RT @jfruh@twitter.com
god i hope warnock wins so we can spend the next two years figuring how to placate sinema OR manchin instead of sinema AND manchin
š¦š: https://twitter.com/jfruh/status/1591630880896094210
https://bycommonconsent.com/2022/11/04/church-finances-in-canada-and-australia/
Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Interesting comment on Hackernews regarding a possible scenario/long term risk should Mastodon threaten the corporate sphere of social media.
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I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the "next Twitter", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook:
1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. ("We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!")
1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1]
2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. ("We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!")](https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/109/319/659/864/764/961/original/810e1580a04f97c3.jpg "xg15 29 minutes ago | next [ā]
I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the \"next Twitter\", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook:
1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. (\"We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!\")
1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1]
2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. (\"We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!\")")
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> āIām awesome, even better than last year, gimme money.ā
Why isnāt that good enough?
Iām seeing long-time Mastodon folks asking people to please PLEASE use CW on posts about political topics and then Iām seeing almost no one actually do that. Itās so important to keep up with the culture of this space that was established long before many of us got here. Just use the CW!!
When following back people here, Iām noticing a lot of people havenāt posted anything yet.
If you canāt think of anything to write just yet, then do consider just reblogging (=retweeting!) good content that you see around. You could start with this post, for example, to encourage more people to start sharing content around here.
BTW, as we get the Bylines publications going on here, that will provide ample good news content for the community. šš
Anyone else having an issue doing any Google search re: Mastodon?
Iāve done each of the following, both for updating my federation rules and to try to find new communities, and I always only get pages and pages about large, ancient mammals:
- Mastodon servers I should ignore
- Biblical Studies Mastodon
- Ancient Greek Mastodon
- Exmormon/Mormon Mastodon
āCause everyone knows that there were many Mormon Mastodons going two by two and door to door back in the Pleistoceneā¦
Friendly tip friends - whatever you do please do not directly quote tweet or engage to Elon Musk's fascist content. That will only boost his engagement.
Take a screenshot of and then comment on it. This way he gets no boost from his rants. #Fediverse
Birb site
Now that Iāve deleted all but a few hundred and locked my account, itās bloody hilarious over there. Vicious. But hilarious.
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I'm back!
I mean, I never really left, but I didnāt keep up with the whole ActivityPub thing after a brief push.
I guess this is really the second time Iāve returned to the Fediverse. When the pandemic first started I needed to get my news and turned, like everyone, to social media. I became more active on Facebook than I had been since my disaffection from Mormonism in the early 2010s, but a lot of my activity came from dismay at seeing my friends get taken in by QAnon nonsense.
I turned to the Fediverse to try and escape the insanity, but I was still too addicted to the dopamine of anger and dismay, so you can see that it didnāt last long. I tried to get my Pleroma instance set up in a complicated Facebook => Twitter => Pleroma chain so that I could post once and still feel connected to friends. I might set that back up again soon, but for now itās been weeks since Iāve been to Facebook and months since Iāve been actively logging in.
Iām excited to see how many people are joining Mastodon. Hopefully, this will be a lasting change. I donāt think it will, however, until someone figures out how to apply an algorithmic feed to your personal ActivityPub graph.
Until then, though, it looks like we might see the fun occurring here at Mastodon increasing, which is good. Even if most people go back to the bird site itāll be good to inject some new blood, new energy, and most importantly new technical ideas into the Fediverse.
Iām excited!
So we're going to post something every night that you can just enjoy. Nothing heavy.
It might not even be an article. For example, tonight's post is an old YouTube video because their algorithm reminded me today that I enjoy it.
If you have 8 minutes free, please enjoy Neil Patrick Harris' opening number at the 2013 Tony Awards.
Have a great night, everyone!
#voteblue
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Note: I'm not just calling hypocrisy and leaving it at that. I'd _love_ for major tech companies to face _realistic_ and _useful_ regulation to help foster competition and innovation. But if we're not going to do that for Comcast but we _are_ going to do that for Google that's crazy. And let's be 100% honest here: the only reason this is happening is because, by population, the majority of English-speaking Internet users are not Republican (not the same thing as conservative!), so somehow Republicans are surprised and cry foul when search engines and other algorithms derived from the Internet used by the world's population then reflect that actual disparity in the results they return. But I guess I should not be surprised that the same party supporting voting limitations also supports artificially resurrecting the "fairness doctrine" of the 1980s for the Internet that was killed by the administration of their legendary hero, Ronald Reagan (legendary because the actual man and the popular image are nowhere near the same man).
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/spurred-by-clarence-thomas-ohio-ag-wants-google-declared-a-public-utility/
https://news.yahoo.com/lockdown-states-like-california-did-better-economically-than-looser-states-like-florida-new-covid-data-shows-153025163.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb&tsrc=fb
Mormon-ish friends: This is genius! Hope it's good for a laugh and provoking some thought. :)
https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2021/05/17/four-reasons-church-members-feel-compelled-to-attribute-motives-to-people-who-leave/
https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V4J21-DzV8&feature=youtu.be