1/2 Today in, "Chris writes to Politicians” 🤣
I wrote to the British Columbia Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness today in relation to this news that she was negotiating with Meta to try to get access to Facebook to post emergency updates. How did we allow ourselves to be so beholden to these corporations for basic communication!
Here is my letter:
Dear Minister Ma (EMCR.Minister@gov.bc.ca)
CC: My Local MLA Minister Josie Osborne
I understand and agree with why you feel you must try to get Meta to allow you to post Emergency messages on that platform, especially during the fire season when we all now face so much uncertainty.
However, you must also acknowledge that:
Meta has made it clear its concern is curating its own content and “news” for its own financial benefit separate from any public benefit consideration.
You will never be able to control the algorithm on any Meta platform, so while you may post, you are still never guaranteed that your message can reach 100% of the people 100% of the time.
You as a Minister and as a representative of the Government of British Columbia cannot rely on third parties to get timely messaging out to communities and citizens. You are government, you have the means and responsibility to get the message out directly.
The question is how do you, as government, use social media directly? This has not been possible before, but it is now.
The answer is the Open Social Web. You may cringe at this example (and rightly so), but the pioneer and most famous person using the Open Social Web tools for public communication is Donald Trump with his “truth.social”.
When he built a bridge to connect Bluesky to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms, @snarfed.org@snarfed.org started a new chapter for the fediverse. The software engineer opens up to @mike about his rollercoaster ride in the latest episode of Dot Social:
I am going to be super busy all day, but this response from the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada just came into my inbox. I argued Public Safety Canada (emergency communications) services were violating privacy laws using corporate social media. They say they don't have jurisdiction to make the call. Would be interested in your guys thoughts on a response before I have time to think on mine. #Fediverse#OpenSocialWeb#Mastodon#Emergencies#Communication.
We got 10 more signatures yesterday! Only need 13 more to break 1000!
Share this link and post about the #e4769 petition on your Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads feeds!
Last month, Meta's Threads took its first step into the fediverse. @quillmatiq, aka @quillmatiq took that as his cue to experiment with how his Threads feed would look like on Mastodon. Here's what he discovered about organizing the chaos, different clients (hello @phanpy) and whether he'll cut the Threads cord when federation is complete.
So Fediverse people are replying to @potus on the Threads account. (eg. https://www.threads.net/@potus/post/C5R2tfZLYXD ) "He" can't see those replies because Threads doesn't allow them through, but we can reply to ourselves on the Fediverse side. It's weird.
Questions:
If I wanted to send a link to someone (including the OP/POTUS) so they could see that Fediverse reply stream what link would I send? I guess it would depend on who replied from what server and if they are public? (eg. https://mstdn.party/@seibelsays/112204482012631501)
I guess a case can now be made to Threads management @mosseri that one way federation is limiting the freedom of expression of citizens to be heard by their politicians? lol. Or maybe you don't need to go that Musk-ian route. You can just say it's really weird to be able to see and reply to someone on Threads but thise replies can't be seen by the Threads user. Like really, how stupid. 😝
I may create a Threads account specifically to advocate for Federation asap , and to encourage people to leave Threads. 😈 Especially while the #e4769 petition is on.
Anyway, I see it as inevitable now that Threads fully federates and becomes interoperable with #Mastodon and the #Fediverse.
As a proponent of the #OpenSocialWeb, no matter my opinion of Meta, this is what the Open Social Web must be, a mix of commercial and non conmmercial, evil and not evil, blocked and not blocked.
The mix will mirror the wider Internet and society and that is far far better than the monopolistic, closed, Social Media behemoths we have had in the previous era.
That's why Federation of #Threads is good, Very good.
"Follower counts matter less than view and like counts”.
Discuss!
(Not only the statement itself, but why the head of Threads would say this, at this moment in particular).
