Notices by Erik Moeller (eloquence@social.coop), page 2

Seeing #pixelfed photos in my Mastodon feed will never not be cool. Thank you, @dansup, for showing what the fediverse can be.

There was a knife attack in Germany. A pretty brutal one, with a small Moroccan kid and one German man killed by a mentally ill man set for deportation.

As usual, it's fodder for the right and a giant media story.

But I didn't read about it here in my feed until well after it happened. And that's how it should be, frankly.

Violence is awful, and reading about it hits us in the least intelligent, most reactive parts of our brain. Proportionality matters.

With Libération, The Guardian, and Le Monde all gone from X (and smaller publications following their leads), its relevancy for journalism in Europe is truly collapsing.

Germany is for once lagging behind -- while many nonprofits, universities and public institutions in Germany have quit X, publications like Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Sueddeutsche, etc. are all still happily posting to Musk's paltform.

Shout-out to German news orgs who _have_ made the departure from X:

- @tazgetroete (684.5K followers on X)
- @heiseonline (238K)
- @correctiv_org (118.6K)

(Also very cool to see two of these running their own instances.)

Many more to go!

I should also give a shout-out to two German public broadcasters:

@3sat and @ZDF

Both quit X in March 2024 without fanfare; they've built their audience here on the fediverse on a dedicated instance. (Another German broadcaster, ARD, also has a dedicated instance but is still on X.)

If you're looking for an open source project to help with in your spare time that can have a large social impact, checkout Metadata Cleaner - they're looking for a new maintainer:

https://lists.torproject.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tor-dev@lists.torproject.org/thread/JWMRZ2D676ZHUQ4PJOEBL7ASNVDQPUGL/

It's a really important tool for anyone working with sensitive files, e.g., in a journalism or human rights context.

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer on the @securedrop team at @freedomofpress.

SecureDrop is open source whistleblowing software. The project is at a critical inflection point as we get ready to build the next-gen version based on a modern cryptographic protocol.

100% remote, full-time, $110-$120K base salary with comprehensive benefits for US-based employees. (If you're not in the US, we can discuss consultancy models.)

Hmu for questions.

https://grnh.se/813b998c5us

#GetFediHired

- unblocks nazis on his platform while suspending antifa
- calls claim that jews push hatred against whites "the actual truth"
- weaponizes platform to get white supremacist elected president
- wears "dark gothic" maga hat at rally
- promotes neo-nazi affiliated far-right in Germany and UK
- does Heil Hitler salute twice at inauguration

actual NYT headline: "Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture"

I'm still maintaining the #eXit spreadsheet as best I can, (https://bit.ly/eXit → GDoc), but -- a good problem to have! -- the rate of notable account deactivations, especially in Europe, is difficult to keep up with.

If folks still find it useful (I'm at this point mainly tracking the specific Mastodon/Bluesky accounts folks set up), I'd appreciate any volunteers willing to co-maintain it :)

It's worth noting that there are now _many_ international campaigns to organize civil society & individual migration away from X (and sometimes also Meta). I've heard of:

https://helloquittex.com/ (French + more)

https://vamonosjuntas.org/ (Spanish + more)

https://leavex.eu/ (Europe; multilingual petition)

https://campagnes.degoedezaak.org/campaigns/detox (Netherlands)

@neuSoM (helped organize academia migration off X in Germany)

Plus lots of individuals helping people, setting up servers, etc.

This is what the TikTok ban (in this case CapCut, another Bytedance app that's collateral damage) looks like in app stores like Google Play. For those of you calling the temporary blackout a "stunt" by TikTok, that's not TikTok's doing - it's Google's.

A sobering reminder that app stores enable turnkey censorship for governments.

On Android you can at least install alternative app stores after ignoring some scary security warnings. On iOS in the US, you must put your faith in Apple alone.

@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.