Archives for August 2017

The political compass test is one of the oldest and most accurate political tests on the internet. It has been around since 2001, received praise from academics, media figures, and people of every political background. It is as close to an objective test of political perspective as exists. The political compass test is such a staple of online discussion that the test itself has become a popular meme.

The test measures not just your placement on the left-right political spectrum, but how authoritarian-to-libertarian are you. For example, Stalin and a hippy living on a commune would both be considered far-left, yet the former is far more authoritarian than the later.

Here is where the makers of the test place the 2016 Presidential candidates:

Here is where the makers of the test place famous historical figures:

Here are my results as of August 31, 2017:

As you can see, based on the test, I am a centrist who leans slightly to the left and cares about personal freedom.

I took the test by answering honestly, without thinking about where I’d land. That said, I can live with being slightly to the right of Gandhi. 

I find it interesting that in our extreme political divide, I’ve had people accuse me of being both far-right and far-left. That’s usually an indication that the accuser falls on one of the extremes of the political-spectrum, but doesn’t realize their beliefs aren’t center (or doesn’t care). If you’re in a corner, center might look like far-opposition. If you find yourself frequently accusing others of extremism, consider taking the test yourself to find out what your political bias is.

It is important to know your own bias. Perhaps part of the reason I find myself calling for empathy is because I fall in the middle, and have friends on all sides of the spectrum. That said, based on this test, if I’m going to practice empathy, I have to work a bit harder to understand extreme perspectives, and authoritarian ones.

Of course, my political beliefs may and probably will change over time. I’ve certainly changed in the past. If I’m presented with new information or wisdom earned through life experience, I’ll change them again in the future. However, this is where I fall at present.

You can take the test for yourself here. 

Read More: Imagination Is The Key To Empathy

 

Right now on most social networks, you either get every update a person posts, or you get an algorithmic timeline that selects what it thinks are some of the best posts from your favorite users.

The problem is that we follow different people for different reasons. When it comes to the people I know in real life, I don’t care about their political views. I don’t want their commentary on the latest news thing. I do want to know what’s going on in their life. However, right now following someone is an all or nothing proposition. If I unfollow a political post, I don’t see anything from them. If I like or comment on an apolitical life update, I start seeing everything from them.

Likewise, there are a few people I follow specifically for social commentary, whose view of world events highly interest me. I’d like to see their posts on current events, but only at certain times. The time I’m in a mood to read deep commentary is different than when I want to see friend’s life updates, and I don’t want the two interspersed. Right now, the two are mixed together, creating a bizarre bounce between political rants, and happy life moments, often not from the people you actually want either from.

The solution to this would be categories – giving users the ability to indicate what category your post was in, and letting your audience filter accordingly. There are multiple ways you could do this – creating a separate timeline for politics, personal, work, and other types of updates, or having one timeline, but letting users determine what kind of updates they want from whom.

For example, I know a lot of people follow me because they’re interested in my film work. They don’t really need to hear my life updates, or political views. If there was a way I could indicate which posts were film updates, so that I didn’t lose followers who were only interested in that, it’d help me as a creator. There are certainly a lot of creators whose work I’d like to follow, but all they do is tweet about politics, and I’m not interested in political commentary from someone just because I saw them in a movie once.

This is actually the way things used to be. Most people did not talk about politics or share their baby photos with every person they met, or strangers. It wasn’t until Facebook began prioritizing news articles in their algorithm that we began learning the political views of everyone we knew. Social media putting every aspect of a persons personality in one timeline is actually what helped polarize the country. I’m not sure that pandora can be put back in the box, but a little filtering couldn’t hurt.

So far, the closest I’ve seen with is Gab, with it’s use of categories and the ability to mute words, but there is still some room to improve (for example, giving to option to only see posts from users you follow in each category, or allowing users to create custom timelines with certain conditions). Plus, like any new social network, growth is slow. Most of the people I know are still on Facebook and Instagram, and slow to change because… well, everyone else they know is also on those platforms.

