Small grass roots projects

[Outis]

I'm aware of or know people working on a few projects right now that are mostly not map related but are map friendly in some capacity.

One is around a free-speech blogging platform built in a way that there's no servers or even serverless infrastructure so no costs and everything stored anonymously and running in browser. It's not targeted at maps or any group but I've had it confirmed that as a free-speech absolutist platform it wouldn't filter posts on map related issues and would expect everyone to treat such as articles with the same dignity as any other article. Basically you don't have to like an article but as a free-speech platform you have to support it's right to have a voice.

Another is a community project looking at how new countries can be formed that have different governance and economic models and constitutions that support all citizens. Again I know people involved in the project and asked the question about map citizen rights and absolutely the assumption is that maps like any other citizen would be treated with dignity and respect.

The third is a project I'm aware of to collect data and statistics on map related issues such as people's perceptions changing over time. It isn't a pro or anti map initiative but is a very small grass roots project to simply try to get some data that can be used for research or even advocacy.

These are all relatively small grass roots projects if anyone is interested in any in particular. I'm also interested in what other grass roots projects people know of that people could contribute to.

[PorcelainLark]

Two ideas:

1. Identifying, documenting, and analyzing previous successes (if there are any). Have MAP related causes (e.g. freedom of expression, humane treatment of sex offenders) been successfully defended or advanced under certain conditions, and failed in others?
2. Reaching out to experts. Trying to find out how institutions make decisions concerning MAPs and what it would take to change how they make their decisions.

[FairBlueLove]

These are all relatively small grass roots projects if anyone is interested in any in particular.

The first one seems interesting, especially regarding how the platform is built. Can you expand a bit on how it works?

I seem to understand, the fact that there are points of attack like servers is a fundamental problem for free-speech platforms. Also depending on where the servers resides. Would a structure like that be a solution to the present kind of issue this forum has with regards to UK members inclusion, or it is a completely different aspect?

[Outis]

These are all relatively small grass roots projects if anyone is interested in any in particular.

The first one seems interesting, especially regarding how the platform is built. Can you expand a bit on how it works?

I seem to understand, the fact that there are points of attack like servers is a fundamental problem for free-speech platforms. Also depending on where the servers resides. Would a structure like that be a solution to the present kind of issue this forum has with regards to UK members inclusion, or it is a completely different aspect?

It's a mix of technologies on the clearweb.

Static HTML and Javascript served directly from GitHub, so anyone can clone the project and run it locally with no special software installed.
Posts stored on IPFS which is a global distributed file system, so no central server or logging of IPs etc. Anyone can run IPFS on their computer or use one of the many public IPFS services to upload their blogs straight to IPFS which returns a code identifying the file on the network, then submit that code to be the blogging service where it's reviewed to make sure it's legal and if approved it gets added to the blogging index. The blog service only gets that code and retrieves the post from IPFS so the blog knows nothing about who wrote and uploaded it to IPFS, unless the blogger includes a blogging handle since most bloggers like to build a portfolio. If the blog post includes a handle then it allows people to search by handle, but it's optional so blog posts can be entirely anonymous. Of course people can run the site and IPFS locally if they wanted to or use Tor or VPNs when browsing to the public site which is served from GitHub.

It's very early days as a service but it is running with minimal search and filtering for example but will continue to be developed and hopefully cloned and contributed to by developers who love free opensource projects.

I know the developers building it, they're just building it as a generic opensource free project. I'm interested in the approach taken because the same approach could be applied to other site types, you could in principle build an anonymous forum for example in a similar way without requiring the use of the darkweb. Of course GitHub itself might log IP addresses from visitors so the usual precautions should be taken when going to the blogging site but the blogging service itself is blind to who's visiting or where posts come from and it comes down to how rigidly they're able to stick to their Declaration of Principles to champion free speech and not judge or take a view on any posts submitted as long as they are legal, and will encourage users to also respect the views of posters even if they don't agree with them.

[FairBlueLove]

These are all relatively small grass roots projects if anyone is interested in any in particular.

The first one seems interesting, especially regarding how the platform is built. Can you expand a bit on how it works?

I seem to understand, the fact that there are points of attack like servers is a fundamental problem for free-speech platforms. Also depending on where the servers resides. Would a structure like that be a solution to the present kind of issue this forum has with regards to UK members inclusion, or it is a completely different aspect?

It's a mix of technologies on the clearweb.

Static HTML and Javascript served directly from GitHub, so anyone can clone the project and run it locally with no special software installed.
Posts stored on IPFS which is a global distributed file system, so no central server or logging of IPs etc. Anyone can run IPFS on their computer or use one of the many public IPFS services to upload their blogs straight to IPFS which returns a code identifying the file on the network, then submit that code to be the blogging service where it's reviewed to make sure it's legal and if approved it gets added to the blogging index. The blog service only gets that code and retrieves the post from IPFS so the blog knows nothing about who wrote and uploaded it to IPFS, unless the blogger includes a blogging handle since most bloggers like to build a portfolio. If the blog post includes a handle then it allows people to search by handle, but it's optional so blog posts can be entirely anonymous. Of course people can run the site and IPFS locally if they wanted to or use Tor or VPNs when browsing to the public site which is served from GitHub.

It's very early days as a service but it is running with minimal search and filtering for example but will continue to be developed and hopefully cloned and contributed to by developers who love free opensource projects.

I know the developers building it, they're just building it as a generic opensource free project. I'm interested in the approach taken because the same approach could be applied to other site types, you could in principle build an anonymous forum for example in a similar way without requiring the use of the darkweb. Of course GitHub itself might log IP addresses from visitors so the usual precautions should be taken when going to the blogging site but the blogging service itself is blind to who's visiting or where posts come from and it comes down to how rigidly they're able to stick to their Declaration of Principles to champion free speech and not judge or take a view on any posts submitted as long as they are legal, and will encourage users to also respect the views of posters even if they don't agree with them.

That's interesting, thanks for the info!
At the beginning I thought it was through IPFS, but as I read

platform built in a way that there's no servers or even serverless infrastructure

I doubted it, because I thought IPFS was indeed a serverless infrastructure.
I remember reading once that IPFS, compared for example to Tor, trades privacy for decentralization. But as you write here it seems that some level of privacy is still attainable.

[Outis]

If you run an IPFS node then your node's IP is visible to the network, so if you're using your own IPFS node then it should be be run using a VPN or over Tor. Alternatively use a web3 node provider to post, you can sign up to several for free without providing identifiable information and post from there.

The blog service itself takes blog posts in either by being provided a the files CID if it's on IPFS, or by email. Other mechanisms will be added but these are both fairly private ways. Once a post is approved it's added to IPFS which means it gets a new CID which is traced back to the blogging service rather than to the original poster. Metadata doesn't contain identifiable information.

It's still at alpha though but there are a few features planned.

1. Publish a public key allowing encrypted submissions to be made. The review process decrypts, approves and publishes so the original encrypted submission can't be read by anyone outside the review service.

2. There's a debate as to whether it will be practical long term to review every post in advance and so whether they will be auto-added to the index and removed if a complaint is made and it's agreed that it contains illegal content. This is how other blogging services such s Medium work, they don't review posts in advance but they do remove posts that raise complaints. The above decryption process can be automated if this approach was taken allowing private encrypted posts to be made which the blogging service decrypts and reposts. If automated though then there would need to be a process to do this securely since a server would now be needed, so this would almost certainly run inside a TEE so that no-one has access to or visibility of the process running.

3. Other ways to submit posts including support for Tor and Hyphanet etc but care has to be taken to not allow a flood of illegal content which is in no ones interest.