Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

Doing a test here to see how much reach this #mastodon account with 550 followers has compared to the same test on #Threads with a 430 Follower count.

I suspect I already know the answer.

If you see this please Boost and Like, and if you want to leave a comment feel free to that.

Story of my life right here...

#lotr #funny #humor #humour

From the colour and vibrancy under Boris #Yeltsin in the '90s, to the extreme crackdown under Vladimir #Putin a quarter of a century later, we explore the gradual dismantling of independent media in #Russia - #TheGlobalJigsaw tracks the key milestones in the process that turned the #media into a “barren landscape”. And we look into a new #propaganda push targeting young people and children.

You can watch (!!!! yes, it is visualised too) this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ztZi-HYWCs

and then a 700 billion dollar company launched a social media app without the ability to add alt text to images

Something wrong with the BBC story about the South African "gas leak". The term gas leak is a bit misleading.
But furthermore there is no "nitrate oxide" gas. Sounds like nitric oxide or nitrogen dioxide both of which are delivered in cylinder.
The idea that these gases would be used in a shack in the middle of a settlement is just horrifying. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66115917

If Jack Dorsey & Elon Musk (who are friends) just wanted to run a MAGA site full of fascists, they could have just bought Parler & saved themselves approx 43.999 billion dollars.

What they wanted was to cripple the sad remnants of investigative journalism, and the political left, which successfully used Twitter for political organizing, activism & messaging throughout the Trump regime.

Why would anyone who cares about either of these things go to Jack's #Bluesky project.

@spacerog I was excited for the platform at first, but it didn’t take long for there to be problems with him, and general issues of homophobia, transphobia, racism, anti-blackness, ableism, and disinformation to follow. It’s super disappointing.

I hate to say it, but all the devs/leadership care about it the technology. They’ve really not put ANY thought into how to keep anyone safe. There’s no trust and safety and they even have an option to “hide political hate groups and extremism” as opposed to not allowing it at all.

Because we all know how January 6th went down…

Not only will #Threads not be launching in the EU (presumably because it'll be sucking up so much personal data that they can't make it GDPR compliant), but now the The European Court of Justice has agreed with Germany’s anti-cartel watchdog that Meta can't share harvested personal data between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. That ruling will also apply to Threads.

A great day for consumer protections.

https://www.thelocal.com/20230704/eu-court-deals-blow-to-meta-in-german-data-case/ #Meta

Good news according to @POLITICOEurope about a draft agreement between EU and UK about the latter rejoining Horizon and the Copernicus programme. Expected to be announced next week, though some devil might still lurk in the financial details:

https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-and-eu-agree-draft-horizon-deal/

I fear that tomorrow or Thursday we will witness the largest #nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.

The #Kremlin has repeated today that it expects that #Ukraine will blow up the #Zaporizhzhia #npp. That is of course Russia-speak for the fact that they are planning to do this themselves and blame Ukraine.

When the enormous disaster at #Chernobyl happened, it involved only one reactor. The nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia has six reactors. If #Russia decides to blow up all six, it would be one of the biggest disasters the world has ever seen.

I truly hope that I am wrong and there are reasons for Russia not to do this. Mainly that the #fallout would spread to Russia itself (as well as the occupied Ukrainian territories that it has now illegally annexed), it would expose Russian soldiers to radiation poisoning and it would serve little tactical purpose.

But this is Russia. They have consistently done things during this war that made little sense, from starting the invasion in the first place to blowing up the dam at Nova Kakhovna, which left #Crimea without its main source of drinking water. So, blowing up the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine is not at all unthinkable, especially now that Russia is losing this war.