Social networks are perhaps the most dominant form of communication in our culture now. The way these networks filter that communication goes beyond a feature into how social interaction is organized. A feature like this would allow people to connect over the things they have in common, and not have to accept a persons updates as an all or nothing proposition.

Read More: Proposal: A BitTorrent Integrated Social Network

In the latest episode of Game of Thrones (season 6, episode 7), Daenerys Targaryen accuses Tyrion Lannister of taking her enemies side. He replies:

I am taking their side. You need to take your enemies side if you’re going to see things the way they do, and you need to see things the way they do if you’re going to anticipate their actions, respond effectively and beat them, which I want you to do very much.

This is very similar to what I wrote in my blog post Empathy Is The Ultimate Persuasion Tool. However, this take adds another layer. Empathy isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. Even if you were coming purely from a totally cold strategic perspective, empathy is the right choice.

As entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, “doing the right thing is always the right thing.”

Game of Thrones is of course a fictional example. What would this look like in practice?

Accidental Courtesy

Recently, I watched a film called Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America. The film follow Daryl Davis, an accomplished musician and middle-aged black man, who has the unusual hobby of befriending members of the KKK, and leading them to to give up their hate through his friendship.

Now – the KKK is an evil organization. Full stop. And if someone were to ask you to be friends with an evil group, most reasonable people would say “hell no!” Yet Daryl, a black man and the target of their hatred and evil, does. Why?

In Daryl’s words, “always keep the lines of communication with your antagonist open,” because “if you’re talking, you’re not fighting.” He also says, “Give that person [who hates you] a platform. Allow them to air their views, and people will reciprocate.”

Daryl believes that if you make people feel safe and listen to their views, then they will do the same for you, and you can lead them to the higher ideal. Persuasion science agrees with him. The seminal book on persuasion, Influence by Robert Cialdini lists reciprocity as the number one persuasion tool. Trained persuaders know you have to “go there first,” meaning that if you step into the feeling you want others to join you in, they will follow.

I’ve been thinking about that recently, because of the recent news in my former city – Charlottesville, VA.

The Side That Loves

These events are difficult for me to write about. Growing up in Charlottesville, there was a running joke that “nothing ever happens here.” Charlottesville was a small town where life was simple. Seeing locations where I grew up as a backdrop for political violence has been strange and saddening. Even writing about them, I’ve had to spiral into the subject.

After those events, a phrase emerged in the media, “there’s only one side to hate.” I think that’s true. And it means we have to become the side that loves.

If our message is tolerance and inclusion, we must extend it even to people we hate. This is not easy. But it’s right. And practically speaking, it is the most effective choice.

However, it is possible. If the father of a woman killed in those events can forgive and love his enemies, so can we. There is even a model for using in protest, which I wrote about after the election.

The opposite would be a reciprocity of violence. Escalation. Civil war. The law of reciprocity is always in a effect. If you do violence against people, you there is a possibility they will reciprocate – especially if those people are bad people, who have no qualms about violence already.

Becoming the side that loves is not the same as doing nothing. It’s actually very hard. It’s so hard that some people find it easier to commit violence. Those people are on the side that hates. Which side do you want to be on?

As the Bible says, love your enemies.

It’s the practical strategy.

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Further Reading:

• Empathy Is The Ultimate Persuasion Tool
• Imagination Is The Key To Empathy
• How A Group of Healers Helped End Election Riots In Oakland
• A Zen Priest On Is It Ok To Punch A Nazi?
• Video: The Logical Conclusion To Violent Escalation

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In this post, I’m going to pitch a new kind of social network. I’m not a programmer, and I recognize this idea is incomplete at it’s current stage. It could be great or it could not. My hope is that by giving the idea away, it will generate discussion, and someone will implement it in a better way than I ever could. Enjoy.

The Problem

Social media censorship is becoming an increasing issue. YouTube has said they are going to censor videos which do not violate their terms of service. Twitter has shadow-banned and outright banned many users. Facebook has a long history of censoring content, which will undoubtably increase if it’s CEO makes a political run. And most recently, Google fired an employee for publishing a memo that disagreed with the company’s political viewpoint.

The need is clear. We need distributed social networks if we are going to have a free internet.

What Are Distributed Social Networks

The first iteration of file sharing was Napster. Napster was a central server from which you could download files. After Napster got shut down, peer-to-peer became the dominant mode of file sharing. Rather than downloading from a central server, users downloaded from each other. If one user got shut down, there were still a dozen more you could download from. Now we have torrents – which allow you to download the same file from MANY users at the same time. Torrents are virtually impossible to shut down.

We are still at the Napster stage of social networks.

Right now, if you want to use a social network – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. – you have to log on to a central server. If the company behind that server decides they want to censor your content, or limit your access to certain content, there is nothing you can do. The idea of a small group of multinational corporations controlling the flow of information was no one’s vision for the internet, save for a few dystopic cyberpunk novels.

What we need are distributed social networks – the BitTorrent stage – where even if one user is banned or blocked, they can still seed their content.

And we could build this using existing technologies.

BitTorrent RSS Feeds

What I am proposing is creating a distributed social network by combining two existing technologies – BitTorrent and RSS feeds.

BitTorrent allows users to download from multiple users, leading to incredibly fast downloads of large files. RSS allows users to subscribe to a feed. RSS exists for blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, and most forms of media. Right now, you could use an RSS reader to subscribe to every channel you currently watch on YouTube, every Twitter account you currently follow, and get almost all your social media content through an RSS reader, independent of any social networks interface.

Imagine if instead of subscribing to that creator on a platform, you could subscribe to a Torrent RSS that would automatically download new content every time they uploaded. This would cut out the middle man of the social network, and allow creators to go directly to their fans, and own their audience. Because BitTorrent can be used for any type of file, creators could send any form of content they wanted – text, videos, podcasts, music, programs, games – literally any file that could be downloaded. They could send something as small as an emoji, or something as large as a TV series.

Better For Creators And Their Audience

Creators would be incentivized to use this, because then they would own their audience. They wouldn’t be at the mercy of any Silicon Valley algorithm, or the whims of politically correct censors. They couldn’t lose their audience at the drop of a new update. No one could ban them. This would be much closer to having an email list that they own.

The audience would have unfiltered access to their favorite creators, and control over their feed. Rather than having content they want banned, demonetized, or hidden by an algorithm they don’t understand, fans could have complete control over what they see. If the client was open-source, fans could even customize what they subscribe to. For example, some might chose to see every post, others might choose to see only those with a video file, and others might chose to only see trackers which had a large number of downloads, indicating popularity.

Creators could shift their audience easily. Rather than subscribing to their favorite creators on multiple social networks, they could get all text, podcast, video, etc. content in one feed. People might even build clients that auto-post YouTube and Twitter content to the TorrentRSS feed, allowing creators to slowly transfer their audience from one medium

You could even build in social elements like resharing, to allow creators to share a torrent file from someone else’s feed to their audience. You could build a torrent client that had a “feed” similar to existing social networks, that allowed users to scroll through new posts. This new client would not have to be tech-heavy in it’s appearance, but could have the same fun interface as other social networks.

Payment

Right now, creators get paid through three existing methods – advertising (selling someone else’s product), selling their own product, and crowdfunding (getting money directly from their audience). In the current YouTube model, creators publish on the platform and the platform runs ads against their audience. This creates friction between the content creators and advertisers, as advertisers often don’t want their ads on content that they find objectionable, but creators want to make. Acting as the middle-man, platforms often censor the content their users actually want, because advertisers don’t want it.

This method would remove that platform middle-man, while still allowing creators to get paid through the same three ways, and a new way – micropayments.

