Someone new to the project asked me what is TROM about, and I tried to explain it as such (is a bit long, but maybe worth sharing here):

This is a project started in 2011. We have more info here tromsite.com but it grew a lot in terms of materials for the past several years. So we have many books, videos, and all kinds of tools.

If I were to describe the project in a few paragraphs (sorry this is a bit long), I'd say that the project is about showcasing how our world-wide society is, at its core, a trade-based society (from China to US, from Cuba to Europe, from socialism, communism, or other isms that were ever implement); And this trade-based society gives rise to most of the problems we see in the world today: climate change, waste, slavery, bad products, corruption, and so on.

What are the world's biggest problems? Climate change, corruption, destruction of the environment, waste, pollution, slavery, and so on. What creates these problems? Humans. What makes humans do these bad things? The environment. What part of this environment? Mostly the trade-based society we all live under.

More:

Humans wake up in the morning to go to some places and do something there (we call those "jobs"), in order to receive something else in return (food, a shelter, access to goods and services, etc.). They do that for most of their lives. Basically they trade their energy, time, skills and so on, to get food, shelter, internet, healthcare, etc. We use money to represent these trades, but that's arbitrary. Could be bictoin, tokens, gold coins or whatever.

Now, if you look at pretty much everything humans do, it revolves around trades. Jobs take some 8h or more a day, 5 days a week. So, most of people's lives. The internet is a place where humans also trade their data, currency, and attention to websites that mine their data, put ads into their faces, or hide features or content behind paywalls.

In other words, if I am a human on this planet, I wake up every morning, go to my job for 8h, and do that for 5 days a week. I traded 8h of my life to get access to my needs and wants, out of 24h (with 8h sleeping). I have 8h as my free time. In between and after I am done with my job, I use my computer/smartphone to read the news, "socialize", talk to others, watch stuff, listen to stuff (movies, podcasts, articles, websites, netflix, facebook, youtube and the like). All of this time I am giving them my data, attention and at times currency to be able to access these. So, 8h at a job, 8h sleep, and a bunch of other hours online trading for entertainment, information, services. Plus spending time in traffic and dealing with bills and stuff, all because of the trade-based society's rules.

Job + Internet + societal duties = most of my day I trade.

Yes, I also enjoy those videos, talking to friends at work, learn and so forth, but they are all like flowers growing from the soil of trade. Meaning: when I use Facebook, since this is a platform I trade with, the contents I see, the people I follow, are driven by Facebook's algorithm and all they want is me spending more time there watching those ads, producing data that they collect, or buying the stuff they promote. It's like a supermarket that pretends to be a library.

So basically pretty much all that I (human on this planet) consume and do, is directed by trades and people I am trading with. Like a movie director directing my life. Therefore my wishes, my dreams, what excites me or triggers me, are all emerged from this trade-based society that I fed my brain with on a daily basis.

And the same way that we see Facebook's practices as bad, trapping people into an endless stream of nonsense content for the purpose of mining their data/currency/attention, pretty much all business practices are as bad, since they always want something from you and that makes them lie, exaggerate, deceive in order to make you their customer and keep you their customer.

Airline companies, taxi companies, pharmaceutical companies, food producing companies, you name it; all probably are corrupt and as good as "facebook", and if some are not, they will probably become.

So, we are showcasing how in the end this trade-based society makes human beings behave really bad and how it consumes them, and how it creates most of the problems we see in the world today. And our approach is to provide trade-free goods/services as much as possible, so that we remove this environment form people's life, little by little.

Sorry that was long. But this is a big project. I recommend you this book of ours, where we explain all of this in detail tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-d…

#tromlive

If you want to help with media.trom.tf/.

To explain it a bit: we want to create a trade-free alternative to Unsplash and eventually Video blocks and the like. We want users to upload original photos and eventually videos of all kinds. Like nature, objects, places, etc.. The platform we use makes is so easy to rename each item, add to folders and create folders, or tag each item.

So, create folders, drag and drop photos to them. Make each folder Public please, and enable "original" and "downloadable". Disable the rest. See these options in the folder's visibility (the eye icon top right corner).

To make this work, we need to properly name and tag each item, so we make them easy to find and categorize. So please do that as much as you can. You can select multiple items by click-and-hold + drag. And can edit multiple at once. You can also use the keyboard to navigate through the photos, press R to rename, T to tag.

That's pretty much it.

A reminder, all content from media.trom.tf will be trade-free, meaning purely free. Anyone is free to use it as they wish. There are no licenses because that means restrictions. In other words, anyone can use these materials without trading (giving back) anything to us. We don't want their currency, attention, recognition, or whatever.

