@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

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hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Another example of the kinds of things I use social media and advertising for today.

I am on facebook. My hay provider is also on facebook.

  • I found them through facebook through an advertisement.
  • I get notified of deals and stock notifications through facebook regularly.
  • I communicate with them and order hay through facebook messenger. They send me invoices through email, but most of our communication is through facebook messenger.

They are a small, local business.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Side rant: Saying "businesses should only be here under their own domain" is just another way of saying "I don't want small businesses or nonprofits here."

It's perfectly fine to want that, but then don't be surprised when those small businesses and nonprofits end up elsewhere.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@andemann @JessTheUnstill It basically doesn't work with mastodon.

You can see discussion on it at:

and in the linked issues.

To the best of my knowledge no major activity pub systems have prioritized solving the multi-single tenancy problem, though there's nothing in the protocol that makes it even particularly difficult: this is strictly an implementation problem.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@andemann @JessTheUnstill There's a combination of factors that make this hard, but I'd also emphasize that the problem for a small company or nonprofit setting it up is not just the IT setup (though there is that) or the server resources (that too), but also just the moderation challenges.

Asking someone to stay on top of all of the logistical and moderation concerns without backup is just not going to be feasible for many such companies.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

One of the things that I think @siderea hit on the head that I want to emphasize again is that there is a ton—a ton a ton—of nuance in what constitutes things like "commerce" and "advertising"

It's tempting to do bright-line rules around these things—"we don't want that here" style—but when you do that you lose a lot of the ability to work within that nuance. That can be perfectly consistent, but then you are going to lose a lot of the people who you are simultaneously saying should come here.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

By way of example: I'm president of a queer support nonprofit that is in the process of forming.

I've been tempted to set up an account for that nonprofit.

Most servers I've seen range between "ambivalent" and "outright hostile" to even attempting to set up an account for such here. I've also seen a lot of "businesses should be under their own domain [so we can block them]."

You know where I could set it up without incident?

Twitter and facebook

Now you could say you don't want that here!

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

That's a perfectly consistent and reasonable position! It's okay if you want things to be that way.

But if you hold that position, I have no reason to ever set up such an account here or even attempt to do so, and people who might want to interact with that nonprofit through a social medium… also have every reason to use the sorts of services that would welcome them with no incident.

There's ways of capturing nuance, but it needs to start from a place other than "commerce and advertising bad."

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Ultimately if you want people to leave twitter, facebook, and other forms of corporate-controlled social media then you need to have room for the use cases that they have for using those services, or you need to give them a better answer than "that isn't how we do things here."

Because they'll just go elsewhere, and inertia favors them staying put on twitter and facebook.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Reading research and articles around pesticides in general and herbicides in specific is maddening.

Is it glyphosate or is it something that is added, such as a surficant, that is causing the issue? These things matter when trying to determine the best strategies for chemical control, but most of what you find is:

  1. Groups claiming that "X is toxic" but that lack specificity.

  2. The company disclaiming all responsibility ever to the end of time.

  3. News articles both sidesing it.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"Deaths caused by pesticides" brings into mind Silent Spring type stuff, but are we talking about insecticides, rodentcides, or herbicides?

Monsanto is evil, and also are we talking about the problems with glyphosate, the problems of mass spraying glyphosate with "roundup ready" crops, just capitalism in general, or something being added to Roundup that's also added to many, many other herbicides, including more "natural" ones?

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@avuko …okay, so that paper makes the same conflationary error I am discussing here, is literally written by the person who is serving as the expert witness in a lawsuit against monsanto about roundup (which they are being paid for), and also appears to make false claims about some of the research (per the responses linked), and is a single person's evidentiary review.

This is, if anything, a great example of exactly the phenomenon that I am talking about.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I would ask how Tenn. Rep. Chris Todd can be a lawmaker and not understand even the basics of how the law works, but he's a fascist, so the answer is right there.

https://twitter.com/RepChrisTodd/status/1665064696381153289

For those playing at home: A Federal judge ruled that Tenn.'s Anti-Drag Law (The / ) was unconstitutional. Chris Todd seems to think that because he told the county DA that they are forbidden from enforcing this in their county that this ruling only applies in that county.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I really wish it were easier to describe just how bad things were for us in the 1990s (and 80s and 70s… but I'm focusing on the 90s for right now). Just how much how many of us were affected by the death of and what that conveyed.

There was a mass epidemic of homophobia. DOMA and DADT are both products of this era. Sen Jesse Helms called us "weak, morally sick wretches." Sen. Lott said that being gay was like alcoholism, kleptomania, or a sex addiction.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/how-america-got-past-the-anti-gay-politics-of-the-90s/266976/

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History June 1 is the day that U.S. labor law officially allows children under the age of 16 to work up to 8 hours per day between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:00 pm. Time is ticking away, Bosses. Have you signed up sufficient numbers of low-wage tykes to maintain production rates with your downsized adult staffs?

