# distributed.press Home

_Source: https://github.com/benhylau/distributed.press/blob/master/index.md_

## We want to give authors greater control over publishing through democratic ownership of online publications.

We’re building **_Distributed.Press_** — a beginner friendly, open-source publishing tool for the distributed web that is built and stewarded by a user-owned co-op.

===COMPOST.digital START===
We’re creating **COMPOST**, a magazine about the digital commons that provides fertile ground for creative experimentation, cultivates communities that value participation, and celebrates the labor of regeneration and care. We are also building the Distributed Press tool for COMPOST, so that anyone can publish to the World Wide Web and Distributed Web.

## Publishing is broken. Creators are struggling. Public discourse is a mess.

Business models on the World Wide Web (WWW) rely on intrusive advertising and onerous paywalls while exploiting creative labor. Many cultural institutions, which have historically raised the quality of works and protected creator livelihoods, are being eroded by the extractive business models of major tech platforms. As a result, creators are atomized and underpaid, quality is undervalued, while opaque platforms reap disproportionate economic benefits.

## The distributed web presents emerging alternatives.

The promise of the Distributed Web (DWeb) is that it gives everyone the ability to control their digital networks and platforms. In distributed networks, the underlying code, data, and network infrastructure are managed by many. So theoretically, the DWeb should also empower writers and artists to own and govern digital infrastructure to best suit their needs.

Yet DWeb projects are unable to provide dependable livelihoods to contributors. This is because, unlike investors and technologists, content creators rarely participate in decision-making at the organizational level. Without giving creators a seat at the table, the potential for the DWeb to be a true digital commons will remain unfulfilled.

That’s why we need participatory and democratic organizations that ensure meaningful livelihoods and steward the Web of the future.

## Our plan is to: (1) prototype a magazine published on the DWeb and WWW (2) build a tool for creators to publish and monetize their work.

The creators of the magazine and the technologists developing the tool will operate as a publication cooperative.

Our magazine, COMPOST, will feature writing and graphics about the digital commons, telling stories about people building the web as a shared resource. It will compensate contributors using a sustainable reader membership model. Our tool will allow creators to publish across several web protocols (i.e., HTTP, IPFS, DAT/Hypercore). It will also enable audiences to pay publications and creators directly through micropayments.

Shared ownership and democratic decision-making will ensure equity and transparency in how revenue is distributed, as well as how capabilities like digital signatures and monetization tools are deployed. The tight feedback loop between creators and technologists will ensure better design and content outcomes.

We want the Web to be a commons — to run on open protocols, be adaptive to feedback, and be maintained and stewarded by sturdy organizations with participatory governance.

## Our project is a seed of the new Web where community and open protocols help to decentralize content distribution and monetization.

We want to provide readers with a variety of creative work, without paywalls or intrusive ads, that are accessible through their choice of Web protocols. We want authors and artists to be equitably compensated for their work, while maintaining agency over their creative expression. We want to ensure technologists are fairly paid for their open source contributions.

Our goal over the next three years is to deploy and maintain an open source tool that authors can use to publish content to the DWeb and WWW. The tool will streamline distribution and monetization on the DWeb, editorial and fact checking, and guide authors to establish creator owned cooperative publications. In turn, the tool will be sustained by the federation of cooperative publications it enables.
===COMPOST.digital END===

## We’ll make our research public.

We have a sense of the wide-ranging and complex issues facing publishing today. Yet specific solutions to address these challenges remain unclear. Working with authors, audiences, and distributed web communities, we hope to co-develop new tools, in order to make publishing fair, democratic, and dignified for all.

Our approach is to engage and learn from broader communities who actively research the issues outlined above and those that practice alternative publishing models. With them, we wish to investigate if and how the distributed web can better serve the publishing ecosystem.

Research topics:
- Applicability of distributed web protocols for digital authorship
- Mechanisms for disintermediated content dissemination
- Economic viability of distributed publishing
- Compatibility with current alternative publishing tools and practices
- Publishing practices that resist centralized censorship

Research methods:
- Informational interviews with diverse community members and partners
- Comparative survey of publishing on the distributed web versus the World Wide Web
- Secondary research looking at existing literature
- Technical prototyping with available distributed web protocols and tools
- Co-creation activities with content authors and readers

## PROJECT TEAM
Our project team has experience in the distributed web, community networks, cooperative governance, and content publishing.

