Mastodon Feed
I'm totally going to rename the devices in my home network. ugod, raekwon, method, dirty, rza, gza, ghostface, etc. Wu-Tang LAN.
Mastodon FeedMastodon FeedDecentralised social media site Bluesky has gone down under the load of new users.
Not to worry, I'll just use one of the other decentralised instances. One of the many wonders of decentralisation.
... What do you mean, there aren't any?
... If a central server goes down, I can't get onto this oh-so-decentralised network?
I guess this must just be how decentralisation works!
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary-Designate of Health and Human Services:
“There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Mastodon FeedReblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
oliphant@oliphant.social ("Oliphantom Menace") wrote:
I don't know. People want to be in "the place" and they want to be where the other people are and AOC isn't joining Mastodon and Barack Obama isn't joining Mastodon and my ex-wife just found out that Mastodon exists at all like...yesterday? Because I told her?
You are comparing a place that is basically a single user experience, where the tech and the user experience itself, the entirety of "The Bluesky experience" is created by a small, tight, and apparently very well-paid team of technical experts. They have literally millions of dollars at their disposal.
Meanwhile, over here we have the dinky little DIY nerd internet, where people write code for free and host the infrastructure for fun and have ZERO millions of dollars and most of us are getting paid almost nothing, and there's no single shared software, much less anything you could truly call a single contiguous place even as we refer to this as "the fediverse" or "this place" or "on here" it's really not, it's truly decentralized, and my slice of the fedi looks different than yours because we follow different people.
There's no well-paid onboarding team or user experience team or fuck, there's not even a "design team" because that would imply a centralized staff (ie., bluesky or X or Meta developers).
There's people making software so people can host their own social media. Many are almost doing this work for free. They have no large investment capital, and often are doing this in addition to their real day job, for the love of it, because they believe in a mission of social media anyone can use and host, and a space that truly isn't owned by anyone, which no one can shut down.
And this little DIY nerd vehicle, "this place" it still gains more users, every month, little by little. Sometimes an ebb, sometimes a flow, but this is without a marketing department, without an MBA, without VC funding, honestly, largely without capitalism.
It's a miracle, and I think we should be realistic about what we should expect.
Not seeing "the big numbers" doesn't really mean anything to me. We were never going to compete with the "new place" and the "one experience" and if you've ever used an iPhone you'll understand the advantages of centralization, and controlling an entire technical ecosystem, and how onboarding and UX is utilized to make adoption easier.
Also, how easily you can use millions of dollars of investment to look like a 'serious bet' to the rest of the world, or get your name in the media, and to drive recognition and adoption.
What the fedi can do better than just about anything else is be affordable self-hosted ownerless ad-free social media in perpetuity. That will always have an appeal and it will still be here, waiting, when the other platforms (from which we can steal all their good ideas while jettisoning all the predatory bad ones) have enshittified or changed ownership to baby Hitler.
Mastodon FeedReblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
codewiz@mstdn.io ("Bernie") wrote:
While visiting the Smithsonian Space Museum in DC, I spotted something I had never seen before: the console of the mythical Apollo Mission Simulator.
It's the first "multiplayer game", running on mainframes, flight computers and other ground equipment networked across multiple buildings.
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
digiphile ("Alex Howard") wrote:
After discovering it was targeted by a disinformation campaign, REPORTERS SANS FRONTIÈRES flagged accounts responsible. X did not remove posts. Now, RSF is suing X in France “for its complicity in disseminating false information, misrepresentation and identity theft.” https://rsf.org/en/rsf-presses-criminal-charges-against-x-formerly-twitter-its-participation-identity-theft-and
Mastodon FeedReblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
willoremus@threads.net ("Will Oremus") wrote:
Not as dramatic as Threads or Bluesky, but Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko told me Mastodon is also growing, with signups up 27% so far in November. From my chat with him yesterday:
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- Text of chat message from Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko to Washington Post reporter Will Oremus on Nov. 13, 2024: Our sign-ups are about 27% higher within the last 30 days compared to the preceding 30 days. I am counting about 90k new user accounts in that period. The total number of registered accounts on all Mastodon servers is 9M today, and the most recent MAU number is 886K. These are numbers for Mastodon servers only -- the fediverse which Mastodon is part of may be bigger. While Mastodon may not be the biggest by numbers today, it's proven itself to be an effective and reliable communications platform over the course of the last 8 years, and does not depend on venture capital to survive. Our small team is working continuously on making this social media app easier and more delightful to use. (remote)
Mastodon FeedReblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
EuromaidanPress ("Euromaidan Press") wrote:
The EU Parliament passed a resolution urging the EU to impose sanctions on Russia's ''shadow fleet'', which enables the country to sell oil while circumventing sanctions.
