Notices by Erik Moeller (eloquence@social.coop), page 4

Good to see that @creativecommons quietly discontinued their X account in November, focusing instead on Mastodon and #Bluesky.

I hope we'll soon see more of the #Wikimedia movement do the same. A few chapters (notably Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) have done so, but Wikimedia Foundation still maintains a very active presence on X, as do most chapters.

Civil society must discontinue its presence on a platform that's become weaponized to promote hate and authoritarianism world-wide.

@dr_renormalizer

You won't get an argument from me that corporate social media are toxic machines of pure emotion for the powerful to manipulate. But to single out TikTok specifically here is just silly when Trump was just elected with support from a major social media platform specifically purchased and weaponized for that purpose. Yet X would not be banned nor even weakened - it would benefit from TikTok's ban.

@dr_renormalizer

The public can and should demand laws that put limits on corporate social media, but such laws must be applied evenly, not to single out one particular actor that happens to be aligned with a US adversary of the moment .

Cheering for such bans may feel good in the moment given the damage corporate social media has no doubt contributed to, but it's not rational -- the outcome will not be what you want.

@dr_renormalizer

Before Twitter/Facebook/TikTok, there was Fox News and right-wing talk radio saying the same horrific shit -- and people believing it. When I moved to the US in 2008, I was horrified by how racist mainstream media discourse was.

All the conspiracy theories about Obama were published through those channels before they became popular on social media later. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad and similar research into the influence of conspiratorial right-wing media.

@dr_renormalizer

You don't protect civil rights by sacrificing them. Civil rights organizations like ACLU are strongly against this ban for that reason. The precedent it would set (beyond the immediate impact of rendering absolutely protected speech by millions inaccessible) would soon be weaponized against the most vulnerable.

Free speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, but it still matters.

The impending #TikTok ban is a free speech ban that protects US Big Tech incumbents. It's in no way fundamentally different or better than other countries banning US websites or apps to protect their incumbents.

If the US wanted to protect private information from the Chinese government, it could pass comprehensive privacy legislation and regulate data brokers.

Instead, if enforced, we'll see app store censorship and ISP-level blocks impacting millions, with no material privacy benefit.

The US has plenty of deeply questionable political alliances: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Vietnam (!), Egypt, to name just a few.

What sets China apart to justify such a ban is is not its authoritarianism, but its economic and political rivalry with the United States.

A new Cold War is used as a justification to violate a major free speech red line -- including potentially ISP-level blocking of a domain, exactly the kind of thing China's "Great Firewall" does to US websites.

The medical-industrial complex in the US is broken by design. It kills people every day, denying claims with impunity, slapping people in the face in the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Singular acts of brutality always will rise to the top of the headlines. But it's the legalized, normalized, everyday injustice these machines manufacture that deserves and requires sustained attention.

The millions who've been hurt, or killed, by the for-profit insurance machines obligate it.

@quinn It's mirror universe Steven Crowder!

Is there any decent open source weather app on Android? I don't mind throwing 2 bucks a month at Weatherbug, but I'd rather support a nonprofit/open project if there is one.

@dphiffer @3wordchant @flancian

Would one of you be able to have a look at the #socialcoop queue backlog? I get these sense that some jobs are running way behind; e.g., I'm still waiting on an automatic follow migration on some accounts I follow to come through more than 24 hours later.

@dphiffer @3wordchant @flancian

This post is from 2022 but looks like it's been updated for Mastodon 4.0 and may still have some good pointers:

https://thomas-leister.de/en/scaling-up-mastodon/

If you're in the US, please use this tool to call your Senator's office and tell them to pass the PRESS Act in the lame duck session. It's super-easy. Barely an inconvenience.

"Journalists should be able to do their jobs without facing jail time or being surveilled by the government."

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/tell-your-senator-pass-the-press-act-now/

Not sure how many times I'm going to have to unsubscribe from Kamala Harris' fundraising list ...

(I'll continue to give, but at this point I'll shift any donations to more left/progressive leaders in the party.)

#AaronSwartzDay 2024 is live now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

First guest: Ryan Shapiro, #FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People (https://propertyofthepeople.org/).

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Ryan Shapiro not holding back: "It's not just the malignancy and greed of these people, it's how unfettered they're going to be in enacting their odious plans."

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Ryan Shapiro recounting his early career: "The FBI tried to put us in prison as terrorists for doing things like undercover investigations of factory farms.."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

#AaronSwartzDay

"I started submitting thousands of [FOIA] requests and it started to work. Started to map out the FBI's strategies for noncompliance." - Ryan Shapiro explaining his use of Freedom of Information Act requests.

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

"We were able to show that years before the JSTOR investigation and prosecution [of Aaron Swartz], the FBI had been preposterously looking at Aaron in the context of an al Qaeda anti-terrorist investigation" - Ryan Shapiro on his investigative work using the Freedom of Information Act (#FOIA)

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo