← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Perhaps the VP should also serve as the Attorney General. The Presidential candidate would still pick them, presumably from the same party. But they'd have public approval from the people. And once elected, would be independent from the president's control. They'd want to investigate bad presidents cause it could mean they'd get the job, but being too aggressive would get them off the ticket and be seen negatively by their party. A voice of reason in every adminis...

• View post

  Loved this interview with #MariaRessa from the @rappler.com. She seems to understand the potential for decentralized social media to break the rising dictatorships of billionaire tech bros over public understanding (and thus thwart democracy). I wonder if the person running this BS account could get us in touch with her so she could maybe do a keynote for @fediforum... https://pca.st/episode/e7e563d9-45fc-4818-810d-76ee59518f26

• View post

  No major #sports team in the US pays the full amount of #PropertyTaxes that they should based on the value of their stadium. They are either fully exempted by having the government own the stadium or a legal deal is worked out to subsidize them. They make enough profit to pay but because they can always threaten to move to a locality that will offer them that deal for their positive externalities, it never happens. It's a collective action problem for over taxed sports loving voters.

• View post

  Americans believe that corporations paying bigger dividends to their shareholders instead of more to their workers is appropriate, even when inflation is bad. That if they were forced by a union etc to pay more, we're supposed to accept that this cost will get passed onto customers. All corporations just being less profitable is crazy. I assume that's cause we think that a rising stock market is more important to our own economic well being than our neighbors' living stan...

• View post

  Listening to the #SearchEngine podcast episode where they talk about ending the #forkiverse for the following reasons: 1. they ran out of storage space ($$$) 2. hosts didn't use it (yet another feed?) 3. russian propaganda hacker bots imo the key thing they said is they would have kept it going if not for strike 3. they said @jaz@toot.wales says they let an innocuous base account join which enabled tons of future accounts join w/o authorization. I want to talk about this... https://www.s...

• View post

  Does #monsterdon ever use #owncast? It would seem like a good way to watch together and chat.

• View post

  YouTube refusing to show ads for the #Musk documentary is a very bad sign. Everybody thinks that when the TV networks and streamers bend the knee, FCC dissidents like Kimmel or Colbert can just put it up on YouTube. That's not going to last. Also YouTube is obviously going to be the last of the big video networks standing when the dust settles. Competition among the billionaires is a joke. Y'all better start fighting to make #owncast and #peertube matter like yesterday.

• View post

  How about we switch out Soldier Field and the Museum of Science and Industry? Finally get MSI onto the museum campus and let the #ChicagoBears truly become the Monsters of the Midway. They can build what they want in a good location in Chicago and near the lake. #Chicago #NFL

• View post

  We talk about fedi instead of mastodon because we understand the difference matters. consider who on #bluesky focuses attention on the company instead of the ATmosphere and what effect that is having on millions of users who never think about decentralization. especially the people who work for the company but claim they are really there because of higher ideals, not getting paid.

• View post

  "Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads." shouldn't everybody want to instead say something like "Follow the New York Times Opinion section at @opinion@nytimes.social." instead? I'll never understand how these enormous media entities haven't already banded together to control their social media fates. they have the power together. how long did it take for them to give up on AOL keywords and create t...

• View post

  Sorry I want more information about the research #Fauci was involved in and how the government made decisions in response to #Covid. But I also hate that algo media means pumping empty conspiracies brings in attention that can be turned into political power and profit.

• View post

  Most people want to have private online conversations. Some also want to post publicly. I get wanting to be able to use the same account for both but trying to let everyone do so seems to be creating more problems than it solves. Lots of confusion and anger and a ton of effort to build more nuance and moderation capacity into the tools we already have and need to keep somewhat simple to encourage adoption. Perhaps build on #matrix and #ActivityPub separately. Have users list both accounts.

• View post

  The reason corporate platforms and algos are winning is because we do not boost enough. Lots of creators now know those places suck, but they get attention there. It's a trade-off. imo they'd give up a lot of that attention if it wasn't like 1/10th of the time that you liked something, you shared it publicly. But instead let's say half. C'mon people. Boost long videos, podcasts and articles. Even links to books and movies. Not just pics and short posts and clips. #SocialWeb...

