New Social Media Platform Dubbed “The People’s Site” by Anonymous
MEDIA, 29 Jun 2015
True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service
(Antimedia) Facebook may have finally met its match. By directly targeting the social media behemoth’s lack of messaging encryption, infamously opaque algorithms, and government and advertiser accessibility, Minds.com has earned the attention of privacy advocates, activists, and frustrated Facebook users—and has even garnered active support from Anonymous. By employing many similar features found on Facebook and other social media giants, Minds gives its users a familiar platform without the numerous privacy concerns plaguing the long-established sites.
Users will find the typical status updates, comments, and link-sharing as other social media, but Minds takes the government’s eyes out of the equation by encrypting private messages and using open-source code that any programmer can check. The platform uses a “reward’ system based on points to earn “views” for posts, so the more active you are, the more the network will promote your posts—-without hindrance from advertisers and profit models.
“For every mobile vote, comment, remind, swipe & upload you earn points which can be exchanged for views on posts of your choice. It’s a new web paradigm that gives everyone a voice,” explains the website.
Minds.com founder Bill Ottman told Business Insider, “Our stance is the users deserve the control of social media in every sense.”
As an answer Facebook’s enigmatic algorithm that has contentiously manipulated users’ newsfeeds for years—essentially strangling organic post reach, even for wildly popular pages—Minds has vowed its formula for boosting posts will be transparent and available. Instead of using inexplicable formulas that rely on Orwellian features like how much time a user lurks on a post, the new platform logically bases its system on user interaction.
These features have been so appealing, the site had 60 million visitors before the official launch on Monday—the majority of whom listed an interest in “alternative media” as their primary reason to be there. In fact, the Facebook page Anonymous Art of Revolution—with a following of over one million users—boosted the Minds website when it announced a hackathon. According to the post:
“Anonymous is initiating a call to hackers, designers, creators and programmers to unite worldwide. Let us collaborate on the code of Minds.com and build a top site that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people.”
There have been many attempts to build alternatives to Facebook, but Minds.com—with its heavy emphasis on privacy and transparency—appears to be the most promising yet.
___________________________
This article (New Social Media Platform Dubbed “The People’s Site” by Anonymous) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and theAntiMedia.org. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org
Go to Original – trueactivist.com
DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
So, there is one more group trying to make the next facebook.
“Minds” claims to be open source. So far this is not true. They published some source code of their mobile application, but nothing from the website and the network server itself. The network and the website as it is now is not more open source than facebook.
Anyway, the main problem with fb is not so much the question whether it is fully open source but centralization: On fb you can only interact with people on fb. (In contrast, email is not centralized and we take this for granted! I can use any email address to email any other, no matter which providers are involved. Yes, GoogleMail is slowly destroying this, but that’s a different story.)
The centralization problem also holds for “Minds”: An account there will only allow you to interact with others who are on this platform on this specific server. This means that the owners of it will have control over who can communicate with whom, which content is deleted, who else gets to see it etc.
They talk about end-to-end-encryption but this is only for private one-to-one messages. Text, images or other content you post are still in the clear. A truly end-to-end-encrypted social network would be something else: It should guarantee that nobody besides your “friends” can view it. Moreover, it should not be necessary to trust the people running the network but this guarantee should be based on strong cryptography.
So, sit back and wait, so far Minds is not a big game changer in any way.
We do not need a new facebook. We need a decentral social network. Look at the diaspora* project instead.