Notices by Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D. (ubiquity75@dair-community.social), page 2

Where else can we find evidence of their politics? Consider their stable of…whatevers they brought in to seed the platform, to the tune of $250k (and up) advances. Glen Greenwald. Matt Taibbi. Matty Yglesias. Bari Weiss. Graham Linehan. Among other shared political orientations, there is an undercurrent among them all of neoreactionary stances. You also might recognize them for other activities of late (e.g., the comically devoid of substance “Twitter Files”).

Sadsack is not just a publisher. It’s a platform. And, as some will be right and quick to point out, platforms have politics. None of these suggested alternatives passes the smell test.

I just don’t know what more to do to try to make this case. But I’m begging folks to listen to me and think this through along the lines I’ve recommended. Talk to your friends and peers. Maybe I’ll put a billboard on the 10. Skywrite it.

I’m really a good time at a cocktail party. Can you tell?

What irony that these people run off at the goddamned mouth about “free speech” in the “town square,” all the while ensuring that they alone hold the keys to that square and they alone make the rules. And the money. Ever get the feeling you’ve been had?

Here’s another big secret: it’s not about feature set, or technological affordances, or interfaces anymore. Almost anything one for-profit company is doing with their products can be adequately mimicked in a non-corporatized release. Or — here’s a thought — something novel could be born without having to be incubated and promoted by VC-funded or Wall Street-controlled firms. Decolonize your minds. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that we don’t have the means.

I will allow that is probably outside the purview of the part-time coder giving voluntarily to projects to build and then run an instance of anything to the tune of two billion users worldwide. But let me ask you this: does that model seem healthy for all of us, the people? There is NOTHING NATURAL about two billion people being subjugated by billionaires profiteering off their human desire for connection. Fundamentally, there are better, more human-focused ways.

And those ways are likely, just by their nature, going to offer more sustainable, eco-friendly options (if we want them and demand them and make them), not a desert in a Utah drought zone (h/t: @mel_hogan). They can also allow people to foster community and connection on a manageable scale (whatever that means to each individual or a person’s community-as-she-defines-it).

Personally, I’m exhausted by the cynicism of the Andreessens and Theils and Zuckerburgs and Dorseys of the world. Haven’t you had enough? I’ve been online since 1993, a lowly paid, low status tech worker for 15 years, and I’ve been researching the trauma and human cost of commercial content moderation — content moderation at scale — for 13 years as an academic; a practice and an industry that ONLY exists because commercial, corporate social media exists. I am fucking exhausted.

As people are leaving Bird for good, I find that many are engaged in what I believe is a dangerous and misguided game of mixing apples and oranges. After what just happened, and all that it has revealed about reliance on for-profit corporate entities for interpersonal and community interaction, why advocate for another such environment? Substack is already known garbage, and Post provides no future-proofing. When I say, “seize the means of your social media production,” this is why.

I honestly find it baffling. And disturbing.

I’m calling banned journalists, for instance, to never ever go back. You do not need to be on Twitter to cover it. I’m frankly agnostic about holding onto an account. Right now I’m doing that, but use it to criticize Melon until I’m somehow banned at some point. I deleted my DMs and almost all my posts and don’t communicate via DM anymore. I post a fraction of the volume I once did. At some point I’m sure that will end, too. There’s no utility to it.

The people actually in danger of “assassination” are the people Musk brigades — such as these folks, and others. Not a billionaire and once-world’s richest man who galavants in a private jet. What a goddamned baby.

“Musk suspends journalists, claims ‘assassination’ danger”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/15/twitter-journalists-suspended-musk/

He’s positively Trumpian in terms of his “bitchsquealer” status. I mean, seriously. SO FRAGILE. Get a therapist.

So, ah, who can recommend a turnkey Mastodon/other federated services host? The ones I’ve looked at are overloaded atm. No surprise. I suppose I could piece together the services but I’m lazy. Lemme know.

(Too bad I can’t run it off a dedicated machine that I actually have access to, but I don’t even know how to get static IPs anymore or what even is required to run boxes that can live outside a local network anymore.)

So I’ve purchased my new domains and set up a free-tier SMTP service, and have now begun the process of deploying a Mastodon instance using Digital Ocean. So far, so good, but I’m getting too tired to finish this tonight. Off to a just-fine start, though!