Notices by @BjornW@mastodon.social (bjornw@mastodon.social)

Working on a #MakeSocialsSocialAgain workshop for @publicspaces

So people & organizations willing to learn about the problems with Bigtech Socials & willing to experiment with Public Socials (aka Fediverse) can be served with this. Ultimately helping them to move away from Bigtech Socials & hopefully Bigtech in general.

Quite happy to formalize my work & experience into something other people can use as well.

#Tech #OpenSource #Fediverse #BigTech #SocialMedia #Workshop #FreelanceLife

A month ago I did a thought experiment about @letsencrypt:

https://mastodon.social/@BjornW/114064065891034415

Now I read this by @aral:

https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/114224434946164202

Apparently Let's Encrypt is/was at risk of losing a substantial amount of funding from opentech.fund (OTF). Other projects like Tor are/were also hit by these policy changes from the Trump administration. BUT, OTF fought back and seems to be OK:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/25/otf_tor_lets_encrypt_funding_lawsuit/

For now. Interesting times.

#OpenSource LetsEncrypt #Tech #Open #USpol #TechPolicy

@cadusilva I agree with your assessment. However they will not be able to compete with bigtech & will alienate all their long-time supporters. There are other ways to stay afloat without burning all bridges and goodwill created over the years. This current strategy is mindbogglingly stupid & makes me wonder if it's intentional destructive.

Well, that was quick!

I wrote about about my disappointment with @mozillaofficial changes:

https://mastodon.social/@BjornW/114032743031437841

Seems they were just starting 🙄

Read
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/

Check
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice

Consider other Open Source apps you may use: aren't you sad that these lack ToS & Privacy legalese?

My advise: move away from Mozilla.

They have lost my trust.

1/N

#Tech #OpenSource #Mozilla #FireFox #Privacy #Surveillance #Security #CyberSecurity

🚩 You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as [..] in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

3/N

Why is this needed now after so many years?

Some red flags: 🚩

🚩"Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to install and use the “Executable Code" version of the Firefox web browser, which is the ready-to-run version of Firefox from an authorized source that you can open and use right away."

I wonder:
For how long will Mozilla Firefox stay Open Source? It seems the ToS apply only to the executable of an authorized source. Anyone compiling their own seems out of scope of these ToS?

2/N

#OpenSource #Tech #Mozilla #Firefox

@gvenk ik betwijfel het, al kan ik me wel voorstellen dat door gebrek aan handhaving er geen eerlijk speelveld is met bigtech.

@cwebber awesome energy at your #Fosdem talk. Thanks for shaking people up. Brilliant 😊

@_elena looks great! Maybe add it to your websites and add a Creative Commons license to make your intentions clear, e.g. if you want it to be shared and give credit use: CC-BY-SA etc.

@dansup perhaps you are already talking with them, but if not, @publicspaces, @edri seem like organisations that might be interesting organisations to talk about this.

Btw, I very much applaud that you have taken action on this. Like you wrote, it could be seen as conflict if interest. Keep up the good work!

@_elena I created a 'mediapackage' *ahum* for now limited to X - to use and point people in the right direction. Perhaps it is useful for you as well:

https://codeberg.org/BjornW/ditch-bigtech

PS: Oh and if you want & have time feel free to expand this with new images for other bigtech platform services as well. However don't feel obliged :)

@_elena
Thanks for sharing!
@cyberlyra thanks for creating this. Inspiring!

@molly0xfff
A thought: if you're selling the stickers as a digital file, than afaict you do not need a representative in the EU. IANAL.
@max @simonschreibt

@_elena Awesome! Enjoy the ride.

Sometime ago somebody shared a screenshot of a service with a cookie message along the lines of:
"We take your privacy seriously" while there also was a list of 600+ vendors with whom data would be shared. Does anyone have this screenshot & the source? I think this was by Microsoft MS365?

#Privacy #Cookies #Tech #TechPolicy #OpenSource #Data #GDPR #bigtech #Security #CyberSecurity

I've just shared my story on why I've left other social media for the Fediverse at the Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/tell-us-have-you-migrated-between-social-media-platforms-recently

Perhaps more people could tell them about this place? Maybe some of it will be published allowing more people to discover the Fediverse.

#TheGuardian #SocialMedia #Fediverse #Mastodon #OpenSource #Tech #TechPolicy #Internet #Media #Journalism

Playing with @MakerTube.

Testing the automagically importing from YouTube option. I still had a channel on #YouTube with #music & #sound tinkering which I wanted to move to PeerTube for quite some time.

#Makertube seemed like a nice site, so I decided to apply for an account to play with @peertube without having to clean up my vps or create another one 😉

Got my account approved, donated some money for the hosting & now my YouTube footage is moving towards the #Fediverse. Pretty cool 🤓 😎

Europa & Nederland moeten écht stappen nemen om los te komen van de bigtech multinationals.

Zie ook deze oproep aan NL regering van @publicspaces @waag @commonsnetwork

https://publicspaces.net/2024/11/06/in-onze-brief-aan-de-commissie-digitale-zaken-zetten-we-digitale-autonomie-op-de-agenda/

De NL overheid is vrijwel geheel afhankelijk van bigtech uit de VS. En de trend neigt naar nog meer afhankelijkheid, zoals @bert_hubert hier beschrijft:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/de-totale-keuze-voor-microsoft

Dit moeten we stoppen, voor het echt helemaal te laat is.

#OpenSource #TechPolicy #Politiek #DOSA #EU #Digital #Tech

Had a great conversation on public organisations & fediverse @fediforum. Been listening a lot to the other conversations as well. Good vibes & interesting topics discussed. Need to chew a bit more on this, so to speak.

#Fediverse #Fediforum

Alexandra van Huffelen (outgoing) Minister for Digitalisation in The Netherlands decided to leave #Twitter / X.

She participated in the Dutch talkshow 'Op1' & eloquently explained her motives (dutch, start 11:28 https://npo.nl/start/serie/op1/seizoen-5/op1_421/afspelen).

More importantly she also appealed to others to follow her example & use #Mastodon instead.

AFAIK this is a first: a high-ranking politician advocating for Mastodon / #Fediverse in a mainstream talkshow on national television.

Interesting developments.