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# delete Facebook has been around for a
while and still for many reasons
Facebook has a tight grip on various
communities depending on the platform
for organizing Mobil Ing and
distributing content this is also true
for alternative cultures needs but an
opposition is rising our next speakers
Al and Rosa Rafe will talk about
approaches of activists and artists to
use art against Facebook from graffiti
and net art to calls for a Facebook
Exodus ell is an independent art
historian from Berlin he was a member of
the Ninja cater of the C of the dead cow
and activismo
L is sharing the stage today with Rosa
ra who are part of the Berlin reclaim
club culture Network so let's give a
warm welcome and Applause to Al and Rosa
R thanks so much for being here um the
topic of my talk is Artful resistance
against social media monopolies today
presenting as an art historian I report
to you of some interesting conflicts
between art and Facebook I do this
faceless and nameless this is meant as
an homage to basic strategies against
social
media around 10 years ago we so we the
inhabitants of the digital industrial
countries started to rely heavily on uh
mobile computers the so-called
smartphones this led to a growing
importance of social Media Services
suddenly they had a use they were the
ideal platform for capturing the time
and attention of the always online users
last week Sasha Lobo neatly sumed this
up in his review of the digital
decade the rest is history we entered
the age of surveillance capitalism where
a few big Services process our
expressions and activities as
data and they use it for the most
elaborate advertising industry in
history it's the end of the decade and
we can't imagine the system to fall
apart no world without Google Amazon and
Facebook seems possible the social
change fostered by these Services is
really a mess attention spans are down
to a minimum journalism is under
pressure a whole generation is occupied
with image feeds and headlines um to
texts that no one reads I completely
agree with such a Lobo and many others
that the new rise of right-wing
movements and the horror clowns they
elect is directly connected to the
superficial feed Services where
propaganda statements circulate
fastly for the Neo fasc for the Neo
fascists these feeds provide a means of
propaganda and panic for the rest of us
they serve as a system of governance to
quote kolene viman she explains that the
interface of faith Facebook serves as a
tool of self- evaluation self-control
and competition pushing out a earlier
uses of the net like playing with
identities collaborating peer-to-peer
sharing um with Shan Zu on her book
surveillance capitalism we can say that
Facebook is your is a behavioral capture
mechanism so please if you have a
Facebook account use it to disbehaving
so with this talk art is here for you
for inspiration and techniques some of
which can be used as open art technology
like the Facebook gravity that I will
show I hope more tools will come out
helping people to manipulate their
attention feere
themselves with my talk art against
Facebook I invite you on a tour of
contemporary conflicts around Facebook
my aim is to show you Artful resistance
against social media polies these are
open movements that rely on your support
to grow and go
viral so what is the current conflict of
Art and Facebook in my field the field
of cultural production Facebook is very
influential currently Facebook has a
tight grip on the cultural scene on the
one side with its events calendar and
the other side with Instagram as a
spectacular image feed for example the
art Market has merged with social media
if your painting is not online it is as
if it doesn't exist some collectors just
buy after seeing digital
images the same for cultural events
event organizers feel that if your event
is not online on Facebook you will not
have guests this is even true for spaces
that try to stay under the radar in
every other sense for example because
they are very underground and don't even
have a
license both of these examples are very
specific but they show how Facebook has
horrible effects on art and culture
images and visibility in general are not
negotiated outside the commercial space
of hyper advertising anymore but are
directly wired to its cybernetic Loops
it's a stage of cultural industry that
seemed unimaginable not so long ago so
we need theory and practice against the
social media monopolies and the harmful
effects they have on our private life
and on politics and culture and my
humble contribution today will be to
document some forms of Artful resistance
that I
saw my talk has three parts first
example there's graffiti in the ruins of
Facebook this is about how users can
destroy the Facebook interface with
Unicode texts it's risky it's illegal
soon and it's great
fun then comes the intermission here we
will hear a sermon to the users a
lamentation of hate against Facebook an
initiation to the movement against it
