Notices by Chris Wiegman (chris@mastodon.chriswiegman.com)

Re conferences people should probably just do virtual ones if possible. If it’s not safe for others to enter the U.S. it’s also not safe for many people to leave it.

I think about this image every day. Turkish protesters used graffiti to spread word about alternative DNS (Google) to bypass state censorship.

What will we do when Google collaborates with the regime? This is not theoretical. We must build and improve tools to communicate without corpo assistance.

True story: I had a one-slide internal presentation I made at Moz, that read "people will say and do and believe literally any crazy bullshit if the only alternative they can see is to feel powerless over something they care about."

One keenly-felt personal failure of my time there was that l could never convince the org that this is not just a truth, but a strategy. So now, people who care a lot about Mozilla have been made to feel powerless a lot in the last decade.

https://mastodon.social/@tedmielczarek/114081712945686676

Some thoughts on Mozilla's new terms of service and updated privacy policy:

https://www.funnymonkey.com/2025/02/mozillas-new-terms-of-service-and-updated-privacy-policy/

Mozilla continues to erode trust with actions that appear hostile to the people who have used and loved what they do.

Their latest update continues this trend.

What's pretty amazing here is the consistency of their bad decisions.

Their terms are bad.
Their justifications are disingenuous.
They way they make updates is overtly hostile.

1/x

I would love to dump Google 100% but considering they're my ISP and there aren't really any good choices for ISP's in the area, and considering my girlfriend needs a reliable ISP for the three days a week she works from home, it's just not a possibility.

The only thing I use Gmail for is spam, but I should dump those soon as well.

And until we get some light bulbs that work with Siri, our Google Home devices will have to wait to be replaced. (we have 2)

Ungoogleing is a pain.

The world is becoming far, far more dangerous of a place to be.

If human rights are going to survive, we're going to need better ways to not only communicate, but to collaborate. To do. To act.

We need stronger foundations than we have today. Stronger by a *long shot*.

The problem is center-left political elites see the movements engineered by their right-wing colleagues as legitimate because they're all part of the same club, they themselves are rather nasty people, and they assume "the unwashed masses" are even worse than they are.

They're also fixated on goals that have nothing to do with improving the average person's life so even when they want to oppose the right, they fail because they can't conceive of or articulate a position that would help.

This is only a small part of @adam’s post (and you should read the whole thing) but never let anybody try to redirect your criticism of fascist or hateful rhetoric to a private medium. Never EVER. Fascism MUST be aired publicly and people MUST understand that their words have consequences.

https://notes.neatnik.net/2025/01/accountability

NOT FOCUSING ON ZILLENNIALS
TWO GENERATIONS OF MOSTLY
WORKING CLASS, BIPOC PEOPLE
FUCKED AMERICA

Millennials and Zoomers are poorer, more burdened by lack of opportunities for socioeconomic advancement than previous generations.

not focusing in the single biggest block of working class, brown and Black, first time voters this country has ever had will cost Americans and the whole Earth dearly.

and let me tell you something about the canard of the middle class… 🧵

New from 404 Media: hackers claim massive breach of location data giant Gravy. Gravy gives data to Venntel, which sells it to U.S. government (FBI, DHS, etc). Data includes customer lists, and even peoples' location data. Hackers threatening to publish it https://www.404media.co/hackers-claim-massive-breach-of-location-data-giant-threaten-to-leak-data/

"How old are you"

"Old enough to have been *extremely judged* by all my friends by the strange idea that listening to video game music while working was a good way to stay productive"

Adding to my list of non-obvious thing you can do as a conference speaker:

- Offer to be a backup speaker in case of other speaker's cancellation (and don't feel bad if you're not needed)

#PublicSpeaking

(I need to convert this whole thread into a blog post)

Look, I get it, we want Mastodon, and the Fediverse in general, to be a great place for everyone of any persuasion, and yes, bots are a pain in the ass that must be controlled. But content policing to the point of blocking out large swaths of users or making users new to the platform feel bad for not following standard practices from their very first toot is not going to make them feel warm and fuzzy about the Fediverse. 2/2

Threat modeling is a key piece of this, but in the guide I don't call it threat modeling because I have found that the term can freak people out and make them less likely to engage. But yes - the process of understanding what you want to protect, and why, and making informed and prioritized decisions is key.

Intro blog post with Table of Contents available here: https://www.funnymonkey.com/2024/11/updates-to-the-personal-privacy-and-security-guide/

3/x

This was an attack not just on me but also on the Pods project as it means we can't do releases. I have suspected this could happen since the WPE team was locked out of .org so I've already gotten consent from a long time Pods contributor for them to take over the .org listing.

Now that I have been locked out of .org officially, I made a formal request to transfer ownership of the Pods plugins into their control so that we can continue our normal release processes.

#WordPress

Today my WordPress.org account was disabled unexpectedly. I did not request that and I have received no communications with reasoning ahead of time or at the time of that being disabled (like most people who were deactivated on Slack or .org disabled).

This puts the @pods project at risk on .org since we've used the security best-practice of having release confirmations enabled on the Pods plugins on .org since they added that feature. To confirm a release, you must log into .org

#WordPress

We need collective action. Otherwise, we have no power.

I propose a boycott of Automattic products.

#WordPress MUST NOT be burned down from the whims of an out-of-control leader.

#WCUS #MattVsWpe

@kevinrns @mavu @StillIRise1963 AI is nepotism. It takes people's jobs and does a shitty job instead. It steals other people's work and presents it as its own. If it weren't for execs shoving it down our throats we wouldn't be discussing how AI kills the planet. If it weren't the exec's fair-haired child, it would be unemployed.

Anyway. Fuck this week. Fuck this month.

When I read pieces like https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/sextortion-scams-now-include-photos-of-your-home/ from @briankrebs , I can't help but think about how easy data breaches and generative AI make this scam.

The data breaches give names, addresses, phone numbers, usernames, passwords, etc -- all small details that can be spun together to create a more believable story.

Then, if no picture is included in the breach, it's not too difficult to get one, and with that, a fake video could be sent with the sextortion clip.