Alan Johnson @acjay@qoto.org

Peter Hotez on new omicron variant, vaccine fatigue, bivalent booster https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/renew-houston/health/article/Peter-Hotez-COVID-XBB15-variant-vaccine-booster-17707273.php

This may go nowhere because I have not been using this platform but if it works, I will be very happy!!! I am teaching online communities to our master's students. If you are a graduate student, practitioner, or faculty member working in this space I would love to have you as a guest speaker to my class. Please let me know! Topics include moderation/regulation, hate speech/harassment, misinfo/disinfo/conspiracy theories, design-oriented online communities work, and privacy!

I keep seeing articles, about people trying to violently overturn election results, that use phrases like “motivated by election lies”.

They aren’t motivated by lies, they are motivated by not liking the result. Repeating the lies just makes them feel powerful because it makes them part of the grift. They think they’re fooling people.

Blaming the lies lulls us into thinking that this is an education/disinformation problem which, if addressed, will eliminate the violence.

These folks aren’t deluded. They’ve learned from their leaders that violence and lying are the route to power.

For most of my life I thought these problems could be solved by education. I no longer do. As far as I can tell, about 30% of the population believes that getting away with grifts and bullying people is proof of power and leadership that should be respected, worshiped, and emulated.

We can’t educate these folks. We can only build a society that ensures that they cannot gain control. Unfortunately, the entire human race has largely failed to do so, and we’re suffering the consequences on a planetary scale.

Every day we act as though they don’t *know* that the elections were valid, is a day we risk losing the fight for democracy, equality, and a stable environment.

#brazil #JAN6

A key thing I've learned about Mastodon: When you find people you know and want to keep up with, don't just follow them — add them to a list!

Merely following is not enough, b/c their posts may not show up in your feed at a time you're logged on. Unlike FB or Twitter, Mastodon has no algorithm to resurface your friends' posts from hours or days ago.

So create a list called "Friends" and check it when you're on. This will ensure that you see what they posted while you were away.

A black man wrongfully jailed for a week in Louisiana after face recognition error, report says. Lawyer says police didn't check man's height, weight or the mole on his face.

#blackmastodon #facialrecognition

https://peopleofcolorintech.com/articles/facial-recognition-tech-used-to-jail-black-man-for-louisiana-theft-hes-never-been-to-louisiana/

The fedi is changing, and it's changing for the better.

Some people like that, and some don't, but the beauty of this place is that there is more than enough room for people to have whatever experience they want.

We need better tools (specifically around safety and managing access), but that will happen. Hell, it's already happening.

A big part of the conflict I've seen as more and more people migrate over is trying to enforce, and in most cases in the most bigoted ways possible, what they feel the fedi should be, which is, of course, ridiculous.

We've barely scratched the surface of what the fedi can do to build communities and share information. Yes, it's cool to be able to replicate centralized platforms, but the fun part is when we start to go beyond those paradigms and explore.

That's the reason I'm still here. We are having some hard conversations, but that's how you get to the good stuff.

Some people will stay stuck in the past, but there is a very cool future right before us.

What we're doing right now has never been done before. That's pretty awesome.

Let me put a phrase into your mind: nonconsensual virality. It's why quote-posts on Twitter led to harassment. People's words stolen, taken out of context, used purely to incite a mob of griefers. The answer is to give #Mastodon users control over whether someone else can quote-post them, with a simple setting. We should be allowed to stop people from taking our posts viral without our consent.