Category: community

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community thoughts

Small Networks: Intentional Communities of Shared Interests

In a previous blog post, I delved into the complexities of decentralization, particularly in the context of setting up and maintaining decentralized social networks.

The passage of time has brought new thoughts to the forefront, igniting a fresh perspective that I’m eager to explore.

I’ve been pondering the concept of smaller, more specialized social networks catering to distinct shared interests. The substantial amount of time invested in crafting content for today’s dominant social platforms comes at a cost – our data is meticulously observed and utilized for targeted advertising, spawning a myriad of issues. This prevailing business model has led tech giants to conduct experiments that manipulate user emotions, as detailed in this article: Link to Forbes article on Facebook’s emotional manipulation.

It’s disconcerting that we’ve become mere data points ripe for experimentation and sale to advertisers. The fundamental flaw lies within the business model of these tech giants, wherein driving ad views reigns supreme, prompting them to resort to various tactics to maximize engagement.

I find myself drawn to the notion of small, interest-centric networks supported by community funding, fostering a deliberate selection process for members and cultivating a culture of responsible conduct. When the focus isn’t fixated on amassing sheer numbers, there’s no incentive for exploitative ‘growth hacking’ strategies or the relentless pursuit of revenue.

This vision evokes the spirit of ‘chamas,’ where like-minded individuals converge to support each other financially, forming tight-knit groups with shared goals and values.

Looking at trying this out soon for a number of small communities.

Categories
community technology

decentralization

Prototype of datacenter demoed by Ethio telecom during Internet Governance Forum in Ethiopia

Decentralization sounds like a great idea. Technically, yes but it brings about a whole lot of issues. Back in the day computing was expensive and communicating meant running your own infrastructure. For communities they had to set up their own forum softwares and have some volunteer run the servers to host the forums.

We got into an era where there hasn’t been a need to run your own servers as infrastructure became cheaper to buy, social media became a thing, hosting platforms and many other developments. The advertisement business model made it easy for folks to connect and communicate as platforms sold their engagement to companies in the form of ads. Ads model means the platform need to understand the users and this obviously brought about a lot of privacy issues. 

For some this centralization is the problem. To some extent I agree with this argument since you cannot tell a privately owned company what to do and without regulation they don’t really need to listen to you. The easy solution is to say lets just decentralize. The issue with decentralization is we are heading back to a time when you need to have some technical experience to run social platforms. For a community to keep engaging or do some any over the internet thing they need to buy and maintain infrastructure.

Decentralization would mean a whole lot of non-technical folks will need to find learn or jump onto some server. Apart from inclusion there emerges digital security and surveillance issues. Running a server would mean you need to be technical plus also need to be able to maintain & regularly update it. This opens up a whole lot of people to government surveillance as it’s easy to not properly follow server security measures.

When you come from communities whose first access to the internet was Facebook you would understand how running own servers and asking folks to install apps or only use a browser to communicate would be difficult to sell.

The other issue is that not everyone can afford to get off platforms they have spent a lot of time building engagement and have curved an audience for themselves. For most it’s hard to take time learn something new especially when it’s a little technical. 

This post doesn’t mean I don’t support or think decentralization can be a solution to a number of issues but I think we need to think of social issues like inclusion & existing threats like growing government surveillance. Decentralization is a great first step fighting use of personal data to sell ads and censorship that’s becoming common among the big social media platforms. 

Image at the top is prototype of datacenter demoed by Ethio telecom during Internet Governance Forum in Ethiopia.

Categories
community technology

Digital Literacy & Taxes

I have spent years working around digital literacy. I’ve had the privilege to support Pwani Teknowgalz’s work through Africa Code Week, Mombasa Girls in STEM, Google CS Clubs, CodeHack, Coders at American Spaces & many other programs. Through these programs we were able to get a lot of young ones excited about technology and the impact it can have in their lives, from simple Google search to find information, use of social media to boost your business, use of tools like canva.com to make stunning graphics. Some of these programs helped students get excited about science and mathematics subjects resulting in their exams score going up. There are those who got into careers like social media marketing, website and graphic design. It’s always amazing to see how one to two hour sessions can have an impact on one’s life.

The internet has enabled us to be able to go to remote places and do digital literacy sessions. There are areas where internet coverage was very low but we were able to make it work. Internet access is a huge challenge with regards to getting folks to participate in the digital economy. There are places where you only have a single mobile network provider because the others have not invested in getting those locations covered by their network. One is subjected to a single choice of network provider, in most cases you find this single provider charges a lot or has no internet bundle offers that are pocket friendly.

Besides internet access, devices are another challenge. In one program I supported we used the tablets that were supplied to schools by the government through the ICT Authority in the Ministry of ICT. Some of these tablets had not left the boxes they came with. The availability of these tablets was a huge plus. The challenge now is access to the devices outside the school.

The one challenge with digital literacy programs is sustainability of the trainings. Will the attendees be able to continue learning/practising when we leave? With the introduction of data and airtime taxes it will get harder for most to invest in learning through the internet and to access information. Beyond digital literacy there are a lot of young people who are self-employed through the different services they offer over the internet. When you cannot have people afford internet access it becomes harder for potential customers to see the importance of digital for their businesses. This increased taxation is implemented at a very wrong time, we are still in the covid-19 pandemic.

In a previous post, I wrote about how technology can play an important role in our country, this increase in taxation will make that difficult. The increase will grow the digital divide not allowing many to afford internet access. This is the time for open spaces and hubs that have funding or access to subsidized internet to play a critical role in providing this vital access. 

Bonus is a video of Kelvin driving us to a school in Malindi