Notices by Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca), page 4

@evan I have heard specific complaints here on Fedi that Threads is as a matter of policy allowing posts calling for active and violent oppression of gay people. But I personally haven’t seen that.

They’re thinking of changing the name of Powell River: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/name-change-powell-river-divide-1.7145873?cmp=rss

OK, but how about we do “British Columbia”? It’s a horrible name, picked by Queen Victoria in 1858, and the locals hated it even back then.

There's been quite a bit of discussion about this. It would be advantageous to computer programmers to keep “BC”. Of the alternatives presented, my favorites are “Bella Coola”, the name of a remote town with interesting etymology, and “Bountiful Chinook”.

What Tim said:
https://webfoundation.org/2024/03/marking-the-webs-35th-birthday-an-open-letter/

Relevant to my #DeGoogle project: https://cantrusthosting.coop/canwork-cloud/

Tl;dr: Worker-coop -hosted/managed NextCloud. I wonder how many of these there are out there?

@kissane @tchambers You are correct, but I think there are things to like about the “we just defederate…” model. It demonstrably provides a powerful incentive for the people who control instances not let them turn into Nazi bars.

@anildash Let's assume that Fedi will get algorithms; the difference is that they won't have to cater to the sensibilities of advertisers, I assume. And thus should be able to avoid this silliness?

In which I argue that the AI/ML/LLM bubble is gonna pop, and worry that its explosion will wreak havoc on the whole financial system: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/02/25/Money-AI-Bubble

[Ugh. My server seems damaged… fixed now]

@weekinfediverse This ⬆️ is potentially a big Fediverse advantage in the conversational-media ecosystem. The APIs are stable and there are no overempowered product managers telling developers what they can and can’t build. All these people look at each others’ ideas, so the software landscape is greater than the sum of its parts. The Mastodon client options are already better than any other product/protocol offers, and improving fast. #fediverse

“The CARIAD project aims to maintain a healthy digital ecosystem by helping ActivityPub service providers to classify or block domains exhibiting harmful behavior. Our commitment to freedom of association means everyone is free to block anyone, at any time, for any reason. ActivityPub is predominantly a volunteer-operated messaging service, and as such, no-one can be forced to accept your content.” https://github.com/iftas-org/resources/tree/main/CARIAD

@inventor @taylorlorenz I do not toss that label around lightly. But Libs of TikTok? Complete no-brainer, fascist to the core by any reasonable definition.

I guess @taylorlorenz's theory was “Don’t platform fascists unless you’re pretty sure they’ll expose themselves as malignant idiots.” I think simple theories are better, as in “Don’t platform fascists.”

Um, starting to see a pattern where people are being followed by accounts whose avatar is an attractive young woman’s face and who post sweet little inspirational messages and cute puppy/cat pix. And they smell synthetic as hell. Saw ’em referred to in a mods conversation as “seeds”. There’s an agenda here, dunno what it is.

@evan maybe recast this a bit… kind of a triple negative there

@Gargron How did you get the sepia tone? In fact, I’d be generally interested in your film-to-web workflow.

@codinghorror So stop using it, switch to phanpy.social or elk.zone. They are amazingly better. I think the Mastodon team should focus their UX work in moderation and administration, the dev community has already shown they can effectively take leadership on everyday clients.

@evan Qualified yes. The qualification being a per-instance default.

@evan Per-instance setting, no?

So… much angst about the possibility of Fediverse/Bluesky i.e. ActivityPub/ATProtocol federation. I’d like to have an opinion about whether this is a good idea, but I don’t know enough, just yet.

I am pretty sure it’s safe to ignore opinions along the lines of “Ooh evil Jack Dorsey cryptofascist burn it with fire”.

So, here are a dozen question I don’t know the answers to. I’m going to use “Bridgy” to refer to this class of cross-protocol bridge. 🧵

Can confirm: https://blog.glyph.im/2024/02/let-me-tell-you-a-secret.html

Tl;dr: As a consultant, earn praise by understanding senior IC concerns and playing them back to leadership.

[The structural question of why this is true is left unaddressed, but is interesting.]