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Continuing The Corbett Report‘s exploration of alternative social media platforms, today James talks to Bill Ottman about Minds.com.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee / Rokfin / Rumble / Download the mp4
I like “Intro Music” of these explorations regarding alternative social media platforms.
(…and that was good color on Corbett’s shirt for a video.)
Minds.com seems really cool.
I may check it out.
I like this guy Bill. Seems like a cool dude. Based off of these recent social media site interviews, Minds seems like the best to me. I really liked Bill’s philosophy and approach to the complexities of creating and running a social media platform.
Cover Parkland!
All alternatives seem to forget why people want to go to a website in the first place.
Why would you use any website at all?
This is a question to anyone.
For me it is:
1) Interesting information. That is why I have corbett report on my daily list of websites that I visit.
2) Funny pictures. Beautiful pictures. Reddit used to be my favorite for that, but now I go to imgur instead.
3) Contact with people that I know. I use my phone, whatsapp. Facebook is horrible. I see information of lots of people that I don’t know. Maybe attractive for the new generation or people with some kind of life-style.
4) Finding new interesting information. This is very specific. I see a lot of articles about things that I am not interested in, on almost any website. With reddit or vote I can see only certain subreddits. Or on youtube certain channels (like corbett report).
5) Some information makes a website less attractive. I unlisted a lot on reddit, especially /r/politics and /r/bestof . It is all just propaganda. On voat I don’t like the continuous insulting or the violence.
On Youtube there is a lot of “promoted” content that is also propaganda.
6) Creative content. Youtube became popular because people could promote their music or make funny movies.
7) Propaganda breaking content. I find some bits on bitchute, where I see reports of people in the streets where things are happening. Discussions about events. Were there staged? Why are there no victims? Why is the mainstream media so biased?
8) Science breaking content. A lot of science is theoretical. It has not been confirmed in laboratory with overwhelming evidence. I have seen so much that is wrong with the theories that I started my own subreddit to promote a different approach to science. (Click my name)
I see more scientific progression in alternative scientific theories that do confirm with observations. Like the electric sun. But not the very old electric-sun version (from 1900) or the very philosophical theories. This sun model works much better in predicting the weather and climate.
There are many good alternatives. But they are suppressed just as alternative news. And because they stay small they are not seen as “real” science. They are not perfect, but need improvements instead of denial.
9) Open source and new ideas in programming. I find them on reddit on youtube but nowhere else. Why not have open-source channels on an open-source website. Explain how unix works, what open-source programs are nice, how to find help, how to start with programming etc. Share!
10) Some life content. In noticed that some channels on youtube started to life-stream so people can ask questions. And to collect bits of money. Make it easier. You could allow some more age-restricted (slightly sexual?) content, and your “social” website will grow beyond your wildest dreams. Remember: “the internet is for ….”.
11) Have good sharing facilities for files and images. People love to share stuff. This will of course be difficult with copy-rights, but I want to share my own images. My own music. My own stories.
Combine google documents with reddit.
You can use the internal credit system to restrict the amount of “downloads” or “uploads” and the sizes.
If you make it easy for people to create and share their own stuff, they don’t need to copy it from companies.
12) Discussions? Maybe. Not in the normal way, as jokes, trolls, advertisers and propagandists are the most common posters.
That is why I promoted deliberation before.
http://cci.mit.edu/klein/deliberatorium.html
Something like this may be used to bring people together instead of arguing about the size of Trumps ice cream.
Discussions need structure, otherwise you are just chatting.
You could combine it in some wikipedia like structure, where people can explain things in their own way, from their own perspective. On each perspective you can have a different problem/solution/discussion as in deliberation.
It is different from the propaganda problem/solution tactic, because you can have alternatives to the problems and solutions. You can also add your own structure if you want to. They can all be linked.
People could talk about the electric sun for example and understand each others view, without the need to convince each other. Instead of voting for your opinion as is common, you can (also?) give votes to people that make well structured and logical articles.
I think there is really a market for supportive discussions instead of competing discussions. You can give “supportive” criticism by pointing out common bias or common logical fallacy in an article. For example the official model of the Sun has some clear logical errors. Like the physically imposible collision of magnetic field-lines. And the mixup of magnetic fields and electric fields. The bias is that they do hold on to certain invalid models and trust their “experts” too much.