this will be be a bit dry and lots of
quotes in fact it is just quotes so it's
just a quick and dirty Manifesto but we
need radical theory for our radical
practice which then will be followed by
the second example club culture against
Facebook how to organize the Facebook
Exodus of the cultural scene how to
break the Monopoly of a Global Network
events calendar here we will have a
guest appearance their name is Rosa Rave
a radical raver from the future who will
tell us how to get R rid of our problems
of the present so
exciting the first example there is
graffiti in the ruins of
Facebook so Facebook looks like it's in
Ruins after countless data scandals and
a rising awareness of filter Bubbles and
psychologic manipulations it has lost
its attractiveness as a host of intim
information to many the Ser has the
service even has to resort to silly
games and challenges like 10 years have
passed upload your face twice viral
challenges to keep users engaged the
ruin look of the feet so this empty
boring feed is just a front in fact they
don't need the users uploads that much
anymore just browsing the feed or
interacting with the many tentacles of
the service throughout the net generates
the necessary data for the this
advertising
machine the normality it produces and
reproduces is still highly problematic
when before it was an open competition
of beauty standards and distinction of
social status it is now a more and more
seple microt targeting machine to
manipulate the always connected
individual how can we reach those
individuals and interrupt this
manipulation
machine I have a long interest in Gra
writing and the interventions of urban
art in general this wild art growing
everywhere is of high significance in
the conflicts around Urban space so I
was highly delighted when one day
something comparable started to appear
in the
feeds someday um there was something
like a crack through my feet from top to
bottom Crossing images text and video
scrolling down some posts I found the
source some cryp letters with little
extra characters attached to them
stacked on top top of each other
following the creators I found out about
groups where people collected the most
effective effective letter combinations
recombining them into powerful little
copy paste
interventions I subscribed to all of
them and enjoyed some months of
completely destroyed feeds with waves of
letters growing from Posts comments
notification boxes menu bars and
everywhere in between and this was only
First
Step but let's pause for a second and
explain what are we seeing
here so Facebook aims at being a global
platform and therefore it supports large
parts of the Unicode Spectrum for
letters which means over a million
different letters and special science
from all kinds of different languages
and
Sciences a lot of these have very
specific rules for example they always
go under the letter before and it turns
out a lot of these can be combined and
being stacked on top of each other
so some Curious artists found that with
some small Arabic science you can
actually combine more than 100 signs on
top of each other technically you can
combine many more but then you reach a
security limit of
Facebook still it is enough to Traverse
multiple posts with your digital
graffiti this is only one example there
are many more let's just look at some
Tendencies so there's graffiti for
humans so digital graffiti for human
readers only you can write with signs
that look like Latin letters but have a
different
meaning um shape catcher is a useful
tool online to find such similar
characters you just draw your letter and
it shows you a sign that looks like it
this means this cybernetic machine of
Facebook is interrupted you create
content that is not meaningful to the
server but only to the user a slogan
that is only readable by
users asky artart crossing the line a
lot of this reminds us of asy art this
means painting with letters like in the
early days of the internet and you can
actually use as to cross the social
media interfaces so cute and radical
form of painting with
text then we have text bumps also
interesting are these very dense forms I
call them text bumps in the middle of a
lot of text is weaved into itself like a
spray can scribble and then some kind of
antennas reach out and grow through the
feet or you can write outside the box
there are some cute little letters used
in mathematics that can be attached to
these antennas that way you can write
into the post next to
yours style writing this is more for the
graffiti nerds um it's not only about
crossing the feed but you can do
actually do style graffiti um in the
feet graphity as an art movement relies
on handwriting but with 1 million
different signs in this glob global
system of digital letters you can
actually type graffiti online again the
tool shape catcher helps to find the
right letters that you need so while
Urban Graffiti only circulates on drains
these graffiti can be fogged they can
replicate copy and paste and
