Mike Capern @mikecsees@qoto.org

Morning Fediverse!

Good news from state legislative world:

Tiny margins led to success this year - typical for state legislative seats and chambers.

Example: just 425 votes in a single house district likely kept North Carolina from falling into GOP supermajority. This tiny margin for Dem Diamond Staton-Williams will allow Dem Gov Cooper to continue to veto abortion restrictions, “don’t say gay” copycat bills + other regressive GOP legislation.

#Politics #Midterms

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article268621292.html

twitters ssl cert expires in 31 days

Emergency heart surgery in the US 🇺🇸

“Make the prices so high that the heart surgery patience gets a heart attack looking at the bill and you can bill him twice”

Highlight of my week was getting to sit in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose. Been living in Portland since 2005 and somehow never went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum. Only ended up going because that's where Microsoft and Asobo celebrated the 40th anniversary of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The change in time meant I went for a walk earlier than usual today. The sun coming through the trees was gorgeous.

Well, it was either the sun or aliens coming to take us away 🛸

BREAKING. A Massive win for progressives out in NW. Rising progressive star Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is heading to DC - huge ups to#WarrenDemocrat @cruickshank and Washington progressives for getting it done even though they got no help from Sean Maloney’s DCCC.

Celebrate this one - bc this one is a win for progressives and big one for Team D. #Fediverse

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/democrat-marie-gluesenkamp-perez-defeats-republican-joe-kent-in-wa-house-race/

🟣🔵🔴⚪🔵🟡🔵🟣⚪

This is your friendly reminder that contrary to the hype and marketing hullabaloo going around right now but #Mastodon is not the #fediverse! The “Mastodon Network” that Eugen Rochko claims to have created is the very same #federation that has existed for well over 10 years. The #fediverse is a huge tapestry of thousands of servers and volunteers, and dozens if not hundreds of developers and even more volunteers, who have made this space what you see today.

There is no “Mastodon Network”. It’s simply the #fediverse. That’s like Facebook saying they are the Internet. We all know what an absurd claim that would be. Facebook is an application accessible over the Internet that provides a walled-garden to its users. Well, Mastodon is just one of many applications accessible over the Internet that provides access to the #fediverse (which is not a walled-garden).

So what is the fediverse? Here’s my definition. The “Fediverse” can be thought of as a giant park that is not owned by any one person, company, group, government, or organization. A park where people gather to meet, explore, collaborate, discuss, watch videos, listen to music, chat, and do a whole lot more. A park that you can only get to by using a piece of software that lets you inside. Mastodon is just one (and currently the most popular) type of that software.

Mastodon is a door-way into the park for anybody that uses it. Same for Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, PeerTube, Pixelfed, BookWyrm, and others.

Since journalists aren’t writing any articles about the real #fediverse, and since it (and the wonderful projects that are at its center) aren’t getting the recognition they so very much deserve, allow me to introduce you to them instead.

Because when you either accidentally or intentionally or through ignorance or apathy spread the misinformation that Mastodon=Fediverse, you erode the very foundation of what has drawn you (and the rest of us) here in the first place.

You are marginalizing and gaslighting great projects and their users.

Note: The following is not intended to be a history of the fediverse. The following is my opinion, understanding, and interpretation. If I’ve gotten something wrong, let me know. But take the following as opinion and interpretation, not fact.

👉 Akkoma — #Akkoma is a hard fork of Pleroma that is heavily centered on user expression.

👉 BookWyrm — #BookWyrm is a federated version of GoodReads. A federated instance by book lovers and for book lovers.

👉 Castopod — Next generation podcasting software #Castopod allows podcasters of all sizes to interact with audiences in the fediverse. Your podcast becomes a social network: your episodes can be shared, liked and commented on without depending on anyone. Podcasts can be monetized or not, you have rich audience metrics and analytics, and series can be deployed to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and other podcast services.

👉 Diaspora — One of the oldest federated instance software. Pioneered the concept of “circles” and “aspects” where users could sort their followers into logical groups and control who sees what.

