The Nexus Of Privacy looks at the connections between technology, policy, strategy, and justice.
Thanks! "Feckless" is a good description of the admin response :)
Suggestions for people on Fosstodon considering moving
For those of you on Fosstodon starting to think about alternatives ... 1) let your admins know that you're planning on moving -- and why, and what if anything they can do that might change your mind. In particular, if it's because your admin put somebody with racist, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ ...
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25142642
And if you're not sure why so many people on Fosstodon are considering moving, there are some links in the reply.
Suggestions for people on Fosstodon considering moving
For those of you on Fosstodon starting to think about alternatives ... 1) let your admins know that you're planning on moving -- and why, and what if anything they can do that might change your mind. In particular, if it's because your admin put somebody with racist, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ ...
And if you're not sure why so many people on Fosstodon are considering moving, there are some links in the reply.
There really are a lot of opportunities here!
A deep dive into @FediForum's last-minute cancellation and the opportunities for a collective learning experience, catalyst for change, and perhaps an inflection point -- for FediForum and the broader ecosystem.
Contents:
"Mutual aid. Organizing. Sharing, contextualizing, and making meaning of news and health information to counter propaganda and information overload. The use cases for alternative social networks – not controlled by techbro white supremacist CEO's working with their cronies in authoritarian governmen...
This was originally going to be a #FediForum session ... oh well. But why let the FediForum organizers' screwups sabotage a worthwhile conversation? We decided to go ahead with the discussion anyhow. Here's the notes.
Feedback welcome! If you'd prefer to respond anonymously, here's a CryptPad form (it takes a few seconds to load, so don't panic; and it's kind of long, but all the questions are optional).
Some potential paths forward -- but the landscape is complicated.
A summary of what I heard in a bunch of meetings with organizers.
Draft! Feedback welcome!
Feedback welcome!
With Xitter's CEO making Nazi salutes and Meta's techbro CEO kissing the fascist boot, now's a good time to look at alternatives
A daunting choice -- but not irrevocable!
There's a lot of detail here. If you'd rather not deal with the complexity up front, and just want to get started as quickly as possible, there's a table of contents up front -- feel free to skip ahead!
And as always, feedback is welcome!
A daunting choice -- but not irrevocable!
There's a lot of detail here. If you'd rather not deal with the complexity up front, and just want to get started as quickly as possible, there's a table of contents up front -- feel free to skip ahead!
And as always feedback is welcome!
Great points ... and yes that is a key question!
With a Trump presidency and the rise of global authoritarianism, we must see that the antidote to our techno-harms are found in communities framed as “dangerous” or the "other," writes Afsaneh Rigot.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/21234278
Excellent article by Afsaneh Rigot, author of the Design from the Margins methodology.
Can We Build Tech That Is Not Oppressive?
Discover and discuss great writing with the world’s smartest readers on Substack.
Excellent article by Afsaneh Rigot, author of the Design from the Margins methodology.
The fediverse is powered by people ... so please keep the people here in mind a part of your giving
The fediverse is powered by people ... so please keep the people here in mind a part of your giving
Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
Part 3 of Bluesky, the ATmosphere, and the fediverses
There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere (the ecosystem using the AT protocol) are decentralized. Blacksky runs three feed generators, a moderation service, and a work-in-progress personal data store (PDS) as well as providing a starter pack. And the vision for Blacksky "extends beyond any single platform".
That sounds pretty decentralized to me!
But as far as I can tell, nobody else in the discussion is talking about Blacksky as an actually-existing example of decentralization. What's with that?
Suggestions and feedback welcome
The official Mastodon web user interface and mobile apps aren't great from an accessibility perspective. Fortunately there are some better alternatives – and many of them also work with Mastodon-compatible software like Glitch, Hometown, GoToSocial, Akkoma, and Friendica.
This is a draft, and I'm sure I missed a lot. Feedback welcome!
This bill can't pass without Democratic support ... but last week, over 50 Democrats voted for it! It didn't quite pass, but now they're trying again ... so please, if you're in the US, please call your Congresspeople!
Here's EFF's action alert. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-not-to-weaponize-the-treasury-department-against-nonprofits
The Color of Surveillance: Surveillance / Resistance - Monday November 18
Livestreamed as well as in-person, and co-hosted by the Georgetown Center for Privacy and Technology and @[email protected]
"Our theme, “Surveillance / Resistance,” is broader and more ambiguous than the themes for previous years, and this is purposeful. What does resistance mean when surveillance isn’t just something that occurs in the environments where we live and work and play and think and create and struggle, but is actually the material with which so many of those environments are built? In a context of broad institutional corrosion and capture, in the face of proliferating global catastrophe, this is a question that remains open and difficult."
The previous workshops I've been to have been outstanding, and this one looks like it'll be great too!
The Color of Surveillance: Surveillance / Resistance - Monday November 18
Livestreamed as well as in-person, and co-hosted by the Georgetown Center for Privacy and Technology and @[email protected]
"Our theme, “Surveillance / Resistance,” is broader and more ambiguous than the themes for previous years, and this is purposeful. What does resistance mean when surveillance isn’t just something that occurs in the environments where we live and work and play and think and create and struggle, but is actually the material with which so many of those environments are built? In a context of broad institutional corrosion and capture, in the face of proliferating global catastrophe, this is a question that remains open and difficult."
