RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jdp23/117480256634993619
Well I wasn't planning on spending a couple hours doing sysadmin this morning but it is what it is.
If you've got a self-hosted wordpress site, or anything else using PHP, you're going to want to patch ASAP.
Custom feeds in the ATmosphere -- Blacksky, Bluesky, etc -- provide some good options for routing around these problems. I've been looking at things from an election defense perspective, with a focus on disinfo-resistance, because we clearly can't rely on Meta et al to be giving us accurate information ... and there are definite possibilities. More about that soon,.
But what about the #fediverse?
Right now, it's not at all clear how to stay informed about the US midterm elections here.
The #uspol hashtag doesn't have a lot of news.
I haven't found any great Lemmy or Piefed communities.
And that's me speaking as a long-time fedi user, imagine how hard it is for a newcomer to find things! Over the weekend I posted asking if folks had suggestions on this front and ... crickets.
https://gotosocial.thenexus.today/@thenexusofprivacy/statuses/01M56VBN03EPS6HQ3Y2BR9KZNC
Which on the one hand makes sense: fedi's very international, and even in the US a lot of people are in fedi because they want a refuge where they're not constantly bombarded with news about politics. Which is completely valid, and some of the replies to the thread discuss how to keep midterm discussions from overwhelming everything else (as US-based stuff frequently does).
But on the other hand ... there's a real need here, in the US and other countries, and it's a real shame that right now the only good alternative is the ATmosphere. So, it's worth thinking about what if anything we can be doing here.
RE: https://indieweb.social/@tchambers/117468134697550198
Yep. I don't agree with @tchambers on everything but when he's right he's right. Four good bullet points from Tim and @WillRobinson, important for any organizing that's fighting fascism and/or the surveillance-industrial complex:
Build the channels nobody can switch off. (Although, Substack's just as fascist-friendly as Meta, so I wouldn't count on them.)
Stand up accounts on open platforms. Damn right. (More thoughts about the #fediverse and the #ATmosphere in a reply)
Warn your people before it happens. "One message, now, while nothing is wrong: here is where to find us if we disappear. Bookmark this. Subscribe here. Follow us there. Nobody routes around an outage they were never told about, and a crisis is the worst time to teach a new habit."
Write the playbook before you need it.
And it's not just here in the US where it matters. Meta has intervened even more blatantly -- and repeatedly -- in the Brazilian election, and you can probably guess who they're favoring. (Hint: not Lula!). They also intervened against protestors in Albania, and I've heard reports of cockroaches (complimentary) in India getting censored as well. So it's good policy no matter where you are!
EDIT: Also keep an eye on France, via @JulianOliver. We haven't seen reports yet of Meta meddling here but I'll bet dollars to donuts they are.
RE: https://mas.to/@PrivacyDigest/117282462706340204
Interesting. The bill doesn't actually ban ALPRs, just restricts their use to a handful of cases. And it almost certainly has no chance to get through Congress this year. Still, viewing politicians as weathervanes, an interesting data point on where the wind is blowing these days ...
RE: https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/117168236715680894
A great thread of ways to get involved with election protection.
It's long enough ago that it's faded from collective memory, but going into the 2008 election there were serious voter suppression shenanigans afoot ... and a groundswell of grassroots activism, along with the usual great work from civil rights and election protection non-profits, helped save the day. We all know how high the stakes are this year, so now's a good time to do it again. There will be ways to help here on fedi as well (stay tuned!) but the impact of on-the-ground volunteering is even greater.
So please, get involved!
@cwebber remember how Bluesky talked so much about their design goal of avoiding the confusing situation in fedi where you see different parts of the conversation and different like and follower accounts depending on what instance you're on?
hahahahaha ...
https://blacksky.community/profile/jdp23.thenexus.today/post/3mtzhlfafec22
I’m at Renton City Hall for the rally against Flock, kicking off the #NoALPRs week of action … And oh no I forgot to bring a sign! Fortunately there are some other good ones here …
Alt text: Get the Flock out!
Alt text: Stop mass surveillance! No ALPRs. Big brother is watching you. 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint
RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/117105821188467747
Please don't do this. Blacksky is up (even though Bluesky is down), so you'll just be embarrassing yourself.
Not only that, if you're ignoring or dismissing the fact that Blacksky is up, you're also reinforcing fedi's reputation for anti-Blackness. If that's not your goal, then give credit where credit is due.
@keith @onepict a question about the latest opt-out scraper. Would you feel differently about it if it honored all the existing opt-in/opt-out flags like "indexable" and "discoverable"?
(My own take, for what it's worth: it seems to me that a separate opt-in is still needed. Mastodon's description of "indexable" and the FEP the specifies it say it governs whether or not the post appears in search rsults, which isn't exactly the same thing as "include in a downloadable dataset." That said I'd be somewhat more sympathetic to the creator if they had been trying to do the right thing but didn't understand the precise meaning of "indexable" didn't include their case.)
Just in case the parent post gets traction ...
If you haven't already contacted your Senators about the upcoming KOSA and SCREEN Act vote, please do! And if you have, please contact them again before the vote (which is Wednesday morning, 10:00 a.m Eastern, 7:00 a.m. Pacific)
https://www.badinternetbills.com/ from @fight makes it easy. There are other options as well; see Tips for contacting Congress about bad internet bills has a roundup as well as suggestions on what to say.
RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jdp23/116967124444088200
KOSA and bad internet bills are getting voted on by the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, so I've been thinking more about this ...
If bills like KOSA and the SCREEN Act pass, they're likely to affect every US fedi instance. So how do we mobilize geographically-based instances like pnw.zone, gardenstate.social, sfba.social, jawns.club, hoosier.social, dmv.community, etc to push back?
A couple of ideas I've had so far:
Influential users can play a big role here, just by posting about it with an action. If there's enough activity on hashtags like #KOSA or #SaveSpeech, they might wind up in trending hashtags to help build awareness.
Admins could potentially paste an announcement post.
What else?
RE: https://mastodon.social/@bmitra/117003838454044213
An excellent thread!
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Hex/116993001025194471
Indeed. Excellent analysis here.
Trivia question: which US war criminal / Nobel Peace Prize recipient wrote his PhD Thesis about Metternich?
RE: https://mstdn.social/@mattmay/116988858841146726
Very important! I group of people I know tested out the time for mail to be delivered in Washington state a couple of months ago, and while it's often quite fast there are times where even going between adjacent zip codes can take up to ten days.
With Election Day on August 4, at this point it's better to drop off your ballots at a drop box -- King County Elections has a map of all the dropboxes in Washington state. If you are going to mail your ballot though, please do it ASAP!
How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (7/6, oops)
And one more -- shame on me for leaving this out of my initial list.
These bad internet bills either require age verification (a surveillance technology) or attack encryption (a critical anti-surveillance technology). Big surveillance-capitalism companies also love them because they put a big burden on small social networks, crininalize anonymity, and require even privacy-friendly networks to share their users' intensely personal data if theydon't want to break the law.
People in fedi generally get that. And a lot of people in fedi here to get away from surveillance capitalism! @cyberlyra and the @TheBulletin crew provide lots of resources for people trying to move away from surveillance capitalism platforms. #FediPact exists! The Free Fediverse defines itself in opposition to surveillance capitalism! Sure, there are also plenty of people here who are just fine with surveillance capitalism, whatever, but there are a lot of us who aren't.
That's a huge strength. How do we leverage it?
And in the process, how can we also get more people involved in projects Tech Reclaimers?
RE: https://dice.camp/@Sablebadger/116966433436133553
For those of you in the Seattle area ...
How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (6/6, for now)
A couple more potential ideas before I wrap this thread up for now ...
one of fedi's strengths is that many instances are communities. Some are geographically based; others (like infosec.exchange and defcon.social) are communities of practice with some very relevant expertise about some of the reasons these bills are so bad. Are there ways to leverage this?
fedi platform and app developers are directly affected by these bills. Are there wasy to get them to take a more active role?
And like I say these are just starting points, so other suggestions are very welcome!
How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (5/N)
The actions in the previous two posts are an example of where it certainly seems like we should be able to make things better. How are people who aren't already following me or Fight supposed to find them? I included hashtags, but I'm not sure they're all that relevant. And stuff like this is often shared in the Bad Internet Bills Lemmy community, but it doesn't have a lot of subscribers -- and it's just US specific.
I'm not particularly sure what the right answer is here, but it really does seem like an opportunity to do better.
And, what about people who want to go beyond just making a call? For example, if there are a bunch of people in an area all on fedi, you could set up a meeting with your legislator (or more likely their staff) to let them know in person why these bills would affect you. (You could even bring people who aren't on fedi!). This can be an intimidating process is you've never done it before, but there's good information out there -- and there are people here who have done that before and can help coach people who are new to the project.
How do point people to how they can get more deeply involved if they the time and interest, give them the information and support they need to be effective?
How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (4/N)
Narrator's voice: we interrupt this brainstorming thread for a time-sensitive action.
If you're in the US, one very concrete thing you can do is to contact your Senators right now. The Senate Judciary Committee is likely to vote on KOSA next week, and there's also a battle shaping up about the STOP CSAM Act. See the link in the previous post!
If you're in Massachusetts, lawmakers will vote soon on a final version of the social media bill. Grassroots pressure has made it a lot less bad than it was, but it still needs further improvement. So please call your state legislators as well!
https://www.stoponlineidchecks.org/MA
And if you're not in the US, please leave links to actions fighting bad internet bills in your country, state, regiion, etc!
Narrator's voice: we now return you to our regularly-scheduled brainstorming.
How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (3/N)
To start with, there are good instructions out there about how to contact legislators -- @fight's Bad Internet Bills in the US, I'm sure there are equivalent sites elsewhere.
Many people here already do that. In a poll I recently did, roughly 50% said they had contacted legislators at least once,, and while it's somethiung of a self-selecting example, I'd be willing to bet the percentage is higher here than on most social networks.
Then again, many don't -- often because they don't realize how critical it is, or know about the bill but aren't sure what to do. So ...
How can we leverage fedi technologies to make it easier for people here to find out what's going on and why it's so important for them to take action -- especially as these battles strech on over months and multiple actions are needed?
From a pro-social design perspective, how do we encourage people to take action, repeatedly, and share the information with their networks who aren't on fedi?