Anarchist Federation partners up with NGNM to launch a multi-lingual news platform in 9 languages

A combined total of over 2000 sources are automatically republished on these platforms as soon as new content becomes available. More than a simple media relay, this platform is an up-to-date database of the radical alternative press and a leading source of anarchist information.

We are a multi-lingual platform bringing together the publications of anarchist organizations from all over the world. Available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Greek, and Turkish.

 

Why?

Improving online presence. The problem with independent decentralized media is that there are so many of them, it’s hard to keep track of all the different websites and make sure you don’t miss any news. Imagine if you had 300 friends on Facebook and the news feed didn’t exist – the only way for you to get news from friends would be to look at 300 different pages. Obviously, you would be missing a lot of news from some of your friends. This is the state of today’s digital anarchist media universe.

Fighting censorship. Recently, we have been reminded once again that anarchists can’t rely on capitalist platforms when Facebook banned anarchists and antifascists. This is another reason why we must implement alternative methods of distributing our news and our information.

Optimizing content distribution. Most anarchist websites aren’t optimized for modern web browsers and mobile devices. Websites with bad search engine optimizations are strongly downranked in search engines, which means the content has a lot less visibility than it deserves. The Online Anarchist Federation is built with SEO in mind for the optimal distribution of content across different search engines.

Independent media. Mass media are owned and controlled by a handful of capitalists and search engines are owned by big multinationals like Google and Microsoft. We need an alternative to aggregate the content of all the anarchist websites without relying on corporations.

Archiving for the future. Distributing the content on this website means that there is a digital copy of the information, making sure it doesn’t disappear if the original website goes down. Throughout the year we’ve seen some important websites like InfoShop and IndyMedia shutting down. Those websites hosted a lot of useful educational content on anarchist ideas, and sadly this content has now disappeared from the internet. Having a backup archive prevents this kind of risk.

Search engine. Having all the articles indexed in a database makes it possible to easily find exactly what you are looking for. Use the search engine to find a specific topic and bring up all the posts from 250+ anarchist groups matching your keywords.

United we are stronger. The platform is structured as an online anarchist federation connecting the groups together to have a stronger impact. Many anarchist organizations have used this horizontal and decentralized approach throughout history, and it can also be successful on the internet.

 

How does it work?

The website works as an automated news aggregator updated every 5 minutes. We automatically repost the articles from websites with public RSS feeds. The system to import the article and the images on the website was custom developed by our team for the specific needs of the Online Anarchist Federation.

Several tools are available to facilitate access to information through the integration of modern technologies such as the automatic translation of articles, accelerated mobile pages (AMP), social media sharing functions, notifications, newsletters, exporting news feeds to other websites, etc. Our website is fully compatible with mobile devices and tablets. We use multiple SEO strategies to optimize the distribution of content across search engines, making sure the information is seen by a wide audience of readers.

 

Technical details

Non-commercial. This website runs on a custom-made platform built and maintained by a collective of activist programmers and volunteers. Most of the features are unique to this website. The server is powered by Linux and runs only non-proprietary software and open-source libraries.

Activist server. This platform is hosted on a self-managed server powered by 100% renewable energy.

Security & Privacy. We take your privacy very seriously. To protect the users of this website, the connection is encrypted with HTTPS, an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and the site. We use security technologies like HSTS and OCSP. The server is behind a firewall to protect against hacking attempts and DDoS attacks. We also don’t track the IP addresses of the authors of the articles or the visitors to this website. Users can expect a secure and private online experience when using this website.

Full-text extraction. Unlike a standard RSS aggregator, we use a special content extraction technology to get the full text of the article instead of just an excerpt with the first characters. We also import the images and run an algorithm to pick the most relevant heading image for the article.

Artificial Intelligence. We use advanced A.I. technologies to increase the accuracy of our text extraction system, as well as language-detection features to ensure the text corresponds to the language of our website. We also have our own algorithm to guess the subject of the text, make sure the content is relevant, and avoid duplicate posts. Artificial Intelligence is trained with data which means it gets better and more accurate over time.

Self-managed. Most of the platform is automated to avoid human interference. If a decision needs to be taken, it will be collectively decided by the autonomous collective managing the website. You can join the forum if you want to participate in direct democracy.

 

Content Policy

As a decentralized platform, we do not have an editorial committee, which means the articles are published as-is without any editing. There are no humans who decide what is published and what is removed. To avoid media convergence, each of the publishers must preserve its autonomy.

Due to our editorial policy, it is therefore not possible to register as a member to publish an individual article on the website. If you want to post an article on this website, you will have to submit your content to one of the publishers that we are reposting here.

The comments section of the website has been intentionally disabled to avoid stealing traffic from the original authors and give them all the credit they deserve. Readers who wish to comment on a particular article are invited to comment on the website where the original article was published.

This website is not moderated and therefore, it is not possible to request to modify or delete an article.

 

Who are we?

This platform is a custom-made website built by the same team of activist programmers behind many well-known online anarchist communities such as Info Libertaire, Anarcho-Punk.net, Pirate Punk, Libertaire.net, No Gods No Masters Coop, and many others.

It all started as a community project by members of the french anarchist collective Forum Libertaire. The idea was to bring together all of the french anarchist news which was split into 100+ different blogs. The initial website InfoLibertaire.net was finally launched in 2016 and has now become the leading reference for the radical left press with over 100,000 unique visitors every month. During the last 4 years, our programming team continued to improve the platform with new features and bug fixes. After a successful proof of concept, it’s now the time to extend the platform to other languages so more people can benefit from it.

The hosting of the server and the development of the website are made possible with donations from the No Gods No Masters cooperative. This partnership secures the long-term sustainability of the platform with continued funding of the servers and also gives access to an experienced team of programmers for maintenance and updates. But more importantly, it also means we don’t have to put up commercial ads or ask for donations to pay the bills.

The platform is run by activists and is open to anyone wishing to contribute or improve it. To contact us, use this form, or let’s talk on the forum.

Source: https://www.anarchistfederation.net/about-us/