Notices by Woozle Hypertwin (woozle@toot.cat)

2023-07-10 In defense of Deliverism:
The radical idea that people vote for politicians who make their lives better. (by @pluralistic)

In my view, anyone who says we can't expect our representatives to let us have nice things because we have to compromise is selling something.

#metaPol

@mekkaokereke @InayaShujaat @Kay

As a white person (for whatever that may be worth), I actually kinda like this new custom of capitalizing "Black" because it lets me signal unobtrustively that I'm trying to be inclusive, even if I sometimes mess up.

Relatedly: a right-wing relative recently passed me an editorial from the UK arguing that capitalizing "Black" is doing it wrong, US political issues are being imposed on the rest of the world, yadda yadda... and I'm, like, yeah, I see what you're doing there. Not buying it.

@welshpixie @Are0h

You know something's not good when it compares unfavorably to effin' LinkedIn.

@idlestate It was a suspend -- if there are irreversible effects, I should probably understand that better. (We rarely end up wanting to reverse full instance suspensions).

@zkat @GrouchyHydra

@GrouchyHydra Done.

cc: @news

@zkat Unironic: please, do give me more information about this. My policy is to act quickly and research later; all hasty decisions are subject to change or reversal as new information comes in. 💚

@GrouchyHydra @news

@zkat @GrouchyHydra Since he hasn't actually built anything yet and is just discussing it, I'll remove the block.

Some context:

This has always been a contentious area -- the fact that public posts technically can be aggregated without anyone's consent or federation has never stopped people from being upset at anyone who does so, openly/transparently or not. This is especially true for search.

There are good reasons to be upset about how it might be abused, but I also think it's a mistake to think we can stop it by just defederating from anyone who does it.

There are also good reasons to think that a lot of the fears stem from abuses of these sorts of tools on less-well-moderated sites and instances. It's my view that tool-abuse is best dealt with through moderation, rather than by refusing to allow the tool.

We need to, basically, do our own EEE on these kinds of uses: flood out abusive uses with responsible & transparent ones.

...and we need to start by discussing what kinds of uses are reasonable.

cc: @news @osslate @idlestate

@boutell We need to build alternative solutions that have equality baked in, so they can't become another Whole Foods -- so that as they grow, they help more and more people instead of making a few people more and more wealthy.

(Yes, I have specific ideas...)

@dredmorbius @vantablack @GrouchyHydra @maloki

...oh, and one other piece of the "software dev co-op" idea would be the development of software for arriving at rational group consensus.

(You know -- the thing I've been trying to build for over a decade now. That thing.)

@dredmorbius @vantablack @GrouchyHydra @maloki @news

In some other twig of this discussion tree, I talked about a fedi software dev coop (feel free to call on Colin Mathmo's bot, whose name temporarily escapes me yet again, in order to find it).

Other things like requiring opt-in for training LLMs on post-data, collecting and selling statistics... basically, think about everything bad that bigcorps do on the web, and disallow it.

@CadeJohnson Agreed. Any concession I might have made towards allowing them to connect would require conditions that were objectively verifiable (such as contributing loads of money towards an independent fedi development co-op).

I would have preferred to work out some conditions* under which we would allow Meta to connect with our fedi, but perhaps it's best to come out of the gate with a big "NO" and not waste time working out terms when Meta probably doesn't see us as worth negotiating with any more than one would try to negotiate with a housefly.

...well, ok, be fair: I often do attempt to negotiate with houseflies before I deal with them more harshly, but I think you know what I mean. (They never listen, so the consequences are kinda on them, so to speak.)

@vantablack Where's that form again? I'll sign #TootCat on, and only reconsider if there's substantial disagreement from our users.

* I can go into detail, but the ideas I had were very much not softball and would ensure that Meta would actually be contributing to the long-term health of fedi as a commons, rather than preying on it.

cc: @dredmorbius @GrouchyHydra @maloki @news (anyone I'm forgetting?)

@goatsarah The way I look at it, it has made Gmail useless since they can't communicate with anyone except other tech giants.

(That's my hill-of-dying, and I'm sticking to it. >.>)

So, am I reading this right?

It seems to be claiming:

1. Unless my ISP somehow authorizes email to be sent from my IP, Gmail will now bounce it.
2. Unless I am hooked up with an email service that somehow has clout with Google, Gmail will bounce it.

Since the "ISP" through whom I am attempting to send mail is #DigitalOcean, I find item #1 to be dubious. They are not blocking my outgoing mail port, and I have no problems sending to most recipients (Google and Microsoft being the only exceptions I'm aware of).

DigitalOcean seems to encouraging its users to use a 3rd-party service -- but I'm already paying them for hosting, and managing my own email service; I don't want to pay yet another service just for the privilege of being allowed to send messages to Gmail's increasingly walled garden.

Is it time to formally #boycottGmail?

#boycott #Gmail #Google

@devopscats I know you meant "dialer" but I am still amused by the idea of a "landline rotary diaper".

@devopscats I never use autocorrupt; it works best for me to let it suggest stuff, which occasionally includes what I actually want :D

@devopscats I mean, if you go to the trouble of having a cat, aren't you kind of expecting random and sometimes messy interruptions as part of the CaaS (Cat as a Service)?

@ryancoordinator @jacob Ooh, "responsibilization" -- that's a good one! I need to add it to my distractivism article.

@being @mekkaokereke

I was told to be more assertive, too -- and this was 2 decades ago when I was still presenting as male! -- even though I got better results from being cooperative and asking nicely.

@steevmi1 @clacke @mekkaokereke @aebabis

Indeed... When your life is built on a lie, how do you step away from the lie.