recombined again for the tracking and
Analysis of Facebook itself this will
not be meaningful this only has meaning
as graffiti
art um this one I call hybrid letters in
the combination of various techniques
often something powerful comes out so
this account uses upside down letters
with some ornamental
outlines patterns a pioneer of this
letter-based feat art was the artist
glitcher the rhythm of his interventions
disrupted the feat in a very happy and
Powerful way we don't really have the
time to enjoy the piece but once a
musician friend of mine even used these
patterns as notations and we could
listen to
it
weing um one artist I follow likes to
create patterns of high density these
sometimes even block out the interface
completely um you can use techniques
like this for example for digital
adbusting if you move it out of your
post over the
advertising these are called destroy
lines um there's one particular nasty
form in Urban Graffiti so in the in the
old graffiti with the spray cans that
it's us used for quick destruction of
large territory it is the destroy line
so what what these people do is they
walk past the building or stand next to
a moving train and just draw one long
wavy line with your spray cam which is
very nasty and very effective so while
many examples of digital gravity that I
did show they very going much along the
feet there's also Beauty in this
horizontal destroy lines I like to think
that they pull the user out of the
linearity of the feed like like in this
old anti- cybernetic slogan please step
out of the line
now so to sum up um this first part
graffiti in the feed is about the
digital Distortion of letters using the
wide type phase of the Unicode system
this system contains millions of diverse
characters from Global writing and
notation systems and is supported by
platforms such as Facebook due to their
International consumer base it is
possible to decorate words in the
digital plat platforms with fragments of
the Unicode Spectrum individual letter
elements then grow in different
directions or intertwin with each other
this is a qualitative leap from asy art
or other ways to play with science like
emojis of course um the unicord Spectrum
can be used to introduce digital gravity
and concrete poetry into the feeds a
special challenge for this digital
gravity is to overwrite the layout of
Facebook um so to assemble letter
buildings that exceed the existing
frames and Facebook is just really badly
programmed because it would be so easy
to uh stop this um this art form pushes
the medium to its artistic limits at the
medium Facebook it is a clash between
the Aesthetics of the interface and wild
forms of art this circulating art adapts
to the specific economy of social media
like posting but is subverting and
undermining it by breaking the rules
which means that it carries the
potentials of art directly into the
digital economy and at the same time
creates a radical
Break um two years ago at this very
conference we did a little
self-organized session about this
phenomenon the question was how can we
turn this thing from glitch art and text
Art into an open graffiti technology we
wanted to unlock digital gravity and
vandalism for all in order to spread
chaos in the feeds and thereby generate
some digital fog in the Cyber nting
system of social media just give people
a tool to annoy fascists online we call
it net graffiti and um as I showed you
before browsing the hashtag is really
great um luckily there were some
friendly hackers at this conference that
volunteered to write an editor that lets
you combine some very effective symbols
we call it letter coder and you can find
it on the URL here as so and then please
use the hash netg graffi to mark your
creation so others can remix
them so this is all for the topic of net
graphy
now it's time for the
intermission
um intermission why all the hate why
this vandalism what do these anti-
Facebook extremists want there are some
remarkable texts against the current
world of social media in fact they are
countless um some are particularly spicy
the following is a collage of some of
them it is a sermon to the user
featuring net critique old schooler pit
Schulz also featuring The Invisible
Committee of the imaginary party for
coming Insurrection and furthermore
featuring the iolita
collective this is a sermon to the
users we the users are all suspects
whose most intimate details must be
known so we can satisfy our compulsive
craving for new and immediately obsolete
objects the problem of privacy is
endlessly discussed but only enters the
public discussion once it has already
been
violated this issue is usually coupled
with complaints about the immoral
immorality sorry of an authoritarian
system that divides people into
categories in the era of Big Data
conspiracies arrive but the real problem
is much more concrete and distressing
because it affects us all personally and
not as an anonymous Mass while certain
individuals want to be profiled for the
others whatever we do in order to avoid