👉 Friendica — The one app that lets anyone or any organization literally create their own private #facebook on the fediverse and make it accessible and federated with the rest of the World. It also has very modest hosting requirements making it accessible to more people to host without requiring a VPS or complex server setups.

👉 Funkwhale — #Funkwhale is a federated version of Soundcloud or Bandcamp for sharing your music library with other Funkwhale users and the Federation.

👉 GnuSocial — One of the original fediverse implementations of a Twitter-like service. One of the oldest projects around (ca. 2008). Far more simpler hosting requirements than other fediverse software. (PHP+MySQL)

👉 Hubzilla — The successor to Friendica, #Hubzilla took what was great about Friendica and made it all the better.

👉 Lemmy — #Lemmy is a federated version of Reddit (or Digg or HackerNews). It’s a federated link-aggregator. Individuals can stand up their own servers or communities of topics.

👉 Mastodon — #Mastodon came on the scene in 2016 and promised a more user-friendly experience. Coupled with some fortunate timing and early publicity it quickly became the darling of the fediverse. It’s certainly the software with the most amount of users. Marketing tends to do that to brands.

👉 Misskey — Several years before Mastodon there was #Misskey. A microblogging platform what provided features not seen in other projects and allows users to customize many aspects of their feed and timeline. Misskey still has a very passionate userbase and is still being developed.

👉 Mobilizon — A federated alternative to Facebook Events. #Mobilizon allows activist groups and organizations of all sizes to stand up a service for organizing events and meetups right here on the Federation.

👉 Peertube — Calling #PeerTube a “YouTube competitor” doesn’t do it justice. PeerTube is so much more than a competitor to YouTube. In a very real sense it’s a YouTube killer, if only more people knew about it and more people used it. PeerTube lets anybody stand up a service and then instantenously their published videos become accessible to the entire Federation (and vice versa).

👉 Pixelfed — #Pixelfed is the federation’s answer to Instagram. By standing up a public or private Pixelfed server you enable yourself (or the public) to post rich multimedia content (photos and videos), “stories”, and more that instantly are accessible to the rest of the federation.

👉 Pleroma — #Pleroma is a lightweight alternative to Mastodon that at the time ironically offered a more user-friendly experience than Mastodon itself and pioneered features years ago that are just now being implemented by Mastodon and other projects. Pleroma’s big claim to fame was that you could stand up a robust instance on a single RasperryPi with little trouble.

👉 WriteFreely — A blogging platform that is built to federate. #WriteFreely federates your words and your content as your write them, and your readers can follow and comment on your posts without having to leave their local timeline.

In closing let me be clear, I have nothing against Mastodon or Eugen. I think it’s a fantastic project and it is an amazing piece of software. I am thankful for the level of awareness and exposure it has given the Fediverse as a whole.

But to continue to perpetuate the misinformation that Mastodon somehow created the fediverse or that the Federation is Mastodon is something that I can’t let stand without challenge.

It’s gaslighting.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍 Updated 2022-11-10

bofh.social, which is the instance I operate, runs Pleroma using the SoapboxFE. (CC-BY-SA)

IMPORTANT NOTE! 🔥

...Especially to those who followed me onto this superb mas.to server - managed by @trumpet

I've just made a donation to the server via the link below.

I encourage everyone who followed me on here to do likewise. And follow @trumpet too, in order to see notifications on how the server is handling the growth.

To those of you on other servers, do consider donating to yours too - we need to help capacity everywhere.

And please boost this post.

https://Ko-fi.com/home/coffeeshop?txid=2e403a1a-a0b9-48a3-bd7c-d6f346e30f73&mode=public&img=ogiboughtsomeone

18 months ago, when less than 30% of Floridians were vaccinated, Ron DeSantis banned local officials from taking precautions to fight COVID.

DeSantis then blew off doctors' warnings of 2021 summer surge and he increasingly pandered to anti-vaxxers during Delta.

Before DeSantis went full MAGA on COVID, FL's COVID death rate was near the national average.

