Internet Shrinkage & Archiving

[brandon]

As for aesthetics, I miss the nerdy hand-hacked personal websites. Background music, visitor counter, dodgy animated gifs and all :)

Me too, hehe.. 'Under construction' signs, webrings... dark blue backgrounds with a floral pattern... Good old Web 1.0.

Interesting stuff about Bastyon, Scuttlebutt etc.. There have been various attempts at alternative social networks/technologies, like Diaspora, Ello, Mastodon (I think people still use this one), but they never seem to catch on ...at least the ones I tried. Sounds like they're getting increasingly well thought out though. But yeah, I doubt anyone in my family would start using something other than FB/twitter as long as those exist, so I think they'll remain the most useful places for actually talking to people who aren't actively looking for something less controlled.. (Myself, I quit FB and twitter a few years back because I couldn't stomach them any more, but I now think that was a bit misguided - thinking of it from the POV of being of service - and I could be more helpful to people if I'd stuck around. Be IN facebook, but not OF it, type thing :) Sometimes think of joining up again but as yet, have not...)

 

[KJS]

Another interesting offering that the community can use is Matrix. It is a protocol designed for real-time communications (it can also handle voice and video calls), so it differs a lot from Scuttlebutt that I posted earlier, but it's backed by some serious money and has very user-friendly client applications like Element that can rival even big tech offerings. What is so cool about it? Although it relies on a client-server model that implies having a server hosted somewhere (just like this forum), it allows for a server federation. This means, that users or communities can have their own servers that can "chat" with other communities' servers, so (from the user perspective) users from both communities can chat with each other in the same "rooms". Thanks to that, there isn't one point of failure that brings the whole meta-community down.

Searx is a network of individually hosted search engines, a list is here: Searx instances

I don't really know how good it is.

It's quite usable, but you need to watch out for some instances because they might alter the results. When the vaccination campaign started, I was quite sure that Disroot one was filtering out "inappropriate" information (and they are advertising themselves as some kind of hacker community, which implies some anarchist motives, right?).

 

[brandon]

I only just got around to watching the videos in the first post.. actually that's creepy.. I had vaguely noticed this before, but hadn't really thought about it..

Did a quick search for "pancakes" (and then a couple other harmless things like "audio interface") on various search engines (google, duckduckgo, brave, dogpile, yahoo, yandex).. they all just end after a couple hundred results (many of which are repeats). Google's estimated number of hits (hundreds of millions) is a lot more exaggerated than Yandex (tens of thousands). Definitely didn't used to be like this, I always used to skip immediately to page 100 or so to get to the more obscure pages. I don't know when it changed, didn't notice, and I guess at some point I stopped using search engines in the way I used to..

Of course, if you add more terms to make your search much more specific, it'll come up with lots more pages that these general searches don't find. But seems weird that they no longer show you ALL the indexed sites which have the search term in. And they all seem to stop after around the same number of results..

Is it their algorithms trying to be smart and helpful? Are all search results provided by one company now? No wonder the net feels so small compared to how it used to! (Maybe the conspiracy is that the internet is actually full now, so every time someone posts something new, the oldest page is deleted? )

 

[Alejo]

In hindsight, as is so often the case, it seems as if it could have been a natural progression/development, but then again the "coincidences" kind of add up, and so a "hidden hand" becomes apparent.

Yep precisely, I don't think the internet would have become what it has become without a guiding hand.. the way I see it is the potential for control was identified and a design ensued.

 

[Iain]

Yep precisely, I don't think the internet would have become what it has become without a guiding hand.. the way I see it is the potential for control was identified and a design ensued.

'Surveillance Valley' by Yasha Levine is well worth a read in regards to this topic for those who have not read it. Review and overview on SOTT from a few years back.

Levine charts the history of the internet from it's inception as an ARPA project to today and makes very clear that surveillance and control was always built in and updated with the changing times and scale of the internet.

If I remember correctly, many of the 'counter culture' types in the 60's were actually calling out the ARPANET that was linking numerous colleges together under the belief that it could be used to spy and collect data on everyone and was obviously created by the government/military. This began to be embraced by the anti-war protesters of the time.

Of course all these dissenting voices were undermined and eventually the internet became the darling of the counter culture while those working on it were funded (often indirectly) by the military.

 

[Complexity]

I think another member posted this video and topic somewhere (it's what lead me back to this forum via some web search), and it's a subject that's been annoying me for a while.

I remember the good old days and there were hundreds of pages of web data to trawl through, but over the years I noticed the results pages just getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller ... until today, when you're lucky if you get more than 10 pages of propaganda to look through.

