)

For certain, Facebook, and the other tech firms

put themselves on this track, instigated

by the French, German and US security-focused

govs. Trust has been lost for certain. Already.

Not even 6 months into this gov-silicon 

initiative.

NB It has something /for/ it, something against.

All issues have carers, you don't get to change 

all the carers' choice of theirs. A lot of good 

happens this way.

This site focuses on how limiting expression

damages progress in society however.

1)

Freedom of expression could be like online

privacy ... one should try to help the society

make workable and realistic compromise.

If all the techies hide in absolutism, the tech 

will be worse of, and society - Obama said

something like that at Austin SXSW Con lately.

2)

Westcoast tries to thread together the developments

and paint a picture of it, to help transparancy,

early warning for authoritarianism and things

like cyberpunk's big business taking over...

corporatism. We'll try to put up here what seems

happening, almost happening and what position

that brings us in, plain english, politically.

(not: polite, not: safety focused) ... the internet

can grow new systems, westcoast is not about 

'fuses'. Once there's weapons, jails, central power

... communication better enter new stages as well.

(and that's /for/ expression ;) peace & progress!

To be continued ...

2016-05-15

As deletion and censorship incidents pile up this may16...

 

Bloomberg radio news at 2016-05-15 19.00cet:

tide is turning against ISIS both online and on the battle field

Okay, that may be the military course that the West wants.

But overhere, knowing what that means, /online/: it means 

sinking to the level of the most aggressive party on the West's 

side: Turkey (violence upon different own parties and media)

A dutch politician, columnwriter and a publisher had their

pages removed. Our guess says, based on xp, that is world

news because these people have some kind of voice anyway

(also without a facebook page).

So we estimate:

[10]min to [100]max times 10 waves [during Turkey's 

actions] times 40 countries

means 4000 to 40,000 have probably been affected,

without being involved in any kind of violence.

That's the dark part of this online victory 'on ISIS'.

The West's campaign is now based on war, violence 

/and/ suppression, which happens as we speak, according

to us, in /such measure/ (4000-40,000 people affected).

We're happy there's a real web to report freely.

But this is a dark month for freedom.

To be continued ...

2016-05-16

Luckily, the day after having this dark perspective

on the nature of the web and the role of the tech

firms, the New York Times international (news paper)

offered a more positive outlook:

You could say: the tech firms transformed and 

are no longer a platform (my term) but

are curators for news and entertainment

Still means we lost neutrality and democracy though ;)

To be continued ...

2015-05-19

Facebook ... acting (deletion 01, deletion 02)

on behalf of aggressive ww3 effort partners or just 

not neutral, and highly unpredictable ... does it 

just /act/ like it's censoring a lot on behalf 

of Turkey? ;-)

Here's more on the algorithms.

The Real Bias Built In at Facebook - read here (NYTi)

Algorithm that decides what goes in the feed ...

values comments and sharing. All this suits cont//ent 

designed to generate either a sense of oversize delight 

or righteous outrage and go viral, hoaxes and 

conspiracies as well as baby pictures, happy 

announcements (that can be liked) and 

important news and discussions

I can only say New York Times international

(algorithms, 'admit they're not neutral', and tech 

transformed from platform to 'curator' of news)

is a lot milder than us from time to time, or

the Guardian, which posted an opinion item

which said the gov already lost control to the tech

firms.

The state has lost control: tech firms now run 

western politics - read here (Guardian)

Maybe safest to say is that the democracy

has been killed in 'big-audience cyberspace' for 

commerce, the illusion of security.

And that while the idea of 'Europe' was sold to 

its citizens under the promise of Europe to use

'soft power' to make the world better.

Now we're /experiencing/ supression and we don't

know who to blame. The gov, the firms or some

algorithm. Maybe 'the machines' in all the scifi

movies were just not transparant enough too? :)

To be continued ...

2016-05-20

Keeping the anti-police violence in France in mind,

westcoast is not asking for revolution. It's just 

that the internet allows one to get up to speed

on media freedom. Again, we do believe media freedom, 

new stages in communication is just as fundamental as

actual freedom of speech. But revolution is too much,

the internet has an intrinsic freedom, and the force

behind it is the force of speech. It will not stop.

The internet gives people an information advantage

because the line from war/industry (perspectives,

defamation), to gov to tech firms to /one's own/

freedom of speech online is short. The line is 

short and feedback on censorship is still doable 

and trustworthy (can you print that 404 Page not 

found for me?, and the likes). Although the matters

on social networks are more graded (profile, 

algorithm, and provided audience).

On twitter and facebook, and the web, it is very

well possible to criticize in the form of quite

technical or philosophical messages.

Specific accusations or defamation can lead to

prosecution, or result in other reactions.

If your expression of discontent is about how you

were treated by a certain party, be it religious,

government, police, military, a relation or a

criminal? The balance you want to strike is 

between a message that points to you, to resque

you, and towards them, which endangers you more

(again).

We can only say, if you want to be unerasable.

Don't seek for it on the internet, be that thing

yourself, alive. Be a living insult towards war 

and force for example. But don't organize.