- **Mai Sutton**
Associate Producer of DWeb Projects, Internet Archive
Steward, People’s Open Network / Disaster Radio
formerly Global Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation

- **Udit Vira**
Strategist, Studio From Later
Member, STEAMLink Network / Toronto Mesh
formerly Contributing Writer, M/I/S/C Magazine

- **Benedict Lau**
Founding Member, Hypha Worker Co-operative / Toronto Mesh
formerly Network Coordinator, DWeb Camp 2019

## Let’s chat!
We’re seeking partners and funders to help us launch this project in 2020. If you’re interested in being involved, please reach out:

[[e-mail]][[e-mail]]

[[e-mail]]: mailto:[e-mail]

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# DISTRIBUTED.PRESS PAGE 2.0

*We’re soon launching [COMPOST](https://compost.digital), a magazine about the digital commons, telling stories about people building the web as a shared resource. The new site is coming soon so stay tuned!*

## Our Vision

We are building the _Distributed Press_ — a beginner friendly, open-source publishing tool for the distributed web. Aiming to empower authors, _Distributed Press_ utilizes the distributed web to amplify free expression worldwide, while exposing sources of misinformation.

We all have a sense of the wide-ranging and complex issues facing publishing today: political censorship, disinformation, walled gardens, and the [decline of independent media][decline of independent media]. Yet the solutions to these challenges remain unclear. Working with authors, audiences, and distributed web communities, we hope to co-develop new tools, in order to make publishing fair, democratic, and dignified for all.

Our approach is to engage and learn from broader communities who actively research the issues outlined above and those that practice alternative publishing models. With them, we wish to investigate if and how the distributed web can better serve the publishing ecosystem. As a means to this end, we are launching a journal for and by the citizens of the distributed web, and test its resilience against the challenges facing publishing today.

This journal is our sandbox, our lab bench, and the seed that will eventually become the _Distributed Press_ publishing tool for anyone to use.

[decline of independent media]: https://www.cima.ned.org/publication/confronting-the-crisis-in-independent-media/

## Today, centralized platforms wield disproportionate power


Of the [3.9 billion Internet users worldwide][3.9 billion Internet users worldwide],

>Facebook now boasts 2.7 billion monthly users across its family of apps.
>
> -- Mariel Soto Reyes, _[Scandals and teen dropoff weren't enough to stop Facebook's growth][Scandals and teen dropoff weren't enough to stop Facebook's growth]_

Facebook, Tencent, and Google now mediate a majority of global public discourse. As recent history shows, such extreme power consolidation can be readily abused to [influence political outcomes][influence political outcomes], [censor citizens][censor citizens], and create an [anti-competitive market][anti-competitive market].

[3.9 billion Internet users worldwide]: https://www.statista.com/topics/1145/internet-usage-worldwide/
[Scandals and teen dropoff weren't enough to stop Facebook's growth]: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-grew-monthly-average-users-in-q1-2019-4
[censor citizens]: https://citizenlab.ca/tag/wechat/
[influence political outcomes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
[anti-competitive market]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770

## The distributed web presents emerging alternatives


The promise of the Distributed Web (DWeb) is that it gives everyone the ability to control their digital networks and platforms. In distributed networks, the underlying code, data, and network infrastructure are managed by many.

## We are trapped by network effects

Centralized platforms with large networks like Facebook and Medium are still unmatched for promoting and discovering new content.

Content authors and audiences who are attracted to the promise of the distributed web are compelled to maintain a presence on centralized platforms in order to access wider viewership and content.

With the inherently fragmented nature of the distributed web, content dissemination and discovery is a recognized challenge. However, initiatives such as [IndieWeb][IndieWeb]'s syndication model and [Micro.blog][Micro.blog]'s decoupling of the timeline from post storage have shown us an encouraging path forward.

[IndieWeb]: https://indieweb.org
[Micro.blog]: https://micro.blog

## Verifiable sources in a fragmented ecosystem

Imagine if authors published content in their entirety rather than as a hyperlink, directly to your favourite social networks or the aggregation sites where discussions happen. It would be important for the authenticity of the content to be verifiable to prevent replication and piracy, irrespective of an origin website that serves as a single source of truth.

