[iDC] Replacing Facebook (Geert Lovink)

Thu Jun 3 18:19:20 UTC 2010

As I walk around campus today, I have the urge to peaches' I DONT GIVE
A FUCK song, because I'm so pissed about losing aaaarg.org. This is
TOO MUCH. When will we all finally reach our limit? It is my hope that
a million aaaarg mirrors will spring up...

Of course a lot of us have been brewing these dreams of escaping
social networks for a long time...
(http://bang.calit2.net/tts/category/facebook/) but it seems that now
we need to organize, we need a distributed strategy, to both help
efforts to develop new autonomous networks like elgg, identi.ca,
opensim and diaspora, but also to infiltrate and disrupt networks like
facebook, twitter and second life. In fact, second life is a perfect
case study of the horror of what these network owners imagine, a whole
world where everything you own, everything that is you, every bit of
your body and identity resides on their servers, and everyday new
Linden Labs licensing restrictions come out to legally  bind people
into the system and prevent escape at all turns.

Personally, I've been invested for quite a while in trying to develop
new networks, including networks such as radical porn sites, just one
example of the parts of ourselves and our lives that are excluded and
stripped from us in these corporate spaces. Actually my book calling
for the development of new autonomous networks stemming out of the
demand for the ability to change my identity constantly and at will
just came out (http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Desire-Affective-Cyborgs-C%C3%A1rdenas/dp/0982530994/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275588562&sr=8-1).

Still, even as we need to develop our own networks and software, we
also have to move to developing our own infrastructure
(http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/22/18603456.php)! We can no
longer rely on phone companies to provide our connections to each
other! We need to be in control of the very hardware itself, and we
all have routers in our homes that we can switch for just this
purpose!

As the case of ricardo dominguez and the bang.lab shows, university
networks are no longer any haven for free thought and radical
experimentation, we need to seriously dedicate our own resources and
lives to these struggles before WIPO controls all of our daily
interactions...

Sorry for the rant, I just can't take it anymore...

2010/5/28 Sean Dockray <sean at e-rat.org>:
>
> i'm not sure if I'm doing this (sending a message to the list in
> response to Geert) right, but here goes nothing.
> there's a few too many question marks and exclamation points and
> strident claims, but the form got the better of me.
> sean
>
> --
> FACEBOOK SUICIDE (BOMB) MANIFESTO
>
> Everyone now wants to know how to remove themselves from social
> networks. It has become absolutely clear that our relationships to
> others are mere points in the aggregation of marketing data. Political
> campaigns, the sale of commodities, the promotion of entertainment –
> this is the outcome of our expression of likes and affinities. And at
> what cost? The reward is obvious: we no longer have to tolerate
> advertisements for things for which we have no interest. Instead our
> social relations are saturated with public relations. But at least it
> is all *interesting*!
>
> Unlike the old days, when we could invent online identities daily, our
> social networks today require fidelity between our physical self and
> our online self. The situation is unbearable.
>
> The frightening consequence of it all is that we believe in the value
> of these networks. We understand perfectly well that our privacy is
> being renegotiated without our consent; the rules are changing in
> plain view; but we still participate! It is like a new form of money,
> something we realize is a myth, but we act like it is real and that is
> its power. We can’t leave because everyone else is there! Or because
> we are invested in the myth ourselves.
>
> The question is how do we extract ourselves from this predicament?
>
> Recently, some programmers figured out how to computationally do
> exactly this. By entering in your username and password, the software
> would delete as much information as possible, ultimately removing the
> account itself. It was a radical enough idea to attract the legal
> attention of Facebook.
>
> This software did not go far enough!
>
> When someone disappears from Facebook, does anyone notice? Does this
> software retroactively invalidate all of the marketing data that has
> been collected from the account? Has this person de-dividuated
> themselves? No, silence has not disrupted the system in the slightest!
>
> Social networks need a social suicide. In the same way that 99.99999%
> of users on Facebook don’t exist within the cloistered world of one’s
> home page, an invisible user – one who has committed suicide – is
> simply a non-factor in the constant and regular computational logic of
> the thing. The answer isn’t silence, but noise!
>
> Suicide on a social network is a matter of introducing noise into the
> system. It spreads viruses and misinformation. It makes things less
> interesting for others. It disrupts the finely calibrated advertising
> algorithms on which suggestions are made – for friends, groups,
> institutions, ideas, and so on. Social networking captures,
> quantifies, and capitalizes on positive feedback. It records and
> reproduces similarity. Oh yes, everyone is not watching one of three
> mass-produced choices; but beneath all of the possibilities there is
> only one choice! The one for you!
>
> A roadmap for an effective Facebook suicide should do some of the
> following: catching as many viruses as possible; click on as many
> “Like” buttons as possible; join as many groups as possible; request
> as many friends as possible. Wherever there is the possibility for
> action, take it, and take it without any thought whatsoever. Become a
> machine for clicking! Every click dissolves the virtual double that
> Facebook has created for you. It disperses you into the digital lives
> of others you hadn’t thought of communicating with. It confuses your
> friends. It pulls all those parts of the world that your social
> network refuses to engage with back into focus, makes it present again.
>
> Invisibility comes in many forms, and on social networks it is the
> form of a radical overload of information – a maximum participation.
> No more thought, because every considered click adds to the
> collaborative filtering algorithms that makes sure everyone continues
> to like what they like, but in slightly modified form. Click
> everywhere, click often, and don’t stop until you have disappeared
> beneath a flood of meaninglessness.
>
> This is a call for suicide, for the abandonment of seriousness and
> belief. It is a call to reclaim ourselves from the sad version of
> ourselves that lives in that bloodless village. Don’t become nothing,
> the singular point defined by an absence, become everything, with
> everyone else. Drown the system in data and make a new world in the
> ruins that remain!
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-- 
micha cárdenas / azdel slade

Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Lecturer, Critical Gender Studies Program, University of California, San Diego
Artist/Researcher, UCSD Medical Education
Artist/Theorist, bang.lab, http://bang.calit2.net

blog: http://transreal.org