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 content 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 Back to westcoast-ideals home top of item Statcounter View My Stats