Twitter goes dark, Reddit closes it’s API, Facebook joining Fedi. A very “meta” month on Fediverse as everyone argues about whether Meta should be blocked.
Me
Some stuff from my diary on the fediverse
Reddit Strike
The Reddit owners decided to start charging for API access, making the third party apps financially unviable.
Reddit going dark caused the users to revolt, the moderators to strike.
After waiting for the strike to end so I wasn’t a scab I deleted my reddit account, telling them I’m giving up the centralized ensihitifed corporate web.
Twitter Chaos
Early in the month Elon says “cis” is a slur, and I ponder trying to get banned for calling someone that but I’m not logging in just for that.
Then they closed down public access entirely! Imagine if they just locked your blog behind a login-wall removing it from the digital commons and enclosing is as part of their digital capital.
Facebook Joining Fedi?
Facebook’s new Fedi software “threads” is released any day now, and the arguments about it swept the whole network. Incredible drama with admins banning each other and great fights.
The poor sods on those big corporate social networks don’t get to see *any* of the drama and bickering between their corporate administrators.
Thank goodness Facebook’s attempt to divide us won’t work because of the fediverse’s inherent solidarity and mutual support. 😆
Kbin/Lemmy
With hundreds of thousands of people looking to to replace Reddit, the fediverse had a new migration into Lemmy and KBin. Two bits of free un-owned fediverse software.
I looked briefly at them – kbin is prettier, more limited, but not really working properly.
Then a bit later wrote a blogpost in which I go into much more detail. What are they? What’s the difference? How it is Mastodon compatible?
We mentioned list of where Reddit users are going as they leave the enshitified corporate web.
Social
I did also go out and touch grass on the heath.
Also, after zip-car let me down managed to get out to see the family a few days later in Banbury, where we found in the park the bit the schools did up for the coronation, and guessed which schools were secretly royalist.
Also had some minor surgery to remove a cyst from my eyelid. Leaving it looking like I’d been punched in the face for a week but it’s all good now.
rant
a rant about landlordism and capitalism
Releases
Wordcloud Tarot
A new tarot show, about the twitter lockdown
Starship Clips
Some threads to talk about bits of my films and what was involved in making them
Reading
“48 laws of power” by Robert Greene.
The laws themselves are all pretty short and are things like “Guard your reputation with your life” or “Get others to do the work for you, but always get the credit” and “Avoid unhappy unlucky people” and “Crush your enemies totally”
Each is illustrated with stories from history of how kings and emperors and sales-executives either obeyed or transgressed the law and how that worked out for them.
Many of the stories are absolutely horrifying, murderous psychopaths throwing each other to the wolves and destroying each other’s lives, even taking those lives for petty reasons.The one where the war-lord made a mistake and then asked his friend for his head, so he could blame it on him as a now-dead scape-goat was nuts. “I just need one more favour: your head. Don’t worry, I’ll look after your family”.
I found no useful lessons for life here other than to continue to avoid seeking power or having anything at all to do with the kinds of people who do seek it.
Watching
Black Mirror Season Six
Charlie Brooker’s anothology series gets another season and they’re all great again.
The one with the remote-presence-bots for space-fairing people was entertaining but the concept is stupid. No reason at all to keep the robots at home and send the astronauts into space. Better the other way around.
The first one was probably best. TV show about a TV show about a TV show. Great meta work.
Dunno how Charlie Brooker manages to keep being so excellent for so many years.
Listening
Call Jonathan Pie – BBC Sounds
Johnathan Pie audio drama in which he’s roped into hosting a call-in-show which is a pretty good way to expose the character to the opinions of the great unwashed masses.
Very funny in places.
Web Links
What’s going on on the web?
Video
* You’re Not Immune To Propaganda – Second Thought
Interesting video-essay on progaganda in the modern age.
* Britain’s Economic Insanity TAKEN APART – Richard Murphy on Owen Jones
Richard Murphy on Owen Jones show shows us how there is no wage price spiral and raising interest rates to crash the economy can’t even fight the inflation.
* What Happens when a Hull Fails at 1000 atmospheres? – Thunderf00t
Thunderf00t video talking about explosive compression such as one might find in a breached submarine a kilometer down in the ocean.
* The Most Dangerous Weapon is NOT Nuclear – Kurzgesagt
Great cartoon-illustrated talk on the dangers of bio-tech, perhaps it’s more dangerous than back-yard nukes?
