Shinycroak

This is all very discouraging, but let me offer a few rays of hope. The objections I have raised are answerable. A centralized sign-up process, user-oriented focusing tools, social ownership, and an ethical governing organization could provide a better version of microblogging. We might even be able to preserve some of the best things about federated models. If one were to design focusing and filtering tools that worked for the users rather than the network owner, they would have both automatic and manual elements, and be subject to direct control by the user as well, which is something the commercial sites cannot allow, since users would block most advertising. But if this is going to come to pass, someone is going to have to take the lead and a great deal of resources would have to be put into this proposed system. It surprises me how short this section, and the section on ideological problems, are. Partly this is because they are a short distillation of years of experience but, a...

Your first problem, if you decide to get a Fediverse account, is which Mastodon server to connect to. I believed the Mastodon propaganda, and picked out a small site from the list at joinmastodon.org . That small site turned out to be run by fascists and does not allow one to cancel one’s account. I left and moved on to a small political site…which kicked my moderate liberal ass out for being too radical. I then decided that being one bird in a large flock was a good idea and signed up for an account at mastodon.social , the Mastodon mother site. Many people won’t get past this first barrier. If you want to try, as a general rule, avoid small Mastodon (and other Fediverse) sites unless you personally know and trust the management; some of them are run by abusers, and you sometimes can’t find this out except by joining and sustaining abuse. Others are run by various sorts of snobs. (By the way, why the devil are Mastodon messages called “toots,” a US ...

I've done my time and then some on Usenet. If learning to moderate online forums is like studying trolls and demons, then hanging out on Usenet is like living in Sunnydale: if you survive long enough, you'll eventually come up against one of every kind of monster – and after a while, your reaction will change to “Bored now.” – Teresa Nielsen Hayden The Fediverse is a decentralized network made up of a large number of semi-independent nodes. Any resemblance to the political order established by United States constitution is not at all a coincidence – it takes serious study and effort to create political ideas, and even then people have to be persuaded to adopt them. Much easier to fall back on things already known. And, it has exactly the problems of constitutional federations on the US model worldwide. In US politics, there has been a race to the bottom in local jurisdictions. Commercial corporations go to Delaware for a liberal regulatory environ...

I have, unfortunately, felt it necessary to establish a Mastodon account. You can find me at @ravenonthill@mastodon.social . So Elon Musk now owns Twitter. He has started his tenure by firing the CEO, the CFO, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety, and the general counsel. He is reportedly planning on firing 75% of Twitter’s staff . He has loaded Twitter with $1 billion in debt . This is a recipe for wrecking a business. Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno comments (on Twitter!): So basically Elon Musk is planning to make Twitter profitable by firing nearly *75 percent* of Twitter’s employees, including most of the people who know what to do to prevent security breaches and how to mitigate them when they happen. That’s a serious national security threat. This is probably about to be an incredibly costly, dangerous, and totally predictable lesson in “no, AI can’t just replace humans.” So while I wait to download my Twitter archive (if that is still allowed) here’s some thoughts about Masto...

A while back, I read Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model and took a few notes, intending to write a review. I decided not to finish the review (the notes are here ) but before I stopped working on it, I looked it up in Goodreads I was struck by their high quality. there were many reviews in the 500 to 1000 word range and they’re very good. People are just giving away this work. In the old days these reviews would’ve been published in newspapers and the authors paid. Goodreads is owned by Amazon, which is one of the richest and most successful corporations in the world. And here we have these erudite, knowledgeable authors giving Amazon work for free? Really?