• Micropayments: Users could enter an amount they’d like to pay each month – say 10$ in bitcoin – and see that distributed by their client among the users they follow. The browser Brave already has a similar feature, however Brave has struggled to figure out how to give money to individual creators, rather than the website hosting their content (like YouTube). This method would allow the client to see which creators a user subscribes to and send money directly to them, rather than their host network.
• Advertising: Right now on YouTube, creators have pre-roll ads run on their content. There is no reason TorrentRSS creators couldn’t add fifteen seconds of sponsored video to the front of their video files. Creators would just have to get these advertisers themselves. The idea that an advertising wouldn’t know what content their ads were being run against is a recent anomaly, and this model would put defining what makes content “advertiser-friendly” on the creators themselves, rather than the network. There of course might be middle-men who sign up large numbers of creators and large numbers of sponsors to an “ad-network” but creators would have options in how they sell.
• Merch: Creators would still have the option to sell their own products. The fact they could send any file would allow creators to advertise their own wares even easier. In the future, some creators might even send 3D printing files to their users and distribute products this way.
• Crowdfunding: Creators could still directly raise money from their audience for specific projects, or ongoing work, like Patreon. I suspect the same way this proposal would innovate social networks, there would be a similar way to innovate crowdfunding, so users don’t have to worry about getting their projects pulled.

The point is – this model would be better for creators. They could own their audience, have more options in what content they choose to share, and have more control in how they chose monetize.

How This Would Incentivize Better Content

Right now, much of the content on social media is about playing the metrics of a certain social network, rather than giving the audience what genuinely benefits them. Clickbait works because many users on social networks are scanning search results, not following individual creators.

A subscription model would change that dynamic by making the primary metric getting and retaining subscribers. If a creator put out bad content, or repeatedly defrauded their audience, users would unsubscribe. Creators who weren’t flashy, but consistently made good content would retain and build subscribers based on reputation.

Subscription would also mean that creators wouldn’t have pressure to publish regularly if it meant a decrease in quality. Their audience would get the content regardless, rather than competing for attention in a search or feed algorithm.

This subscription model would create incentives much closer to those in podcasting, where creators are rewarded for doing long-form nuanced content. There is very little clickbait in podcasts, because all that is visible is the file title, users have to subscribe to a creator they like, and creators have to deliver to retain that audience.

Perhaps I’m being idealistic, but it is known that the format content is published in changes the content. I believe direct relationship between audience and creator could only lead to more authentic content.

Requirements

In order for a BitTorrent subscription client to be successful and widely adopted, it would need a few things:

• It would have to be open-source. In order for this to work, and not fall under the same corporate control and censorship that has plagued existing social networks, it would have to be transparent. All code publicly available. This would also allow users and client developers to modify the code depending on their needs. For example, some privacy concerned users might want built-in VPN, while others might want a highly customized feed. Some might be willing to pay for software that had certain extra features.
• It will need to be “normie friendly.” In order for this to spread, it will have to be easy to use, such that the average Facebook user could download it and start using it immediately, and the average creator or influencer will feel comfortable recommending it to their fans to start building an audience there. Whatever interface is created has to be as vigorously tested and iterated upon as the feed of any other social media site. This isn’t for engineers and tech geeks – it’s for average users.
• It will evolve over time. No tech product is perfect right out of the gate. There are still some features I haven’t figured out how to implement. For example, how could commenting and replies work in an RSS model? I’m not sure, and I suspect for a social network to grow, there has to be easy visible replies. However, part of the reason I’m offering this idea freely to the internet is because I believe the collective intelligence of the net will find solutions for these problems. Rather than trying to create the Napster-like hub in the form of a company, I’m going peer-to-peer with it.

This is just an idea. Ideas are cheap, and execution is everything. As someone who is not a professional programmer, I’m not sure how to implement this. I’m told there are some similar ideas already being developed, but none have taken off or been accessible enough that they’re used by major creators. I’m giving this idea away freely in the hopes that someone will create the technology that allows us all to have a more free web. What you do with this idea, it up to you.

Edit: After writing this article, I learned about BitChute, a torrent based social network. It seems to follow what I propose here, but even more decentralized. Worth checking out. You can follow me there at bdmarotta.