Yes. You want to retreat. The rich retreat,

the old retreat. Get both. Double retreat :).

Speak from wisdom when you're young, be wise

enough to sit back later and remember fondly.

To be continued ... 

===

Conclusion

We would want to, but we can't change the nature

of the Web as it is now:

o the majority hardly leaves the social web

o a large part of the rest of the web is

  accessed through apps and/or is commercial

The westcoast ideals have faded: the 2013-2016 purge

Looking at our own stats.... many brazil webpage hits 

indicates that google purged our sweet webpage. 

It has been on the Web since 1995 

Everyone would do their own publishing. Now everyone 

is on the pages of a few commercial social media sites.

International press freedom is in decline

since 2013, so is freedom on the social media.

Communication enters new stages of development.

The affected freedom is no less fundamental

than affecting actual speech.

===

Some

conclusions, 2 attempts at some media theory 

& the EU / tech firm agreement of 1st of june 'in the press'

or ... in one line

Thanks

Grtz

SF

===

Update 2016-10-29 A

Germany's Merkel addressed several of the search and 

censorship questions surrounding tech firms' algoritmes

(however, not the question of censorship by EU and 

the question of corporate action resulting in limitation

of free speech and ... freedom of speech differences 

linked to profiling of users by the firms.)

Merkel wants Facebook and Google's secrets revealed

Update 2016-10-29 B

Wired Magazine UK has a 6 page article on the problem

that social media, comment sections online, etc face.

It reports on studies into authoritarian regimes, the

people that get into trouble, trolling, 'troll farms'.

And Google's project Google Jigsaw and Conversation AI,

which have the intention to study and automate, resp.

The mentioned free speech activists and as we already

were aware even trolling victims often dont want

censorship, especially not automated. One feared the

'delete all' option it provides ...

Wired coins the digital 'justice league' (while we 

coined 'corporate justice'!) ... the implications

is an erosion of human rights (free speech), sense 

of justice, etc. Also important to discuss is how

these devs affect sense of justice in people that

are growing up now and never knew justice classic.

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justice-league-ai-powered-war-trolls/

To be continued

===

PS Haven't worked or thought about it all for a while

  but concerning the old Usenet, I tried it

  and ran into very clear problems ... and once

  again can sense some EU censor-trouble there

  the Usenet is an ancient 'p2p' posting sys, and

  really not that relevant, but i feel locked up

  if there's only web and mail (without the

  option to spam, in some sort of emergency :)

  This is the crude 1mb report on usenet censor EU 

  (or NL, but it's probably the EU, so... censor EU)

  1028_samhain16_usenet_post_REPORT_2part_censor_check_confirm_(1mb).zip

  Thinking again: so the Internet and the Web?

  ARE the same thing in EU

  My God - don't know where to turn...

  So, westcoast-ideals -> we 'live' it

=== eof

(73 links in this page)

Appendix

The Web 1993-2016 - some web 1.0 and web 2.0 info

History of the Internet (in 2018 50 years old!)

History of the Web (in 2018 25 years old!)

the Web's most popular sites (wiki)

the Web's most popular tech: WordPress (wiki)

the 4 greatest, according to westcoast, sites 

ranking below the web giants of the top 25, 

ps. all less than 100m users

pinterest - my own page

reddit

wordpress.com

tumblr

some webstats (number of sites & xx)

===

CLAIM

We claim that nowhere on the web

you find info like there is on

westcoast ideals - westcoast-ideals.com

it's critical, technical, political

and ideological - oriented at peace

and well documented thinking

(though it's becoming a bit like

those webpages with evergrowing

link-and-comment pairs of before ;)

=

MORE SITES WITH A CRITICAL MESSAGE 

Back to westcoast-ideals home top of item

===

THESE ARE SOME WELL KNOWN SOURCES

ifex.org

indexoncensorhip.org

globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu

=

https://www.cpj.org/

commitee to protect journalists

https://commondreams.org

positive, not polarized, with

quality guest writers

https://mediashift.org/

quite decent, but quality info

https://censorwatch.co.uk/

lots of media censor watching

and some general free speech

news (section broad sheet)

https://www.csmonitor.com/

always quality, has been

on the net forever

https://opendemocracy.net/

=

THESE SITES ARE MORE AMATEUR-ish

BUT QUITE COOL and worth checking out

connexions.org

popularresistance.org

panarchy.org

=

these sites are quite overpolarized

in war or anti war, imperialism,

or into conspiracy:

informationclearinghouse.info

inconvenienttruths.net

globalresearch.ca

seeingtheforest.com

===

MORE

greenteethmm.com

aim.org

academia.edu

thelucidlibertarian.blogspot.com - stopped in 2014

kractivist.org - unav - Resource Limit Is Reached

variant.org.uk - free arts & culture

interaksyon.com - cool, philippino

washingtonsblog.com

alternativeway.net - # shop

trust.org - # foundation

sras.org - # school of russian and asian studies

scidev.net - # edu in s-afr

epic.org - el priv info centre

=== eof