unFocus Projects

Author: Kevin Newman

  • Destructive Social Media 2026

    Destructive Social Media 2026

    I’ve written before about the horrendous algorithm at the core of every social media platform‘s “engagement” algorithm. They align political posts with human posters, on an incredibly ignorant and stupid single dimension, based on American 2 parties, with left (Democrat) and right (Republican) steps. In Facebook you used to even be able to see this – but they’ve hidden it all now. In the old days, you could have people who were anti-abortion, and anti-gun (but only motivated to vote on one or the other). These days, those idiotic sorting algorithms are so good a sorting posts and people to match everything and everyone against that single measure, that they effectively propagate uniformity among 2 opposing, and increasingly extreme sides.

    It’s maddeningly simple to understand and explain (1 short paragraph,) and would have taken almost no effort to fix back then – except now, the problem is exacerbated by LLMs and other AIs having been trained on this nonsense. Now AI sorts people in to the same 2 extreme camps, except we can’t actually fix it any more, because even the people who make this slop, don’t understand how it makes decisions.

    So – we are utterly screwed, when it comes to these anti-social platforms (to be clear- that’s Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, most especially TikTok, even YouTube, etc.) The only real way to fix it, is to divest – to just stop using those hateful platforms.

    In that vein, I’ve jumped out of medium, back to the old web 1.0 model of hosting my own blog. I’m also in the process of trying to break away from all the centrally planned hosted “web 2.0” platforms, and more toward decentralized platforms. Roughly, that means:

    Medium -> unfocus.com (a simple blog)

    Facebook/Twitter -> mastodon (social.unfocus.com) – https://unfocus.com/@kevin

    Discord/Slack/etc. -> Matrix (a synapse server) for private messages – @kevin:unfocus.com

    I don’t quite have an answer to the finance half of this. One of the things that those Web 2.0 things can do reasonably well is create a financial structure, where you can actually get paid for your contribution, with varying levels of success, and more than a bit of abuse. YouTube most especially has a decent (but not great) model, though Alphabet/Google are doing what they can to mess it all up. Twitch and Medium have this, TikTok to a very very limited extent. We don’t have an alternative to that that I’m aware of, just yet, but I felt the need to get started anyway. But even there, those web 2.0 financial transactions are really a subversion of essential capitalism.

    However you feel about that word these days, capitalism generally has at it’s core 2 aspects – profit motive for making things (over rent) and open markets (not free markets, they don’t exist, have never existed, and will never exist – markets are man made, authority regulated social instruments.) A double sided algorithm driven faux-market, where a rent seeking middle man, controls what the suppliers get paid, and what the buyers pay – and controls both not through markets, but through algorithms, is in no way capitalism. It is rent over profit, and it there is no real market.

    Those of you who like capitalism really should be paying attention to these changes. Those of you who criticize the current system as capitalism, should also pay attention. We don’t have capitalism anymore. That’s why Tesla, for one example, doesn’t need profit to keep it’s stock value high. (See Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis if you’d like to learn more.)

    (There’s an argument that this is just a rentier form of capitalism – or that it’s just plain bad regulation. I don’t buy the former argument, but the latter, sure – maybe. It’s possible it just all collapses under the weight of its own nonsense.)

    Anyway, I chose these specific platforms for the following reasons:

    WordPress for unfocus.com – honestly, I just had a lot of history with WordPress, and an old blog with old posts, and it’s just kind of easy to use. I did replace it with an alternative for a couple of months, but it was too much. Despite the nonsense going on with the owner of WordPress.com, it’s still an easy to use, backward compatible, and mostly stable platform, with a rich ecosystem of themes and plugins.

    Matrix for chat – Matrix/Synapse has a bunch of different servers and implementations, is decentralized, and it uses e2e – end to end encryption, for chats. I’m not some super privacy nut – but I’m tired of corporate data mining, grabbing everything they can, including private conversations, and turning that in to ads. So e2e is the way.

    Mastodon for socials. Mastodon is an interesting mix of Facebook’s private posts, with Twitter’s public posts, and it’s decentralized. Bluesky does something similar, and I did consider it. But at the end of the day, it’s still algorithm driven, and measured by “engagement” which means it has all the wrong incentives. Mastodon is decentralized in a cleaner way, and it’s feed is just based based on who you followed, in the order they post, not based on “engagement.” This lines up better with what I’m after. Bluesky does let end users manage and even define their own algorithms, so it’s not off the table, and I do respect what they are at least trying to do, more than any of the manipulative ad driven monstrosities. So, Mastodon for now, maybe Bluesky one day. We’ll see. (It was also a lot easier to self host Mastodon.)

    Over time, I intend to get away from the centrally hosted, algorithm driven anti-social machines. The internet used to be fun and productive. We made the wrong move with web 2.0. Maybe there’s a way to go one step back, to take two steps forward.

