I'm usually just a lurker on anarchistnews for the articles, so hopefully I don't sound too much like someone who doesn't know anything about the culture here. I always feel uncomfortable about advertising shit like this, so I'll try not to do that. There's a wider discussion to be had here anyways about online anarchist spaces - or the apparent lack thereof, and whether they have any value.
From what I've seen in the comments, anarchistnews.org has a bit of a problem of what the imageboard community calls "shitposters". Reactionary types trying to slide the discourse by false flagging as anarchists, and in general just making this not a comfy place to talk about stuff related to anarchy. Not that this is unique to anarchistnews; it's pretty much symptomatic of every comment section on the internet. The comment sections aren't the place to have any semblance of a sane discussion most of the time on pretty much any website.
Maybe I'm completely ignorant of how things are here. I wouldn't want to sound like an outsider strolling in telling everyone why they should be posting in a different anarchist space, or like I'm trying to take users away from anarchistnews, but it seems to me that the biggest strength by far of anarchistnews is publishing non-sectarian articles, and that discussion would generally be better off done somewhere else.
I know that some people here before have mentioned Anokchan (which sadly is dead) and /leftypol/ on 8chan. If there's anyone here who is at all interested in the prospect, I am trying to/hoping to revive 8ch.net/anarcho/ to create a non-sectarian space for the discussion of anarchist theory and culture. I know that 8chan is a horrible, horrible place, but unlike /leftypol/ I'm not at all interested in giving "free speech" to fascist shitposters, or promoting a kind of pseudo-anarchist Old Left dogmatic materialism, or letting reactionaries slide the board with nonsensical National "Anarchist" or "anarcho"-capitalist shit.
Better yet, in the long term, would be to have a dedicated online space for anarchist discussion - an anarchist imageboard maybe, similar to Anokchan. But that all depends on whether there are any anarchists on the Internet who care about or would participate in something like that.
Other than anarchistnews, where do you go for discussion with other anarchists? A lot of people aren't fortunate enough to have other anarchists in their area to meet up with IRL, but is there perhaps a lack of a strong anarchist space on the Internet? Is there really a need for one?
If this sounds interesting to anyone, I'd like to hear your thoughts or better yet see you over on /anarcho/ or in IRC: #anarcho#
I would greatly enjoy an actual anarchist discussion area on the internet. AnokChan did well in many ways, but just didn't generate the kind of interest that would've justified more resources being thrown at it. There was a lot of unique and interesting efforts put into it and it is sad there isn't much left to show that it had existed.
A new effort would be great.
I dunno... I think the chan formula doesn't allow for much intelligent discussions neither. It seems to rather make people produce childish level of content, letting aside the usually cool graphic stuff being posted, which basically is the best of what the chan can do.
I was more contemplating a Reddit-like discussion board that's all based on GPL and run by some liable/known anarchist collective, which wouldn't be explicitly "anarchist" yet be enough subversive and closet anarchistic to appeal to those interested. I think the mistake many have done was to put obvious labels on everything from the start... Actual real anarchy doesn't come with the clean, symmetrical circle-A or with any other explicit imagery.
The reason why I think "anarchistnews.org" kinda worked is its tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top facade... Kinda like having an "Anarchy TV" channel on the cable back in the '80s, run by actual anarchos though without taking themselves too seriously. Slapstick value, ya know...
I like the previous poster's idea of an anarchist discussion platform that doesn't have to always be explicitly anarchist. A lot, if not most, people who are interested in anarchist ideas are wary of labels (with good reason - there is even a strong anarchist politic against ideological labels). Labels help us find each other, but they can also limit the discussion - the number of conversations here about whether or not something is sufficiently anarchist to be worthy of discussion is more depressing than the shitposting (pssh, why talk about people influenced by tiqqun, they not even anarchists!).
There are a couple of reddit anarchy pages that are ok, but I don't discuss in them because the level of discussion is pretty low. I honestly find it better here, in the times when things don't get mired in a stupid flamewar between a known troll and the equally-trollish crew of anonymous anti-known-troll people. Although there have been some big improvements lately, and the increased use and prominence of the forums is a big part of that.
It's seems like there's not a lot of programming energy or capacity in the a-news project right now, so making suggestions about how to tweak this platform is, you're right OP, maybe less useful than looking for a new place for the things we want that a-news can't provide. I kinda like reddit, but I would like something that wasn't on reddit.com.
The problem with not having it be explicitly anarchist is the attraction ancaps and other fringe have to most things that don't explicitly say they aren't allowed to join. Even this site, which was originally very anarchist until thecollective took over, has opened the doors to enemies dominating the discussion while those who would consider themselves anarchists are pushed out because they usually have a little bit more of a life than these basement dwelling Stirnertards.