profiling our digital footprint is
inescapable there's no way we can opt
out once and listed in the army of the
data
suppliers we no longer shape a discourse
data is to have the last word this is
the Cera of datadriven society where the
role of the human subject is practically
irrelevant
the role of humans now is one of doile
aisans sorry where we relinquish our
ability to choose and desire it seems a
parody of the ancient delic Maxim know
thyself and instead the Messianic
promise of the Quantified self-movement
self- knowledge through numbers G give
us even more powerful machines hand over
all your data be transparent and we can
predict the future the future future of
the market of course while cybernetic
governmentality already operates in
terms of a complex completely New Logic
its subjects continue to think of
themselves according to the old Paradigm
we believe that our personal data
belongs to us like our car or our shoes
and that we are only exercising our
individual Freedom by deciding to let
Google Facebook Apple Amazon or the
police to have access to them the object
of the Great Harvest of personal
information is not an individualized
tracking of the whole
population if the surveillance insinuate
themselves into the intimate lives of
each and every persons it's not so much
to construct individual failes as to
assemble massive databases that make
numerical sense it is more efficient to
correlate the shared characteristics of
individuals in a multitude of profiles
with the probable developments they
suggest one is not interested in the
individual present and entire but only
in what makes it possible to determine
their potential lines of flight the
advantage of applying the surveillance
to profiles events and virtualities is
that statistical entities don't take
offense and individuals can still claim
they are not being monitored at least
not
personally behind the futuristic promise
of a world of fully linked people and
objects when cars fridges watches
vacuums and dildos are directly
connected to each other and to the
internet there's what is already there
the fact that the most poly valent of
sensors is already inter in operation
myself I share my
geolocation my mood my opinions my
account of what I saw today that was
awesome or awesomely Bano I Ran So I
immediately shared my route my time my
performance number MERS and their self-
evaluation I always post photos of my
vacations my evenings my riots my
colleagues of what I'm going to eat and
who I'm going to [ __ ] I appear not to do
much and yet I produce a steady stream
of data whether I work or not my
everyday life as a stock of information
remains fully
valuable the social Factory of Facebook
as well as Amazon Google and any other
larger commercial online platforms will
turn to a model of commodifying and
monetizing data by feeding it value
extraction methods that are run by
Machine learning algorithms the
underlying propertization of data is the
central strategic point to attack the
discourse of regulatory law as well as
ethical commissions will not prevent the
next levels of alienation surveillance
and oppression that are coming with
machine learning and Big Data driven AI
the econom economic inequality
and the property relation should be the
first Common issue beyond all minority
based struggles to connect various
fights and not obey to the framings and
neutralizing offers of liberalism a more
objectoriented social network is
possible where subject groups around
issues goals projects events and the
individual is not just the ultimate
product in the center of the social
graph
anymore and of the intermission so this
was pretty back right um from the ruins
of the feat and the new net critique
let's now move to the Future how to
organize the Facebook
Exodus at the last C communication camp
this summer the Berlin based Network
reclaim club culture announced their
campaign idea of a Facebook Exodus they
want to motivate the club and cultural
scene to support free Alternatives by
moving their biggest digital Capital
which are the events
announcements once the information
Monopoly on events is cut through maybe
more people will make the step to leave
the platform they don't even like
anymore because very often what you hear
is that one Central thing that keeps
people on Facebook are the
events today we have as a guest the
party political spokesperson of reclaim
club culture she's a raver from the
future please welcome Rosa
r
so it's over
Facebook I will delete Facebook for
today suberg I'm over you I'm over it
all ah it likes me I get into the
group
[ __ ]
Facebook I can promote my events by
myself my movement is my our movement
not yours of
company W you have to help me
please
for with this campaign we want to defeat
the mass surveillance we want to um call
for a human strike online we are all
Rosa we want to um have targeted ads to
destroy Facebook we want to try to shape
a better
future we want to share our list of
Alternatives Facebook makes good parties
in bad
