Notices by Erik Moeller (eloquence@social.coop)

Disturbing reports that Google Play is threatening to kick out Mastodon apps. See:

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818

https://toot.fedilab.app/@fedilab/104765191594914330

App stores have a track record of acting capriciously & are also easy targets for gov't censors (including Trump). This is why alternatives like @fdroidorg are so important for user freedom.

If unfamiliar: F-Droid is a free & open source app you can use to install other Android apps, with focus on free & open source software. Get it here:

https://f-droid.org/

Freedom of the Press Foundation is hiring again :)

This role has more of an administrative bent -- managing relationships with news orgs who use our services, e.g., SecureDrop support & digital security trainings -- but it also includes tier 1 support for SecureDrop, and room for technical advancement.

A great "starter" role if you want to get into tech nonprofit work, are super-organized, & are into digital security in particular. Remote -friendly (US time zones):

https://freedom.press/jobs/job-opening-newsroom-services-coordinator/

In our hiring I speak to _so many_ folks who are tired of being stuck in unsatisfying for-profit tech jobs, and who are open to salary compromises to do purposeful work.

In a typical year Freedom of the Press Foundation will probably not hire more than 2-3 tech jobs so there's always a lot of "saying no". :/

But it just strikes me how demoralizing the tech industry is for so many people, and how big the gap is for more meaningful work. Let's create as many of those opportunities as we can!

Latest review: Jackson Rising, about Cooperation Jackson and the efforts to build a solidarity economy in the Deep South of the US. (Sorry #readinggroup, I put this one on the backburner for a while!)

Lots of repetition in the assorted essays, but interesting snapshots of a movement with a radical and ambitious vision. I especially appreciated the history of African-American co-op efforts. A bit more:

https://lib.reviews/review/c885f143-6708-4216-9d86-9098bcea8cbe

Really enjoying the Duolingo Spanish podcasts. Engaging first-person stories, with helpful English narration in between, high production values; as far as I can tell, the audio is completely ad-free, + there are transcripts and vocabulary guides. Really nicely done, hope they keep it up:

https://podcast.duolingo.com/

We still have a tech position open at the Freedom of the Press Foundation (a nonprofit): a Sr. Software Engineer position to work on SecureDrop, the open source whistleblower platform used by 65+ media organizations, originally developed by the late Aaron Swartz.

You get paid to work
✅ from anywhere in the world
✅ on a world-changing project
✅ that's open source,
✅ stewarded by a small team
✅ that's led by a woman.

Help spreading the word is much appreciated:

https://freedom.press/jobs/job-opening-senior-software-engineer-securedrop/

Hi folks! My employer, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, looking for an Associate Site Reliability Engineer, which is a fancy-ish way to say "keep websites running and automate all the things" :)

- Open to junior/entry-level
- Open to remote work in American time zones
- Mentoring included
- You get paid to help protect freedoms that are under imminent threat.

Great role if you're looking to start a career in infrastructure work with mission focus. Questions? DM! :)

https://freedom.press/jobs/job-opening-associate-site-reliability-engineer/

Loading common web pages without ad/tracking blocking (including browser-level tracking protection) and watching the network tab is honestly a surreal experience. Like observing a malignant force that wants to consume you, the consumer.

Good session about Mastodon + ActivityPub at #OpenSourceBridge (#osb18) -- touching on governance, alternative implementations like #Pleroma, new services like @pixelfed. Thanks to Aaron for notes:

https://pad.riseup.net/p/OSB-Mastodon

TFW you accidentally load Twitter without uBlock Origin enabled and notice just what a horribly ad-polluted garbage experience it is for most users.

#FreeCulture and #FreeSoftware advocacy often focuses on remixability and hackability. I think another aspect is important to talk about, due to its universal appeal: permanence.

The tools we develop, the websites we build, the music we share under free&open licenses -- _they will be with us_ as long as we care to maintain and share them.

Free culture, in that sense, is an incredible cooperative enterprise across all humanity. It is unlike nearly any other endeavor. It is a joyful thing! :)

If you're into working with humans, free software & cryptography, and you love the idea of helping news organizations break their biggest stories based on submissions by whistleblowers, you may want to come work with me! New opening at Freedom of the Press Foundation just went up - boosts appreciated:

https://freedom.press/jobs/job-opening-newsroom-support-engineer-securedrop/

#nonprofitjobs #securedrop

Love that my favorite Android Masto app, #Tusky, is open source. Love the fact that #Pinafore and #Halcyon exist as alternative web UIs. Love that #Pleroma is coming along well as an alternative #ActivityPub server. Love that the sex worker community on #Switter is actively working on building open source tech that works for their use case. Love to see instances like #OpenSocialAfrica and vis.social.

Y'all inspire me that this open source/free software thing may actually work out in the end. :)

Happy one year anniversary to #socialcoop! Big thanks to all those who made the original Medium article happen (https://medium.com/open-collective/social-coop-a-cooperative-decentralized-social-network-c10980c9ed91) that brought a lot of people to this instance. Proud of what we're building together. :)

Following up on my earlier comments re: constructive journalism, instead of mirroring more news accounts to social.coop, I'm going to create a "constructive journalism" handle here on social.coop to curate some selected solution-focused stories from multiple sources (Positive News, New Internationalist, etc.) I'm expecting 3-5 toots a week.

Anyone interested in co-editing this account with me?

#Pleroma was pretty easy to install once I got Elixir up to date. Nice to see an alternative social media server w/ full ActivityPub support. Even lets you use the Mastodon web frontend. Really a nice example of what true openness and interoperability in social media means. ❤️

https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/

The latest issue of c't (German computer magazine) has a four page article by yours truly about Mastodon. Thanks to @Gargron, @cwebber, Evan Prodromou, @angristan and everyone else who spoke to me in the last few weeks. We ended up scoping this one pretty tightly around Mastodon from an end user perspective, with a short blurb about the fediverse.

The online version is paywalled, but you can at least see a pretty Mastodon graphic:

https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2018-6-Verteiltes-soziales-Netzwerken-mit-der-Twitter-Alternative-Mastodon-3976925.html

@mayel @mattcropp @vmatekole @phildini

I love this idea. social.coop could definitely sponsor a regular forum for Mastodon instance operators, to bring more of the cooperative spirit to the masto network. :)

Very nice to see 3D file support landing on Wikimedia Commons, including an interactive viewer. Maybe we'll see more Thingiverse type content there down the road:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#3D_objects_can_now_be_uploaded_to_Commons

"The Co-Op Group", a UK consumer co-operative, advertises in the Daily Mail, which is notorious for its anti-migrant and anti-gay rhetoric.

Lots of angry responses over on birdsite about this. Their social media manager just keeps pointing to a blog post from last year that characterizes it as a "proactive relationship". Very disappointing; conventional for-profits have been far quicker at severing ties with Daily Mail and other hate rags.