Mastodon #psa: there's a post going around about #mozilla#firefox and the salary of the Mozilla Corporation CEO. This post is based on a blog post written by an openly transphobic fascist, Brian Lunduke, who has a beef with Mozilla for them treating trans employees like human beings.
It doesn't matter how true the material is; we must not take decisions based on information collated with such motives.
This is a moderation issue and it should be taken down but it's already been seen a lot.
In other news, I'm currently recovering from this mild heart attack of suddenly experiencing ads on YouTube for the first time in probably 10+ years. 😵
Please don't drop fake stuff for the lols for April fools.
We all have enough mental bandwidth consumed filtering out active disinformation and innocent mistakes to add to the burden. In general they aren't funny and degrade many folks online experience.
⚠️ PSA for Admins: Please update your pixelfed instance ASAP
We're dropping support for v0.11.5 and below in the next #pixelfedApp release and making v0.11.6 the min version for inclusion in to the https://pixelfed.org/servers directory.
v0.11.8 will be released later this weekend with Post Edit support, and other improvements! #pixelfed#PSA
EDIT: See important context from visually impaired users in the replies!
Friendly reminder to help our visually impaired community: avoid hashtags in the middle of your posts
Many people use screen-readers. It can be annoyingly difficult to parse things like "I went to the hashtag store to buy some hashtag bread but I got hashtag screwed when the last loaf was hashtag sole doubt ha ha ha ha"
Please remember to put your hashtags at the end, and make sure to capitalize within the hashtag where appropriate!
Just a reminder, if you're seeing spam, be extra careful when blocking the offending account. It's easy to block the whole domain by accident, and you're not going to get those followers/people you followed back easily.
Please, don't just block/suspend bad accounts; report bad actors whenever possible.
Of course, this isn't always safe. But it really helps us admins if you check the rules of the server the offending user is from and, if they are violating those rules, forward a report to that server.
It's the only defense we have in many cases. We don't see private messages. We can't monitor all accounts' profile contents. Even with 100 moderators, continually auditing all old accounts is unsustainable.
So help us out by making sure we know about the bad stuff before we get defederated.
Ugh! I found someone had scanned and uploaded a copy of my book to the Internet Archive, without my permission. When wanting to find a review to recommend a book to someone, I found that copyrighted book there, so looked for mine. I still own my copyright. This interferes with me creating an author-preferred edition (instead of the publisher's vision) as planned.
In their terms of service, you will find:
While we collect publicly available Internet documents, sometimes authors and publishers express a desire for their documents not to be included in the Collections (by tagging a file for robot exclusion or by contacting us or the original crawler group). If the author or publisher of some part of the Archive does not want his or her work in our Collections, then we may remove that portion of the Collections without notice.
You can only contact the Internet Archive through email as their telephone number is voicemail. AFAIK their website doesn't list take down procedures.
I have emailed them a takedown demand, with their identifier for my novel, and left the same message on their voicemail.
Please boost so your circle of followers will see this, especially if they are authors.
PS: Yes, they consider themselves a library. I don't mind if they loan an original paperback from Del Rey in paper form. I don't give them permission to scan and then display, or display someone else's scan of my book.
The societal role of "Science Fiction Author" is obsolete.
The primary utility of SciFi is to satirize problematic real-life trends, and/or present visions of a better future.
Given that life is blissfully perfect in Friend Computer's Utopia, such works are redundant and moot.
All science fiction authors are hereby reassigned as reactor shielding, and their works burned.
#PSA: It's not a fluke or a lark that the "Black" in "Black people" is capitalized but the "white" in "white people" isn't. CJR does a good job of explaining why: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php
If you post in a thread in which anti-Black racism is being discussed and you capitalize "White", you're going to come off as ignorant at best, or intentionally antagonistic and disrespectful, or a White Nationalist (see how it's capitalized there? they do that) at worst.
Don't be that person. #racism#DEI
Individual aspirations are unnecessary. The Computer has pre-determined your life path for maximum efficiency.
Deviating from or subverting this path is an act of rebellion.
A bottle of water can be $1 at the grocery store, $3 at a restaurant, $4 at the movies, and $6 at an airport. The only thing that changed its value is the place, so the next time you feel like you have no value, maybe you're in the wrong place.
#PSA, if you're illegally driving onto our Open Street, while I'm carrying home groceries from the store, you'll get your picture taken, you'll be reported via http://web.reported.nyc, and #TLC will pursue your case. Not sure saving 30 seconds will be worth those $75. #NYC#bikeNYC@TheWarOnCars
To maximize efficiency and keep up with modern culture, you are now encouraged to communicate exclusively in emojis.
Express the intricacies of your utopian life through smiley faces, thumbs up, and the occasional XD.
Words are sooooo last century.
Remember: Happiness is mandatory. Sad and/or angry emojis are treasonous.
Mastodon is built differently. Just like the birdsite, you won't see every toot in existence but the 'why' is different. On birdsite, an #algorithm decided. Here, it's your #social connections that truly, organically determine what you see.
It works because it gives you control over who you interact with, and the people you interact with shape the timelines of you and all your neighbors.