@aral both those things are true - while it is a billionaires crisis, it is also a personal responsibility crisis - those companies are delivering good and services mostly to the billion or so people in the global middle class (income eg. US$20000-300000 annually). As long as we pay them, they'll continue to do it

@aral no one will miss the billionaires when they're gone.

@aral Basically, Fortune 500 is our hit list, how convenient.

@aral That's the real definition....
AI is not capable to create proper ideas, it's only mixing the one's human told him before!

@aral

Could AI replace you?

I'm afraid there probably is not enough signal in the noise.

@aral Based opinion.

@aral @Codeberg This is pretty amazing, thanx! :)

@aral And sourcehut! https://sr.ht/

@aral @Codeberg I won’t deny I looked up @gitea and #gitlab today.
I’m not sure I want to host it myself. Codeberg could be the way.

@aral
Every social construct is fiction. It's our participation in social fictions that allow us to get along.
This includes believing that money has value. It's not real, but it is useful.

*social. Some form of money would exist even in a primitive society without governments and their laws. It's the good old "the shoemaker needs bread but the baker already has enough shoes".

And here’s what’s saddest: the question itself is moot.

Because mastodon.social wouldn’t block it.

Instead, we’d hear about how Meta joining the fediverse is a Good Thing™.

This would be about a year or so before Meta or some other major instance with major Silicon Valley money displaces mastodon.social as the primary fediverse instance.

At which point maybe a certain someone will realise that legitimising Big Tech-style scale and centralisation is a silly strategy when you’re not Big Tech.

Right, well, since the charming person who owns thegx.ca saw it fit to reply so kindly, I’ve gone ahead and reported their domain to both their domain registrar – abuse@promopeople.com – via email and to their web host – https://www.hostpapa.com/ – via chat – “Thank you very much for letting us know about this Aral. I will report it to the appropiate team so we can take care of it”.

See what being so damn affable gets you?

Bloody spammers.

@aral
It seems that the Russian parliament might unblock twitter now?

@aral What did Trump say about shooting someone in a crowded street?

@aral I have a duty to my readers to endure the shooting of puppies so I can report on the shooting of puppies.

#twitter #journalists #journalism

@aral somebody please make a list like that but listing white cis heteronormative males.

@fungible_thadius

@aral @fungible_thadius Remember too that Myra Hindley and Rose West and Ruth Ellis were cis women. Let's tar all cis women with the same brush - or maybe not. We could all be sensible and epathetic human beings and condemn violence wherever it comes from and condemn the USA for having so many guns available with no restrictions.

@aral @fungible_thadius

Over 95% of mass shootings are carried out by men.

One thing is VERY clear; the modern toxic masculinity movement is radicalizing men into terrorists.

Ref: https://www.statista.com/statistics/476445/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-gender/

@aral *Everything* is political. It's just a matter of degree.

@aral Got to age 71 until I finally joined a political party.

@aral this image says everything

@aral

Maybe worth reposting?…

@EU_Commission

@aral @EU_Commission

The best part is, where US-based services HAVE implemented data-sovereignty capabilities, the US government has tried to overcome it.

https://cdt.org/insights/microsoft-ireland-case-can-a-us-warrant-compel-a-us-provider-to-disclose-data-stored-abroad/

@aral @EU_Commission What about Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast, Paramount Global, and Netflix? All of their apps demand total access to everything on your system under a pretense of "preventing piracy."

@aral let that sink in 🙄

Elon Musk doesn't care about others' views and question. If the work of an entire team can be easily handled by a robot, that team is nothing but an unnecessary business expense.
@aral

@aral

Based on the answers so far - and correct me if I am wrong - Twitter Press Contact is answering all questions from the press with a poopy-head emoji?

Here’s a good guide for writing alternative text for images so people who use screen readers can also take part:

https://www.sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/digital-accessibility/guides_tutorials/alternative_text/step-by-step-instructions-alt-text/alt-text-examples/index.php

#a11y #accessibility #inclusivity #web #fediverse #mastodon #twitterMigration #altText #altTextMovement

@aral

@aral

I like the term "bug catcher" for "user".

@aral @cancel "tried all the silver bullets recommended by Hacker News, used kafkaesque request forms to prove legitimity, contacted the admins of some blacklists."

oh my gooddd. as someone who's had to do this in recent memory just because the domain name *extension* was flagged as "bad vibes" i feel this article in my bones.

yes, spam is an issue, but email deliverability has become a shitfest.

jeezaus

and this is a good heads-up. big tech will obviously try to throttle mastodon too =/

@aral @cancel you are a brave lad. Or a pro admin! Running a host in the cupboard under the stairs is not for amateurs.

Tech Bro Hypocrisy #451: Consent

“If you make something freely available on the web, we can take it and do whatever we like with it.”

– Oh, so I can just take your company’s logo and the copy from your site and use it? Download your app and redistribute it?…

“No, those are protected by trademarks, copyright, and licenses.”

🤔

#consent #tech #technology #techBros #BigTech #SiliconValley #peopleFarmers #optIn #optOut #hypocrisy #copyright #trademarks #licenses

@aral I have had my own write.as blog for a couple years now. I love the minimalist approach to writing and reading. I also appreciate that both me and my readers aren't being exploited for financial gain, and that my writings are truly mine. We need to bring back blogging for the sake of blogging, not for financial gain.

@aral I've had an account at Medium since before Mastodon existed. It has its good sides, but it goes through drastic changes too often. When it was new it was super easy: signed up with my Twitter account and started writing. Then they went to more paywalled articles.

I haven't posted there in a long time.

I looked at #WriteFreely and its ilk and I'm still curious, but for now I'll stick with my trusty WordPress blog that I've had since 2010.

#Blog

@aral thanks for posting

By the way, if you think the artificial lens bit is hyperbole, think again. Quite a few years ago now I was sitting at dinner with some CEO of some startup that had developed a free tool they said helped people with dyslexia read more easily.

So, as I do, I asked him my favourite question: “how will you make money with this?”

He looked at me like I was rather daft before answering, matter of factly, “well, we know what you’re reading.”

Say no more, my friend. Say no more.

#PeopleFarming

What’s betting the only part of this Adobe corrects when they see it is the typo in the passage?

@aral Bravo!

@aral "Forget about “going viral” (leave it to the psychopaths in Silicon Valley to make virus-like behaviour aspirational). " OMG SO TRUE!!!!!! LOL!!!

@aral
If you are on a centralised network to grab some short term benefit for yourself, you lure in other people to be victims of the whims and harms of that network. You are reinforcing the monopoly. You are 'causing' the problems.

"But there are more people on the Titanic than in the lifeboats"

Think longer term, and think community, not just of yourself.

The future is decentralised.

@aral we all know that the system favors narcissistic traits over empathy....so yes its fugded from the ground up

@aral: This is a natural outcome of loose marginal tax rates at the high end of income. Levying high taxes on the rich is prosocial, in part, because it gives the zillionaires a motive to re-invest that income, and to spend it in ways that zillionaires are known to like but aren't taxable, such as naming museums after themselves. By taking that motivation out of the equation, the sort of people primarily motivated by hoarding money get a strong advantage at the money-hoarding game.