Remember: if you get Wikipedia "pls give us money" begging, give to the Internet Archive instead.
The internet archive is perpetually underfunded, whereas Wikipedia has enough cash on hand to continue operating at twice its capacity for about 3 decades.
Editors strongly opposed the wording of the recent beg banner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
The #surveillance #advertising industry is dominated by a handful of companies including Google, Meta, and Amazon, which together control nearly three-quarters of the global digital advertising market.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-capitalism-not-a-few-bad-actors-destroyed-the-internet/
The dismal outcome of this #journalism crisis, writes Victor Pickard, is “a lack of public access to high-quality information, a loss of diverse voices and viewpoints, and the evisceration of public service journalism.”
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-capitalism-not-a-few-bad-actors-destroyed-the-internet/
@manlius @tiago @lmrocha @estebanmoro @hirokisayama @PessoaBrain @danielemarinazzo
@dk
It's the rich uncle #pennybags attack!
After 2 years of negotiations with Microsoft, the German Data Protection Conference issued a damning statement: German schools must not use MS365 due to privacy violations.
Fortunately, Linux, LibreOffice & Tutanota are very good alternatives. 💪🔐
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/microsoft-office-365-email-alternative
Again, a quick and dirty analysis, but if I have no bugs then the 1% largest #Mastodon instances accounts for 84% of all users.
The top 5% accounts for 97% of all users.
We can say that the system is effectively centralizing around a few instances, and this might be a problem for the overall stability and sustainability.
@tiago @lmrocha @estebanmoro @hirokisayama @PessoaBrain @danielemarinazzo
I wrote a bot that parses the current #Mastodon instances and assigns them to the respective #ASN (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASN).
Interesting is the concentration on a few top ASN. Here for example the 10 most frequent ASNs as Pie Chart (as of 11/25/2022).
❤️ Thanks to @TheKinrar for the nice API for receiving the current mastodon instances.
#networking #network #mastoadmin #mastoadmins #research #bot #instance
it's four years later and everyone is still favoriting this post which must mean that everyone agrees it is good advice and yet nobody is following it
I remember seeing Halliburton employees hiding their badges at a tech conference because they were ashamed of it. (Not conjecture, by the way, I asked them why and that’s exactly what they told me.) And that’s exactly as it should be. They, at least, had some situational awareness. I can’t say the same thing for folks who proudly work at surveillance capitalists now parading themselves on the fediverse like prized peacocks.
3/n
#surveillanceCapitalism #fediverse #corporateCapture #activism
As @ummjackson mentions elsewhere on this thread, disabling the public timeline is a potential workaround to avoid getting scraped, as #http is not #activitypub as doesn't have federation rules.
However, I don't see why disabling this feature for all should be the answer to avoiding a few bad actors. iptables block lists perhaps? Or maybe a network wide request to respect something more HTTP-ish like a robots.txt?, and reserve firewall blocking for violators?
It seems to me that an important part of the #fediverse is the ability to de-federate.
As someone involved in attempts to build #community networks, I find this feature attractive. I support the creation of small instances, where most users would have some kind of real world connection and can carry on their business without having to participate in the #myrmecology aspects of the internet.
@ciaby
Yesterday I found this: (from Nov 2021):
http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698
"The Bandwidth Of The StarLink Constellation...and the assessment of its potential subscriber base in the USA."
Concerns about #starlink
3) Resource extraction.
The internet is a colonialist tool, like roads that are built into jungles to extract precious minerals, the info superhighway does the same, while you might expect here one would say "for personal data", actually we can just focus on the simple hard-earned MXN $1100/month transferred to USD via SpaceX.
Is this any worse that paying the local WISP that pays #Telmex or #Totalplay for their uplink?
My knowledge of economics of this is limited.
Concerns about #starlink
2) USA centralised infrastructure.
We build community networks, for community communication.
Starlinks Downlink/Uplink ratio is huge. That is to be expected, the network is designed primarily for beaming the likes of Netflix and "social media" into hearts and souls.
Still, we can ignore that and route SIP/RTP over it, and reach community services running on our servers, albeit only by routing our data through #SpaceX teleports.
Concerns about #starlink
1) Yet another complex dependency about which we know very little.
Will it last?
What happens if there's a massive crash in space?
How will performance be as the number of terrestrial antennas increases?
What about the environmental, scientific and political issues of the implementation of starlink, and supporting the #mars colony project. As often, not for me to say, but once again in this work, there is the task of facilitating the making of an informed decision.
Yesterday I did some very "manual" tests of VoIP call quality with #starlink. Works 100%.
So, for the moment, it would seem like the perfect solution to remote communications. For #Rhizomatica/TIC this has been a major block for years. We have been unable to install local #2G #telephony service in quite some number of communities, due to being unable to provide reliable backhaul.
However, I do have some concerns about it.
@ummjackson
Hi Jackson.
How does my instance opt out?
Technology Coordinator / Rhizomatica.