For now, if you want to upload videos, please limit them to under 200-300MB. We are still in testing mode.

If anyone wants to help, please let me know and we will create an account for you ;). #tromlive

For now I will not add bitwarden password manager to trom.tf, although I could do that. That's because I asked myself a simple question: would I, personally, use it? And the answer was NO. I have hundreds if not thousands of passwords and if there is a server-side compromise then I'm fucked. Sure, if you Friendica or Peertube and such get compromised, then that's very bad, however if you password manager gets hacked and someone has access to all your passwords, then all of those and more are fucked. It is too huge of a risk for now.

Maybe in the future we will add bitwarden but only after we test it for a while and add a 2facetor authentication by default. I recommend you use KeePassXC which creates a single encrypted file with all of your passwords, and simply add it to say files.trom.tf (nextcloud) - sync it - so you have your passwords on any device. Basically a file with your passwords, encrypted, that can be synced on any device and decrypted locally via all kinds of apps that support KeePass. Easy!

So for now I'll take it easy with trom.tf since we already have a lot of apps there. Will focus on TROM II as much as possible. #tromlive

Like I talked to Aaron in private, I would not really recommend this documentary. It is made by the same people who made Cowspiracy and What the Health. More here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowspira… and here blog.ucsusa.org/doug-boucher/c… about Cowspiracy and here about the other documentary sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-… . Also read the criticism for Seaspiracy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspira… and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspira… .

I am just saying, be aware of those. Yes, overfishing is a huge issue and it is something that big organizations are complaining about en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfish… but that should be presented in a scientific way. We do not need to exaggerate facts and such. The reality needs none of that. ;)

So yah, be aware please! #tromlive

Aaron

2021-04-05 20:08:09

Today I watched Seaspiracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy) and it's an interesting documentary. Quite shocking how blatantly the commercial fishing industry is driving animals to extinction, contributing to plastic pollution, and destroying entire ecosystems, but like Cowspiracy (which is about commercial agriculture), there's no discussion about our trade-based society that creates these problems in the first place. Of course people will hunt dolphins, whales, salmon, tuna and sharks (basically overfish the oceans) because there's a profit to made in doing that - and people do so even if it is illegal.
The documentary also shows how organizations who give those licenses of "sustainable fishing" are corrupt, because they too make money by giving their licenses to fisheries. The more licenses they give, the more money they make.

Telling people to stop eating fish is a well-intended approach which is advocated in that documentary, but I wouldn't rely on that. We have to look deeper at the core problem which is the incentive (profit above anything else) that makes people do those "bad behaviors". How can we change that incentive? Education and infrastructure. If people are well educated and have access to what they want and need (as trade-free), they wouldn't be pushed to exploit the oceans and its marine life. Instead, there would be an incentive to take care of the oceans and protect its marine life, as we would understand that we (all people on this planet) depend on it. #tromlive

Not surprisingly some users are making accounts on our PeerTube and uploading the most crappy and conspiracy videos on the platform videos.trom.tf/videos/local - it is because of several big reasons:

1 Our world is full of idiots as a result of our trade based society. It is the cattle society. Human beings are put on school from a very young age, where the learn nothing about the world and all they do is compete with each others for nothing things, like grades. They sit down, and listen to the authority (teachers). After school they train for a job in universities. Then they get the job. So they become specialized robots that understand nothing about how the world works.

2 Our society is full of these specialized traders, and some of the biggest traders are online. They grab people's attention (via ads) and data, and currency, in return for some silly things like social networks, video platforms and the like. In other words: facebook, twitter, youtube, and the like. So these huge companies, all they want is for the morons to stay there and watch as much content as possible regardless of what this content is, so they feed the cattle whatever food makes the cattle stay there and consume. More importantly, they will kick out the cattle that goes too crazy and posts conspiracy shit, nit because these platforms give a shit about that, but because their "ad partners" (their PIMPS) demand for a "clean" platform. So they kick the conspiracy nuts as a PR move.

3 These idiots that get "deplatformed" migrate to alternative platforms like Peertube, lbry, mastodon, or whatever else. And we end up with the idiots on these amazing platforms. The garbage that the big corporations threw out because they wanted a "clean" platform where ads can be advertised. Whatever "clean" means, since they are still full of garbage.

So yah....our Peertube will be flooded with crappy stuff, but so will be our friendica. Since these are trade-free tools we will leave them as such and not ban any video. We will try to tilt the balance towards science by the content we will upload and will try to remove any "trending" or other links from our Peertube. #tromlive