Joshua Wood @wood@qoto.org

Hi friends, I’m Josh. I’m a software engineer and Ruby developer at heart. I love open source and the open web and currently build tools for developers at a company that I cofounded. My Mastodon claim to fame is that I made the little keyboard shortcuts legend that you see when you type ?.

I love books and consider myself a lifelong learner. At this moment, I’m particularly concerned about information literacy, online disinformation and conspiracy theories, and violent extremism. I’m actively studying and exploring constructive solutions to those issues in my spare time.

My favorite things are books, computers, photography, and musical instruments (piano and bass mainly). My favorite people are my family, friends, colleagues, and you (you there, behind the screen).

#introductions #ruby #opensource #foss #mastodon #books #reading #photography #piano #bass #science #criticalthinking #informationliteracy #disinformation #misinformation #extremism #conspiracytheories #fundamentalism

I’ve always favored subscriptions over Twitter’s advertising-based revenue model. Now I see what was apparent all along: they’ll take your data AND charge you for it.

Who watches the watchers watching the watchers?

Shocking that Home Depot is top of the list of Fortune 500s who have given money to election deniers. https://projects.propublica.org/fortune-500-company-election-deniers-jan-6/

Not saying there isn’t room for an industry-focused server, but that’s a bit different.

Another thought… there are already local-area servers, i.e. for a city or regional area. Maybe that’s where local/independent journalists should register, rather than on a dedicated instance. The purpose of local journalism is to serve the local community, after all.

I suppose that's the case with any community, though.

Moderation and security seem like the two biggest hurdles for something like this, assuming anyone would join.

Idea: this could be similar to a professional association like NPPA or ASMP, open to anyone who agrees to the Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics. I'm an NPPA member, and their Code of Ethics is one of the reasons I joined. All members must agree to it. https://nppa.org/code-ethics

Thinking about setting up a Mastodon server focused on #journalism and #journalists. May have registered the domain “federated.press” … anyone interested in that? cc @Gargron

“When the ‘don’t take sides’ commandment meets a lopsided story like, ‘we have a two-party system and one of the two has turned anti-democratic,’ people in newsrooms hesitate because they are confronted by what feels like a conflict in their code: stay balanced vs. say what is” https://twitter.com/froomkin/status/1587803678853025793

If this is finally the tipping point for the Fediverse, I’m here for it. Great to see more people from Twitter moving over.

Mastodon has a lot going for it, but I worry the UX still has too much friction for normies.

Took the kids trick or treating in the rain. We’ve now fully embraced life in the Pacific Northwest.

So it seems like Counter Social is not federating, or something is broken. CS doesn't find accounts on other Mastodon servers for me—I tried mastodon.social and qoto.org. I *can* find CS users from Mastodon, but following doesn't work. Anyone know what's going on there? Nbd, just curious because I thought it was compatible.

Following status says “pending” for people I followed on other servers recently. What’s up with that?