ML2 @mathlover@social.cleverlibre.org

As we watch Elon Musk slide into rightwing radicalization in real time, I’m reminded of this 1941 piece by Dorothy Thompson.
“Who goes Nazi?”

In short: it is the people who love money and status and power that are at risk.
Those who resist the urge are the people who have a solid family life; a job they love for the work, not the money; a moral framework based on pluralism and equal access to opportunity.
Worth a read. #nazi #Twitter #liberal

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Twitter has reversed a 10-year old suspension of neo-nazi Andrew Anglin (Daily Stormer editor). I really hope either Mastodon or another Twitter substitute can flourish because I don't think anyone should be on the bird site now.

@pluralistic

I spent 5+ years as a billionaire's wordsmith, which meant knowing him intimately enough to write in his voice.

I think the thread running through most of them is not a belief in their own basic goodness but rather contempt for everyone else, including and especially their peers. Expressing that contempt with plausible deniability was part of my (usually) unspoken mandate.

Contempt and duper's delight. Those were the last thrills once $$ reached a point of diminishing returns.

Musk’s people are indistinguishable from Trump’s people. They LOVE sticking it to the rest of us by elevating rich, cocky assholes to the top of the food chain.

Oh, and Matt Taibbi used to be a dyed-in-the-wool lefty, but he became a Trumper by default once he decided that his mortal enemy was the mainstream media, with their apparently unconscionable deference to the political party with most of the facts on their side (aka the Democrats).

Straight up, if he’s handing off company emails from the prior regime to former journalists who will do his bidding, what is stopping him from taking your DMs and making them public? What?

I can’t get over people saying “labor can’t do that, it’s illegal”

Please learn something about the history of organized labor. Steelworkers at the homestead strike had a fucking cannon, they literally shelled Pinkertons

Alt Right Elon just reinstated Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin to twitter

To all of you “resister” accounts still there? You are making that platform viable. There is no staying and fighting. That’s a distraction

You are simply writing a blank check to neo-Nazis.

The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.

Genocides do not start with mass murder. That's where they end up.

Genocides & other mass atrocity crimes begin with words - specifically, with powerful people dehumanizing a minority.

Once they are seen as less than human, anything is possible, even mass murder.

👉 You can speak out loudly today for the rights of others, or you can stay silent & wait for tomorrow, when your rights will be taken away too.

My theory of Musk at this point:

-- he fired all his PR people several years ago after he got some negative press and blogged through it to Tesla customers
-- this deprived him of basic reality checks on how media work
-- he started believing right wing propaganda about social media companies
-- he bought a social media company
-- he wildly botches basic PR for releasing the emails he bought when he bought the social media company

@aravosis

Russia is spying on Telegram chats in occupied Ukrainian regions.

Here's how.

https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/russia-is-spying-on-telegram-chats

Publicly posting the names and identities of front-line employees involved in content moderation puts them in harm’s way and is a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do.

Some folks here ask/plead/demand that others add a picture and bio to their profiles before they can expect a #FollowBack.

While a bio is useful to determine whether an account is an actual person or a 'bot, a picture should not be required.

Why?

Because there are blind people on #Mastodon who don't *see* the need for a profile picture. And some have been here a LOT longer than us newbies.

And there are others who are shy, indecisive or just making a statement. We should also allow for that.

A previously undocumented data wiper named CryWiper is masquerading as ransomware, extorting victims to pay for a decrypter, but in reality, it just destroys data beyond recovery.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-crywiper-malware-wipes-data-in-attack-against-russian-org/

The two parties are divided by deep differences in values & goals. They are not surface differences that can be swept away by sufficient charisma. Unbelievable that people still think this way in 2022.

The people who write these "post-partisan" dream journals, when they get to actual positions or policy, describe ... a standard, run-of-the-mill moderate Democrat. Always, always, always.

@RoboPack The action we've taken against scalping is to sell only kits, for the most part, not lone boards. People get annoyed with us for that but then they also get annoyed at scalpers so, rock and a hard place.

You're right, we have chosen to send stock to companies which would have to lay people off if they don't get boards, rather than send them to be bought by hobbyists because we thought losing your job is more important than making a cute thing for your house.

Damned if we do...

When posting stats about the number of people (not “users”) joining the fediverse (not “Mastodon”), please also post about the number of instances.

If 400,000,000 people join BigTech.social tomorrow, that’s not a win. That’s how you recreate Twitter.

So let’s focus on what matters. Sure it‘s great that the fediverse is becoming more popular but the character of that popularity matters. How it scales matters. Avoiding corporate capture matters.

#BigTech #fediverse #scale #focus

My twitter followers are jumping ship. My engagement is dropping rapidly. They changed the algorithm to force feed me right wing accounts. And white supremacy, Islamophobia, & antisemitism on Twitter are being defended as valid points of view.

By contrast this Mastodon community is igniting robust dialogue, respectful disagreement, and offers little comfort to racists and bigots.

This is what Twitter could’ve been, and I’m really hopeful this is what Mastodon continues to be. Thank you all.❤️✊🏽

Content scanning software checks images and words for markers, or digital fingerprints, on social media and private messaging. When there’s a match, the AI will remove or report it. This includes false positives made by algorithms that can’t account for context.

#OnlineSafetyBill #BlockTheBill #privacy #freedomofexpression