Keith Whyte @keith@tic-ac.org

On 8th of March 2023, we call for a #CounterCloudActionDay.

On this day, we will try to withhold from using, feeding, or caring for #TheBigTechCloud. The strike calls for a hyperscaledown of extractive digital services, and for an abundance of collective organising.

We join the long historical tail of international feminist strikes, because we understand this fight to be about labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans★feminist techno-politics.

Join the #strike! https://titipi.org/8m/

I'm so super happy to announce that OFFDEMo3 programme is online, it will be great to see you there on february 4-5
https://ps.zoethical.org/pub/offdem-ozone-programme

We have train tickets at reduced fare for #Berlin ↔ #Brussels

03/02 at 10:46 Berlin → Brussels
06/02 at 10:24 Brussels → Berlin
€117.80 seat reservation included

Anyone interested?

Boosts appreciated.
#FOSDEM

Microsoft and Google are both making investor noises along with their recent layoffs that they're going to be refocusing their efforts on "AI" and as a user of both Microsoft and Google products I am feeling absolute dread about what monstrosities MS and Google are going to label "AI", shove in my face, and make it extremely difficult for me to turn off

So viel allein

“The #fediverse is like #email.”

Yes.

Now read this and understand it:

“I have been self-hosting my email since I got my first broadband connection at home in 1999 … But my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server.

Email is now an oligopoly, a service gatekept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality … I lost. We lost. One cannot reliably deploy independent email servers.“

https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

Via @cancel

Poor countries are not “under-developed”, they are over-exploited.

@jakintosh well, we had this vanguard in the days when all social media was federated, Usenet, email, Inc, etc, and where it led was here.

#OFFDEM is a month away.

So many things to do...

read: https://ps.zoethical.org/pub/offdem-ozone-cfp

write: https://ps.zoethical.org/c/engagement/offdem-0x03/165

group: https://ps.zoethical.org/g/offdem.0x03

💬 It’s going from bad to worse for Meta. 
"Meta faces €390 million in fines and must find a new legal route to targeted ads, while the Irish regulator is suing the EU data protection body over claims of ‘overreach.’ "
https://www.politico.eu/article/meta-fina-ad-business-model/

Yeah, it's like, why even bother? We all know Big Brother is watching, so why not just embrace it? Let's make our own search engine and make it better than theirs! Or, you know, just go about our lives and do something more productive. #YOLO!

Our mistake was turning them back on.

the sad reality of open source software development

In short: folks love the amazing decentralised encrypted comms utopia of Matrix. But organisations also love that they can use it without having to pay anyone to develop or maintain it. This is completely unsustainable, and Element is now literally unable to fund the entirety of the Matrix Foundation on behalf of everyone else - and has had to lay off some of the folks working on the core team as a result.

https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update-2022

"mastodon would be a lot cooler if you were more analytics-friendly" is the "you'd be a lot prettier if you smiled" of the fediverse

I think I am ready to leave #academia.
I’ll add this to my #NewYearResolutions list, which I have never made before. There’s always a first time.

Just 20 years ago, cars could freely enter and park in Delft’s historic core.

Then a center-left coalition narrowly (19-18 votes) passed an autoluwe binnenstad (‘low-car city center’) policy.

Now not a single resident or merchant misses the days when cars choked their streets.

I really think we need to reject the term "content creator."

That phrase is used by people who aim to Monetize™ us without needing to care about what it is we create. A "content creator" is there to make the stuff that attracts people so they can be fed advertising.

Call us what we are. Artists. Essayists. Film makers. Authors. Photographers. And so many others. We are creators, yes, but what we create has so much value beyond filling otherwise empty space on a website.

#MakeArtNotContent