The reality is that child labor laws have always been violated regularly by employers and these violations have been on the rise recently. Additionally, many lawmakers are seeking to weaken existing, poorly enforced laws to make it even easier to exploit children. Over the past year, the number of children employed in violation of labor laws rose by 37%, while lawmakers in at least 10 states passed, or introduced, new laws to roll back the existing rules. Violations include hiring kids to work overnight shifts in meatpacking factories, cleaning razor-sharp blades and using dangerous chemical cleaners on the kills floors for companies like Tyson and Cargill. Particularly vulnerable are migrant youth who have crossed the southern U.S. border from Central America, unaccompanied by parents. https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
.
Of course, what is happening in the U.S. is small potatoes compared with many other countries, where exploitation of child labor is routine, and often legal. Kids are almost always paid far less than adults, increasing the bosses’ profits. They are often more compliant than adults and less likely to form unions and resist. Bosses can get them to do dangerous tasks that adults can’t, or won’t, do, like unclogging the gears and belts of machinery. This was also the norm in the U.S., well into the 20th century. In my soon (I hope) to be released novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” the protagonist, Mike Doyle, works as a coal cleaner in the breaker (coal crushing facility) of a coal mine at the age or 13. Many kids began work in the collieries before they were 10. They often were missing limbs and died young from lung disease. However, when the breaker bosses abused them, they would sometimes collectively chuck rocks and coal at them, or walk out, en masse, in wildcat strikes. And when their fathers, who worked in the pits, as laborers and miners, went on strike, they would almost always walk out with them, in solidarity.

@bookstadon

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@MikeDunnAuthor

As Attorney (Possibly Clarence?) Darrow said in 1902: "The laws cannot enforce themselves."

(The Lafayette News, Volume V, Number 233, December 20, 1902)

@bookstadon

hrefna, to internet
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Let's go through a few scenarios for ways deciding to enter would not be as simple as "just block them."

Scenario 1: Meta publishes a client. It's polished. It's clean. It's well behaved. It interacts with instagram and also loads your posts from mastodon.

Oh and it supports these custom extensions that do make your life easier compared to other clients…

Scenario 2: Meta publishes a boxed server. Easy to run, takes advantage of Meta's CDN network, low maintenance.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

You can almost hear Meta singing "poor unfortunate souls" in the background for this one, because mastodon servers are fairly miserable to run.

The problem in both of these scenarios is that you cannot tell when a meta product is being run, and yet they now have a large amount of protocol level influence.

It's not ever as simple as "just block them."

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Scenario 3: Meta does neither of the above except for their own service which has a convenient domain. They now get a flood of users onto their service, some of whom will eventually migrate elsewhere…

…but they are unlikely to move to services that have blocked them.

Oh hey look none of the big centralized systems like m.s are blocking them.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

The fundamental way that mastodon currently works—and the implicit assumption in AP—is a variation on "everyone talks to everyone."

There is no concept of a server. There is no concept of a domain block in AP proper. The default is "let's talk."

So now every single server has to block them, which means shared blocklists or depending on every individual server to act independently.

Neither of these are ideal.

wikipedia, to random
@wikipedia@wikis.world avatar

In case you needed a rabbit hole today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mail#Mailing_children

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

While he wasn't shipped US postal, around this time my grandfather was put in a shoe box as an infant, stuck on a train, and sent to his aunts to raise him.

Trying to do that today on amtrack or an airline today would raise… questions.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

for various surgeries:

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Also in a Dutch study 98% of those who received gender affirmative care as kids continued to use hormones as adults: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00254-1

98%

Now, there are a ton of caveats on this sort of thing. We gatekeep the hell out of these procedures, but this indicates to me that our false positive rate for treatment and for these procedures is extraordinarily low. As it should be, but that does raise questions for me about our false negative rate.

This moral panic is just that: a panic

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Now let's compare with the kinds of things we've granted cis people.

This isn't even getting into the coercive surgical assignment that happens with intersex people/those with various DSDs.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@est Yep!

They also use it to try to increase the height of kids, which was approved by the FDA in 2003: https://news.umich.edu/tall-girls-short-boys-using-hormone-therapy-to-shape-childrens-height-to-social-norms/

There's been some debate around it, but the view of the kid is almost never factored in that I can see. Fun, no?

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Part of why I get so frustrated with online (and liberal) types is that there's this huge emphasis on moral correctness but not on actually doing the things that matter.

says in the intro:

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Ugh, okay, now even my mother is asking Evil AI™ questions. Time to do some writing.

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