Free software scares normal people

danieldelaney.net/normal/

if you believe that a better world is possible, you may be tarred as a doomer, because achieving a better world involves calling attention to what is wrong with this one.

your very optimism is called pessimism, particularly by people for whom the current world is more than comfortable.

Donald Trump's DOJ has recently started treating doxing as a crime, charging at least 4 people in SoCal with it. Which makes it all the more corrupt that Juicebox Janine memory holed Trump's own doxing that led to dangerous stalking of Barack Obama. www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/30/j...

Jeanine Pirro Covers Up Donald...

Jeanine Pirro Covers Up Donald Trump's Doxing Conspiracy - emptywheel

Among the things Trump's DOJ excised from the sentencing memo of Tayler Taranto yesterday is Trump's own role, by doxing Barack Obama, in getting Taranto to stalk Obama's neighborhood.

^emptywheel

Sensitive content Click to open/close

my basic thesis of how the AI bubble works: it doesn't work on market forces at all or it'd be dead already. it's an industry-wide Enron scam. they will all put in whatever money is needed to keep it afloat as absolutely long as possible.

(hence me picking 2027-ish for the final collapse)

#WordWeavers 29 Oct
Pick your preference: drafting, editing, formatting, or marketing

What?

No.

You write because you write. You then edit to polish the rough edges, to remove inconsistencies, to improve the quality of the prose. You don't write because you 'prefer' to write. You write because the narrative is coming through you.

I don't manually format at all. I have stylesheets for that.

Marketing? No.

#USPolitics
The bigger threat to the country, bigger than Trump [who's brain is nearly dead, but he looks better on Ozempic], is the people who have power [GOP] and let it happen.

Because they will let it happen again.

They wanted power specifically to let this happen.

Explaining why I push back so hard on the question: "Why do you want millions of people on the Fediverse?"

If I ask people "Are there racists on Twitter?" People will say "Yes, lots!"

If I ask, "Does the owner of Twitter have the power to define moderation rules that allow racism but ban criticism if they choose to do so?" People say yes.

If I ask people, "Do the owners of Twitter have the possibility to algorithmically control what people see, and what gets amplified / shadow-banned?" People will also say yes.

If I ask, "Do you believe that the Fediverse offers an alternative to centrally controlled, algorithmically defined, social media?" People agree.

If I ask, "Do you think Black people that don't want to be on Twitter, deserve access to a better form of social media than what is available on Twitter?" People agree.

So far, so good! 👍🏿

But then when I say, "Are you aware that at peak, 1 in 5 Twitter users was Black, and 1 in 5 Black people in the US was a monthly active Twitter user?" Fewer people know that stat.

There were ~300,000 Black trans Twitter users that used the service monthly. Almost none of them are on the Fediverse.

Black people deserve safety. Black people deserve access to more choice in social media.

Decentralized social media is not zero sum. Adding Black people and making the Fediverse safer for them, does not need to take away from your experience.

Your instance doesn't need to go from 100 people to a million people to accommodate the influx of new users.

That's the logical explanation of why we should make the Fediverse safer for everyone. But... why push back so hard?

One of the problems with the world in general, and the US in particular, is that we often prioritize white *feelings* over Black *safety*. I am not gentle about pointing this out. Tiptoeing around this phenomenon is tiring for Black people, and I won't do it.

Black people are not safe on Twitter or Mastodon. The difference is that we as a community of people of all backgrounds, have agency to improve Mastodon.

We can make Mastodon safer without breaking the experience for existing users.