J.C. Holder @jcholder@toot.thoughtworks.com

Hey everyone! I just luanched my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/chrisgnome

I'm currently strapped for income after ending my Purism contract, so any donation you can provide is greatly appreciated.

Red counters on notifications are specificially designed by social media "engagement experts" to be anxiety-inducing.

We need a color which is like "you have a notification, but don't worry about it, you can see it when you feel like it".

I like how #Pinafore did it. In fact, there's a lot to learn from Pinafore on ethical design.

Ethical tech should let people use it with intentionality and purpose unlike the manipulative tactics of surveillance capitalist tech.

#DesignEthics #DarkUX

Everything in this talk about package management could also apply to social media:

- You have no way to hold Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg accountable.
- The real owners do not care whether it is pork bellies or our commons; the goal is to make money from it
- We have ceded our commons to a private entity.
- We decided this was okay. We voted with our feet.

I think the biggest problem with reviewing PRs on Github is that you do this in a web browser, which also contains every single thing that is more interesting than reviewing a PR.

"Blocking Gab instances sets a bad precedence!"
People running Gab are acting in bad faith and trying to abuse the system to either get Mastodon apps to work for them or to get them banned from appstores. Either is a win for people like them.
Apps blocking the instances isn't "bowing down to the app store" it's refusing to take part in Gab's bullshit.

Facebook: “There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy.”
https://www.law360.com/articles/1164091

This is something I've been grappling with for a long time and have struggled to put into words. Joining Mastodon, quitting Twitter, dumping MacOS for Ubuntu, switching to LineageOS – all of these things have made my life better in some ways and much harder in other ways. In particular, it makes me feel estranged from friends and colleagues who haven't made these same choices. The closest analogue I can find is to religious, spiritual, or moral choices, such as veganism.

As seen in a German thread: does the news reflect what we die from? Comparing actual numbers in the US, Google searches, and reports in two big newspapers, one from the USA and one from the UK. Take a look at the info graphic.
https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die-from

ok here are some FAQs

> will you block more domains? - The size of gab is pretty unique and I have no time to research smaller instances, so most likely no

> Is this censorship/against free speech etc? - No because A. hate against marginalised groups is no opinion B. gab can still be accessed by other means and Tusky can be forked and C. Tusky is no government, so it cannot take away your basic rights

Mobilizon: let’s finance a software to free our events from Facebook!
https://framablog.org/2019/05/14/mobilizon-lets-finance-a-software-to-free-our-events-from-facebook/
#framasoft #federation

Mastodon doesn't need to be popular to be great

"Taking part in research is a form of free software contribution, just like writing code, localizing strings or writing documentation."

Wise words from Bélen Barros Pena. All her slides are available here: https://belenbarrospena.github.io/no_design_without_research_lgm2019

#lgm19 #lgm2019

In case anyone was wondering due to recent discourse, Toot! will be blocking any gab domains.

I do not support white supremacy and hatred, and will never support any server that promotes it.

So Gab has decided that their own code that they spent $5M of investor money developing is so unsalvageably bad that they're going to use Mastodon's code instead, with the added bonus of leeching off of our apps (with Gab apps being banned from app stores)

This is an early warning to fellow admins to be vigilant and domain-block them on sight, when/if they appear (unconfirmed whether they intend to federate), and to app devs to consider if blocking Gab's domains from their app is necessary.

https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterprise-manifest-v3/

Chrome users: your free trial is over. You're required to buy an enterprise license if you want to use an ad blocker.

Just FYI I have not done any more work for Purism since Todd told me the decision to not moderate Librem Social was final. I've already seen some alt right personalities on there and that's not fine with me.