Just passing through.

  • 4 Posts
  • 154 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
cake
Cake day: April 24th, 2024

  • Yeah. The article seems to almost be written as a propaganda piece, yet all I see is red flags.

    “Her mission letter prioritises bolstering European competitiveness. It significantly varies from her predecessor’s bad-mouthing of tech billionaires.”

    Launching a war against tech billionaires is exactly what the EU should be doing. If one genuinely loves tech, and not just the tools of oppression it can provide, one has no choice but to also hate tech billionaires. They are cancer on the planet, they are cancer on society, and they are cancer on technological developments.





  • True - I guess I just need to be able to safely trust their journalistic integrity, it doesn’t need to be completely independent in a strict sense.

    I should absolutely start reading DW, thanks for the reminder! Though their coverage of the Amsterdam unrest does not seem immediately encouraging. I guess it is German after all. At least the Guardian did a decent job on that.



  • Yeah, it’s the same in mbin. It’s pretty common for spam bots here to create their own magazines to post in, for some reason. It’s a bit weird, because generally nobody will see their posts at all. I guess it might have to do with SEO?

    Anyway, I try to weed them out by sorting by new and local now and then, but other than that they’re hard to spot. Reports are much appreciated.





  • A red flag for me, from an outside perspective, was how the #MastodonforHarris campaign was dealt with.

    A completely grassroots organization led by ordinary Americans who care about democracy get together and collect hundreds of thousands for the campaign. Some are relatively well-connected and attempt to reach out. And, as far as I could see, the campaign couldn’t even be arsed to issue an official “thank you”.

    If this is how far removed the campaign was from ordinary Americans, who in the world had any access? Who would feel like their voice is being heard, if fundraising half a million is not even enough to be recognized with a thank you from some low-ranking representative?

    I’m not American, and I have no idea what the situation is like on the ground over there. I kind of hoped/assumed they put in their effort being available to steel workers in Pennsylvania rather than nerds on Mastodon. But seeing how it all went down I guess they were equally far removed from everyone.



  • I see quite a bit boosted on Mastodon, but I’m not sure where they are all posting from. On Pixelfed I follow photographers, so I see photography.

    If youwant to see more art, the first step is to follow artists. Try to search for hashtags related to art forms you’re interred in on a large Mastodon instance, and follow relevant users wherever you want to follow them from. Pixelfed might be good if you’re not interested in text posts, but make sure you display boosts. Lemmy is not good as most content is invisible.

    Once you follow some, for example @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org, you’ll see what they boost from around the Fediverse. Artists generally have a decent overview over their sphere of interest, so once the ball starts rolling you’ll see content from all over.

    I filled my feed up quite nicely with independent musicians very quickly after listening to RadioFreeFedi a little while and following a couple of artists. Their boosts creates a nice little window into the indie music scene.


  • Always happy to see Friendica users around - it seems to integrate impressively with huge parts of the Fediverse.

    I remember reading about it in the early days of the project, and not giving it a shot because there’s just no way any of my social graph would come with me there. Checking in now and then through the years it always seemed like an odd corner of the Internet. It’s really cool to me that I suddenly find myself seamlessly interacting with its users, both anonymously here and with my full name on Mastodon.







  • I’m not sure what to make of compatibility between Mastodon groups and Lemmy communities. On the one hand, it would obviously be a good thing if the technology would talk as much as possible. On the other, the microblog format does not look so good in Lemmy unless the author is knowingly making and effort to create a thread rather than a post, starting with a title and all that.

    Compatibility between the two by default could end up flooding both services with content that looks out of place, and lowering the user experience rather than improving it. It would also subject one service to the technical constraints/decisions of the other.

    I think it might make more sense to keep them somehow separate, and leave it to the different fediverse software to implement it however it would like. The priority of the Mastodon developers, in my opinion, should be to create something that works as well as possible in their ecosystem.

    Then again, I could absolutely be wrong.