Hacker, activist, free-softie ◈ techie luddite ◈ formerly information security and infrastructure at https://isnic.is/ and https://occrp.org/ ◈ my opinions are my own etc.
Oh look, the car maker that consciously and purposefully programmed their cars 🚗 to lie to regulators about emissions 🚬 , while the planet is burning 🔥, is now on fedi.
@rysiek@VWGroup brands (in general, doesn't even need to be that harmful) act like they are not a part of the reason people are fleeing centralized commercial "social" networks.
Seriously though, fedi was *built* by furries, trans and queer folk, disabled neurodivergent people.
This is *the reason* the culture here is what it is. Why CWs are a thing. Why image descriptions are a thing. Why privacy matters here. Why moderation tools not only exist, but are usable — and used.
If you had joined and asked yourself "wow, how come this place is so chill and kinda… nice?" — that's thanks to all the nice people from communities some people call "weird".
@rysiek read somewhere that you should object to a large number of furries on a plane - not because they're furries, but because if the plane goes down the impact to Internet/computing infrastructure would be incalculable. This place is dope. Weird is best.
If you are trying to "give the people what they want", maybe roll out new features like that as opt-in, not opt-out? If people *really* want it, they will enable it, right?
What happened to getting consent?
But I think we all know people who *already are on Signal* might not actually want "Stories". This is aimed at getting new people; on farming that sweet sweet MAU.
If you are trying to "give the people what they want", maybe roll out new features like that as opt-in, not opt-out? If people *really* want it, they will enable it, right?
Apart from the consent issue (which I think is major), there is also added risk.
More code means more bugs means more attack surface. #Signal is used by, and in fact it is *marketed at*, people at-risk: journalists, activists, and so on.
Adding such a weirdly unrelated feature adds a bunch of potentially vulnerable code, and also adds a lot of complexity for the user. And, for #InfoSec people who might be responsible for helping that user stay safe using Signal.
We're a few days into the current wave of #TwitterMigration, and we're all excited for all the #NewHere folks to have joined.
But please be mindful you are joining a social network that was not a barren, desolate desert before. It was a blooming, cozy garden.
It's not just about finding your old connections from :birdsite: , it's also about making new valuable connections with folks on here, who might have moved years ago, or who might have never had an account on hellbird.
It's also important to recognize that like any large change to a social space, and like other such migrations before, this is making many of us old-timers here somewhat anxious.
Plenty of fedi people had quit :birdsite: to find respite from the toxicity. So, a social contract of sorts emerged here.
It includes things that might be unfamiliar to the new arrivals — like broad use of Content Warnings ("CW" under the edit box) and expectation that images have alt text for the visually impaired.
Obviously #Fediverse is more than just Mastodon. I am not sure if #Pleroma and #Misskey offer RSS feeds of accounts and hashtags — would love input here!
> Reportedly, Elon stack-ranked Twitter engineers by "lines of code written in the last year" and fired the bottom X%, which likely means he's gotten rid everyone who worked on particularly challenging things, like security, privacy, performance, & reliability.
There is not enough 🍿 in the 🌏 for this. This means that :birdsite: let fired some of their most experienced engineers.
> Reportedly, Elon stack-ranked Twitter engineers by "lines of code written in the last year" and fired the bottom X%, which likely means he's gotten rid everyone who worked on particularly challenging things, like security, privacy, performance, & reliability.
Just a reminder, this is the same :birdsite: that runs 500k servers, 60% of them so outdated, that many are not even supported by the OS vendor anymore.
Whose technical staff, every single one of them, has direct access to production environment. Because they develop on it. Because there is no testing/staging environment.
Just a reminder, this is the same :birdsite: that runs 500k servers, 60% of them so outdated, that many are not even supported by the OS vendor anymore.
Whose technical staff, every single one of them, has direct access to production environment. Because they develop on it. Because there is no testing/staging environment.
Remember that instances are usually run by volunteers, and often with little or no financial support. Nobody is making 💸 on mining your data.
There will be some slowness, especially on the most popular instances, as fedi adjusts to sudden influx.
Good strategy is to choose a less popular instance: smaller, more tightly-knit community, interesting local timeline, but also — *actually* decentralizing #Fediverse. :drake_like:
You can block and mute, specific accounts or whole instances. You can also mute specific threads/conversations.
Muting means you will not see posts from account or instance, and that a thread/conversation will not show up in your notifications even if you're mentioned.
Blocking does the same, plus the blocked person/instance doesn't get to see your posts either.
Don't be shy, block/mute early and often. It's okay. It's self-care.
Fedi is supposed to be a nice and fun place, and if you feel that someone is making it less nice and fun for you, slam that mute or block button like there is no tomorrow.
If I am making you feel uncomfortable, sad, or in any way un-excellent, mute or block me. It's fine, really! Nobody will mind, and if they do, it's their problem.
You can mute/block accounts and instances for specific time or indefinitely. I find muting for a few days very useful, for example.
> Ultimately, if we reduce “alternative social media” to be solely large, right-wing alternative media (…) we get a false dichotomy where the extent and diversity of the types of media available is greatly reduced.
> The result is we miss out on innovations in platform governance that both go beyond the corporate model and actually do a very good job at marginalizing hate speech and undermining surveillance capitalism.
> Ultimately, if we reduce “alternative social media” to be solely large, right-wing alternative media (…) we get a false dichotomy where the extent and diversity of the types of media available is greatly reduced.
> The result is we miss out on innovations in platform governance that both go beyond the corporate model and actually do a very good job at marginalizing hate speech and undermining surveillance capitalism.
@rysiek @VWGroup brands (in general, doesn't even need to be that harmful) act like they are not a part of the reason people are fleeing centralized commercial "social" networks.
@rysiek there's also Cariad_Tech@mastodon.social for your blocking needs
@rysiek @VWGroup wait, is they official? Why?