Essentially such a discussion website could replace wikipedia. As it allows criticism and enables different views on the same topic.
Why would you pay for a website
This is more difficult.
Reasons why I would do it:
1) To promote my own ideas.
2) Have my own website like environment.
Should not have a crypto-miner or virus or whatever.
3) To promote my commercial product or service.
4) A simple webshop?
5) To support someone else. (I am paying Corbett now).
6) To get a product.
I am not someone who likes to pay for content first. But I like to support people that produce content that I like. This can be different per person.
7) To discuss certain ideas in a friendly environment. Without money there could be certain restrictions.
Warning: this should not give companies extra rights.
8) To get help or service with certain problems. Like legal problems. I could place a reward, and the best answers share the reward.
There is more..
Why would I pay for website
9) To place information (leaks) untraceable and anonymously
Why I would NOT use a certain website
This is of course personal.
1) Advertising (almost any site)
2) Propaganda (much of reddit)
3) No privacy
4) Most information is about…
a) cryptocurrency
b) how to use this website
c) bla bla bla
5) Biased information (wikipedia)
6) Futurism (almost any science website)
7) People chatting with me uninvited (facebook / hotmail)
I don’t want to talk all the time..
8) Lots of unknown people connecting (social website)
I don’t want to know everyone.
9) Most discussions.
I don’t want to know your biased or uninformed opinion.
I do like supportive replies.
10) Fake stories. (reddit / imgur)
11) What you ate for lunch. (facebook)
12) Websites that do social experiments (facebook)
13) Bots. Almost any bot.
14) Not intuitive navigation (reddit mobile, facebook mobile)
15) Limited content. (Have only beginning of a song or other restictions).
Etc.
Also software developer.
It is good that you are working on some alternative, but I don’t exactly see how your application can fulfill all listed items.
Maybe you can explain some more here.
Maybe we can even work together with minds/bitchute to make this work. As open-source allows cooperation between different platforms.
About your idea, I already disagree that it needs to have a block-chain or currency. Also it will be hard to stop any government interference as we saw how reddit has been completely manipulated by correct-the-record. If many people are fully devoted to break a discussion it will happen.
The commercial value of a more deliberation-like forum would be very high. Not only can it replace wikileaks and give us valuable different perspectives. It can also connect us with local small companies that give us solutions. It could be creating a online market for local trades and services.
We also have to watch out for stupid patents that are blocking all kinds of interactions. Maybe the servers would need to be placed in patent-neutral countries.
So you want me to search through all your post to find the interesting bits? I could not find them at first. I hoped you could point out some stuff that relate to the interesting topics.
In your reply you talk again about block-chain and crypto-currency. While interesting they are not answers to a better communication system.
For now they are just buzzwords, as the relationship with the solutions is not clear. They don’t seem to be a solution, because most problems are not solved by hiding them behind numbers.
So lets rephrase the problem as I see it:
The problem is that the information is massive.
A lot of information is false, partially false, biased, mixed with prejudice and illogical.
Minority reports and actual facts are often discarded due to unpopularity and bias. This can be easily influenced.
Can I talk about the advantages of a social system in a conservative community?
People and companies are able to infiltrate the system and push their own agendas onto people. This means that futuristic stuff (like GMO and space) will become popular, based on the wrong reasons.
The system should be designed in such a way that it becomes clear that 911 was caused by demolitions. The evidence is extremely clear on that, but the conclusion is very unpopular.
The 911 truth can not come to most people, because people don’t understand the physics behind it and because of the extreme bias of people that might understand it.
So my advice is to have a structure that promotes logic reasoning and good philosophy.
True logic allows philosophical subjects that do not have clear reasoning. And should allow for unknown and secret things, which might be filled in in different ways. It gives us the skeptical “we don’t know”, but can also be “we suspect”.
This means that we need to restructure the presented information into clear logical structures (reasoning).
Crypto or block-chain do not do that, they are effectively just random numbers.
(I will copy the last bit to mix-block chain and discuss it further.)