Mom said basements are the breeding dens for syndicalist propaganda and that organizing anarchy is like baking a cake in a brown paper bag! So who do I believe, you or my mom?
Would folks be interested in a new site that was invitation only, and requires login? Wondering...
So kinda like libcom, but maybe a bit more choosy about who can sign up and somewhat different politics? It's an interesting idea, but I wonder if it would attract enough of a base to make it exciting. Thinking about chans and reddits, the difference between an anarchist discussion space that meets a dynamic threshold of participation (r/anarchism), even if it's full of annoying non-anarchisty stuff, vs one that's more pure but less used (r/anarchistnews) is pretty clear. In spite of its flaws, people still use the former because it's where the conversations build up energy, even though there's lots of stuff they hate about it that the latter doesn't have.
I guess I'm worried about throwing out the baby with the bathwater with a-news. It's still kind of amazing that we're able to have interesting conversations about as many things as we do on here and a lot of that has to do with the number of people who comment and contribute. The openness and sometimes fuzzy 'non-sectarian' character is a big part of that.
" The openness and sometimes fuzzy 'non-sectarian' character is a big part of that." This tells me you are a traditionalist who has still not fully embraced individualists, but points for acknowledging their significance. In the 8 yrs I've been an occasional commenter on @news, libcom have always been the nemesis and traitor of the real anarchist vision.
The unknown Purist
Are you the anonymous poster I've been anonymously having conversations about purity with for the past several years? If so, hi, and also I still think striving for purity isn't worthwhile.
I believe there is enough discussion, people should make more actions.
reddit is part of NSA, who discuss there, he must be without brain.
why people should trust to you?
I don't trust to libcom, not even to some insurrection websites that can be honeypot, any snitch can publish news website and infiltrate among anarchists who are militant, others are not so much interesting to the secret service except to build reputation for snitches through activities among "legal" anarchists (anarchists that don't break the law). ruling class play games that cost us freedom and life.
less internet, more actions. we are not in peaceful society to discuss, discuss, discuss ...
It's funny you bring that up, because I had also been thinking about the relevance of this compared to just getting out and DOING things. It's part of the problem I've seen with /leftypol/ on 8chan: No one actually does anything IRL.
My biggest concern with doing something like this is how trustworthy the web host is. It'd have to be hosted outside the US, in Denmark maybe. I would set up a bitcoin pool and pay for the webhosting in bitcoin, and would have a canary to alert the users if any State officials have served gag orders or subpoena's or anything like that. HTTPS would be enabled by default, IPs would not be logged, bans would be done on the basis of browser fingerprint, Tor would be allowed, and if you're really concerned nonetheless about your privacy, I'd recommend you use a VPN. Riseup has a free VPN for instance.
I think that having an I2P board dedicated to action would be a neat idea, though. I2P by design is completely anonymous. I just don't know how one would do something like that without it becoming obvious bait for COINTELPRO-type stuff. If there was registration on the site, I think that it'd have to be something only available to registered users who are trusted members of the community. I2P would already hide who is posting on the board anyways, so no one would know who is registered and posting on there.
Just an idea though. It might not be a good one.
Browser fingerprinting is at least as dangerous as logging IP addresses, though in a different way. It takes an expert to post something to a site suspected of fingerprinting browsers (such as Youtube or Facebook) and not have to destroy the computer afterwards as a precaution against it being recovered by the enemy and used to prove they posted something "hot." A fully encrypted computer will block that attack-but only if the passphrase is strong enough to resist the usual dictionary attacks etc.
IP addresses on the one hand can generate suspects by monitoring ISPs, but any newbie can use a coffeeshop's wifi and forget about the IP address being registered in their name so long as the coffeeshop in question does not demand personal information to get online.
Torbrowser, BTW, is a fairly good technical defense against fingerprinting, as a lot of the things that make browsers unique are standardized or blocked. Also effective against IP address logging of course, so it will make bans hard to enforce either way.
Bans could be enforced by manually recognizing a troll's writing style, and the ability to do that is a reminder of the need not to have people whose writing is well known write secure communiques. That's how the Unabomber was caught, even though there was no other way in the world to trace his communique. His brother saw it, recognized the writing, and snitched.
So, these are all some good suggestions - many of which I hadn't considered myself.
