downey

me, 5 months ago to threads

This whole anti- #Threads, #defederation thing is getting out-of-hand. The attached image is a post by the admin of Floss.social and it honestly blew my mind.

I run my own personal Mastodon instance so I can choose with what instances I defederate from, don't have to worry about getting banned for sharing content in non-English languages (namely Finnish), can customize it to my liking (add any sort of emojis) and of course have the freedom to post content on a wide range of topics rather being on an instance that encourages one specific dogma, ideology, viewpoint, or topic.

For (Buddies of Budgie, I chose the Floss.social instance after moving from Fosstodon since there was a restriction at the time on supported / allowed languages (strictly English) and problematic moderation. Instances were being blocked rather trivially and while it isn't clear that Floss.social is going to be blocking Threads, the language of the owner / admin is rather concerning.

It's concerning because it equates being excited for prospect of another alternative to X / Twitter and wanting to promote ActivityPub, not to mention sharing your thoughts, ideas, organization, etc. with a wider audience -- with the notion that one is being paid or otherwise financially incentivized to support Threads or ActivityPub.

For Buddies of Budgie, it gets all its donations (a generous 68 USD per month with many one-off contributions as well) from the community, in the public, via our OpenCollective. Not companies, not some masterminds at some secret underground cabal lead by Zzuck and Mosseri. Just other people that like open source and in our case, a desktop environment for Linux.

https://opencollective.com/buddies-of-budgie

The values of Buddies of Budgie are established at https://buddiesofbudgie.org/about/organization and focused around three pillars: Independence, Transparency, and being User-centric.

Folks from all walks of life and all sorts of viewpoints can use our software. They have a legal right under its license. I nor anyone else have to agree with those viewpoints for them to use the software. We aren't getting money for supporting anything but our own software and our own values.

Of course, I have personal views on how we should treat each other, what is / isn't acceptable, and moderation is applied in my community to make sure it is free of hate, repressive or other harmful language, etc.

From a leadership perspective, it is in my best interest to ensure the work that the organization and its members are doing is shared with the wider world. We're proud of that work.

So what's up with the shaming from folks about being excited about Threads? We get to reach more people, it's a fantastic opportunity! Folks need to stop asserting that others have a lack of values for simply wanting to connect with others.

metabrainz, 5 months ago to opensource

25,000 listenbrainz.org users! ❤️ you all, making music cool again*

https://listenbrainz.org/current-status/

*don’t @ me about this true statement - aerozol
#listenbrainz #opensource #opendata #music #musicdata

downey, 5 months ago to fediverse

:fediverse: :mastodon_oops: :boost_love: #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin old timers, boost this if you were around the first two times we had to organize boycotts against bad actors in the #Fediverse. (Gab, Truth Social, now #Threads.)

downey, 5 months ago to meta

🚨 #Myanmar: Time for #Meta to pay reparations to #Rohingya for role in ethnic cleansing

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/08/myanmar-time-for-meta-to-pay-reparations-to-rohingya-for-role-in-ethnic-cleansing/

#Threads #FediPact #FediBlockMeta #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin

downey, 5 months ago to Facebook

:fediverse: #FediAdmin pro tip:

When you see someone heralding the arrival of #Facebook / #Meta / #Threads to the #Fediverse, look closer at their motivations.

Follow the money (and how they and their work gets funded). Look at their public statements about their values. (Or, more commonly, the lack thereof.)

#MastoAdmin #ethics #privacy #abuse #StockholmSyndrome #GrowthAtAnyCost

mttaggart, 5 months ago to random

There are basically two irreconcilable camps in the Threads debate here.

• Camp 1, understandably, wants nothing to do with Meta and view them as an existential threat to the Fediverse for plenty of well-precedented reasons.

• Camp 2, also understandably, sees potential in connecting a managed platform that appeals to entities like news outlets and other services to the Fediverse, enabling us to access that information without requiring an account on a Meta-owned platform.

Camp 1 will not cede ground because they view the issue as existential.

Camp 2 will, I dunno, deal with it or move to a server where they can see what they want to see?

But given the scale of Threads already, widespread blocking of it will create a pretty noticeably weird gap in the federation graph, and make onboarding for new potential Fedi users even more confusing. That part, by itself, kinda sucks.

downey, 5 months ago to apple

🚨 🕵🏽 :apple_inc: :google: Once again proud of my US Senator, who is blowing the whistle on government #surveillance of people through mobile push notifications typically sent through #Apple or #Google servers.