The resolution calls for restrictions on anyone involved with this shadow fleet.
📷 European Parliament
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
there seems to be another out-migration from theBirdSite alla-sudden. a bunch of my old group from there have suddenly shown up on BlueSky, & The Guardian has finally abandoned Musk’s no longer shiny new toy.
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
but but but… I thought that was a satire site?
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-nominates-head-of-cia?r=4mlta7&utm_medium=email
Mastodon FeedReblogged by cmiksche ("Christoph Miksche"):
Review of "Facebook - Weltmacht am Abgrund" (4 stars): Very Detailed
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
huh, BlueSky is running at the speed of snail…
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
from a Guardian email:
“…we are no longer posting from any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our content elsewhere.”
good.
Mastodon FeedPosting just to show I’m alive 🙂
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Mastodon Feeddnalounge@sfba.social ("DNA Lounge") wrote:
♬️ MINKA at DNA Lounge tonight: Thu Nov 14, 8pm!
https://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2024/11-14d.html
#dnalounge #minka #hottakes #topsecretrobotalliance #indie #synthfunk #nextwave #synthpop #livemusic #concert #sanfrancisco
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Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
What was this juvenile orbweaver doing outside, in Minnesota, in November?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/14/they-just-gravitate-to-me-i-guess/
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:
Time for an #introduction... again!
My name is Christine Lemmer-Webber, I'm co-author/co-editor of the ActivityPub standard which connects together the fediverse (Mastodon, Peertube, Sharkey, GotoSocial, etc). In other words, I'm one of several people who worked on the specification by which you're getting this very message!
I'm also Executive Director of the Spritely Institute! We're making next-generation decentralized tech https://spritely.institute
I moved here from @cwebber@octodon.social! Hello again!
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Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
KITTY!
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
ajroach42@retro.social ("Andrew (Television Executive)") wrote:
One thing about 80s and early 90s pre-internet counterculture that current internet counterculture misses pretty hard is the culture of publication and curation.
I don't know what's got me thinking about this so much this morning, but I am, so it's time to talk about it.
In the 80s and 90s, if you wanted other people to find something you had to put in some effort. You had to make a physical artifact, a mixtape or a zine or whatever, and you had to include all the information they'd need on that artifact, because there was no way to bootstrap discovery from nothing. All discovery was dependent on either a social layer or a publication layer or a social publication layer.
Mastodon Feedsacha@social.yesterweb.org ("Sacha Ravenda") wrote:
Happy partially muscled skeleton by the perimeter fence, screaming for 30 seconds before vanishing day.
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
radicalrobit@laserdisc.party ("Mr. Q The Pizza Demon") wrote:
Mastodon Feedfromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
AOL Pretends to be the Internet - The History of the Web https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/aol-pretends-to-be-the-internet/
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
I guess somebody had to buy the InfoWars junkheap.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/14/alex-jones-legacy-is-in-good-hands/
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
welcome to our future
Mastodon Feedandreu@andreubotella.com ("Andreu Botella :verified_enby:") wrote:
Since Twitter is changing its ToS tomorrow to allow every tweet to be used to train AI, I decided to delete my accounts today.
And I saw that your account settings somehow have a gender marker, which is internal and not displayed publicly. And mine said female.
I don't remember that section of the profile being there, or me setting that to female. And the text suggests that the "initial value" of that field might be AI-determined based on your tweets and profile.
So I guess thanks Elon for validating me as not a cis man? 🤷
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
Is this a pessimistic post, or an optimistic post? I can't tell anymore.
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
okay, this is hilarious
Mastodon Feedfromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
The Internet and Engaged Citizenship | American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Great read on the history of the World Wide Web. https://www.amacad.org/publication/internet-and-engaged-citizenship/section/2
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
‘One anonymous House GOP member told Axios: “We wanted him out of the House … this isn’t what we were thinking.” Another remarked they were “stunned and disgusted”.’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/13/republicans-matt-gaetz-trump-attorney-general
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“Trump has signaled he will authorize an execution spree of all inmates sentenced to death by the US government as one of his first acts after his inauguration on 20 January… would be a continuation of the 13 federal executions carried out at the end of Trump’s first term in office.
The sudden burst of Trump executions, carried out over six months in 2020-21, was the most intense period of federal judicial killings under any president in more than 120 years…”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/biden-death-row-clemency