parties Facebook should not know where I
am going we want to get rid of the
addiction
Facebook um and now it says here because
we are all Rosas that the crowd should
uh shout [ __ ] Facebook [ __ ] Facebook
[ __ ] Facebook [ __ ] Facebook [ __ ]
Facebook we want to use flyers and
stickers because they are
cool we want all to check out the fatty
verse don't be the con consumer be the
producer uh don't be an Instagram
DJ Facebook stole my friends you won't F
find me on Facebook
anymore um we want to have a cruel D
dystopia uh where
Facebook uh the the people who are on
Facebook are zombies like him
perhaps
find me on opium not on
Facebook K it do it no we don't have
enough time do
it kill it
it it
it time for something
new
and if you want to uh join the movement
we have here some flyers because Flyers
are cool um where you can like join the
movement and there's an address so I'm
going yes thank and the message and Rosa
for the sparkling intervention and we do
have time for questions should you have
any please use the microphones uh one to
three and uh I asked the angel signal
Angel no questions from the internet
what a
surprise
actually remarks
maybe no questions everyone convinced
yeah maybe one question in the room who
will delete Facebook
now we do have a question on mic
one no sorry Mike one
sorry okay then please uh test thanks
for this great talk and the presentation
uh I just wanted to ask if I don't have
Facebook anymore which I don't is there
a way to help destroy it
though uh absolutely yeah um these
interventions work uh work the the
graffiti works on any kind of Internet
service that is harmful for our life and
the campaign is hosted elsewhere so you
please join the Rosa's campaign yeah all
right see
you okay thanks and now mik one
please uh thank you a lot for the talk
thank you for the idea um uh that's also
something that I feel um very uh
relevant I'm also from the art field but
I have another question um
someone uh I heard someone a year a few
years ago I don't remember who saying
that actually the uh social uh Medias
could be put down uh as soon as um we
would um look into the question of adver
advertisement and um I was wondering I
mean if we make credible that
advertisement is not credible that is uh
that it doesn't work I think that
there's a good uh also power uh in
bringing down also so those platform
through this means and so I was
wondering if uh there was any idea uh
going into this direction
also thanks that's a very central point
of course um and I try to quote some
people that are really working only on
this what what is this economically what
is this culturally um so the critique is
there still Facebook has a lot of power
so I guess we have to continue on this
and the artistic level on the level of
theory and critique politic I campaigns
I mean it's really um I'm just reporting
from Global movements that are actually
really big and growing and very
professional uh um interventions and
research is done in this way so thanks
for for making this
point um we now have a question from the
internet the internet asks why I hate
specifically Facebook why not the other
companies like Microsoft Twitter and
Google
um
so I want to give an example um there
was this um service in some countries
that don't have a stable internet and
people actually could use Facebook there
because Facebook is so friendly um and
more and more people in these countries
believe that Facebook is the internet
and actually I think that even in some
uh Western countries European countries
people actually or kids actually believe
that Facebook is somehow the internet um
so maybe we don't realize this but for
many people this is the the point so
it's a good point a good starting point
for um for an
intervention um question for mic number
two
please yeah uh thank you for great and
interesting talk uh I was just wondering
uh when you see graffiti in the urban
space there is no segmentation of it
when the tram comes by with graffiti on
it you you're kind of forced to watch it
but on the internet especially Facebook
you have these algorithm that sorts you
into your interests so how can you as a
net graffiti artist Escape the virtual
algorithmic bubble to expose people that
don't really have the same interests as
you um yeah you should always write
congratulations and happy birthday and
everything in these post because then
they are more effective you just have to
research basic um yeah basic me the
basic mechanism yeah so make really
popular posts with videos and lots of
seasonal greetings and write about food
and love and life and then yeah that's
how it works oh yeah buy a lot of
likes all right um we have another
question from the
internet did Facebook try to fix the
broken
characters not
yet easy answer and then a question from
mic number one
please um yeah thank you Rosa raes for
your enjoyable intervention could you
maybe stress out a little bit how this
Exodus uh is planned or
organized yes we want to uh do a call in
the uh Berlin club scene um that people