I do agree that the *chan format is kind of played out. The Internet of today isn't what it was like in the 2000's, and the imageboard community has been absolutely swamped in fascist alt-right bullshit. There is definitely a clear need for being willing to move beyond the stubborn adherence to *chan culture that most people who use imageboards still advocate, because its model for creating good content just doesn't work anymore. And it arguably has never been conducive to good political discussion anyways. I know that there have been people on A-News who have mentioned /leftypol/ before, and if any of you go on there, I think you can probably see why *chan culture and politics just don't tend to mix well.
All the same, I still like the *chan format and this it can still be utilized. But there needs to be a separation between the funposting and the srs discussion, the community needs to be more willing to accept newcomers, and ideally the moderation and administration model for the community would be done more collectively.
I have a couple ideas I've been thinking over for awhile now about how one might be able to fix these issues. I think it might be a good idea to have a text-only board for serious discussion, to minimize the shitposting and distracting, childish posts as much as possible. I also think it would be a good idea to have on the front page something like an RSS feed for sites like A-News, which would both give sites like this more publicity and also encourage people on this hypothetical anarchist imageboard to read about stuff that's going on and not just stroll in to shitpost. I also think that it would be cool to combine this with something like a zine board, so that the site could be a platform for users to contribute their own articles and other content that would go in an e-zine. Lainchan already does something like this in fact.
Accepting newcomers is difficult, because there's always the risk that people are just going to spam the community with their hot opinions and drive out the people who have been a part of the community. I've seen this happen plenty of times on imageboards, and trying to enforce a secret club mentality is a really fragile way of preventing this. I'm not sure exactly whether or not to go with a less-explicitly anarchist type of image, or to be over-the-top about it. I think the best thing to do, though, would be to have a board specifically for newcomers and for debating anarchism. Maybe we could have this as one of the boards that are publicly-accessible and anonymous by default, and then keep other boards like a serious discussion textboard and the zine board as registration only?
There's also the issue of moderation. I think that 8chan is proof that a lassiez-faire moderation model just doesn't work because it allows for outsiders to flood the community and drive out any dissenting opinions. But there's also always the risk that the mods are going to be biased in some way, and having mods isn't the most anarchist way of administration. But unfortunately, the way the Internet is designed and because of the nature of online discussion, I don't see any way that the site could be collectively moderated. As others have mentioned, sites like Reddit tend to have poor discussion because a vote system creates a kind of echo chambery environment.
I think in any event that there needs to be more publicity to what the mods are doing. The mods should be required to sign every ban with a PGP key, and these logs should be publicly accessible and obviously so. I also think it might be a good idea to have a dedicated moderation IRC channel, with a webchat console embedded in the site's UI, so that anyone could jump in and make suggestions to the mods but also make it so that trust is created between the mods and the regulars in the IRC. It's possible that this would end up being a lot of work and would maybe require an unrealistic level of participation from the community, but it seems like a pretty close imitation of like an anarchist council type thing at least.
Anyways, sorry for the tl;dr again. Thoughts on these ideas?
there are no million anarchists, and your site would not attract so many people in any case. most anarchists are not tech guys sitting so much beside computers. there are, but not so many. even the US is so big, many well-known anarchist sites don't get so much visitors and even less comments. even if people read news, they are not so much active. they still get something on the plate, they read it and bye bye
but surely, your server should not be in Denmark, I think their parliament adopted the law about mass surveillance.
I think server should be owned by Greek anarchists (they have servers at the university) and you can be as admin in some other country, in that way, there are 2 levels of control if there is spying from the side of server, they can control you, you can control them. but I don't know if they give a server or just subdomain/site... try: www.espiv.net
Servers are becoming a rather tricky matter these days, and you see that with the recurrent high-profile arrests of Torrent site admins. Servers in Exarchia appear to still be a reliable thing, but you may also go for i2p hosts. i2p being used mostly for torrents must have contributed a lot to the speed and stability of the network lately.
It's true that these days we'd better look for actually useful and creative online spaces, instead of starting yet another blog or forum that's going to be ridiculously under-attended. Had to withdraw from the 5-years old blog I took part in not just because of the low rate of contributions which gave it the impression of being another one-way communication from the middle of the desert, but also for the lack of dynamic, especially in relation to real-life human activity and relations. Blog DID do its intended purpose, though in the dark, somewhere...
So I say if you are clear enough about the intent of a site, if you got an idea of what contribution it will bring to the anarchist struggle, then go for it.
Also Noblogs seems to be still cool, though my issue with this one and Espiv is the lack of support in English or French when it comes to technicalities.
- "anabraxas" (Antidev)
Insofar as the laws of mathematics are certain, they do not refer to reality, and insofar as
they refer to reality, they are not certain.
— Albert Einstein,
And then there are the natural laws hmm
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