Notices by Erik Moeller (eloquence@social.coop)

@cheeaun I had never even heard of it until now 🤷

Praising Trump for his antitrust pick, as @protonprivacy CEO Andy Yen did (https://archive.is/l1WYU), reveals wilful ignorance of the slide towards authoritarianism. That's disappointing for a product that journalists and human rights defenders rely on.

It's not complicated: All Trump is interested in is to implement rewards for CEOs who bend the knee (tax breaks, deregulation, etc.) and punishments (investigations, bullying, antitrust) for those that step out of line.

@jessamyn @wikimediafoundation

Good question. I think Wikimedia-l is probably still a decent place to reach folks affiliated with many different orgs:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikimedia-l.lists.wikimedia.org/

Individual affiliates also often have their own lists, many of which can be found here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Overview#

But I'm not very involved these days - maybe other Wikimedia folks seeing this thread have other suggestions for places that are more likely to reach the right folks, or to have good/constructive vibes.

Looks like @wikimediafoundation is at least pausing its use of X "for now".

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Social_media&diff=prev&oldid=28106844

Now would be a good time for additional #Wikimedia chapters to explicitly exit X (and why not Meta, while you're at it :-) to keep the momentum going.

@evan

Oh, I'm not optimistic about Bluesky long-term, given the panopticon (global index) model, centralized control structures, drive towards virality, and increasing capital demands.

I think our best bet for fedi's resilience is to use slowness as an advantage - nurture tech, governance, cooperative funding models, healthy culture, while new capital-fueled "alternatives" come and go.

@evan

That was the original hope indeed. I feel at this point it's empirically very clear that the major corporate platforms (with the exception of Bluesky, if one wants to call it that) do far more harm than good in the world. :/

@evan

To be clear, I wasn't making an argument for or against interop - I think that's rightly an instance-specific decision, and I appreciate the technical efforts for interop in principle (esp. with Bluesky!).

But personally, I want to prioritize anything I can do to support the movement off the most harmful platforms (e.g., X, Meta, TikTok, with X still leading the pack by a wide margin) by making clear the harm that they enable.

@evan

This movement off hate-enabling platform feels especially important to me for nonprofits, governments, academia, and public figures who seek to act with moral integrity.

This helps create the kind of network effects that can enable civil society to take shape here on the fediverse and, yes, on Bluesky.

On one hand, I think it's incredibly important to read about what Meta did in Myanmar (please see @kissane's excellent series: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series). It's a history people should know.

On the other hand, a lot of people have heard at least the tl;dr version, yet choose to remain on platforms that enable hate-bait loops.

I think that's because it's a history many people have difficulty relating to their own comparatively mundane daily online experience. But it is _deeply_ related.

Hate is a continuum of horrible things. Once a group of people is dehumanized, perpetrators of hate will do things that range from "well, that person just doesn't _belong_ here" to the most horrible crimes imaginable.

Platforms that foster hate-bait loops will lead to such dehumanization not only taking place, but being amplified and shared and reposted. (Musk is also organizing his own hate campaigns every day.)

That has real-world consequences, whether anyone observes them or not.

When Meta explicitly adds stuff like "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality" to its hateful conduct policy (yep, that's in there now), they're opening a door to hate-bait loops that will get people killed.

People may read about Myanmar and think "that couldn't happen here". I think that's bullshit (there is no exceptionalism), but it's also not the only question. The question we should be asking, wherever we are, is: what _could_ happen here, as a result of this? What _will_?

I should add, since I mentioned Myanmar, that the crisis is still very much ongoing and not just "history". There are many ways we all can help, including via UNHCR:

https://giving.unhcr.org/en/rohingya/

Oh boy, @dansup is going to get a lot of Streisand effect traffic 😅

https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed/

@cwebber @elipariser @wearenew_public foreshadowing

The https://freeourfeeds.com/ FAQ is missing one question that's actually being asked frequently: How does this approach relate to existing nonprofit, open source, standards-based efforts centered around #ActivityPub?

@elipariser @wearenew_public Can you fix that? It's a bit tone-deaf to promote this effort here without speaking to how it intersects.

It's hard to keep up with everything Musk is doing to undermine democracy in Europe and to promote 21st century authoritarianism.

For anyone making the case to organizations, colleagues, and friends, this article from The Guardian is a useful summary:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/11/how-elon-musk-has-meddled-in-european-affairs

An Open Letter to All European Politicians and Leaders to Abandon X/Twitter:

"By abandoning X/Twitter, leaders can reduce its credibility, promote fairer alternatives, and take a stand against the spread of disinformation, ensuring democratic principles are upheld."

H/T to @everton137 for organizing this - already close to 1,000 signatures:

https://www.openpetition.eu/petition/online/an-open-letter-to-all-european-politicians-and-leaders-to-abandon-x-twitter

#Europe #EU

The Meta developments make it even clearer why so many of us are wary of #bluesky, while welcoming the migration off X in principle.

It's very much born from the same Silicon Valley soup as Facebook and Twitter, with some decentralization cosplay masking that they are absolutely in charge of who can speak and who can't.

Early test cases include Jesse Singal (see https://glaad.org/gap/jesse-singal/ - still not banned on Bluesky), Vagina Museum (forced "adult content" labeling), and probably more.

For corporate platforms, "Community Notes" is just a transitional stage to AI-added "context" (and the "AI" label will increasingly be dropped or footnoted).

Meta and X have already begun blending human & AI-generated content towards this end.

Above all, the temptation of controlling the models which annotate and "check" posts will be too great to resist. AI will be framed as being "objective" in ways humans can't be, while serving those who control the models.

I'm very proud of my colleagues at @freedomofpress for publishing this guide for journalists who want to write about people behind bars:

https://freedom.press/issues/covering-the-mass-incarceration-system-part-1/

https://freedom.press/issues/covering-the-mass-incarceration-system-part-2/

American prisons are crime factories that perpetuate harm and violate human rights. They are also a highly normalized form of injustice.

We need more courageous reporting about America's vast prison population of 1.9M people -- the size of a small country.