The previous workshops I've been to have been outstanding, and this one looks like it'll be great too!
Yeah, a lot depends on where you live. Check out these lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmMobN4AVw And they're far from the worst! I just did a search on "four hour voting lines" and it happened in Chicago, New Jersey, UC Irvine, Northeast Ohio ...and that's just the first page of search results.
One reason people might be annoyed by this is because it sounds like you don't realize how many people had to wait in four-hour long lines.
Anyhow, turnout wasn't abysmal, it looks like be down a bit from 2020's record numbers.
Do you think the Director of CISA -- who Biden appointed (and has done a great job) and Trump will almost certainly fire -- lives under a rock and wants Trump to take office? Because here's what she said:
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/statement-cisa-director-easterly-security-2024-elections
Yes there several english-speaking instances running Misskey or a fork. Here's the list for Sharkey - https://fedidb.org/software/sharkey
Misskey's a vibrant colorful very interactive experience
Bluesky's a very good Twitter alternative, at least for now, although it's owned by a VC-funded startup so we'll see how long that lasts
Mastodon (and even moreso forks like Glitch and Hometown) are good if you want a small-to-medium size community along with the ability to be part of broader conversations. It can be a decent Twitter alternative for some people (especially white techies) but Bluesky's a lot more usable, easy to get started on, and diverse.
What's the evidence you find "literally incontrovertible"?
The comparison is apt though:
Sure, if it's somebody you know or trust who's saying this, then it's not disinformation; agreed about helping them contact election officials and/or other authorities, and if you think it's useful to amplify it, then I'm not trying to talk you out of it.
If it's not somebody you know or trust, then amplifying it is quite possibly helping out a disinformation campaign.
And in any case, amplifying individual claims is very different from the unsupported claims about "millions of missing votes", and that's what I am trying to talk people out of.
It's true that downballot Dems ran ahead of Harris in most states. Why do you think it's statistically unlikely? Polls ahead of the election showed downballot Dems were more popular than Harris. Republicans focused most of their negative campaigning on Harris. Biden's very unpopular and she didn't try to distance herself from him (I'm not saying that she should have, I'm just observing that she didn't). Sexists and racists were less likely to vote for Harris.
I talked about that in the article:
Don't get me wrong, multiple voter suppression techniques actually were used to keep people from voting – purging voters from rolls, felon disenfranchisement, 6-hour lines, texts with false information, voter intimidation, voter id laws, signature challenges, etc etc etc. But that's not what these conspiracy allegations are focusing on.
And I also discussed it in terms of the goals of people pushing these conspiracy theories:
focusing attention on an alleged fraud that didn't occur is a good way to divert attention from all voter suppression that really has occurred and has been steadily ramping up ever since Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voing Rights Act – and got even worse this year after Republicans blocked legislation that could have provided voters and election officials with more protection.
Please don't amplify conspiracy theories!
The reality is that it always takes time for some states to count all the votes; when these rumors started ramping up, there were over ten million uncounted ballots in California alone. But, many people don't know that this is how things always work. So, with emotions high in the aftermath of the election, disinformation purveyors are taking advantage of the opportunity to get well-intentioned people to help amplify conspiracy theories.
If you see allegations of "millions of missing votes" or voting machine fraud, please don't amplify them! Instead:
Rumors, conspiracy theories, and disinformation about "millions of missing votes" and voting machine fraud
Please don't amplify conspiracy theories!
The reality is that it always takes time for some states to count all the votes; when these rumors started ramping up, there were over ten million uncounted ballots in California alone. But, many people don't know that this is how things always work. So, with emotions high in the aftermath of the election, disinformation purveyors are taking advantage of the opportunity to get well-intentioned people to help amplify conspiracy theories.
If you see allegations of "millions of missing votes" or voting machine fraud, please don't amplify them! Instead:
Post-election disinfo: weaponized inaccurate exit polls targeting marginalized communities
Think before you engage or share!
Well-crafted disinfo takes advantage of our emotions by getting us to amplify false and misleading messages. A specific example of post-election racialized disinfo that I'm seeing a lot of is weaponizing exit poll data to target Latinos, Black men, trans people, and other marginalized demographics.
Thanks for the clarifications!
Yeah, it's somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It's great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren't any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There's certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta'll happen.
There isn't direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started
Have a look here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17718832/11190856
As Strypey acknowledges, there's a lot he didn't know about at the time and left out. Before Mastodon: GNU Social and other early fediverses includes a lot of that.
For what it's worth, the guy who mostly maintains the Wikipedia page agrees with you. And yet even so, at least for now, the Wikipedia page states "The majority of fediverse platforms ... create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol" -- which pretty clearly implies that not all fediverse platforms use the ActivityPub protocol.
Anyhow whether or not you agree to disagree ... we disagree. Time will tell how broad usage of the term evolves. In the original article I pointed to examples of TechCrunch and Mike Masnick using the term in the broader sense, but maybe those will turn out to be points off the curve. We shall see!
Yep. And also, like I said in https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/
For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn't have good experiences ... so didn't stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn't addressed the reasons why.
Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities ... So today, BTS ARMY and millions of Brazilians, and everybody else looking for a Twitter alternative are more likely to have a good experience on Bluesky than Mastodon.
Great point. And Jay won the power struggle with Jack, which almost nobody gives her credit for.