xapr [he/him]

What’s insane is that didn’t Proton just recently announce they were converting to a non-profit?

Yes, they did: https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation

I don’t think either of those are major issues. I happen to think that Mastodon is OK, almost catchy. Their mascot is very cute too. They officially did away with the Toot terminology quite a while ago, like a year or two, but some instances modified the code to keep that, and the old hands keep calling it that too. Also, keep in mind that I said that I fully expect Mastodon to stay a minor but viable player. It’s never going to overtake a corporate behemoth like Meta, and most likely not even Twitter.

I hear what you’re saying and think you have a good point. It’s very likely that Mastodon will stay a minor player, but I also think it will live on as a viable alternative to the major social networks. There are a lot of people dedicated to developing, running, posting, etc. to keep it lively. There is also the factor that Mastodon will always be there if (when) X or BlueSky stumble and make a mistake that will send another chunk of users over.

Cool, thanks.

That sounds pretty neat. Are all the algos developed by Bluesky (i.e., corporate/billionaire/VC-driven) though?

Following hashtags is also a great way to find content you’re interested in.

Sure, this is legitimate as well, and I believe I’ve heard that they’re working on this feature.

There are different Mastodon instances with different post character limits. You could also use an ActivityPub based macroblog (like write.as / WriteFreely(?)).

It’s absolutely insane to hear that a streamer, of all types of people, said there’s a learning curve to it. Twitch is/was bewildering to me, just as a user, much less a streamer who would need to learn to configure and use OBS, etc. SMH.

Nightmare is massively overstating it. Mastodon’s UI/UX is neither a nightmare nor difficult to use. People who say this stuff leave me scratching my head.

In my view, the only legitimate criticism of Mastodon is about the lack of an algorithm that’s constantly bubbling content to the top, but that’s a valid design choice that many people prefer over the toxic algos over at X/Twitter.

Exiting the Vampire Castle, by Mark Fisher (2013): https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exiting_the_Vampire_Castle):

“Exiting the Vampire Castle” is an essay written by the English theorist Mark Fisher for the online publication The North Star in 2013. It argues for increased leftist solidarity by departing from the phenomenon of online callout culture to instead orient activity around organization of efforts around the accountability of one’s economic class, rather than around traits in identity and culture.

Fisher argues that a largely online style of identity-based leftist discourse grounded in “witch-hunting moralism” halts productive leftist discourse and undermines class politics.[1] In particular, the combination of a primary focus on identity and the policing of others’ speech is deleterious.[2] Fisher saw the turn from class and materialism towards identity as a move from objective outward-facing goals to subjective inward goals that result in fragmentation of the left’s efforts and community.[3]

Fisher defends Russel Brand in the essay, but remember that this was written in 2013, and Fisher died in 2017.

From what I understand, that’s not the real manifesto. That’s supposedly a fake one that was circulated shortly after his real “manifesto” was posted by Ken Klippenstein, and which has supposedly been confirmed by law enforcement: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

Instead, punishment for ALL crime should be proportional to the perpetrator’s annual income. That’s how they do it in Finland (and it seems also some other Scandinavian countries), for instance. They have had at least a couple of instances of over $100k speeding tickets, for example. This makes incredibly SOOOO much sense that it will never happen in most capitalist countries.

Some references: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine