Notices by Rusty Corgi (rusty@cubhub.social)

"Mastodon sucks." Every last bit of Fedi is built by members of your community trying to provide a space to people for free, often at great expense to themselves. This isn't some social network we just rolled up and started using, we built it. I wish more people understood that before they slam it. :corgi_sad:

#Mastodon #Fediverse

"man, why do I feel like shit?"

*drinks water and immediately feels better*

"...HOLY CRAP DO PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS???"

WINDOWS 10 IS OFFICIALLY OVER, IT'S LINUX TIME :ameowdundundun:

BEEP BEEP YA BABIES HERE COMES THE PENGUIN PLANE OPEN UP WIDE :linux: 🛩️ NYOOOOOM :dog_spin:

#Windows #Windows10 #Linux #Endof10

The problem isn't ActivityPub (the underlying tech that drives Fedi/Mastodon) vs ATProto (the underlying tech that drives Bluesky), the problem is convincing people why they should care about decentralization in the first place, and why some of its trade-offs are actually worth it. :blobcorgi_excited:

ATProto will never be decentralized. It's not designed to be. :meowshrug: It's built to make sure everyone's data is completely public so then it can be aggregated by centralized networks built from your data. While it can take in data from decentralized sources, the network itself (the interactions, the likes, the replies, the reposts) are all centralized to one network. It's why Bluesky feels so centralized despite claims to the contrary, because it is centralized. It's also why Bluesky will never have privacy controls, because it relies on everyone's data being completely public.

ActivityPub is properly decentralized, which is great if you want proper freedom from big tech firms, but a problem when the experience feels a bit disjointed. Fedi is awkward to join and to navigate, it's difficult to explain how it works, and, frankly, some of the servers in the network are run by shitty people who shouldn't be in charge of a server, but you don't know that until you join. :meowdizzy: That sucks.

The problem is that those headaches are worth it. We are immune from arbitrary ToS decisions, we can't be bought or sold to private equity, Trump can't come in and strong-arm us into giving a voice to Nazis, etc. Our communities are moderated by members of our community, we'll never have an employee who doesn't understand our subculture randomly decide to delete your posts, and we certainly won't have AI misidentify your post and randomly ban your account. We have really strong privacy controls because the network is built on them and not built on needing to suck up everyone's personal data.

Aspects of decentralizaton sucks, sure, and you're right to feel that they suck. There are plenty of smart people working on solving some of those problems, but in the meantime, isn't it worth having a bit of a learning curve in order to have proper freedom for your place on the internet?

#Bluesky #Bsky #Fedi #Fediverse #Mastodon #ATProto #ActivityPub #FOSS #Decentralization

Psst :neodog_floof_cute: If you post something and you don't like how much engagement it got, boost it a few hours/half a day later. Do it again a few days later. Don't, like, spam it or anything, but boosting your own stuff is helpful for dumbdumbs like me who forget to scroll back on their timeline sometimes.

#Tips #FediTips #MastoTips

Trump getting Jimmy Kimmel cancelled using the FCC while attempting to declare any antifascist action as terrorism is terrifying, yet we can't openly talk about these people as the Nazi scum they are because these social media platforms are more interested in protecting their bottom lines than protecting democracy.

Why Mastodon is better than Bluesky or Twitter summed up in one sentence:

Charlie Kirk was a piece of shit Nazi loser who can rest in piss and Trump really should've been guillotined by now.

So, on an iPhone, if you allow an app to have background location access it'll just nag you nonstop until you give in and disable access to it?

How is that not an anti-competitive measure to promote their own Find My network? :corgi_wtf1: Like I get the security side of it, but as a user I should be able to permanently whitelist an app to have background location access.

People defend the decision by saying it's a security measure, which kind of baffles me because 1) no it's not, it's clearly a way to hamstring apps like Tile from using location access, and 2) at that point you're just saying that you deserve to have Apple treat you like you're a complete moron with your own device.

#iPhone #iOS #Apple

@forgifuzzbutt I don't get why they exempt the Find My service from the nag but not their own weather app :corgi_wtf1:

So apparently Bluesky is banning people for posting werewolf porn. Y'know, an anthro wolf, the thing the furry fandom is built around. :corgi_wtf1:

This is why centralized moderation doesn't work. You get one biased moderator and suddenly the entire community is at risk. For all the people who say Bluesky is decentralized (it's not), it's actually Twitter 2.0 just with more buzzwords. :blobfoxdisapprove:

#Bluesky

@aral @GuerillaOntologist @adnan Meh, I can hand-wave it away as that just being how toxic tech is in general, but yeah that was pretty gross.

Picking Firefox instead of Chromium feels like (obviously much less extreme than this) picking Biden over Trump to me, but obviously I hate both of them. It's just harm reduction.

@aral @GuerillaOntologist @adnan Yeah but I'd argue that Mozilla is a victim of Google's market position more than profiting from it. Google put Mozilla under their thumb and Mozilla didn't really have much ability to stop it. None of this is great. :blobfoxmeltsob:

@aral @GuerillaOntologist @adnan Yeah but I'd take that over a browser that's funded by selling AI to Israeli Defense Forces. :meowshrug: Like yeah Mozilla is bad but they're incompetent-bad, not really evil-bad outside of the typical pitfalls of late stage capitalism. That said, I do distrust them enough to use a fork.

@adnan I don't have as big of an issue with the ToS as everyone else does. I just think it's another silly Mozilla flub where they do something without particularly thinking it through. :blobfoxgooglymlem:

Mind you, this still isn't a good excuse to use a Chromium-based browser.

And for all you people using Brave out there, well :corgi_wtf1: 🖕 Brave is run by this guy who hates queer people and believes conspiracy theories about Covid, so maybe don't use his shitty browser that's been caught injecting affiliate links.

#Brave #BraveBrowser #Mozilla #Firefox #Google #Chrome #Chromium #FOSS

Me: Please don't use Chromium-based browsers, use Firefox instead. Google has way too much control over the web because of Chromium and they'll be sure to leverage that in order to benefit themselves.

Chromium: Hey all, we're getting rid of ad-blockers because it's cutting into our record-breaking revenue! I mean, uh, we're deprecating Manifest V2 for, uh, security. Yeah.

Me: See? Please use Firefox. :blobfoxmeltsob:

Mozilla: Hey friends, AI is really cool! *steps on rake* Hey friends, we're making an ads business! *steps on rake* Hey friends, we have a ToS with either the most nefarious or the most incompetent language ever! *steps on rake* Also AI is cool!!!

Me: ... :corgi_wtf1: I hate it here.

#Mozilla #Firefox #Google #Chrome #Chromium #FOSS

@itsOasus @alex Maybe there's some tracker blocker I have running that it doesn't like? I dunno :blobfoxconfused:

@alex @itsOasus I turned off my VPN and it still didn't show up. Popped up a Chromium browser and it worked.

So, uh. :corgi_wtf1: I guess it doesn't like Firefox either?

@FediPact Can liberals please realize the relationship between capitalism and fascism finally? :neodog_what:

Cloudflare: Are you human? :neocat_think_anime:

Me: *completely misses the checkbox when he goes to click the captcha*

Cloudflare: LMAO yeah. :drgn_think_science: Yeah, you're good.