Strypey (Quitter.se refugee) @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

A more personal #introduction. I enjoy #SciFi and #comedy. I've done some writing of both short stories and comedy skits, and keen to share more creative work along these lines, under #CreativeCommons licenses. I'm a keen performer, from #Shakespeare to #improv to #juggling to playing music, and keen to get back into these activities too. I'm passionate about #permaculture, the #Transition movement, and other forms of ethical and ecological design. I'm also vegan (been post-meat since mid-90s).

#Introduction career activist and professional volunteer from Aotearoa (NZ). Co-founder of numerous community projects, including a community newspaper, #CoWorking space, #MicroRadio station, #SocialCentre, the Aotearoa sections of #Indymedia and #CreativeCommons, and the Aotearoa Permaculture Network. These days, I publish long-form blogs at #Disintermedia. I'd love to hear from you about common interests, my contact info and more about my project history is here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/danyl-strype

The #Steam store is facing real competition in online game sales. But for all the legitimate criticisms of its non-free software, Steam has done a lot to make gaming on #GNU #Linux more viable, including #SteamOS. Has its competitors? Is what's bad for Steam, good for Windows?
https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2018/12/04/fortnite-epic-games-steam-rival-digital-store/

This made me cry (in a good, 'humans are awesome and I love you all' kind of way):
https://mashable.com/2017/01/31/danish-ad-all-that-we-share-box/#CKRoSqrM6Oqk

To give an example, the fediverse is a common carrier. The people who define federation protocols are not responsible for anything transmitted using them. Whereas any fediverse instance that does any kind of blocking of other instances, or moderation of users, is a publisher. So they are responsible for everything hosted on and transmitted through their instance. In summary, if you want the power, take the responsibility.

If you want #SafeHarbour protections as an intermediary, not a publisher responsible for content, it's only fair that you behave as - and get regulated as - as #CommonCarrier. If you make any editorial decisions whatsoever about who and what can be transmitted through your system, you are behaving as a publisher and it's only fair that you get regulated as a publisher. That means you're legally responsible for all content transmitted through your system. Carrier or publisher, which is it?

“One of the problems with climate change is getting people to realise it was anthropogenic – created by people. It’s the same problem with social networks – they are manmade. If they are not serving humanity, they can and should be changed,” says #TimBernersLee, the man who rolled over and let the datafarms push #DRM into the #W3C web standards. I agree with what he says here though.

Errr, George, you might want to look into this whistleblower named #EdwardSnowden. He reckons the most powerful "democracies" - including the US - have already "paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance", and have been doing it for years. State-corporate surveillance in the Philippines - bad as it is for Filipinos - is the least of our worries on a global scale.

"Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/george-soros-facebook-and-google-are-a-menace-to-society

Sure, newspaper website, I'll turn off my ad-blocker and #NoScript for your site. When you turn off all the #JavaScript that tracks me and makes my browser crash, so all I see is static placed ads, just like I would if I read your print edition.

This op-ed, written by a former FarceBook engineer, is an excellent illustration of the ethical vacuum that exists at the company. Imagine a government, with as many citizens as FB has users, where public servants were this lackadaisical about the consequences of how its powers are used *shudder*
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/02/facebook-executive-advertising-data-comment

"Founded in 2007, Tumblr reached its heyday around 2012, and hosted 108 million blogs the following year, when it was acquired by Yahoo. It wilted under the company’s leadership and is broadly acknowledged to be on the decline."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/style/tumblr-porn.html

There seems to be a pattern here, like #Yahoo is a digital retirement home where aging websites go to die (have they acquired #MySpace yet?). Maybe Tumblr needs to escape, just like #FlickR did?

I've noticed that there is another wave of refugees entering the #fediverse, this time from #Tumblr. I was wondering why, and then I did a quick web search and found this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/style/tumblr-porn.html

Interesting times ahead folks ...

#ShowerThought Imagine if algorithms determined which political parties you see on a ballot paper, rather than it just being a neutral list of all the candidates that decided to run. The second that algorithms start determining what people see on a digital media platform, rather than user choices to publish, subscribe to, and search for, it stops being a democratic platform, and becomes a totalitarian platform.

Electric buses are taxis serving large, modern cities are now officially a thing. When are cities in #Aotearoa (#NZ) going to replace their noisy, smelly, diesel buses with electric ones?
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/12/silence-shenzhen-world-first-electric-bus-fleet

This is what we look like from the POV of an average user ;-)

'How I Quit Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon' - Daniel Oberhaus
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-quit-apple-microsoft-google-facebook-amazon

History repeats ....
https://www.cbronline.com/feature/openbook-opensource-socialmedia

I also like the way this article distinguishes between compromise (where nobody gets what they want), and trying to come up with a new and better idea that hybridizes the best elements of each person's proposal. The article calls "collaboration", and fair enough, but this is what people who promote consensus decision-making mean by "consensus".

“be curious, not furious.” This is my new motto for all online communication ;-)
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-argue-better-with-your-partner-1831076056