Joshua Casey 😷 @JoshuaACasey@social.cleverlibre.org

And leave those assassination coordinates at pay phones like nbd !

someone on mastodon pointed out that allowing people to pay to downvote also allows state actors (like Putin) to target, say, Ukrainian accounts, or to silence dissidents. easy to do if you've got state resources and a bunch of bots.

Even Trump's cronies think his new NFTs are embarrassing. One said "Whoever wrote that pitch should be fired and should never be involved" in Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/steve-bannon-trump-allies-bash-nft-release-1234648699/

Watch what the right says about Musk. I already know: The left did it first, he's just doing the same thing to the left that Twitter commies did to the right.

But it's demonstrably false! Twitter pre-Musk was hostage to bad faith claims of bias, unable to act against accounts that openly flaunted their rules because they were so afraid of accusations of bias.

Musk bans anyone who criticizes him, not even bothering to have policies or enforce them. He doesn't care and neither does the right.

Try commenting on a right wing website:

Racism, conspiracy theories, even advocating violence, all allowed. Mild criticism from the left? Banned.

But their people will come over to a place like Slate,and when they're banned for calling our LGBTQ commenters pedophiles they SCREAM that we're suppressing right wing opinion and against free speech.

They don't care. They don't even believe any of it themselves. It's all bullshit. Musk is like every moderator I've ever seen from that side.

Welcome newly arrived refugees from that other social media site!

You'll likely get a lot of (mostly unsolicited) advice about how the "culture" here is "different". It can be overwhelming and make you feel like you have to walk on eggshells. But other than "don't be a jerk" (which you hopefully knew already), you can safely ignore most of it..

Follow people, make friends, connect with old ones, speak your mind. You got this.

We’ve advised journalists to set up their own Mastodon accounts and servers. This kind of federated social media puts people and communities in control. It can guarantee journalistic freedoms, which #ElonMusk and #Twitter have demonstrated are precarious in their centralised, monopoly products. #fediverse https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/16/twitter-elon-musk-suspension-journalists-sets-dangerous-precedent-un-warns

A #FediTip I’m just now starting to understand..and it’s so cool! Last week, I created a #PixelFed account (OpenSource Instagram replacement). I can go into any #Mastodon app and follow any Pixelfed account, and see it’s posting activity in my feed!

It works in the reverse as well. I can follow any Masto account on Pixelfed. It’s like being able to follow Facebook, Instagram and Twitter favorites all in one place. Sweet!

This is the weekend I end my 46 year radio career. After 19 years as the Tech Guy, the last Saturday show is today. Tomorrow is the very last show of all.

I'm not leaving the mic, however. I'm still doing six podcasts a week, including the new Ask the Tech Guys which debuts January 7, 2023.

Thanks radio, it's been a blast. You will be forever in my heart.

#MastodonNews Dec 16, 2022

The Guardian: Twitter’s suspension of journalists sets ‘dangerous precedent’, UN warns >>> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/16/twitter-elon-musk-suspension-journalists-sets-dangerous-precedent-un-warns

The United Nations is “very disturbed” by Twitter’s abrupt suspension of a group of US journalists...

... the Open Rights Group urged journalists to set up accounts on the rival platform Mastodon.

Twitter started blocking users from adding their Mastodon usernames to their profiles...

#twittermigration
More News >>> https://medium.com/@mastodonmigration/sharing-advice-and-assisting-with-the-great-mastodon-migration-53c1a286b805#cfd1

The School That Calls the Police on Students Every Other Day
--

An Illinois school for students with disabilities has routinely used the police to handle discipline, resulting in the highest arrest rate of any district in the country.

In one recent year, half of Garrison School students were arrested.

#Illinois #school #students #disability #police #911 #arrest

https://www.propublica.org/article/students-police-arrests-illinois-garrison-school

to everyone whose short links are being blocked by twt(inc mastodon):
add a Zero-Width Joiner (ZWJ) before or after the dot before the TLD (the last dot)

This will stop the URL from being recognized as an actual URL and when copypasted into a browser it should not affect parsing

Because Elon has continuously misrepresented this:

The data used for flight-tracking accounts like ElonJet - called ADS-B data - are transmitted from nearly every plane in the sky.

The signals are unencrypted, and anyone with a $20 RTL-SDR radio can pick them up. Aviation hobbyists gather the data and put them on websites like ADS-B Exchange.

It's publicly available, legally acquired data of the kind Elon Musk said he'd allow, until suddenly he no longer did.

The new normal.

As a direct result of #Musk 's #JournalistPurge new users per hour went from about 1000 per hour to 3500 and has now plateaued at around 2000. The network has responded beautifully. Four of the largest instances closed registrations, but things ran smoothly.

What can we conclude from the last 48 hours?

1. Mastodon can easily handle moderate surges.
2. Mastodon has huge untapped capacity for growth due to the large number of small and midsize instances.

#twittermigration

Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a day to remember sex worker lives lost in the past year and call for action that can help save lives in the future. The first and most important step to stopping violence against sex workers: decriminalization! https://genderpolicyreport.umn.edu/how-to-end-violence-against-sex-workers/ #IDEVASW

This is something I'm really worried about. We need a response to AI generated art that doesn't depend on expanding surveillance or censorship (through stricter IP enforcement) or criminalize research etc (by expanding CFAA to include image scraping for example)

We've been down this exact road before, from the creation of the VCR to the explosion of the Internet. #CopyrightMaximalism does not help artists. Period. We need a better way. #copyright #AI #AIart #NoAIart #artificialintelligence