The Nexus of Discussions

@GuyDudeman no need to imagine, you can read the article and see what experts actually have to say!

Many thanks to our collaborators at r/feminism, and to co-authors @sarahgilbert, Marianne Reddan, and Tyler Simko.Sarah and I have written further about behavioral science and rights of assembly and association in this post:https://citizensandtech.org/2024/10/assembly-and-association/

Yeah …https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113867969234998558 . scott@carfree.city @inquiline

I am hopeful about the changes at Mastodon. I think IFTAS is doing absolutely crucial work with very little support. I've come around on bridging, as wildly imperfect as it is, as a stop-loss and a way of keeping fedi more viable for more people who are willing to accept the (nebulous) trade-offs.But also I love the federated model and I want it to be a real option for more people in more places, so it's discouraging to keep hitting "eh screw the normies" when the societal risks are so high.

Agreed. But also, is there anything at all in what Meta's said that gives any reason to believe there will be less censorship of Palestinian voices? @raph @eff

@_elena if you run into people at FOSDEM who are looking to explore here, I've just updated https://privacy.thenexus.today/resources-for-choosing-instances/

@kissane great essay. "Franklin’s insistence on putting the realities of the most vulnerable at the center of decision-making is maybe the most radical part of her technology thinking—more radical when she was alive, less radical-seeming for a few years when artifacts like Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice emerged, and now an idea under concerted and overwhelming fire."Yeah really. Not sure if you've seen Afsenah Rigot's Can We Build Tech That Is Not Oppressive? but it's very much in alignment with Franklin's point about groundeing work il understanding of fears and the conditions that produce them."This deep understanding of criminalization is not only for lawyers, human rights experts, or historians, it is vital for technologists too. The details of how highly marginalized communities are criminalized are the key to how we can build robust and even scalable tech that is not oppressive. This is how Design From the Margins truly works.Fear and dehumanization of communities who are othered pave the way for abusive technological advancement. These groups are placed in protection black holes and become testing grounds for this tech. They face the biggest threats from states and power regardless of who is in office: from migrants at borders and incarcerated people in prisons, to apartheid systems. Once these approaches have been tested on those living in the margins, it is then expanded to other segments of the population."

@timnitGebru How dare they "distill" our (non-copyrightable) output based on (copyrighted) training data OpenAI used without consent!!!!!!!And yeah you can already see the grab for more resources happening with "White House AI tsar" (bletch) David Sacks" talking about "intellectual property theft".

@timnitGebru great use of DAIR-Tube!

@hakan_geijer excellent work, thanks much for writing and sharing it!

@luka

He also says "The way that Bluesky is structured demands a lot more of relays than Mastodon demands of "instances" (a loose Fediverse analog to relays)"NO! The loose Fediverse analog to relays is (wait for it ...) relays! HOW HARD CAN THIS BE??????@mackuba.eu

@FediPact who, who could have predicted?well, okay, everybody predicted this. but other than that, who, who could have predicted?

@atomicpoet good list! Is it okay if I link to it in https://privacy.thenexus.today/resources-for-choosing-instances/ ?

Congrats ... and timely too!And yes, good article @Sarahp @julian

Pixelfed's rapid growth is very exciting. Still, until you have a mod team -- and the underlying software supports mod dashboards and roles -- please consider switching to invite-only registration (and encourage or even require other instances listed on pixelfed.org to do the same). The opportunity isn't going to go away: Meta and Instagram aren't going to get any less evil, so people who are interested now will still be interested one you've got the team and softrware in place. In fact many other social networks have successfully used invite-only phases to build pent-up demand. But a moderation disaster (which is increasingly likely as things grow without the proper tools and teams in place) could permanently damage Pixelfed's reputation in a way that's very hard to recover from. And, until there's good moderation support in the software, you're putting both the people who sign up and the people who are hosting instances at risk.@dansup

@fediversereport really excellent analysis!

A great reading list on Xiaohongshu (the real name for RedNote) was shared earlier by Dr Qian Huang, have a look! https://qianxeniahuang.super.site/resources/xiaohongshu-literatureShe also made the appeal to refer to and share the spotlight with those researchers who have acquired expertise on this platform for the past 11 years, so it's also a good referral list in case anyone gets media requests for comments! https://bsky.app/profile/qianhuang.bsky.social/post/3lfsaeja7bc23

The "Free our Feeds" announcement is very much along the lines of the NPIC appointing itself architect of the future of decentralized social media."The Social Web Foundation convenes the network of platforms connected via ActivityPub. SWF's executive director is involved in the #FreeOurFeeds campaign as a custodian and you can read more about in her blog post"@ophiocephalic

Hate is a continuum of horrible things. Once a group of people is dehumanized, perpetrators of hate will do things that range from "well, that person just doesn't _belong_ here" to the most horrible crimes imaginable.Platforms that foster hate-bait loops will lead to such dehumanization not only taking place, but being amplified and shared and reposted. (Musk is also organizing his own hate campaigns every day.)That has real-world consequences, whether anyone observes them or not.