Notices by Alex Howard (digiphile@mastodon.social)

“The New Years's Eve Ethics Massacre is a repudiation of the Ethics Committee's job to hold Members of Congress to account for their wrongdoing and to be honest and forthright to the public about their behavior.”- @danielschuman
https://open.substack.com/pub/firstbranchforecast/p/the-new-years-eve-ethics-massacre?r=dcep&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

December 2024: Elon Musk asks Twitter creators to stop using #hashtags because they “look ugly.”
#Hashtags are one of the signature features of Twitter & symbolize its cultural impact.
Like retweets, they were created by us, not @jack @Biz @ev & @noah, & adopted by the platform.

@bobjonkman email is a funny one! It’s both a noun and verb.

Happy to lose the hyphen on that one, to be honest.

Wouldn’t it be server :: email ?

Please don’t mistake the message for the medium, or a platform for the media. :)
📚Book :: chapter
📰Newspaper :: article
📖Magazine :: article
⚡️Telegraph :: telegram
📻Radio :: show
🎥Theater :: movie
📺TV :: show
⌨️Blog :: post
🎙️Podcast :: episode
💻Substack :: post
🕹️Console :: game

“journalists in the USA need to write about press freedom & make it part of the national discourse, and not only when there's a catastrophe to report or when a politician says something extreme."-Seth Stern

NB: South Korean press defied martial law:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/business/south-korea-news-media-martial-law.html

Mexico is dissolving its freedom of information ministry, @inaimexico , which is a global model for an independent regulator for all 3 branches of government.
https://civic-texts.ghost.io/as-mexico-the-usa-autocratize-at-the-same-time-south-korea-fa-an-attempted-coup/ INAI is what the USA needs, but is unlikely to get in the next 2 years.

The open government fiesta is over.

New CivicTexts: As Mexico and the USA autocratize, South Korea faces a constitutional crisis after an attempted coup: https://civic-texts.ghost.io/as-mexico-the-usa-autocratize-at-the-same-time-south-korea-fa-an-attempted-coup/

Welp, I’m on the Fediverse in two places. How many people here would prefer not to subscribe to a threads instance? (I’ve been crossposting across platforms for years, but it’s more unpaid labor. Part of me is sorely tempted to slim way down, unless something changes.)

“This is the most spineless response to a mendacious, targeted campaign by a politician who is weaponizing the power of the government to pressure a media company over its editorial policies”- @mmasnick on Zuckerberg’s letter to Congress https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/28/trumps-accidental-admission-and-zuckerbergs-surrender-the-real-takeaways-from-metas-letter/

Photos and videos depicting child abuse aren’t “free speech.” Political violence and threats aren’t “legitimate political discourse,” either. https://civic-texts.ghost.io/media-depicting-child-abuse-isnt-free-speech-politifal-violence-and-threats-are-legitimate-political-discourse-either/

As I told the @washingtonpost , Elon Musk’s political advocacy has erased any trust in the platform’s neutrality & spotlights which accounts get restricted, suspended, supported, or promoted. Neutrality has left the building. Institutions must adapt, faster.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/07/musk-x-harris-bias/

Today, @ProPublica published the unedited video of John J. Harwood’s 21-minute interview with @POTUS @JoeBiden from September 2023: https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-interview-unedited-september-2023 https://youtu.be/oZFeBHWtgzs?si=shB-lADhjv9yxyBF

It is a model for the sustained, substantive, conversation the President will need to seek out & have with independent journalists each week to mitigate legitimate concerns of Americans have about his age and fitness to serve after the debate.

@jessamyn @joeo10 “Login.gov offers in-person identity verification at a United States Postal Service (USPS) location near you as an alternative to verifying your identity online” https://www.login.gov/help/verify-your-identity/verify-your-identity-in-person/ can’t love this enough

In a HUGE win for digital government in the USA, US Treasury says Direct File will be a permanent, free tax filing option! https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2385

NB: A USGSA survey of 11,000+ filers found 90% ranked the UX as “Excellent” or “Above Average,” after a successful pilot with 140,000 Americans that saved an estimated $5.6M in costs.

Next steps: invest more to pre-populate returns, test, iterate, & scale.

@jessamyn ditto. It’s wonderful to be over the moon about an objectively great outcome & decision from a pilot that panned out after corporate lobbying stopped the USA from entering the new century like peer democracies. We get so few times to celebrate right now.

Memorial Day should be above partisanship, pettiness, & petulance, finding unity in remembering the fallen & offering support and gratitude to those they left behind.

No one who genuinely loves our country would behave this, placing personal grievance over patriotism.

This is indefensible conduct & merits sanction & shame.

After a normal statement noting our national day of solemn remembrance of the Americans who died in military service, Trump wished us “Happy Memorial Day” again — including “human scum” — & attacked judges presiding over his trials & defamed E. Jean Carroll.
There is no bottom for this unfit demagogue, nor obvious curbs on his erratic, impulsive need to denigrate his fellow Americans or prosecutors or judges who seek to hold him accountable for corruption & conspiracy before juries of his peers.

On #WorldPressFreedomDay 2024, the 🇺🇸 has dropped to 55th on RSF’a index. https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states
📰📉”After a sharp increase in 2020, #PressFreedom violations have fallen significantly in the United States, but major structural barriers to press freedom persist in this country, once considered a model for freedom of expression.”

@pbump Big swing. Complex, hard, nuanced. Thanks for tackling it, & the conflict between “backing the blue” and denialism about the “hostages” who attacked police officers.

next up, the history of fascism, police states, and the congruence of the “authoritarian personality” & common trait of Trump supporters? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10986111231193032#:~:text=Law%20enforcement%20officers%20have%20been,1984%3B%20Skolnick%2C%201966

On the one hand, it’s a good thing that @potus joined the #fediverse https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24119353/joe-biden-threads-mastodon-activitypub-fediverse so that everyone can subscribe to official statements posts without having to use Twitter, AKA X. On the other hand, that namespace should be @potus@whitehouse.gov & be announced with a blog post that shares a strategy for a federal open social web & online Q&A. The void of policy here is frustrating.