• View post

  AI will tell you that Zeus isn't real but when asked about God, it responds "that's a personal question". #atheism

• View post

  James Brown: Jonathan Lethem Rolling Stone Story With Godfather of Soul via @wallabag@fosstodon.org https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/being-james-brown-rolling-stones-2006-story-234764/?print=true

• View post

  An actual sexual assault is much worse than everything that has come out before. So far there's no reason to think she is lying. So it probably did happen and he shouldn't be the candidate even though I like his professed politics. But this never should have been a concern of people outside of Maine. And Dems there loved him. It's also just really stupid that they have RCV but use it poorly. He should be 1 of 5 viable candidates right now, not the only Dem/left option. #GrahamPlatn...

• View post

  This is very useful re hashtags on fedi. When I click on one, I want to see everything by everyone on fedi that isn't blocked by myself or my server. Like I imagine that I'm seeing every post by visiting a subreddit. Sorted reverse chronological. All recent conversations on that subject. I assume that's what most here want, but I know some definitely do not. And I know it's very difficult to do on a not-even-that-huge-yet decentralized network. #SocialWeb #hashtags https://ta...

• View post

  Being a jerk on social media is a negative to weigh against a candidate's possibly great policy positions. But our stupid media environment makes being a jerk a path to the attention needed to run in the first place. And our stupid electoral system means voters usually have few other options to vote for anyway, without supporting a spoiler candidate. If you want less dirtbags, make the media and the electoral systems better. cc @aselrod.bsky.social https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-dirt...

• View post

  This isn't just true of AIs. Algos are enough. We change based on what we pay attention to. The 20th century was all about letting big media owners decide. The fedi lets us decide together. While social media with algos promises the computers will do so in order to serve us best, they are owned by biased humans. Consider how many negative posts about them you've seen go viral.

• View post

  The Speech (2007) via @wallabag@fosstodon.org #Obama https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2007/the-speech/

• View post

  @mosseri fully fucking federate.

• View post

  Does #MAGA know that #AndrewTate raped #LaurenSouthern? I've found that the best way to push back on their bullshit is to get them to think about the mistreated that they otherwise don't care about, as their own family. The empathy that their favorite celebrities somehow shut off, gets flipped back on. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/andrew-tates-empire-of-abuse

• View post

  I can't think of anything else right now except that I just created an #APnative article using #ghost. How to explain what that points to for the future of social media but really all of how we determine together what deserves attention. Which has huge civic and cultural implications. I'm just stuck. #SocialWeb

• View post

  Group chats are not part of social media. It's not microblogging, it's our social news feed. We're thinking about this all wrong. Until we focus more on the boosts, the algos will keep growing and driving people away while big money continues to dominate public attention, debasing our culture and civics. #SocialWeb

• View post

  The Freedom of Value - How Value-for-Value Fixes the Monetization of Information | dergigi.com [imo we need a fedi fiat not crypto] via @wallabag@fosstodon.org https://dergigi.com/2021/12/30/the-freedom-of-value/

• View post

  @infobeautiful@vis.social @ourworldindata@vis.social does the NYT mostly mirror other outlets that most people get their news from? living near Chicago, I mostly hear about crime from other sources.

• View post

  We have access to infinite information, opinions and art. But what shapes our culture and civics is what we pay attention to. While that's somewhat a function of life experiences and education, it's mainly what gets pushed at us and whether we're willing and able to pay any possible fee to consume the digital work. That's the focus of #DemocracyOfReach. Independent creation, distribution and consumption. We decide together what goes viral. Creators get fairly paid, directly and...

• View post

  The Case Against High-School Sports via @wallabag https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-high-school-sports/309447/

• View post

  "Capitalism’s biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action." #economics #capitalism https://evonomics.com/how-capitalists-corrupt-capitalism/

• View post

  #Iran is communicating through #telegram. How about governments instead run their own websites that support #ActivityPub and allow for their public statements to be boosted to the world without any intermediaries involved? Somehow we've devolved back to AOL keywords.