To me integrity is huge and I view talk as cheap. If you are going out of your way to loudly talk about #Threads and how horrible #Meta is then go all of the way. Scolding people and pushing people to block Threads is cheap if you’re not willing to block those federating with Threads. I see people attempting to harass Eugen for his instances federating with Threads and tell him he aligning himself with a company guilty of genocide. Why not block him & others for being guilty by association? Many of the loud ones won’t because they can’t get over the slight discomfort & inconvenience of cutting off large parts of the networks. Personally, I find it hard to respect such opinions. When people protest it’s for change and they don’t back out due to discomfort and inconveniences. To be clear, my focus isn’t on those simply making the choice to defederate or not, it’s those being very forceful and vocal on either side of the fence. #Mastodon#Fediverse#OpenSocialWeb
A year can go by in a flash. And that’s certainly how I feel as @Flipboard marks the first birthday of our Mastodon editorial desks. We tentatively dipped our toes into the water, not sure what to expect. What we quickly discovered was a smart, engaged community of people truly curious about our world for all its virtues and faults.
We instantly observed far more replies, favorites and boosts than we ever saw on X (Twitter) even though we had many more followers there. By November, we abandoned X to focus on Mastodon and a few other platforms.
When we launched our Mastodon accounts, we had no idea that Flipboard itself would federate, which is a work in progress. In recent months, we’ve federated our editorial curation from the app, greatly expanding your options to follow the topics you’re most interested in, such as news, politics, sports, entertainment, etc. And we’re in the process of federating publisher Flipboard accounts so that you can follow their topical Magazines. Already, you can find accounts such as Smithsonian Magazine, Euronews, Frommers, CBS Sports and SPIN.
Thank you for all of your feedback and support. If you like our work, please boost this post and help us grow our audience.
Thank you to all of our supporters who appreciate our human curation. We're so pleased to be welcomed into a community with such a genuine passion for all things tech. We'll continue to champion exceptional journalism and boost posts we think deserve some eyeballs.
Let us know in the replies what you'd like to see more of in the future and we'll do our best to make this an even more enjoyable and insightful space for tech lovers. #Flipboard#OpenSocialWeb#TechNews#Tech#SocialMedia#AI
@BeAware@amgine@lacouvee no criticism at all, I'm just articulating (poorly) the fact that that 700 is inevitably going to be millions if the ‘promise' of ActivityPub and the #OpenSocialWeb is realized. Which I hope it is.
Today I submitted a complaint to the Information Commissioner of Canada arguing that by only using third party social media platforms Public Safety Canada was not living up to the spirit, if not the word, of the Access to Information Act.
You can read it on my blog.
I blame @bougiewonderland for egging me on but hey, if you're going to complain about something, you might as well really COMPLAIN! 😂
Today, we're beginning to federate a selection of publishers based in Germany and the U.K. We've also introduced @FlipboardDE, a new profile for the Mastodon community in Germany. In the first test, we are partnering with 21 publishers to federate their profiles and Magazines. Follow the profile to see all the stories they are posting on Flipboard, or topically curated Magazines to get coverage on specific areas of interest. Here's a blogpost that explains more.
Hier sind alle Profile von föderierten Publishern in Deutschland, denen Du nun folgen kannst. Verwende einfach die Suche mit dem jeweiligen Publisher-Profil, um ihre Magazine zu finden und eine Liste von allem zu sehen, was sie kuratieren.
Here are all the accounts you can follow for federated publishers in the United Kingdom. To find their Magazines, simply search for the publisher profile and you should see a list of everything they're curating.
We're less than a month away from the end of the signing period for Petition #e4769! We have an excellent number of signatures but more is always better!
If you'd like to see more Fediverse servers and used by (Canadian) government in particular, this is the petition for you!
We've launched a biweekly newsletter on LinkedIn to help connect the dots on the world of decentralized social media. We'll be taking a big step back to help non-technical people understand what the Fediverse is, why it's an improvement on traditional social media, and how to get started.
We'll also be cross-posting these articles to our own blog and Medium. We hope they're helpful, and we're open to your ideas on things you want to better understand. Just let us know!
I want the public to take back control over what gets attention. I think that's required to have a working democracy. I think everyone replacing the programming decisions of corporate media and the algorithms of big tech with a decentralized social graph without ads is key. Our thinking will be influenced by others. The question is can we better control who will be doing that, so that it's varied and of the highest possible quality. #LiberalValues#AttentionDemocracy#fediverse#OpenSocialWeb
Attention, U.S.-based folk who are looking for restaurant reviews and other food news that is relevant to where they live! @Eater has federated all of its local Magazines. Here's how to discover all their stories.