ALAN LAVENDER @lavenderlens@social.cleverlibre.org

If you want to delete all your old Twitter DMs (which I think is a good idea even if Twitter might retain copies of them somewhere), and also your historical likes, RTs, and any tweets you don’t want to keep, I made a Twitter app for that.
It’s called Semiphemeral and it’s pretty easy to use. I posted instructions for how to do it https://twitter.com/semiphemeral/status/1591258781098594304?s=46&t=L4aWvmyNxEFRL6eULgeO-A

% who say religion is very important in their lives
Ethiopia 98%
Indonesia 93%
Honduras 90%
Nigeria 88%
India 80%
S Africa 75%
Egypt 72%
Brazil 72%
Turkey 68%
Greece 56%
US 53%

Mexico 45%
Canada 27%
Spain 22%
Australia 18%
Russia 16%
France 11%
Japan 10%
UK 10%
China 3%
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/

Not gonna lie: It's been refreshing to hopescroll more than doomscroll this week.

If you rate mass communication platforms on the factors that really matter then it's obvious where the gap in the market is.

So someone messaged me privately and asked how absolute this is.. like would we block an instance calling for genocide. I feel my response is import to reiterate here, so here it is:

Its not just about the authorities, it is about the people whose lives are at risk by that call to genocide having the right to see those posts and use that information to look out for their own safety... If someone is doxed, they should know, if someone is threatened, they should know, and they should be able to take action.

Someone saying violent things online doesnt guarantee some police officer will meander by and take them down. The law only tends to get involved once someone is reported, and sometimes not even then. No one will be reporting a site if no one can see or know it is there.

The question is, if someone is being physically threatened and having their life in jeopardy how are you helping them by blocking the privileges of the **victim** and disallowing the victim the right to see the threat placed against them?

In short, I refuse to take away rights from the victim simply because there is a violent bad actor out there. If the victim doesn't want to see it they simply need to import the block list and the problem is solved for them, so why not keep the power in the victims hands?

There's a Twitter All-Staff meeting going on right now and Elon Musk just told everyone he's not sure how much run rate the company has and “that bankruptcy isn’t out of the question.”

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1590812793787518977?s=20&t=FHVtr-RMwHYQAksRW3uCgw

Today's the deadline: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is looking for interns to spend the winter contributing to work in one of three areas: campaigns, licensing, or with our tech team. Read more and apply! https://u.fsf.org/3up

@worldsendless Gab is a toxic right-wing social media app built on a fork of the Mastodon app. https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking

@freemo I have been here a week and have already seen more positive engagement here than years on Twitter.

I tried to take a photo of a grasshopper on my windshield, but now it looks like it's gigantic and destroying the town.

I remain genuinely and pleasantly shocked that in the course of 10 days or so, we all just went, “no way, eff this, we’re going to @Mastodon”, and now we’re just here and people are so nice and writing alt-text in their images and sharing great stuff and using content warnings and everything. Obviously none of this would have been possible without years of work by #Fediverse / #ActivityHub devs that came before. Even so, this is really something, no? 😃

Anti-Bullying Apps Are Popular. But Do They Work? - Tech promises to help defeat bullying, but larger and glaringly obvious problems remain. - https://www.wired.com/story/anti-bullying-apps-schools-children/ #gear/howtoandadvice #zerotolerance #gear

Just 30 minutes left on my poll about what were called content warnings. But I'm now shifting to more positive language about and calling 'content wraps, or perhaps 'hooks' . I think they should be given a go, as it goes as there are many benefits and I don't see the downside other than it takes. Second longer for thought. New world, new approach.