As my father is fond of saying, "every day you spend on the right side of the grass is a good day." In that spirit, #FediFam, let's try to let go of our sadness, frustration, and fear and think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🌨️ A snow flurry rolled through while I was out shopping.
🧘🏻♂️ Tried a new #yoga routine for my back and it felt great.
🧍🏻♂️🧍🏼🧍🏼♂️Housework goes fast now that our little family has grown to 3!
Off we go into a new week, #FediFam; as we snuggle into our respective beds, let's breathe deep, let go of our stress and sorrows, and think about THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🫂 Have an old friend staying as a houseguest this week. Fun times ahead.
👔 Got my laundry done.
👻 Kept the #anxiety under control today despite difficult conditions.
Yesterday is a memory, today is ending, but tomorrow is another fresh chance to give yourself a good day. Sleep tight.
1/3 Ok, a lot of us seem to have had a tough week, #FediFam. One of the reasons I do 3GT is that it is, in a small way, meditation. It's a way to force yourself to stop. Breathe. Clear out your intrusive thoughts. Realize this moment is for you; just for you. Now. Keep breathing. Think of something good about today. Maybe that's a struggle. Maybe it feels small and banal. Maybe it's just that you didn't get hit by that bus, or your milk didn't spoil. But that's still A Good Thing!
3/3 And now that I've led you down this path with me for today, #FediFam, that means it's time once again for THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🐓 Homemade chicken pot pie for supper with my family.
🏋️♂️ Good arm day despite the crappy gym in this town.
👴 Dad's recovery is going great!
I get this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy #Positivity and #Gratitude from other people, try it for yourself. You don't have to post anything. Just stop, breathe, and think of #ThreeGoodThings. @3goodthings
The last hiur of the day is slipping by, #FediFam. While we wait for the 11:00 news to show the weather, let's take a moment to feel #gratitude and think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
Does anyone know if a graphic or animation was made to visualize a consent-based network or communal #fedifam#freefediverse network to help visualize this concept? I want to make one, but I wanted to see first if it already exists! @ophiocephalic@thenexusofprivacy maybe you all would know?
We have recently been advocating the activation of a function which is present but usually off in Mastodon and other fedi services called Authorized Fetch. As we plead with the major development projects to take safety more seriously and make it a default, we have learned that Meta itself didn't think twice about it and has activated it in their own ActivityPub implementation against us.
We know this because of news that a fascist has devised a way to evade it and force federation with Threads. They promise to then turn their technique upon us and coerce unblockable federation with fascist and cryptospam instances: https://soapbox.pub/blog/threads-server-blocking/
While Authorized Fetch remains important to activate, it is clear that even it - which remember, provides better defense than that currently implemented on most of our home servers - is inadequate to the threats facing us as the Zuckerberg incursion progresses. If we're serious about protecting our communities and expressions from absorption into surveillance capitalism and the accelerating miseries of fascism, we need to talk about a stronger grade of defensive weaponry.
To this end, @are0h has fired a first volley: https://h-i.social/@are0h/111653850819592308 Every fedi community which serves as a refuge for those targeted and under siege should be thinking like this. True safety only awaits us in a transitive approach to defederation, and further on, in an intentional federation based on the allow-list.
Some worry that consent-based federation would lead to isolation, but this doesn't need to be true. For the end user, nothing at all would change; it would be just as easy or hard to join an instance as it is now, minus the funneling into a centralized, poorly-moderated vanilla flagship.
And what about new instance spinups? Their prospects could actually improve from the current status quo, if an allow-list fediverse was structured into instance alliances as described in the fedifam concept. New intra-fam spinups would automatically federate: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110793531238090472
Fedifams could then form trust-treaties with other fedifams, smoothing federation out from the fam into the broader fediverse in whatever manner of comfort or caution is preferred (such as limited or probationary federation): https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110985194948458666
We accept and support new spinups by fellow travelers were are already in community with. The servers which entirely come in from the cold are mostly those belonging to the creatures of the dark-fedi, which cause many of the moderation problems for those of us on proportionately-sized instances (and most of the other problems are caused by the disproportionately-sized ones, who will be joining the Zuckerverse).
By assuming agency for who we choose to federate with, rather than existing in a state of constant reaction against those who would try and force us to federate with them, we can defend our federation both from the fascists, racists, transphobes and pedos of the defediverse, and from the horrifying and corruptive threat of the Zuckerberg entity, and its collaborator instances.
An intentional federation would be a more decentralized one, as we could fully affirm a collective choice to keep instances small. That's not just an abstract idea; a more decentralized fedi would be a more democratic one: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110707707012210965
And it would also be a more community-centered one. Currently, the Mastodon network in particular is being driven by an approach which denies the prospect for a riotous polyculture of small and distinct communities in favor of a growth-oriented monoculture in which "servers are not... communities" ( https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/111628882009671820 ) and "it doesn't matter which one you use" ( https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter ), an outlook which Zuckerberg must find favorable.
A note also on the gaslighting we face from Meta's colluders; the latest being the embarrassing spectacle of ActivityPub co-author Evan wagging around a "small fedi". @thenexusofprivacy has a good rebuttal to this cringe exhibitionism here: https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-annotated-case-for-a-big-fedi/
Evan has seen fit to misappropriate the "small fedi" idea, then build a blog post around warping it into a smear, with a long list of patronizing and fictional mischaracterizations. But what is truly small is the thinking that the fedi's future is surveillance, algorithmic ingestion, centralized servers too big to moderate, and huge psychotic corporations like Meta. In fact, that is social media's catastrophic past, the one we're all here to reject.
A better vision for a near-future fedi requires an exercise of both the technical and social imagination, and another thing that Meta's collaborators appear to find elusive: a moral center.
Instead of a regression into another Zuckerberg-controlled nightmare of hate speech, harassment, "brand engagement" and dehumanizing surveillance, we can push forward into an intentional federation based on consent and community, which centers the non-negotiable requirement of safety for everyone who otherwise has the most to lose from the betrayal of this online space of refuge and resistance.
Oof, baste my turkey and call me Big Bird, I'm late again today! Don't panic, just sit quietly for a moment, breathe deep, and think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🍪 Christmas cookie day with the family, the tradition continues.
🏋🏻♂️ Yesterday's shoulder pump is today's ouch.
🌁 Road trip back to Worcester tomorrow!
They can be stressful, the winter holidays, with so much to do and lots of travel, but I hope you survive it just great, #FediFam!
Almost missed it today, was out shopping later than I thought! A busy day full of distractions is the perfect day to sit for q uiet moment and think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🎄 Shopping almost done.
🥤 Tried a new kind of protein shake that I actually like.
💵 Remembered to use my reward bucks before they expired, for once!
Hope your day had some happy moments too, #FediFam. Get some rest, tomorrow's gonna go great.
Where does the time go each day, when my first moment to slow down is almost bedtime? Nevertheless, we're gonna take this moment to ponder the day and find THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
👨🏻🤝👨🏼 Dinner with The Domestic Partner before he leaves again for work.
🖇️ Finally resolved a long-running bureaucratic, uh, disagreement with the Commonwealth.
🏋🏻♂️ Had a monster shoulder day, which has been escaping me lately. No PRs but close.
It's a nice windy evening with the sound of cars on wet pavement outside. How about we take a peaceful moment to look back on today and think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️?
Well, the hour is late, and while sunk deep in our winter darkness, let's try to find some inner light, and spend a moment think of THREE GOOD THINGS™️!
🏥 I love my #telehealth care team, total game changers, all of them.
🍲 Butternut #squash stew that The Domestic Partner made me for while he's away.