@bpettis@benpettis.ninja
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

bpettis

@bpettis@benpettis.ninja

he/they

Studying Internet culture & web histories
at UW-Madison (ABD).

So basically I get to look at memes and scroll through social media and call it "data collection" he/him 🦆 | 🐏 | 🦡

Boosts = 'hey check this thing out' and not always full endorsement/agreement.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

bpettis, to TikTok
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

Fun drinking game for the next 9-12 months: take a shot every time a news article uses the phrase "Section 230" or "chilling effect on free speech" -- that way you'll be in the hospital with liver poisoning instead of having to keep up with all the TikTok news and court challenges

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-senate-vote-sale-biden/

bpettis,
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

Alternatively, lean into the chaos. At least we're sure to get some fun memes in the ensuing days/weeks/months.

Time to dust of this classic from the last time the Tik Tok ban was discussed

bpettis, to random
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

In class, students are quietly working on their own projects, and the building suddenly makes this awful "cccreeeeRReeeeeeEEEEAAAAaaaaaakkkkkk" sound.

Student A: let's goooo! Maybe it'll finally collapse!

Me: Honestly, same.

bpettis, to random
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

@Gargron: "I believe governments should not rely on 3rd party platforms to connect with their constituents."

100% yes. There is no reason that a massive organization/institution such as the checks notes United States government should not set up their own nodes on the Fediverse instead of relying on Meta/X/<insert any tech company here>

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/112208521589924874

bpettis, to random
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

In an effort to make the web less of the corporatized and platformized hellscape that it has been in other places, I want to make social media mundane again. Let's share banal things and put them out into the world

In that sprit, I have discovered why my eye has been itchy all morning:

bpettis, to random
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

Had a student email me after having missed several classes, and offered to send their medical records if I needed "proof" of them being absent. I had to assure them that I absolutely did not need to see those and that it was unreasonable that their other instructors have wanted it

Dear peoplr who require students to share those kinds of private information as part of an attendance policy or anything similar: stop doing cop shit

Rob_T_Firefly, to accessibility

Reddit has now sufficiently broken their own site that moderators of the blind community's subreddit who are themselves blind can no longer access the moderator tools.

This statement by the mod team is worth a read to understand the full extent of the failure.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14nzwkm/they_finally_did_it_reddit_made_it_impossible_for/

Edit: it's also worth noting that this community now has a dedicated Lemmy instance. https://RBlind.com

bpettis,
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

@Rob_T_Firefly

Highlights (for me) from the full mod announcement:

“Reddit made a business decision to effectively remove users' access to third-party apps and must assure that access by its own means.”

“If Reddit Inc wants to deny service to disabled people, they must make that statement.”

“Disabled redditors will not accept being quietly whisked away, nor will the broader Reddit community. People make Reddit and people can break Reddit.”

bpettis, to twitter
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

I've been gradually working on small updates to my Birdwatch Archive project (https://birdwatcharchive.org) as I've been doing my own research and realizing "oh hey I actually need feature X or Y now"

The site is still super ugly and clunky, but working for the most part. And hopefully will help support ongoing

Screenshot of JSON formatted output from the Birdwatch Archive Website. It shows metadata for several user-submitted notes

bpettis,
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

I was spurred into action by Musk's recent tweet about "Cis" and "Cisgender" being considered slurs on Twitter - and I was wondering how Birdwatch/Community Notes users were responding to that provocation.

https://birdwatcharchive.org/notes?q%5BcreatedAtMillis_gteq%5D=&q%5BcreatedAtMillis_lteq%5D=&q%5Bsummary_i_cont_any%5D=&q%5BtweetId_eq%5D=1671370284102819841

Because publishes their data publicly, I'm merely aggregating and reformatting it so that anybody (not just Twitter users in the Birdwatch program) can view them more easily.

lauren, to mastodon
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Watching the load average creeping up on the server. Uh oh.

bpettis,
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

@lauren

Screenshot of the “Several people are typing…” notification in Discord. The image has been animated so that the entire message is shaking rapidly.

bpettis, to random
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

If people wander around wearing the iGoggles (which is what I'm calling them) the same way that they just wander around wearing airpods - so you never know for sure where they're paying attention or if you can be seen/heard - I may become physically violent

(and yes, there's tech to let them hear you and you to "see" their eyes but that's all still way too black mirror-y)

bpettis, to selfhosted
@bpettis@benpettis.ninja avatar

I've now migrated to a new () server, so here is an post for me to pin here

I'm a PhD candidate in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I'm studying Internet culture and am interested in how individual people relate to corporations, governments, etc. through various types of technology.

My dissertation is about how individual people are constructed as "Users" on the internet.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • cubers
  • DreamBathrooms
  • InstantRegret
  • tacticalgear
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • thenastyranch
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • modclub
  • kavyap
  • ethstaker
  • provamag3
  • osvaldo12
  • khanakhh
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • everett
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tester
  • megavids
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •