%7yBgT50oJ5kfKdXWf5WuxBlDOwtD520WIAlw9Z9LRYY=.sha256Tool Reviews 🛠️
#manyverse 📱
I've been anxious to present SSB to communities with little or no connectivity for a long time. Computers are really rare, sometimes found with school teachers, but many times not even that. So Manyverse is the only client that could really be put to the test.
Since I almost never have a phone with me what I did was open Patchwork in my computer and sync with their phones. The first villages I visited had Internet, so they downloaded Manyverse from the Play Store, which is good for keeping the app up-to-date. Villages I later visited had no connection, so @andrestaltz made the apk available so that I could download and share with them.
I on-boarded the first three people thru my main SSB id. But very quickly realized all the problems that would come with that: meaningless content in English and fast use of already limited phone storage. So I created an alternate account, disconnected from anyone in the main-net.
Although most were already users of the corporate web, they were very open to trying out SSB. During the women's meeting I went around installing Manyverse for everyone who had a phone (not many people). At the end I had probably on-boarded around 10 people. Since the village hosting the meeting didn't have any connectivity it was a very good setting for showing the powers of SSB.
I used SSB to share the documents that were produced during the meeting with everyone who had a phone. I was also testing out the #community-server setup I've been working on, so there was a WiFi network to use as medium for data exchange.
As I didn't know what to expect, I had no prior planning on how to present or on-board people. Learned a lot, specially that I need to give it more thought and preparation next time. Although they found it interesting, I doubt they'll keep using Manyverse in the future, mainly because there aren't enough people or content to make the platform appealing to them.
Improvements
Methodologies
- Have a video in Portuguese/Krahô on the dangers of the corporate web and the importance of data-sovereignty
- Have a video in Portuguese/Krahô explaning the basics of how SSB works and how's it's useful for low-connectivity and indigenous context
- Have a Pub disconnected from the main-net for different indigenous communities/allies to come together
- Invite key indigenous peoples to the alt-net in order to create bridges that don't exist thru the corporate web
- Publish meaningful content on the alt-net, such as photos and music, so that people have something to explore at first
App
- Make the private messages UI/UX more like other chat apps (Whatsapp/Telegram), with audio and photos button, for familiarity
- Private groups so that they have a safe space to share and collaborate with each other in big numbers
- A config option for auto-connecting people within the same local-network, like ssb-promiscuous
- A config option for changing the network, like #patchbay
- An "oral culture" mode, with no words just icons (the Krahô are already very literate, but other cultures aren't)
- A way to pre-load configurations, like Pubs, network and "oral mode", kinda like #mapeo does
My many thanks and appreciation to the work André, @Rômulo Alves, @David Gómez and everyone else involved. The improvements I suggested would be a plus, but there's a whole lot we can do with what we already have. Together with @nonlinear and @Ana Rosa, we'll be focusing on the methodologies for presenting and onboarding Manyverse to traditional communities in the brazilian territory. Hope to share more in the near future.
Will be posting reviews for other tools later...