Read More: How Tech Will End Our Shared Reality

So now that Ridley Scott is producing a series about Jack Parsons, I might as well talk about the script I outlined for a film about him a few years back.

For those that don’t know – Jack Parsons was one of the most brilliant rocket scientists of his time. He founded Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which many joked was “Jack Parsons Laboratory), which became NASA. He was also fascinated by the occult, held a black mass in his home, and a member of Aleister Crowley’s religion, Thelema. So he was a scientist and practiced black magick.

Jack lived in a big mansion on Orange Grove Ave in California, which he filled with nuclear scientists, occultists, and science fiction writers. One of his tenants was a little known science fiction author by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, that Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. It was watching Jack that lead Hubbard to allegedly say that founding religion was where the real money is.

Parsons became immediate friends with Hubbard, and started teaching him black magick that he wasn’t supposed to teach to those not initiated into Thelema. Hubbard repaid Jack by taking advantage of the free love situation in the house to sleep with Jack’s wife.

Are you seeing how this could be a movie?

Jack pretends to be cool with Hubbard banging his wife, because he’s written about free love and considers himself above such feelings. Meanwhile, his housemates catch him muttering black magick curses to break Hubbard’s relationship to his wife. Tensions escalate into house until Jack decides the only way forward is to do a ritual known as the Babalon Working, a ritual designed to summon a Thelemic goddess into the earth. But to do this ritual he needs Hubbard’s help, his wife, and some ritual sex.

Oh, and that’s just the setup. The story only gets stranger from there.

Why It Appealed To Me

The story appealed to me for a couple reasons. First, I’m fascinated by cult dynamics. The weird dysfunctional family relationships, the misguided spiritual striving, even the genuine realizations people have in the midst of a bad situation. This story has it all – including the founding of one crazy cult, during the height of another.

Parson’s as a character fascinates me. Jack is agreed by all to be brilliant scientist, whose work on rockets is what eventually lead to America putting a man on the moon. Yet his fascination with the occult came from the same impulse that allowed him to build a million dollar company. In his mind, magick was just as practical as rocketry, and a technical means to achieving an end.

There was also the appeal that you could do this story low-budget. The vast majority of it would be four actors – Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, Sara “Betty” Northrup (Jack’s wife), and Marjorie Cameron (a woman Jack believes his ritual summoned) – in one indoor location – a giant California house – having intense dramatic scenes with each other, and doing physical activity work in the form of magical rituals. Sounds like a good low-budget drama, with even a few horror elements.

Why I Never Made It

There were a couple challenges. The biggest being – there is no way to do this as an onscreen movie without making L. Ron Hubbard a major character – and a bad guy at that, who is constantly spinning stories to get his way. I wasn’t sure about the legality of showing the founder of Scientology onscreen, especially with the reputation of his lawsuit-happy fan club. I thought about calling him “Lafayette” (which is what the “L.” stands for) and listing him as a fictional character with a nod and a wink, but still – it’s a risk.

There is also the issue of Parson’s himself. Jack was a very good scientist, but a very bad magician. If magick (as Parson’s mentor Aleister Crowley said) is about manifesting your will in the world, Parsons wasn’t very good at it. If I’d done this as a film, Parsons surrendering the fact that he can’t control everything through science or magick and accepting the world as it is would be a major theme. Even thought Parsons is fascinating, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that long working on a character who fails at so much of his stated mission in the world.

I’m not sure I’ll make it now, because if I did, I’d be competing with Ridley Scott and a multi-episode series, with a low-budget movie. I’d toyed with the idea back in 2012, and hadn’t thought about it since till I saw that news article on the series, and thought “yeah… that is a good story.” I’m glad someone telling it. Hopefully, they’ll do it right.

Thankfully, as a filmmaker I’ve got more ideas already then time to create them all – enough I could probably do a movie pitch each week on this blog. If you’d like more ideas and pitches like this, let me know on social media and subscribe by email.

Read More: The Secret of Damascus Steel: Rewriting and Editing Films