To establish authenticity, we can disseminate content along with digital signatures by the author, publisher, or other fact-checking bodies, such as organizations like [Civil][Civil] that aims to uphold journalistic ethics.

Signed messages also allow authors to distribute peer-to-peer payments in order to crowdfund their work. Crowdfunded public interest publications like [Ricochet][Ricochet] and digital currency supported [Popula][Popula], exemplify this concept.

[Civil]: https://civil.co
[Ricochet]: https://ricochet.media
[Popula]: https://popula.com

## Censorship resistant content dissemination

Distributed web technologies [claim to resist centralized censors][claim to resist centralized censors]. But even the most distributed technologies have [chokepoints that can be exploited][chokepoints that can be exploited] by private or state actors to undermine people's free expression. As a result, circumventing censorship [necessitates particular practices][necessitates particular practices].

We plan to utilize tools such as the [OONI Probe][OONI Probe] to measure worldwide content dissemination and evaluate compatibility of distributed web protocols with independently operated network infrastructure, such as [offline mesh networks][offline mesh networks] where packets travel through channels out of reach from state censors.

[claim to resist centralized censors]: https://ipfs.io/blog/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/
[chokepoints that can be exploited]: https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs/issues/419
[necessitates particular practices]: https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/281
[OONI Probe]: https://ooni.org/nettest/
[offline mesh networks]: https://edgeryders.eu/t/a-radically-new-internet-a-study-on-p2p-protocols-and-mesh-networks/9802

**Our goal over the next three years is to deploy and maintain an open source tool that authors can use to publish content to the DWeb and WWW.** The tool will streamline distribution and monetization on the DWeb, editorial and fact checking, and guide authors to establish creator owned cooperative publications. In turn, the tool will be sustained by the federation of cooperative publications it enables.

## Research will be made public for a wider community of researchers and developers

Research topics:
- Applicability of distributed web protocols for digital authorship
- Mechanisms for disintermediated content dissemination
- Economic viability of distributed publishing
- Compatibility with current alternative publishing tools and practices
- Publishing practices that resist centralized censorship

Research methods:
- Informational interviews with diverse community members and partners
- Comparative survey of publishing on the distributed web versus the World Wide Web
- Secondary research looking at existing literature
- Technical prototyping with available distributed web protocols and tools
- Co-creation activities with content authors and readers

## Project team
Our project team has experience in the distributed web, community networks, cooperative governance, and content publishing.

- **Mai Sutton**
Associate Producer of DWeb Projects, Internet Archive
Steward, People’s Open Network / Disaster Radio
formerly Global Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation

- **Udit Vira**
Strategist, Studio From Later
Member, STEAMLink Network / Toronto Mesh
formerly Contributing Writer, M/I/S/C Magazine

- **Benedict Lau**
Founding Member, Hypha Worker Co-operative / Toronto Mesh
formerly Network Coordinator, DWeb Camp 2019

## Let’s chat!
We’re seeking partners and funders to help us launch this project in 2020. If you’re interested in being involved, please reach out:

[[e-mail]][[e-mail]]

[[e-mail]]: mailto:[e-mail]

---

# distributed.press Approach

_Source: https://github.com/benhylau/distributed.press/blob/master/approach.md_

---
layout: page
title: Our Approach
---

_Distributed Press_ is a proposal to build an open-source publishing tool for the distributed web. Our approach is to engage communities actively researching the many issues we face in content publishing today to create a tool that prioritizes content authors. In particular, we hope to learn from independent media that are practicing alternative publishing models, to investigate if and how the distributed web may augment this ecosystem.

Beginning this year, we interviewed activists and journalists who combat misinformation and censorship, founders of progressive platforms like Popula and Are.na, builders of open protocols from the IndieWeb and DWeb movement. Some of these interviews are published on [GitHub](https://github.com/benhylau/distributed.press/blob/master/interviews.md). As our project develops, we will continue to collaborate with these communities and many other neighbors.

If you are interested in having a conversation about possible ways we may collaborate, [please get in touch](mailto:[e-mail])!

*****

Phase 1 (interviews and acknowledgements)
Phase 2 (COMPOST and link to COMPOST domain)

*****

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# compost.digital Home

_None_