I first noticed the serious trouble we were in on YouTube, as after a few years of filling up my "watch later" playlist, I decided to finally go through it all and see what on earth I'd amassed .... to my sheer dismay, some 90% of the content I'd "bookmarked" had been removed from the platform. 90%! The purges had happened, but I hadn't even noticed. Since then - and especially and exponentially since 2020, it seems huge swathes of the web have been vanishing before our eyes - and thanks to "Hate Speech" laws here in the UK and Europe, I'm now having to use VPNs just to watch documentaries about WW2, and other hot topics.

So it was last year I undertook the challenge of trying to find and save as much of the good stuff as possible, before it's impossible to find at all.

I've been chipping away at it, I've got files on most topics I suspect the global government has wanted banned or suppressed, and every day I'm eager to find new resources to add to my archive.

I've got just shy of 10, 000 items thus far and topics include Occultism, Communism, Fascism, Zionism, UFOs, Hollywood, Pedogate, Vatican, Polar Expeditions (many sub folders, tightly organised) ... the idea is, if you name it, it should be there. I've already collected books, files and videos from some hundreds of sites, but now they are all in one convenient place and will be uploaded to the web as such.

But to accomplish that I need some help along the way, so I'm really hoping I can get some archive material recommendations coming in - please :)

 

[XPan]

The subject is also discussed in this thread

Are they "Quietly Deleting the Internet" in front of our eyes?

As we are well aware by now, the internet censorship on social platforms and video portals like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has become quite notorious and extreme (mostly in the west?). The extent to which this is happening by now is staggering, often blocking, deleting stuff and...

cassiopaea.org

Personally, I too started the habit since 4 years, to download any/many important documents, articles (saved as pdf’s), and key videos, to my local hardrives - because i too noticed, that far too may sources disappeared on the internet when i needed them.

Ps. It helps to have special apps for downloading videos as files onto ones hardrive. Apps that can extract videos from sites, which prevent downloads.

Albeit keeping track of all documents on local hardrives can turn into a chore when they go into the thousands - not knowing exactly where a particular document is located

 

[Complexity]

The subject is also discussed in this thread

Are they "Quietly Deleting the Internet" in front of our eyes?

As we are well aware by now, the internet censorship on social platforms and video portals like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has become quite notorious and extreme (mostly in the west?). The extent to which this is happening by now is staggering, often blocking, deleting stuff and...

cassiopaea.org

Personally, I too started the habit since 4 years, to download any/many important documents, articles (saved as pdf’s), and key videos, to my local hardrives - because i too noticed, that far too may sources disappeared on the internet when i needed them.

Ps. It helps to have special apps for downloading videos as files onto ones hardrive. Apps that can extract videos from sites, which prevent downloads.

Albeit keeping track of all documents on local hardrives can turn into a chore when they go into the thousands - not knowing exactly where a particular document is located

I'd be super interested in cross referencing what we've both got and pinching some of yours off you?

Thanks for the post refresher, I deep dived the whole forum across two days and got lost in a sea of threads, I hopelessly lose track.

 

[XPan]

I'd be super interested in cross referencing what we've both got and pinching some of yours off you?

Thanks for the post refresher, I deep dived the whole forum across two days and got lost in a sea of threads, I hopelessly lose track.

That would be a lot of work to cross reference our material.

But you know what ? What i have on my hard drives is a mix of “before” and “after” joining the Cassiopaean Forum two years ago. I get reminded weekly that my level of knowledge (as well the material on my hard drives are) highly fragmented in terms of quality ; an endless mix of good and bad (cointelpro) info from my time “before” and “after” with the Cassiopaean extended family, so to speak.

Instead of cross referencing anything - i rather try to contribute with material / by pitching in with additions, here on the forum - in front of the open eyes of all. Which also lessens possible errors and/or bring new insights.

I mean, the forum is still the place to be, in order to learn: by sharing and exchanging, presenting; learning how to discern, learning to work with material together with other members who contribute, read, correct, fill in, share or come with new interesting angles in the approach of a subject.

Oh Yes.
It is easy to get lost among the threads and subjects discussed here at the forum. The wealth is simply and truly amazing.

I approach this now, by not trying to jump into everything at the same time, and instead take on for me new threads, ”now and then”. Or when related to something particularly discussed in the present time.

This is a kind of step-by-step approach for me, in order not to get too overwhelmed, lost or shallow about it (since the material also needs to get digested, processed and reflected upon - not just reading it “on-the-fly-and-bye).

Just take it easy; you can always follow what interests you the most, to begin with. And then from there, gradually, organically, expand your interests into other threads.

 

[Alejo]

That would be a lot of work to cross reference our material.

That would be, and comparing them would be indeed such a monumental task, but it would be interesting.

However, I am not sure as to the practicality, perhaps if there were spread sheets with the list of titles, and then those two could be compared with a formula, then we'd have a list of items that differ in both... that would be a start.

