Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 135

@sean true that. I mentioned in a post a while back that online payment systems are really only reputation tracking systems (like Reddit karma), unless the rubber meets the road. ie They have to connect with the offline economy in which we have to pay for our rent/mortgage, food, and clothes, not to mention the hardware and net connections that allow us to be here at all.
@bhtooefr @pea

This made me cry (in a good, 'humans are awesome and I love you all' kind of way):
https://mashable.com/2017/01/31/danish-ad-all-that-we-share-box/#CKRoSqrM6Oqk

To give an example, the fediverse is a common carrier. The people who define federation protocols are not responsible for anything transmitted using them. Whereas any fediverse instance that does any kind of blocking of other instances, or moderation of users, is a publisher. So they are responsible for everything hosted on and transmitted through their instance. In summary, if you want the power, take the responsibility.

If you want #SafeHarbour protections as an intermediary, not a publisher responsible for content, it's only fair that you behave as - and get regulated as - as #CommonCarrier. If you make any editorial decisions whatsoever about who and what can be transmitted through your system, you are behaving as a publisher and it's only fair that you get regulated as a publisher. That means you're legally responsible for all content transmitted through your system. Carrier or publisher, which is it?

“One of the problems with climate change is getting people to realise it was anthropogenic – created by people. It’s the same problem with social networks – they are manmade. If they are not serving humanity, they can and should be changed,” says #TimBernersLee, the man who rolled over and let the datafarms push #DRM into the #W3C web standards. I agree with what he says here though.

@clacke not to mention formal registration of experiments and studies before they begin, as a prerequisite of having papers on them published in #PeerReviewed journals. #DrBenGoldacre has been campaign for this in medicine, in regard to using studies as evidence for public health policy (see #AllTrials.net), but it needs to be the norm in all areas of research.
@bob @phani

Errr, George, you might want to look into this whistleblower named #EdwardSnowden. He reckons the most powerful "democracies" - including the US - have already "paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance", and have been doing it for years. State-corporate surveillance in the Philippines - bad as it is for Filipinos - is the least of our worries on a global scale.

"Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/george-soros-facebook-and-google-are-a-menace-to-society

Sure, newspaper website, I'll turn off my ad-blocker and #NoScript for your site. When you turn off all the #JavaScript that tracks me and makes my browser crash, so all I see is static placed ads, just like I would if I read your print edition.

This op-ed, written by a former FarceBook engineer, is an excellent illustration of the ethical vacuum that exists at the company. Imagine a government, with as many citizens as FB has users, where public servants were this lackadaisical about the consequences of how its powers are used *shudder*
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/02/facebook-executive-advertising-data-comment

I'm aware that the process is much more complicated in the US. But my original comment applies to the US as a platform. As many people have pointed out over the years, the US is a republic, not a democracy (federal government that is, there are democracies within the US):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eR_95slEFw
@fashywhitefem @CharredStencil

@fashywhitefem it depends what country you're talking about. In NZ, to be a candidate for an electorate (local rep), all you need is two people who live in that electorate to witness your registration form, and you're on the ballot. To get a party on the ballot it needs to prove it has 500 members and pay a registration fee. The Aotearoa Legalize Cannabis Party has managed it every election for a couple of decades. #ALCP
@CharredStencil

@CharredStencil on the #fediverse, the only rules are that anybody can publish, and each user chooses who to follow, and what they look at and reply to. FB and the birdsite started out that way, but now, via algorithms, they act as a gatekeeper, just as older media like network TV do.

@CharredStencil in my country, anyone can run (one election I was a candidate for the Legalize Cannabis Party). The algorithm is alphabetical order. But there are only ever so many parties that get organized enough to get registered each election, and the electorates are small enough that only so many people decide to run as a candidate for its representative. I've never seen more than 1 page.

"Founded in 2007, Tumblr reached its heyday around 2012, and hosted 108 million blogs the following year, when it was acquired by Yahoo. It wilted under the company’s leadership and is broadly acknowledged to be on the decline."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/style/tumblr-porn.html

There seems to be a pattern here, like #Yahoo is a digital retirement home where aging websites go to die (have they acquired #MySpace yet?). Maybe Tumblr needs to escape, just like #FlickR did?

I've noticed that there is another wave of refugees entering the #fediverse, this time from #Tumblr. I was wondering why, and then I did a quick web search and found this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/style/tumblr-porn.html

Interesting times ahead folks ...

#ShowerThought Imagine if algorithms determined which political parties you see on a ballot paper, rather than it just being a neutral list of all the candidates that decided to run. The second that algorithms start determining what people see on a digital media platform, rather than user choices to publish, subscribe to, and search for, it stops being a democratic platform, and becomes a totalitarian platform.

Electric buses are taxis serving large, modern cities are now officially a thing. When are cities in #Aotearoa (#NZ) going to replace their noisy, smelly, diesel buses with electric ones?
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/12/silence-shenzhen-world-first-electric-bus-fleet

@jcbrand have you looked into #Ionic? It does essentially the same thing, but without bundling most of a #Chromium browser with your app. I was introduced to it at the recent #Coopathon in Hong Kong. The team I was part of used Ionic (with a #Horizon back-end) to build an MVP for a cross-platform app for use by foodbanks, in 48 hours.
https://ionicframework.com/
@shura @z428

@jcbrand *shudder* I agree with Drew about #Electron.
https://drewdevault.com/2016/11/24/Electron-considered-harmful.html
@shura @z428