    Update: I deleted my old twitter/x account @touvan. If you see posts there in the future, it’s not me.


  • unfocus.com – What Are We Doing Here?

    unfocus.com – What Are We Doing Here?

    I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want this space to be. The original idea behind unfocus.com, maybe born out of the naivete of youth, was that there was too much focus on myopic ideas around political ideas. The idea then was to take a step back and think about the bigger picture, thus the idea of “unfocus”.

    Since then, I’ve learned a lot about politics, about political theory, strategy and especially messaging and how that works in our embodied minds. Most of that hasn’t really made its way on to these pages. I did spend some of the last few years blogging about those topics on medium, with dozens more drafts than published articles. I still find that space interesting, but it’s I think, not what I want to spend my effort on here.

    I think what I’d like to focus on here, are projects. That’s what I used to blog about, before the algorithm driven economy burgled the attention from my mind. That’s what I’d like to blog about again. I’ll probably leave the old political stuff up (to mirror medium,) but will likely remove it from any feeds on the site.

    So let’s talk projects!

    What do I want to do? I’m not sure. The software space is in a state of jubilee, from the over hyped, but still useful LLM driven AI bubble. Many things really are possible, and some things have never been easier. How to get passed the hype, and land on the slope of enlightenment early, might be worthy of some blogging. In this place, in the archives, there are still many articles about to achieve very difficult things with fun tech like Flash from back in the day. Today, the LLMs are actually pretty good generating code that can achieve much of what was hard back then, at least for “solved problems,” easily (ethics aside – we’ll get to that.)

    I’ve got a couple of ideas about things to work on. I’d really like to step away from the political turmoil we find ourselves in, and just make games, and other forms of art, but the collapse of western civilization is quite distracting. One idea I had which is technical, but still adjacent to politics, was to use an AI model to do some kind of analysis, and try to tease out the different moral world models (worldviews) that different factions are promoting, mindfully (Republicans) or not (non-Republicans – basically, everyone else.)

    There is a whole framework to communicate here, but I’ve had so little luck explaining it. Anyway – that’s one project. A kind of Ground News, but not just filtered on the bias of the publication, through an idiotic and destructive left/right spectrum, but analyzed per article, on the substance of the article itself, to reveal the underlying moral world models, and how it fits in or contrasts with competing models. Could be fun and interesting. Definitely is needed in the world. But it’s also very difficult, especially since there doesn’t seem to be many who understand how this stuff works (it really seems like Republican strategists are literally the only ones, and they use it to foment hate and derision… very disheartening.) So that could be a fun side project, and I might yet build it.

    The other things I thought of would all be efforts at media and artistic expression. I’ve always wanted to get in to the video game space. Ever since I was a small child, I have dreamed about which mechanics I’d add to the various games I’ve played. I haven’t really spent my career working on that skill, but hey, it’s never too late. I also have some stories I’d like to tell – and maybe that’s a better place to assert my insights about humanity, politics and moral world models, than some grand plan to fix the world. I could easily channel that in to some stories. Another muscle to build – something new and entirely different from what I do in my day job. That might actually be nice.

    I also might start simply writing more. An easy way in, could be to write more game reviews. I did write one for Metroid Dread a while back. I hated that game. But I also wrote quite a long review of Final Fantasy XVI, after it shipped to PC, that I never published. That one was fun – and I love that game. I might really lean in to that for the year. I’ve been playing a few AAA games, and a lot of indy games. I’ve also almost entirely been playing on Linux (and a bit on Switch 1/2,) on either Steam OS (original Steam Deck) or my custom Bazzite machine. There’s probably some cool stuff I could share about those. Maybe I’ll start by finishing that FF XVI review, then share some thoughts about gaming on Linux.

    I’ve also been running some cool home lab type stuff in my basement, including some web services, and some home assistant lighting coordination. That’s a whole domain that could be fun to blog about.

    In the short term, I’ve basically been dusting off some old hobbies. This blog for example. It’s not really what I want unfocus.com to be, but it’ll do for now, until I get the itch to build something different. For now – I’ll continue to blog some hobby stuff here, starting with the resurrection of Quint Dice! More to come on that soon.

  • Update from the future!

    I resurrected this blog! I intend to make some updates here eventually, hopefully not a false start. This blog has been dormant, and barely even functioning for years. In that time, I did post a bit on medium. Those posts are mostly political commentary in nature, as I watch my civilization implode, and I’ve back ported them here. But I’m actually looking to pivot away from that a little bit, so we’ll see if I keep them. I want to get back to my technical roots, and fun – I have updates coming for Quint Dice, and some other thoughts about technology (AI!) The intention is to use unfocus.com as central location for a bunch of things, on medium (maybe), youtube, and other stuff. The focus will be on tech, with maybe an occasional political rant. Longer form thoughts coming soon.