Yet another reason to use @fdroidorg to avoid corporate #spyware. And to use something like @ntfy for your push notifications instead.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/us-senator-warns-governments-spying-apple-google-smartphone-users-via-push-notifications/

#SurveillanceCapitalism #privacy #FDroid

downey, 5 months ago to Quotes

"If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising, then they wouldn't have to advertise them."

— Will Rogers

#quotes #FridayThoughts #BlackFriday

downey, 5 months ago to email

📧 🐖 ☣️ Happy #UnsubscribeFriday to all who celebrate!

#email #spam #BlackFriday

downey, 6 months ago to Quotes

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

— Melody Beattie

#quotes #Thanksgiving

downey, 6 months ago to China

🕵️ 🇨🇳 In #China, social media platforms #Weibo, #WeChat, #Douyin, #Zhihu, #Xiaohongshu, and #Kuaishou now require users to reveal their real names to the public. People are quitting as a result.

#privacy #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism

https://restofworld.org/2023/weibo-legal-display-name-influencers/

josh, 6 months ago to opensource

Stop treating open source projects and foundations like consumer-facing businesses.

Unless you've got a paid support contract that's being neglected, or there's a grave concern, it's inappropriate to escalate issues to massively public forums.

Maintainers and the staffers and volunteers at foundations are already overworked.

Don't make it harder for them to address your issue by ALSO making them waste time firefighting in public.

#OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS

downey, 6 months ago to random

Dream big:
Idealists are the real realists.

Watch 3 minutes of #inspiration from one of my dad's colleagues and mentors:

https://vid.priv.au/watch?v=loay2imHq5E&local=true

downey, 6 months ago to Quotes

"Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing."

— Rollo May

#quotes #ThursdayThoughts

nekohayo, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to web

Restarting your apps while the network is offline makes you realize some things are silly… like needing to click the Reload button in #web #browsers' error pages, when they very well know when the operating system is fully back online anyway.
Therefore, I filed a request for #GNOMEWeb / #Epiphany to do that for me when #GNOME / #NetworkManager signals that online connectivity has been restored: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/-/issues/2230

downey, 6 months ago to random

"By gracing a platform like X with your presence, you're actively hurting society."

• Michiel Leenaars @ #NGIForum23

downey, 6 months ago to opensource

💡 Shout-out from the French ambassador for digital affairs for #GovStack at #NGIForum23! I'm proud of my team who launched this important initiative several years ago, focusing on supporting #OpenSource #DigitalPublicGoods to help people modernize their governments to better serve their communities.

https://www.govstack.global

downey, 6 months ago to opensource

☕ It's only 05:00 for me, but with the help of a little caffeine, I'm pleased to be watching #NGIForum23 and lots of smart people talking about how we want to build a digital commons and the Internet of the future, focusing on #DigitalAutonomy and empowering individuals to use #OpenSource to build the world they want to have.

If only we could get US governments to think similarly!

downey, 6 months ago to Quotes

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

— Mom

#quotes #WednesdayWisdom

hywan, 6 months ago to Matrix

A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends, https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/.

> It is hard for Element to innovate and adapt as quickly as companies whose business model is developing proprietary Matrix-based products and services without the responsibility and costs of maintaining the bulk of Matrix

This changes of license should help the Matrix ecosystem to survive and to grow. I know CLA isn’t loved but I don’t see another alternative for the moment.

Read the article carefully.

#matrix

downey, 6 months ago to Matrix

:matrix: So the dev teams of two major #Matrix homeservers, #Synapse and #Dendrite, have announced that they will fork their work to change from the non-reciprocal #Apache license to the reciprocal #AGPLv3. That is a good step in the right direction. #Copyleft is the only effective way to ensure software public goods remain open.

However the effect is not much change yet, because they will require a #CLA for contributions to be merged. Revert to a #DCO would ensure future protection.

(1/2)

downey, 6 months ago to opensource

🗻 Missing #SeaGL this year. Needed a weekend to slow down and take a breath. Once I'm back to a normal job, it'll be a regular stop for me. As it should be for you. #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #Seattle #PNW