Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

“All gendered "-men" nouns immediately become delightful when you substitute "-folk": fisherfolk, countryfolk. And even when there's a perfectly suitable gender-neutral alternative, firefighters & guards pale in comparison to firefolk & watchfolk. In this essay I will”

https://twitter.com/laura_hirsb/status/1483789703564259328
#gender #english #language

Given that I've seen the "admin kneejerks a server block, then regrets it and reverses it within less than a day" play out like 3 or 4 times in the mere months I've been here, instances being able to facilitate reconnection between users strikes me as a necessary feature, not a luxury. Users should be able to insulate themselves and their communities from boneheaded kneejerk admin calls

as an extension of that I think the clear solution to a lot of problems is to shove the five loudest asshats into a lake and explicitly tell the other asshats that that's what asshattery gets you

While I’m having a moan about stuff - and this is something I got wrong in my early days here…

Following hashtags is great, but I’m starting to unfollow some of the more popular ones (mosstodon, bloomscrolling etc) as half the toots using them are just recommending them to other people, not actually posting cool moss pics or whatever. If you want to recommend hashtags to your followers, stick ‘em in your profile, or boost some examples of them in the wild.

is the CEO of mastodon working with european police agencies?

https://paper.wf/downas/is-the-ceo-of-mastodon-working-with-european-police-agencies

i don't think most spaces online are that "polarised"

it's more, loud asshats will dominate any otherwise reasonable conversation if given the opportunity

and inside "loud asshats" there's no meaningful way to tell the difference between "an absolute ignoramus," "a child," and "an evil person."

i think it's interesting how in the regular internet world, a company providing a service and folding after 10-20 years is a regular occurrence, and in some situations (like online games) actually a significant achievement

if the fediverse was just another regular project, it getting absorbed by meta would be seen as the end of a moderately successful 15-year run

but since fedi's goal is to actually have a viable long-term community and to serve its users and not the admins, it's instead our nightmare scenario

Don’t worry, if GMail ever gets to be too abusive, we’ll just defederate from them!

“Hey, some fediverse instances are growing larger and larger, isn’t that great? Yay!”

Stop and think about what this means. You’re celebrating the creation of fiefdoms and feudal lords. Mini Zuckerbergs, if you will.

There’s a reason I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about limiting server sizes for as long as I can remember.

e.g., If mastodon.social blocks my instance of one, they block 1,196,910 accounts from interacting with me. If I block them… I do the exact same thing to myself.

Ok, this made me chuckle.
#StarTrek

I really am disgusted by how many people are advocating to give Facebook a chance.

Their history is objectively abhorrent.

I’m appalled by how many people who consider themselves smart just expect us to give them the benefit of the doubt based on absolutely nothing.

How's that fucking boot taste?

Reasons to block the Facebook extended universe:

There is no fucking way they want to integrate with a growing Indy network. Why would they build competition? I would bet serious money that their internal memos are actively clear about Embrace Extend Extinguish. If bootlicker or fashy instances want to get caught up in that, let them.

Their internal memos will be even clearer about data harvesting.

If meta wants to join the unmoderated wing of fedi, they'll fit right in - or barely notice. They are thousands of times bigger than all of us put together. We can't keep them out of ActivityPub, but we don't need to be part of their disaster.

Keep furry weird.
Keep fedi weird.
No corps in either.

How do you deal with the lack of historical consciousness among younger or less aware people? As in not understanding shit about queer life while you are pretty experienced. The drama, the ignorance, the lack of interest ...