I do concede that there has been a trend towards xenophobia that has been exacerbated by filter bubbles and even more by algorithms. But the balance is that people who once had no choice but to suffer ostracism and extreme isolation have been able find community online and have improved mental health and outcomes in many ways.

I certainly found this myself in the early days of the internet before the iron fist of corporatism grabbed this fledgling space, determined to extract value from it, and creating the nightmares of isolation and hate that are now Farcebork and its ilk. Fedi has been a welcome return to smaller communities that have to do the necessary work of self management, which reduces the hate and isolation that is promoted by antisocial media, even if it doesn’t stop it altogether.

My point is, the internet isn’t worse. Humans can be good or bad, but certain environments make them behave in worse ways, and these environments can exist both online and off.

Honestly? I live in a small town, and face to face isn’t much better. People are incredibly bigoted, and might be polite to your face but incredibly judgemental and small minded, especially to anyone perceived as different. Empathy is a skill that needs to be practised, like meditation. And many people lack it both online and off.

I’ve seen people say that Farcebork was like being in a small town, actively making that kind of everyone-knowing-everyone’s-business a reality again for communities fractured by urban anonymity.

But that was there in spades in the early internet, it’s just that normies hadn’t been beaten over the head by social conditioning by the corporate overlords yet to join in.

It’s human nature to think and behave tribally. So we should expect it to continue in the Fediverse, we just can’t shove the problem over to someone else to manage and take their tithe in eyeballs, and thus fracture our communities all over again: we have to do it ourselves. Drama fucking sucks, wherever is found, but we have to accept it’s our job to manage if we don’t want to trade our freedom for a padded cell.

Sure, I agree, but I think it’s reasonable to think about limiting procreation ideally to one child per couple ethically who wants the experience of parenting - obviously if you’ve already had more, there’s no backsies, but the pathway of many countries now is even below that number anyway. It’s absolutely sick the Christofascist obsession with forcing women to give birth especially as they really don’t care what happens to the babies once they are born. But if you want to parent, it really is a wonderful thing. If you WANT it, not forced, and not selfishly breeding beyond the capacity of the planet, which no individual is doing if they only replace one for two leaving, that’s the right direction (but it doesn’t work for colonialism, oh noes)

Managed population descent is possible though, even if unlikely, and we can hope that the overall population growth curve is maxed out very soon by choice not by circumstance/disaster.

He was right, and yes, we will indeed see a colossal crash within the next few decades unless some truly magical technology somehow happens, and that would just kick the can down the road a bit further anyway, unless we can rein in the culture of colonialism and endless growth.

Two books that are vital reading in this time:

The Limits to Growth by The Club of Rome

and

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Parenting is one of the most natural and essential human experiences. Don’t regret it, even if you expect things to be harder for your child or children. Don’t sugar coat things for your kids either, we have hard times ahead. No one can be certain even of next week, and life wants to create life. Each moment is worth it.

You do realise they are planning on not having elections again, right?

Interesting article, and it did change my view slightly of what ATProto is, but not by a huge amount.

Given the current political climate, a few days ago I randomly started wondering… what if some governments around the world acknowledged that communicating through Farcebok or Xitter is no longer tenable, and committed to providing social media infrastructure hosted in their own countries as a public good: “your tax dollars at work!”

Would ATProto make sense in these cases? They have the resources, and ATProto might seem more attractive/robust for that kind of scale compared to ActivityPub?

Saw it once decades ago. It’s very rare to see here. Avoid, but you really don’t have to try.

Pretty sure he’ll be dead before lasting that long… I wonder what the odds are on exactly how though

Bold of them to assume that Trump’s presidential term will end at four years.

Holy fucking shit. That will now be the NUMBER ONE TALKING POINT I will be leading with when doorknocking this election:

“Hey, do you or any friends have young kids? Yeah? Did you know if the Libs get in they have just suggested to change ratios to as little as 1 educator to 50 kids? No? Well that is what you risk if you don’t put Libs last. Terrifying, huh? Thanks for your time!”

Well at least they won’t have to go into the office.

This is helpful for known sites of high contamination, but good luck gathering them from far and wide where they are in the environment more diluted.

Awww this reminds me of the early days of Flickr.

Yup. It’s why so many died, not from measles, but from other diseases in the 3-5 years after they had measles. IIRC they only really worked this out in the last 5-10 years because of the amount of data to comb through.

Yup. At least a decade ago I used to explain how important interoperability was to legislate for, and used this as the main example of why. Networks are better for everyone when there is no lock in, and the waste of competition for eyeballs could be avoided. It’s sad that most people truly don’t understand this.

There’s a new server planned relatively locally to me and it’s capitalising on the terrifying plunge into fascism that all the Big Socials now have as their badge of dishonour. People have never been “happy” to be on Facebook but the local focus in a pretty leftie iinet city area is a good idea. If people know people irl on Fedi they will maybe have an easier time.

I love Tusky, it is my app of choice for Mastodon

It’s the tusks, clearly.

What we really need (and have always needed) is an update to the legal frameworks that classify what networks are and what protections are in place for users to ensure interoperability. The Internet has been the wild west for too bloody long, and the extractors and their monopolies need to be put away. That’s why they have been so happy to jump in with Donny Diaper at this point, because he’s letting them not only continue with impunity, but bring back company scrip.