Always good to remember: Every empire has fallen.

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/every-empire-has-fallen-original-6x8/

I'm getting burnt out on all my moderation actions being against fucking AI. Like, I never thought I'd say it, but I miss suspending Nazis and bigots—at least they were real people who would give up after a while—these LLMs just go on and on, and they don't give a shit if they're suspended or rejected.

#FuckLLMs (but also #FuckNazis and #FuckBigots)

Today's additions to list of terrorists operating in the UK.

#WeAreAllPalestineAction #UKPolitics

RE: https://legal.social/@malteengeler/116754767724784963

@malteengeler hat das schöne Bildchen, ich noch den Link: https://ohdk.de/programm/detail/digitale-plattformen-vergesellschaften-372

Lasst uns Plattformen vergesellschaften, von Immoscout über Doctolib zu Google Maps! Mehr in Frankfurt :)

RE: https://indieweb.social/@alineblankertz/116744239041938294

Good read! @alineblankertz sketches the example of @pixelfed, which is basically an Open Source duplicate of Instagram. Without all the tracking problems, and data extraction, but wíth the problematic tendencies that platforms have which are aimed at gathering as many followers as possible.

I do love hanging around on Pixelfed, but it's design could be much more interesting.

Weekend present for me, Stanford grads walking out of Sundar Pichai's speech chanting "free Palestine." And old guard venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla have the audacity to call these students "selfish" lol.

"Why don't they eat cake" level of out of toughness combined with the evil.

Hot take: I would love the US government to restrict access to ALL "AI" models in the rest of the world.

"Sovereign AI" is what Nvidia thrives on and what will destroy the planet and our societies just as much as US-led "AI" will.

Wir sind so wütend, dass wir sogar einen Blog-Post geschrieben haben.

tl;dr: Soldat*innen haben im Chaos nichts verloren. Also zieht die Militäruniform und Nationalflaggen aus und lasst uns lieber für eine bessere Welt kämpfen. ✊

https://geheimorganisation.org/chaos-camouflage-club/

#CCC #ChaosMeta

Really terrible precedent from the UK:
"The case is believed to be the first time that convictions for criminal damage have been classified as being connected to terrorism.

The judge said their actions had aimed to influence the government."

If "aiming to influence the government" makes activists terrorists...the two become almost synonymous.

Solidarity with the activists from Palestine Action! Thanks for their courage, Charlotte, Samuel, Leona and Fatema.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce950111xk7o

26 years after Borsook's "Cyberselfish" explained the toxic cypherpunk-culture,

6 years after the Crypto/Web3 hype destroyed the life of countless people,

2 years after Golumbia's "Cyberlibertarianism" painted to most clear picture of the politics of cyber,

there are still conferences called "Neocypherpunk Summit" (presented by Vitalik Buterin).

This is not what I wanted a "Neo" version of. Not at all.

RE: https://indieweb.social/@alineblankertz/116744239041938294

Excellent post. Similar to #OpenScience, which requires a completely new attitude, a new philosophy, to achieve what it sets out to achieve. In our current environment, these "open" movements quickly lead to (self-)exploitation and co-option of well-meaning tech-focused initiatives into the larger (and utterly toxic) context they are trying to survive in.

@alineblankertz @malteengeler

Regarding the why: When coding Mastodon, Eugen used those parts of the #ActivityPub and #ActivityStreams standards he found useful. For functionality that was not (yet) covered by those standards, he came up with his own solutions and made them part of the Mastodon API which can be considered a quasi-standard now.

When Mastodon was a one person shop, this was a pragmatic way to make progress fast. Standardization bodies are famous for moving slowly, and maybe Eugen was also put off by some of the more eccentric personalities in the ActivityPub community. Now that Mastodon (the organisation) has grown, they should assume a more active role in standards bodies. Perhaps they have – I have not followed these processes closely in recent years.

At any rate, I think it is fair to say that the Mastodon makers and the Fediverse standards community have had a difficult relationship. This is my impression from visiting FediCamp and FediDay events (where Mastodon makers were absent), and some reading in the ActivityPub community forum, e.g.:
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/mastodon-monoculture-problem/3189/11
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/discussion-mastodon-and-the-fediverse/1967

Also thanks again to @malteengeler for great comments and additions - for example, I had not even heard of the ActivityPub standardisation body on which Meta holds a seat while Mastodon doesn’t… (as almost always, once one starts digging, things turn out to be even worse than expected)

For the avoidance of doubt (and in response to some dms): Yes, I am aware of free software and do appreciate the difference as it suffers from fewer limitations. But open source has overtaken it in popularity due to (commercial) reasons. Many people just shifted from free to open, reducing the transformative potential even more.

"Wir sind hier, wir sind laut,
weil ihr Datenzentren baut."

(neuer Lieblings-Demospruch,
gehört auf der heutigen @Sicherheit_ohne_Ueberwachung Demo in Berlin)

Open-source software may be less bad than proprietary software, but it is also co-opted by big tech, follows proprietary design paradigms & is produced under similar conditions: extractivist, white, male and undemocratic.

The role of open source in digital is very much like that of the electric car in mobility. Check out the latest @structural_integrity blog for how this relates to the EU Open Source Strategy in the Tech Sovereignty Package and how to be more ambitious: https://www.structural-integrity.eu/open-source-is-the-electric-vehicle-of-digital-policy/

Was mich an diesem Text noch mehr nervt als die wiederholt aufgewärmte Cybersyn-Nostalgie und die komplette Ignoranz gegenüber jeglichen ökologischen Fragen ist das vollkommene Desinteresse an den konkreten Funktionsweisen von Technologien
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https://jacobin.de/artikel/die-linke-braucht-eine-eigene-zukunftsvision-fuer-ki

The Common European Asylum System: the eugenics of statistics put into cruel practice

The CEAS uses an “asylum recognition rate” to sort asylum seekers into treatment in the established bad OR much worse (“speedy”) ways. The cutoff is whether 20% of applicants from a country were accepted in the past.

The 20% seem like an objective figure, right? No cruelty involved. But it is an output of the same system it is feeding into. Cybernetic feedback loops against humanity. https://amp.dw.com/en/eu-asylum-law-ceas-germany-deportation-migration/a-77508144

Unsere beiden Geschäftsführer der @digiges, Tom Jennissen und Sebastian Marg, im Gespräch mit @netzpolitik_feed über die die Demo am diesem Samstag: wir können die Welle brechen. ✊
https://netzpolitik.org/2026/demo-gegen-ueberwachung-wir-koennen-die-welle-brechen/

Die Vorbereitungen laufen auch Hochtouren. Erzählt es allen die ihr kennt und kommt dazu! Samstag, 13. Juni, 14 Uhr, Berlin.
@Sicherheit_ohne_Ueberwachung - Gegen die digitale Aufrüstung der Polizei
#Unsicherheitspaket #Sicherheitspaket #Vorratsdatenspeicherung #Chatkontrolle

Auf dem Sommerfest einer Grundschule verbreitet die Polizei Berlin ihre Propaganda: Sie will, dass sich Kinder als „Kinderpolizisten“ identifizieren, da ist der Schritt zur Nachwuchs-Bürgerwehr nicht fern. Mit Booten für Recht und Ordnung auf dem Wasser - gerade in Anbetracht des Mittelmeers wohl besonders relevant auch in Berlin.

Hauptsache, das maskuline Image sitzt und die deutsche Fahne ist gut sichtbar. Gruselig.