Notices by Tony Webster (tony@mastodon.tonywebster.com)

Earlier this month, Hennepin County, Minn. filed a motion to dismiss my public records lawsuit seeking data about the use of trespass notices to ban people from libraries under threat of arrest and prosecution. Here’s my opposition brief, filed today: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23815483-webster-20230517-memo-in-opp-to-motion-to-dismiss-hennepin_redacted

Paul Graham didn’t even have any URL or Mastodon account identified in his profile. It being on his personal website was enough to ban him. What a train wreck.

As annoying as it is, the reality is that followers provide independence. If a reporter has a following, they can be more independent against corporate media power. Demanding reporters “delete their Twitter” is to cede to corporations, who will never leave Twitter. A better start to this would be to encourage journalists to join Mastodon *too* to build and diversify their audience, and to get them to report on Mastodon itself to get more folks here.

Constructive things to say to journalists: join Mastodon, encourage your audience to have their conversations here, report on Mastodon, add Mastodon to your news org bio, make a video explaining how to use Mastodon, ask lawmakers if they will be joining Mastodon
Not helpful: You are a fascist just like Elon Musk for not immediately deleting your Twitter and giving up the audience you spent 15 years building. It’s all or nothing, right now.

Here are the two tweets about @ADSBexchange which Twitter forced me to delete as violating their rules by “posting private information.”

Twitter forced me to delete tweets explaining how to set up an ADS-B feeder and contribute open source, public flight data to FlightAware and @ADSBexchange. I was told these tweets violated Twitter’s rules against posting private information.

It feels like Mastodon has enough critical mass to fully replace Twitter for most people. I'm finding a lot of my favorite people from Twitter are already here.

I’m sad some reporters are distancing themselves from flight tracking or ElonJet. Jack Sweeney might not consider himself a journalist, but his work in building ElonJet and many other flight-tracking accounts is in many ways a journalistic endeavor. The journalism community should strongly defend him and his work.

Follow my colleague @maxnesterak at the Minnesota Reformer, who recently joined Mastodon. Here's a story Max and I did covering flaws in the Minneapolis Police discipline system a couple years ago. https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/12/15/the-bad-cops-how-minneapolis-protects-its-worst-police-officers-until-its-too-late/

My Twitter account has been suspended. I’ve received no explanation.