Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

How can I support you today?

Share your work, critique a draft, brainstorm together?

I'm here to help. In any way.

Green groups slam Biden admin's oil and gas auctions during UN climate summit COP28 https://t.co/sovWJbBuCE

EV chargers, heat pumps may be curtailed in Germany as of 2024 https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/ev-chargers-heat-pumps-may-be-curtailed-in-germany-as-of-2024/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Our annual State of the Onion starts in less than 24 hours, be sure to join our livestream on Nov 29th, 1700 UTC
🧅 Watch as an onion service on Tor Browser: http://xgsobitduxv7gcc5qlveigwiku7qcjn5exf4ayusw4mwq7kfrapmrjyd.onion/

📺 Or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFL0kXu440

@dashdsrdash Okay, found it. Content warning: the crux issue was CP, and the person who wrote this blog post is pretty clearly identified with political positions that, let us say, you do not share.

2017 Apr 3: Ansuz (personal blog): "Mastodon WTF timeline" by Matthew Skala
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/335

The most interesting thing we can do with our voices is to open up spaces of discourse. And that's what I would most like to enlist you in.

I would love to see emerge on Mastodon, finally at long last, a discourse about social media platforms that centers social engineering as an actual thing. That is based on the ideas that we should be curious how things actually work and check our hypotheses against reality, that we should take responsibility for how our virtual built environment shapes the society that flows through it and the society in which it reposes, that there are things worth knowing here, things worth finding out, and interesting people to talk to.

Fundamentally I am hoping to *interest you* in the entire topic of social engineering, in this new sense that I mean it. Because if you are interested in it and if you talk about it with other people who are interested in it, and interest in it grows, then it will feed on itself and it will grow as a field.

🧵

All of you.

This message isn't just for "the people in charge".

For one thing, this is a *federated* system. This means the odds that you, personally, might be a "person in charge" in some sense go way, way up. And if not today, maybe tomorrow.

Furthermore, some instances are straight up democracies. Everybody on them is a person in charge.

But much more importantly, you have a voice. And if you're on Mastodon you probably use it.

I am hoping to convince you to use that voice not just to call for remedies you are certain will work to solve problems you haven't really specified. I'm inviting you to engage with curiosity questions like, "I wonder what the pros and cons of this are?" and "I wonder what it is that is giving me that impression, and how I might check out whether or not it is true?" and "I wonder if there are any other social media platforms that came up with a solution to this?"

🧵

This raises some very fundamental and quite interesting questions about what the role of moderation is on a social media platform. Is it the job of a social media platform to prevent people from using it to collaborate to commit crimes?

Historically, a lot of people who have put together social media platforms have insisted it is absolutely not the job of the platform – or the people who run it – to do that.

But if it's not the job of the platform to do that, whose job is it, when a platform, by its affordances, makes real world crimes – horrendous, very serious "real-world" crimes like actual genocide – not just more likely, but so much more likely they are effectively enabling a crime that wouldn't otherwise happen?

Why should our societies – our larger, meat-world societies – tolerate the building and operating of social media platforms that destabilize them and are detrimental to them?

🧵

The social media world is filled with people just pulling ideas out of their asses and hoping it all works out.

Folks who have been around the block a few times in a governance role have started amassing a body of lore. Case studies, observations they made in the trenches.

At the very least, availing oneself of what they have to share is a good first step.

But if we were to take this seriously as engineering, well, that suggests a few things, doesn't it?

It suggest we get a little bit more sciency about this. It suggests we start imposing a little bit of rigor.

🧵

A lot of people, especially on the Fediverse, wind up being governance parties precisely because they don't want to be disempowered anymore. They want to be the people who make decisions about how to solve social problems on their social media platform of choice, and Mastodon/etc makes that much easier than trying to get a job with Twitter's Trust and Safety team.

So it's worth remembering if you are a governance party on the Fediverse, that's great for you, you're all empowered by that arrangement – but your end users are still end users. They get search if you choose to give them search. They still rely on your sitting in judgment of the reports they file on other users to take action on bad actors on their instance. They still experience themselves as largely just as disempowered as they were on Twitter. They have a choice of what lord's fields to till, but they're still peasants.

🧵

The established users, who are still within their own social bubbles, have an experience that feels to them like, "OMG, where did all these jerks come from? The people responsible for running this place should do something to fix it – things were fine here the other day, they need to just make things like they used to be. How hard could it be?" They are only aware of the problems that they encounter personally, or are reported to them socially by other users or through news media coverage of their platform.

But the parties responsible for governance get the fire hose turned on them: they get to hear ALL the complaints. They get an eagle's eye view of the breadth and diversity and extent of problems.

Where individual users see one problem, and don't think it's particularly difficult to solve, the governance parties see a huge number of problems, all at once, such that even if they were easy to solve, it would still be overwhelming just from numbers.

🧵

These results are indicative of a deeply troubled society – a fundamentally unhealthy social and political culture. This is a national emergency, and a healthy polity would mobilize all available resources of the state and civil society in an all-out effort to reverse those trends. 8/

Cutting-edge UK underground from Keysound with Scotti Dee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6xdwMwr6kU
#youtube_rinsefm #rinsefm #rinse_fm #rinse #rinse_youtube #rinse_mix #rinse_uk #rinse_tv #rinse_radio #rinse_playlist #rinse_london #rinse_label #grime #uk_garage #hip_hop #dubstep #drum_and_bass #house #music #wiley #dizzie_rascal #kano #skepta #live #jammer #DDouble_E #Grime_Musical_Genre #the_grime_show #grime_show #Rinse_FM_Radio_Station #freestyle #kool_fm #koolfm #jungle

Woozy with Ema invites Rinse France resident Beatrice M for a guest mix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xogXcwuzNaU
#youtube_rinsefm #rinsefm #rinse_fm #rinse #rinse_youtube #rinse_mix #rinse_uk #rinse_tv #rinse_radio #rinse_playlist #rinse_london #rinse_label #grime #uk_garage #hip_hop #dubstep #drum_and_bass #house #music #wiley #dizzie_rascal #kano #skepta #live #jammer #DDouble_E #Grime_Musical_Genre #the_grime_show #grime_show #Rinse_FM_Radio_Station #freestyle #kool_fm #koolfm #jungle

"Bylines exist for a reason: they give credit where it's due, and just as importantly, they let readers hold writers accountable." 💯 Props to Maggie Harrison and colleagues at Futurism for documenting this:

https://futurism.com/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is leaving X, blaming it for "destroying our democracies" — coming after major advertisers exited following owner Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

https://t.co/yM12pd6xxV

The rate of civilian deaths in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war is outpacing those of other conflict zones in the 21st century. https://t.co/zypC2V2Vcc

Protecting forests is crucial to keep climate change and biodiversity loss in check, and to ensure thriving rural areas and bioeconomy. 🙌

Many forests in the EU are not in a good state overall.

They are suffering from:
🌲biodiversity loss;
🌲pests;
🌲pollution and disease.

We highlight the need for #EUCivilSociety to be closely involved in the further development and monitoring of the EU forest strategy for 2030.
More information 👉 https://europa.eu/!vHhPMK

#EUForests #EUGreenDeal