I also think that sometimes it's best to wait until whatever material is requested by someone else... so that the effort of combing through it would have a purpose of sorts.

 

[Complexity]

That would be a lot of work to cross reference our material.

But you know what ? What i have on my hard drives is a mix of “before” and “after” joining the Cassiopaean Forum two years ago. I get reminded weekly that my level of knowledge (as well the material on my hard drives are) highly fragmented in terms of quality ; an endless mix of good and bad (cointelpro) info from my time “before” and “after” with the Cassiopaean extended family, so to speak.

Instead of cross referencing anything - i rather try to contribute with material / by pitching in with additions, here on the forum - in front of the open eyes of all. Which also lessens possible errors and/or bring new insights.

I mean, the forum is still the place to be, in order to learn: by sharing and exchanging, presenting; learning how to discern, learning to work with material together with other members who contribute, read, correct, fill in, share or come with new interesting angles in the approach of a subject.

Oh Yes.
It is easy to get lost among the threads and subjects discussed here at the forum. The wealth is simply and truly amazing.

I approach this now, by not trying to jump into everything at the same time, and instead take on for me new threads, ”now and then”. Or when related to something particularly discussed in the present time.

This is a kind of step-by-step approach for me, in order not to get too overwhelmed, lost or shallow about it (since the material also needs to get digested, processed and reflected upon - not just reading it “on-the-fly-and-bye).

Just take it easy; you can always follow what interests you the most, to begin with. And then from there, gradually, organically, expand your interests into other threads.

Thanks for the tips, but I was hastily scrolling through looking for specific resources. I grabbed a few a long the way, so it was worth the endeavour.

I don't think cross referencing has to be laborious, I was just wondering if you had any specific gems that others may not.

Here's a link to an overview of my archive, in the hopes it sparks some suggestions.

Archive-Data.pdf

Document: Archive-Data.pdf | Added By: historian | Filesize: 10.89 MB | Uploaded: 14/10/2022 02:09:51 | Downloads: 32

www.udrop.com

In particular, I'd like to some help sorting out the "Authors" section from the "Shills" section, lol.

My intention isn't to be dogmatic or ideological, but unbiased as as factual as possible and I think the shills are key as part of providing further context, as is having both "for" and "against" arguments on a given subject.

Most of my titles come with complete info; date, title & author - the ones which don't, I am working my way through and tidying up.
So spreadsheets could totally be the way to go

 

[XPan]

Thanks for the tips, but I was hastily scrolling through looking for specific resources. I grabbed a few a long the way, so it was worth the endeavour.

I don't think cross referencing has to be laborious, I was just wondering if you had any specific gems that others may not.

Here's a link to an overview of my archive, in the hopes it sparks some suggestions.

Archive-Data.pdf

Document: Archive-Data.pdf | Added By: historian | Filesize: 10.89 MB | Uploaded: 14/10/2022 02:09:51 | Downloads: 32

www.udrop.com

In particular, I'd like to some help sorting out the "Authors" section from the "Shills" section, lol.

My intention isn't to be dogmatic or ideological, but unbiased as as factual as possible and I think the shills are key as part of providing further context, as is having both "for" and "against" arguments on a given subject.

Most of my titles come with complete info; date, title & author - the ones which don't, I am working my way through and tidying up.
So spreadsheets could totally be the way to go

Wow !!!

Complexity, You got some serious order in your MANY files and folders. I am impressed and give you the prize, because that well organized mine are not, i am afraid. Yet - at the same time - i get immediately inspired by how you did it.

In fact, and this is funny, i thought almost to ask you, how you are doing it, but didn’t want to intrude.

So, thank you for the inspiration you are giving by showing us/me your file / folder / name / subject structure in your own research and archive. This certainly helps me to change things on my own computer, too.

 

[Expedition26]

I was just thinking of this but in the context of recipes/blogs going offline. I went to look something up today and it was gone. Good reminder to write things down as they’re found.

 

[XPan]

I was just thinking of this but in the context of recipes/blogs going offline. I went to look something up today and it was gone. Good reminder to write things down as they’re found.

Funny, i was thinking of this quite often during the past days, too... that everything we have stored on computers, iPhones and iPads... is quickly gone during times of no electricity or god forbid, war. I was mainly thinking of health tips, and other survival things good to have, to read about...

I personally have not undertaken any steps about that. The only difference I have made since I entered the World of the Cassiopaean forum and extended family is, that all the books i have ordered since then, have been/are of physical nature instead of digital.

Maybe it is time, to print out vital texts ?

 

[Nienna]

Complexity, please use the search function before starting a new thread. It's better to have one thread for a subject rather than having information on the same subject spread in different threads. This is not the first time you have done it. So it would be greatly appreciated if you could do a quick search first to see if there is a thread already started.

I have merged the threads.