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   Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Sunday, 20-Oct-2024 21:54:23 JST Mx Jay Baker

   A lot of people are still baffled by the fact substantial anticapitalist change hasn't come about, despite the rise of "alternative" media. What we rarely acknowledge is the reality of the dire landscape: state media, corporate media, clout-chasers, commercial initiatives competing in the marketplace, and disparate silos where everyone's "alternative" media is the one that will change things if just more people would consume it. But this is all wrong: https://www.mediaactivist.com/manifesto/

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Sunday, 20-Oct-2024 21:54:55 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     It took me about twenty years of research and about two years to put that together, and a anti-authoritarian radical media network of local sites based on the French Mutu model - that I'm calling "The Intersection" - is something I've constantly come back to as the ideal, robust media we need: no commercial interests, no ads, no algorithms, no clout-chasing, no hierarchy; just bulletins about actions, events, and ideas relevant to your locality. Let's build it. Let me know if you're interested.

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Sunday, 20-Oct-2024 23:07:14 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • ophiocephalic 🐍
     • kat donegan 🇵🇸✊

     I know @kathimmel and @ophiocephalic expressed some interest in maybe helping develop The Intersection - I wonder if we can find anyone else? I set up a Signal group, just have to pick when to invite folks to it to form a small group to throw around ideas!

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Sunday, 20-Oct-2024 23:57:23 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • kat donegan 🇵🇸✊

     @kathimmel Wow, thank you so much. That choked me up!

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     kat donegan 🇵🇸✊ (kathimmel@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Oct-2024 23:57:24 JST kat donegan 🇵🇸✊

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist ps: it is always a sincere & distinct joy to read your writing, jay.

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:35:53 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • benjamin melançon

     @mlncn Definitely what I led up to, you're right! That's awesome, and very interesting!

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     benjamin melançon (mlncn@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:35:55 JST benjamin melançon

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist

     The Visions Unite shallow version of #sortition – an approach in its fuller version that i think all of us working to build a world without 'leaders' separated from the rest of us should consider – would also be supplemental, the broadcast layer or extra attention-boost mechanism for what i felt you were leading up to, social-movement-embedded local news orgs.

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     benjamin melançon (mlncn@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:35:57 JST benjamin melançon

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist

     Very interested!

     Full disclosure i've wanted for 20-odd years, and occasionally worked on, something supplementary to what you describe:

     Mass communication that avoids the problems of hierarchy and power-seeking in the flow of information by collectively sharing the work of deciding the reach of any given message.

     We have a prototype up: https://visionsunite.gigalixirapp.com/about

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:58:10 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • benjamin melançon

     @mlncn I think you've made some absolutely superb points here, and I really appreciate you taking the time to offer them to me! I really wish these were the kinds of discussions more of us were having. I'll have to take some time to get my head around the software you cite here (as it is worth!) and consider how that could complement - or even drive forward - such a network.

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     benjamin melançon (mlncn@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:58:13 JST benjamin melançon

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist

     Oh, last thing i was trying to fit into only two posts:

     i realize that #VisionsUnite is likely to mostly make "wildly popular yet remarkably mild alternatives and tweaks to the system" stay in public consciousness, but i hope that when they system denies these anyway it makes people more radical and more organized (without the corporate mass media able to perform a lobotomy every single time).

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     benjamin melançon (mlncn@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:58:14 JST benjamin melançon

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist

     Reporting (and #journalism if one must call it that) includes skills worth developing, and #tools that support it.

     (Related, you got the long-winded version of me because Fedilab on my Android ate my mobile posting while i was drafting it!)

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     benjamin melançon (mlncn@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 21-Oct-2024 01:58:15 JST benjamin melançon

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist That is, i think reporters who are part of and accountable to communities struggling for liberation is more important than removing reporting from being a dedicated role some people have (though opening that up to everybody is central to Visions Unite style democratically-moderated mass media).

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     ClimateJenny (climatejenny@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Oct-2024 23:42:53 JST ClimateJenny

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist Good stuff! My brain is exploding. More later.

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     Mx Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Oct-2024 23:42:53 JST Mx Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • ClimateJenny

     @ClimateJenny Great! Excited!