But since he went full MAGA, FL has suffered the highest COVID death rate among large states and the 4th highest death rate among all states:

I mentioned this in a private message to someone recently about why a small handful of servers block qoto. I wanted to reiterate it here for the new comers on QOTO who dont know the history:

So there are some servers out there that demand every server int he network block every instance they do, and if a server doesnt block an instance they block then they block you in rettatliation.

Their reason for this is quite flawed but it goes like this.. If we federate with a bad actor instance and we boost one of their posts then their users will see it and defeat the purpose of the block. The problem is, this isnt how it actually works. If they block a server and we boost it, they wont see the boost, thats how blocks work.

The issue becomes even more complicated when you consider the fact that these servers, by virtue of their policy, have huge block lists where they block tons of major servers. So in order to satisfy them we too would have to block a huge number of servers.

This means you have a choice, you either join a server that isnt blocked, but has a huge block list themselves, or, you join a server that doesnt block and be blocked by a small handful of servers. Obviously that means on QOTO you will have bigger view of the world than you would on any of these others servers. In fact QOTO has onne of the largest federation footprints of any server in the network.

I want to also explain why we choose the decision we did. Years ago when this controversy started and servers across the fediverse started blocking there was a divide of people taking sides. WOTO was one of the few servers that didnt take sides and allowed people read content from any server (but with strict hate speech rules). This caused a huge influx of people,s pecifically from the LGBTQ community, onto our server. It turns out many people relied on us not-blocking for their physical safety. There were big name biggots (like milo yanappolus) who were on the network. They used their accounts here to watch his account for doxing so they could warn themselves and their community and protect themselves accordingly. In fact we added a feature just for them called subscriptions which allowed them to monitor accounts without following them so they could do so anonymously.

In tthe end for the safety of the LGBTQ community here we refused to engage in mass server blocking and instead encouraged our users to block servers on an individual basis and provided access to block lists for them to do so. But some really misguided servers blocked us anyway.

Thankfully the servers blocking us are few and far between and are limited to only the most excessive and aggressive block lists. As I said, QOTO has one of the largest federation footprints on the fediverse,

#mastoadmin

Amazing chart on the growth of Mastodon.

Graphic by @estebanmoro

RT @mjs_DC@twitter.com

If Republicans win control of the House of Representatives by current projections, their victory can be attributed to the Supreme Court's 5–4 order in February suspending the Voting Rights Act's ban on racial gerrymandering. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/supreme-court-republican-control-house-alito-mccarthy-gift.html

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1590398954612850688

A very nerdy thing that used to bother me was how we call Facebook/Twitter a “social network” but actually it’s just a website run by a corporation. #Mastodon feels much closer to the actual definition of a network. Just a thought.

#socialnetwork #networks #Facebook #Twitter

The QOTO server gives you 65535 characters per toot, which makes around 36 standard printing pages

The #midterms this year are simply unhinged. You have idiotic celebs like GPaltrow & CPratt endorsing an anti-choice rich white guy for LA mayor on one hand but Sarah Palin being utterly wasted by a Dem in Alaska. I don't even know how to square those two things!

Glad to live in the blue Northeast (still plenty of red towns), friendly to LGBT+ folks & women, where general sense prevails.

J.D. Vance, who claims to be a populist outsider, worked in private equity and has benefited from tax loopholes designed for the ultra-wealthy elite.

He'll now be a U.S. Senator thanks in large part to his billionaire benefactor Peter Thiel.

I'm still constantly dismayed by the lack of scientific understanding among politicians but can't see a good solution other than improving education in the long term for our kids. Better educated adults will hopefully make better decisions at the ballot box, but good #education gets sidelined by these same people in the mean time. #politics #science #Canada
https://globalnews.ca/news/9261881/alberta-ndp-danielle-smith-covid-bioweapon-paul-alexander/

This is an introductory message of thanks to all who have followed on Mastodon. I am here for reasons laid out in this post: https://fallows.substack.com/p/twitter-is-our-future

I will get up to speed, follow back, and do other set-up chores as soon as feasible. For now am posting on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamesFallows . Will cross-post those here as appropriate. Again thanks.