A lot of people are still baffled by the fact substantial anticapitalist change hasn't come about, despite the rise of "alternative" media.
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A lot of people are still baffled by the fact substantial anticapitalist change hasn't come about, despite the rise of "alternative" media. What we rarely acknowledge is the reality of the dire landscape: state media, corporate media, clout-chasers, commercial initiatives competing in the marketplace, and disparate silos where everyone's "alternative" media is the one that will change things if just more people would consume it. But this is all wrong: https://www.mediaactivist.com/manifesto/
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It took me about twenty years of research and about two years to put that together, and a anti-authoritarian radical media network of local sites based on the French Mutu model - that I'm calling "The Intersection" - is something I've constantly come back to as the ideal, robust media we need: no commercial interests, no ads, no algorithms, no clout-chasing, no hierarchy; just bulletins about actions, events, and ideas relevant to your locality. Let's build it. Let me know if you're interested.
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I know @kathimmel and @ophiocephalic expressed some interest in maybe helping develop The Intersection - I wonder if we can find anyone else? I set up a Signal group, just have to pick when to invite folks to it to form a small group to throw around ideas!
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@MediaActivist
I have a thought or two about this call to action. It reminds a bit of my experience on the fedi, advocating for the communalized organization of a "free fediverse" based on what I call intentional federation.I posted a few longer-form posts on these ideas. I never really included a direct "get in touch" sort of invitation but it was implicit. The results weren't terribly inspiring; the posts were politely received but didn't really spark much further convo, let alone movement.
It's tricky trying to organize stuff like this on social media because lots of folks, even as radicals, are here to hang out rather than activate and build something. We have an additional problem on the fedi, which is the predominance of Mastodon, a project which embodies zero consciousness for community organization and is entirely directed as a twitter clone for individuals.
Getting people interested enough to jump apps can be a challenge, and we have inadequate tools here on the fedi to organize groups. This is slowly changing, but only with Masto-alternatives. Bonfire is particularly interesting in this regard, it's being built from the ground up as a microblogger which makes group organization easy
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@ophiocephalic @kathimmel You have provided such superb resources in the past. But yeah, it can be tricky; I reckon a few more posters could help sum up "The Intersection" and articulate it better. Please tell me about Bonfire, that sounds really interesting!
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@MediaActivist
Bonfire: https://bonfirenetworks.org/The project is in beta but has its shit together.
And yes, by all means continue to post on this idea, it's a strong one. We need something like this and this fediverse toolset has the raw materials to build it
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@MediaActivist @kathimmel @ophiocephalic
There is a project people have been working on for the last ten years that does this is #KISS and soughted #OMN
There have been quite a few, mostly funded projects, that have failed to do this over the last 20 years.
#techchurn is a real problem, we need to compost the #techshit as much as make more
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@witchescauldron @kathimmel @ophiocephalic That's why the manifesto proposes a completely different way of doing things; a seed that needs planting and watering while the others are composting. You're right, there are too many silos, like I alluded to. The only way forward is this kind of mutual aid media; no hierarchy, no clout-chasers, no commercialism. But that's a major reason "The Intersection" isn't appealing for a lot of media activists: they want to be "seen," they want to be "known." Too much ego, requiring high-profile recognition over a desire for revolutionary media.
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@witchescauldron
I would argue that Jay's idea is novel - if I understand it properly, a mutual-aid Indymedia for the fediverse age. There's lots of potential here. Mutual aid orgs tend to organize loosely and quickly and don't have the time or resources to reinvent the technological wheel.Would further offer that *some* of the fedifam ideas might be useful here, like the communalization of infrastructure (e.g. setup and hosting)