  • Weak Memes and Loser Frames

    Weak Memes and Loser Frames

    Why are we so bad at this?

    Once again?—?IT DOES NOT MATTER IF WE ARE NONVIOLENT. Focusing on that, rather than on what we want our message to be in moral and values terms, is entirely counter productive. The fascists are going to cut to footage from another country, and claim we are violent, regardless of our actual behavior. It should go without saying, that of course, we should protect ourselves, and not start shit. Don’t be the one. But you have you know, ultimately, it doesn’t matter how peaceful we are?—?they don’t want peace. They ARE going to start violence. ICE is already violent?—?it’s already started. They ARE ALREADY claiming WE are violent, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Our behavior does not factor in to their plans.

    This meme does kind of sort of, in an extremely weak way, get around to something like a message?—?but it’s a counter message, stated at the end, when it’s already too late to frame anything. A proactive statement— would be “Constitution or bust”?—?a better phrase, which the weak as shit Democrats would caution against might be New Hampshire’s state motto, “Live Free or Die”?—?the lawyers?—?100% of the Democratic Party, and 90% of the problem?—?would probably caution against using language like that, basically, the reason we’ve already lost.

    I can think of a few other slogans:

    • Trump, go fuck yourself
    • Republicans are Fascists, and so are (centrist) Democrats
    • #waitingforwar
    • Let’s maybe try civilization
    • Billionaires are the problem, you fucking nitwits
    • No peace without Economic Justice

    The problem is, this is all so reactive. They have a simple, describable plan to fix the problems real people are feeling. Their plan is abhorrent, but they have one. We have a reaction against their plan, and little else. The right wing has already rigged all 3 branches of government. They have already grabbed power?—?they aren’t grabbing power, it’s done. The “not right wing” (that’s everyone else, all dozen other sides, generally arranged in a circular firing squad) has no social contract on offer, so it’s hard to even come up with slogans to promote whatever the fuck we want.

    We end up just defending the status quo, like shutting down the entire government to defend a Medical Insurance subsidies?—?read that again. It’s literally what Democrats are defending. You can’t make this level of utter incompetence.

    The status quo is broken. It’s not breaking down?—?it has already broken down. Until someone other than the right-wing has a social contract to offer?—?which yes, includes a defined model of authority, and defined set of rules for civil order?—?then we literally just lose by default. But whatever, keep singing Kumbaya in the street. That’ll work.

  • Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.

    Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.

    This photo is from 2017?—?Can you tell? Alex Radelich

    I keep hearing the dumbest take from the “not-right-wing” imaginable. They keep saying stuff like, “Don’t get violent, cause they’ll use it against us,” or “Don’t show up in black, cause it’ll look like the armed resistance they need.” “Don’t give them what they need.” Truly stupid crap like that.

    Of course we should not start any violence?—?absolutely that’s true, and it almost goes without saying. But the rest?—?why is it stupid? It literally could not matter less what you do, or how you look, or what you say. It’s the “because”?—?the expressed consequence of bad behavior. No. It does not matter if you behave “badly” or wear the wrong color or style of clothes, but numbers do matter. Stop dis-inviting people because they wear the wrong clothes. Understand what is happening.

    The Right Wing has an entire media ecosystem, a messaging strategy, and an echo chamber, and nowhere in any of that is there a concern for reality. They will simply say you did something, they will say you said something, they will say you looked a certain way, or that you dressed funny, and then repeat it over and over again. They’ll show stock footage of unrelated events from foreign countries, or from 20 years ago. They’ll use AI to fake the footage they want. YOUR BEHAVIOR CANNOT IMPACT THEIR DECISIONS.

    You have to understand the game. Understand the media landscape. Understand social media algorithms. Understand how the messaging works to persuade and mislead. This is the dumbest take I keep hearing from the “not-right-wing.” It’s pervasive, reinforcing ignorance. It’s a doubling down on willful weakness.

    Your behavior cannot impact Republican decisions here. It could not matter less how peaceful your protests are, they are going to claim it isn’t anyway. Fox News, and Breitbart, and the 200 other right-wing media talking point factories they call “think tanks” they’ve built up over the last 50 years, are going to claim it’s an insurrection regardless of the truth. The truth does. Not. Matter. Not to them. Facts don’t matter. Your civil behavior?—?DOES NOT MATTER.

    I hope you are ready, because they are going to escalate, not matter what we do. Don’t wear black? Get serious. It simply, does not matter.

    The way to fight back is broader than reactive-protesting. Have a strategy, mindfully promote an alternative point of view?—?win the persuasive arguments, don’t just react to whatever hateful crap the Right Wing is doing. Yes, we are hopelessly behind in building a media landscape to match a vast right wing media machine, but there are paths forward. Start a youtube channel, write on Medium, start a sub-stack, all of that?—?build on strategy, not just reactive tactics. It starts from understanding the game.