AI
A hugging-face AI model to generate music from a description and an optional hint-audio-track. It’s, sort of okay. Works. No vocals. Expect much better things to arrive soon.
Featuring a section on probability spreads, and a image with a probability distribution graph on how hard AI alignment will be from Steam Engine to P vs NP.
Imaging your answers to questions as probability spreads is helpful for avoiding narrow tunnel thinking where you only expect one outcome. Drawing the chart for yourself for both the difficulty of alignment and the possibility of super-intelligence is a good exercise for understanding your own hidden thinking on what AI risks might be.
* AI Is a Lot of Work – The Verge
As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere. A long article interviewing many ai labelling workers. The grunt work involved is tireless.
more
That’s just the highlights this month, there’s more in my full public bookmarks from my link-bot on the fediverse or an RSS feed
Around the Fediverse
We’re taking over the means of communication, ending the corporate ownership of the free web.
Around a million new accounts on the Fediverse this month, helped by the boom in Lemmy and Reddit and the trashing of Twitter.
What’s going on on fedi?
Fedi on Fedi
* @thegibson@hackers.town – Veilid Hackers.town and the cult of the dead cow think Fedi isn’t distributed enough, and so they have even more decentralised comms software coming at a converence next month
* @ifixcoinops@mstdn.social – take-turns ordering
Dan suggests reading not by reverse-chronological, but by giving each friend one turn each. “you get halfway through and it runs out of posts from everyone but Alice. The last twenty pages are the Alice Show, but at least you’ve gotta scroll down to that.”
* @deadsuperhero@treehouse.systems – Re-launch of Fediverse news site. The Fediverse’s original news site is back.
* @mariyadelano@hachyderm.io – The Old World Is Dying Mariya’s blog on her Mastodon experiences translating Russian articles on the war
Culture
* @ajroach42@retro.social – DIY TV AJ was thinking about early home video art and early home video activism all day, and wrote a great thread, and then a book and DIY TV manefesto
* @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk – Slides from his talk on Online Satefy Bill “It’s one of the worst-written pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen – and I’m a telecoms lawyer.”
* @deadsuperhero@treehouse.systems – Brands.town history The history of the brands.town server
The corporate web ensitifies the bed.
* @rysiek@mstdn.social – It’s the moderators that are moving, and the mods that are important. It’s not how many leave, it’s who is leaving.
* @Aaron@social.aaroncrocco.com – Then and now How it started, how it’s going.
* @eaton@phire.place – API pricing is what made Twitter break. “Anyone interested in low end tinkering was suddenly incentivized to sidestep the API and just scrape” Which is twice as expensive for the servers, thus limits.
* @RussInCheshire@mstdn.social – Twitter Genius Sarcastic description of Elon’s amazing track record.
* @thegibson@hackers.town – Meta Thread listing Facebook’s many criminal and immoral wrongs.
* @yassie_j@snowdin.town – Facebook and Myanmar “catalysed a racial and ethnic genocide in Myanmar” and more!
* @atomicpoet@calckey.social – how joining fedi kills Meta Long posts on how open-protocols can kill businesses.
* @pre – Didn’t expect them to follow me When I left Facebook I didn’t really expect them to follow me 😉
* @dznz@cloudisland.nz – facebook doing the double-cross on video businesses. Bait and switch
* @alcinnz@floss.social – Blog about XMPP being Extinguished How to Kill a Decentralised Network
* @welshpixie@mastodon.art – Reasons people join Fedi .art admin lists reasons people say they want to join Mastodon: “I don’t feel safe on Facebook. Instagram cares about ads, not artists.” Etc.
Images
You gotta see these visual things.
* @IamHappyToast@mastodon.social – Bob Mortimer as Columbo
* @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org – Reddit tree-surgeon
* @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org – Meta joins us at the campfire
* @IamHappyToast@mastodon.social – Elon Disrupting
* @cyriak@mastodon.social – Zooming Skulls
Bluesky
Bluesky is the tiny upstart decentralized network that has the advantages of not actually being decentralized in any way yet and also being backed by billionaire surveillance capitalists.
They might be decentralized, but are they peer to peer?
@lrhodes@merveilles.town has threads on:
* Censorship Resistance and Nazi Recruitment
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