2019:Partnerships/Volunteers needed to develop noncommercial social media to save civilization

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Partnerships/Volunteers needed to develop noncommercial social media to save civilization

Description

Wikimedia Saving Civilization

Major philanthropies like the Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network, have advertised for proposals to counter the threat of antisocial media that is allegedly contributing to recent increases in political polarization worldwide. Xenophobia is growing worldwide, as witnessed by the election of many extremist leaders and the increasing frequency of xenophobic violence including the assault rifle shootings at Charlie Hebdo in 2015 and in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month. These trends if left unchecked pose multiple existential threats to civilization including nuclear war and winter, whose most likely outcome would involve the deaths of 98 percent of humanity, most from starvation.

I believe that the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedians more generally are ideally suited to reverse these trends by developing and encouraging the use of noncommercial social media platforms that would challenge the hegemony of commercial and other elite-controlled social media. The funding of these commercial and other elite-controlled social media depends on microsegmentation, i.e., Balkanizing and exploiting the body politic to benefit the elites, who control their funding. A project to develop alternative noncommercial social media, e.g., a Wikisocial, to counter this trend could start by reviewing and comparing existing noncommercial social media platforms, like Mastodon to name only one. We could then partner with major activist groups whose use of the platforms might help the activist groups make faster progress toward their objectives, because suitable noncommercial platform(s) could help them build bridges between competing groups rather than the separating and polarizing approach of those trying to exploit them to benefit their funders. This effort might involve someone like Daniel Kahneman, whose deep understanding of how people think and make decisions might help drive improvements in the social media platform(s) used. Further software development could be funded and supported in other ways by philanthropies that have already called for proposals for work in this area.

Relationship to the theme

This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — by asking workshop participants to help review existing noncommercial social media platforms that social activist groups would use to increase their rate of progress toward their goals. This relates especially to the 2019:Wikimedia 2030 key Sustainable Development Goals as follows:

• Goal 17. Partnerships for the goals: By creating and helping deploy noncommercial social media designed to help people understand and bridge competing perspectives, in contrast to existing commercial and other elite-controlled social media, whose funding depends on microsegmentation, which is a form of Balkanization required to facilitate the exploitation of the body politic by the elites who control media funding and governance.
• Goal 13. Climate action: Because the social activist groups most likely to be early adopters of innovations in social media might be youth groups like Extinction Rebellion and the Sunshine movement.
• Goal 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions: Because groups like Peace Action and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability understand (a) the need to appeal to the youth and (b) the need for better media (and because the author of this workshop proposal already has connections with these two groups as well as some connection with Extinction Rebellion). If these groups get good results from using new noncommercial social media, similar groups like the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons could likely be interested in promoting further deployment of such noncommercial social media.
• All the other Sustainable Development Goals, because progress on all these issues is obstructed, because every SDG measure threatens someone with substantive control over the media: If we can produce more democratic media, we can overcome these major impediments to progress in all these areas.

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

Participants will have discussed what they might do to further the development and deployment of noncommercial social media to increase the rate of progress toward accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals and other purposes consistent with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. With alignment of intentions, some of the participants will commit to action in this area, including the following:

1. Testing and comparing existing noncommercial social media platforms [like Mastodon, to name only one], and posting their comparisons in related articles on Wikiversity, which is a reasonable platform for crowdsourcing collaborative work of this nature.
2. Promoting the benefits of using noncommercial social media by the activist groups they support, probably including but not limited to Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise movement, and documenting what these groups would want and need to make it easier and more attractive for them to use one or more of those noncommercial social media platforms in their organizing efforts.
3. Working with paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation to seek grant funding from philanthropies like the Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network, both of which have already called for proposals for work to address the growing concerns about “antisocial media”.
4. Iterating to improve our understanding of alternative noncommercial social media and what would be needed to develop and deploy noncommercial social media platforms that could potentially overtake Facebook and Twitter, to name only two, as platforms for political organizing and action to build a better future for all of humanity.

For more, see the Wikiversity articles on "Wikimedia Saving Civilization" and International Conflict Observatory.

Session leader(s)

• v:User:DavidMCEddy, lead author of v:Everyone's favorite news site and many related Wikiversity articles under v:Category:Freedom and abundance. Outside of Wikimedia projects, he's known as Spencer Graves. He was recently elected Secretary of KKFI, a noncommercial FM radio station in Kansas City, broadcasting 24/7 at 100,000 watts with a paid staff of two full time and two half time and with 90 percent of its broadcast schedule locally produced by volunteers. He also serves on the Board of Peaceworks Kansas City, which is affiliated with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and Peace Action. He also knows people in a local Extinction Rebellion group and plans to talk with them about the circumstances under which they might be interested in experimenting with one or more noncommercial social media platforms.

Session type

Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

• Workshop to identify and try to solve problem

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

• Room: with round-table seating with a projector, screen and a flip chart for each table.

• Audience: up to a few dozen that would discuss in small groups what they might do in this area, to draft group report backs as envisioned with “Session Outcomes” above.

• Recording: A workshop like this would not seem to lend itself to recording, beyond possibly recording the report-backs of each group to the others, and the resulting questions and comments.

Notes