uh that the clubs um are like also
uh use different
networks yes all clubs all club culture
in the world use newsletter communicate
with
your community with your friends with
your society and then you can
communicate the change in another
platform or another
way and we want to also um make clear
that uh it's not that just that Facebook
is something where I can promote my uh
event or something like that but uh that
they are really that Facebook is really
collecting data data from the visitors
or the the participants from this uh
events and like having this uh like
political um dimension in the
campaign yes [ __ ]
Facebook [ __ ] all companies I mean
Google too but uh first [ __ ]
Facebook and we have another question
from mic number two
please I tried to look at the the
glitcher Twitter account and I was
disappointed that uh they fixed it so
that the Tweet the text doesn't go
doesn't bleed outside the the Tweet
section
um by the way um I read that this uh
weird text that you said human can read
but the computer cannot read but
actually it's a problem for voiceover so
the blind people cannot read the text
and I wonder if there's like a accessib
accessible option uh for um the net
graffiti no because it's the second
question no it's a contradiction of the
machine can't read it people who need
help reading text also can't yeah so
it's not possible
um but yeah but it's a it's like a a
riot or something it's not to spread
information that is valuable to people
of course it will exclude people um the
first question yeah of course I mean
glitcher is also not active anymore but
I wanted to give glitcher credit for
starting this all and some of um
glitcher methods are outdated yeah um if
you check the net with the hashtag I can
post some lines that are still working
so you can copy and paste
them all right and another question for
Mike 3
please yes uh how long can I and other
people see this
text for one hour for one second how
long does it take that
Facebook yeah we refresh the site and
you can see it anymore um yeah that's a
very specific question um I think the
beauty of it is um it actually crosses
the whole feed so if you're reading
something else suddenly there's graffi
in the other post so yeah you will
scroll past it but you will have seen it
a long time before so the the
temporality of it as your concerning
your question is really kind of
beautiful because it can be reposted
then it appears elsewhere gets
recontextualized then you push it to
somewhere where you need it maybe on a
fascist we uh web post so it's reusable
it's continuously it's just text copy
and paste you can use it on the phone on
the computer um the individual post they
are like um any social useless social
media post it's um only for some seconds
yeah but it's very effective yeah so um
there was this number that the attention
span is now down to 8 seconds but yeah
actually in 8 seconds you can do amazing
things okay thank
you and another question Mike too please
thanks again for the great talk and as
well showing this new way of rebel
against those big companies my big
wonder about it is is if we do the
Exodus from Facebook and we try to open
or build a different
alternative community that uh inevitably
will be part of the network or like
online because this is where we going
today we're not going to create more
flyers we're not going to print more
stuff it's probably will work in the
digital sphere how would you prevent a
new forces raising exactly like Facebook
how the new generation of those
companies to prevent them to repeat
themselves and actually really manage to
create online an alternative uh
independent uh social
network basically this only can be part
of larger social political struggles to
regulate companies that are this harmful
for our um personal life for our
psychological life so it has to be a
bigger struggle on on different fields
and I mean now it's even getting more
serious serious because already kids are
using these services so they are
affected much earlier on so yeah um it
has to be on in every way possible but
um the the role of art as as I see it
that's why I wanted to show artistic
examples is really to to provide
inspiration um to provide some fantasies
of yeah basically a world after Facebook
and yeah we still have to believe in it
and artst maybe helpful
yeah another question from Mike
one H hi thanks for the talk is great
I'm not on Facebook so I'm wondering if
the Facebook graffiti is documented
somewhere else especially since I assume
eventually they're going to ruin your
fun I want to see it somewhere
forever yeah um actually I made these
screenshots uh while not being signed in
on the site so you can browse it
apparently
um yeah so it works um you just uh use
the hashtag netg graffiti on Twitter and
Facebook and without being signed in and
you can view it yeah you can have the
fun of it without giving them your
data all right I think that wraps it up
uh let's again give a warm Round of
Applause for L and Rosa
r
w