Karl Austin @[email protected]

hello again fedifriends, it's me, Sundog, back with more signposts for new folk to find fun and function on the fediverse.

as you've no doubt noticed, there are numerous frontend clients that can interact with the various ActivityPub servers in use.

one of the smaller client projects is called brutaldon, and it's a lightweight web-based client for Mastodon and compatible servers. you can use it by going to https://brutaldon.org/ and authenticating against the server you're using.

I am the accidental maintainer of brutaldon as the original author decided to move on from the fediverse and was going to take it offline, which would have made me sad as it's excellent.

however, I'm not really a python web dev, so it's been mostly gathering dust.

there's a repo at https://gitlab.com/brutaldon/brutaldon if you're a #python person who's looking for a project to contribute to, and I'll be happy to review and merge any PRs submitted by the community! and who knows, maybe you'll fall in love with the project and want to take the reins - hit me up and let's chat about it! I really just want to see it keep existing and I am not a good active steward for it at this point in my busy life.

thanks for reading and I hope some of you enjoy #brutaldon!

Without proper verification, and acountability the Internet defaults to the cautionary tale from 1994.
#TwitterBlue #TwitterTakeover #TwitterMigration #cartoon #newyorker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog

I read this elsewhere: If trusted news outlets would start offering #Mastodon instances to their staff, that would bring some sort of verification and visibility. Think social.nytimes.com, social.heise.de etc. I'd love to read more from trusted journalists on the #fediverse and this could greatly help. (Again, not my idea but couldn't find the original author.) Boosts for visibility would be great. Reminder: Favorites don't help as on this other platform.

If you download your #Twitter archive it arrives wrapped as a static HTML page, which is not very useful for doing anything with, and worse: it requires the original account to be still active to do useful things like enlarge the images since they use t.co links.

So here's a #Python script to convert a Twitter archive to #markdown or other formats: https://github.com/timhutton/twitter-archive-parser

Now you can archive your tweets in any way you want.

@bloor and the man in charged thinks its a joke

The biggest mistake web devs ever made was focusing on corporate-owned APIs instead of on new and innovative open protocols.

I don't care how all-encompassing Big Social becomes -- or whether Google or Apple can keep their market valuations ongoing.

Those "critical" APIs can be yoinked at any moment.

However, SMTP and HTTP have now been used for decades. So why not build on the next generation of open protocols?

Social media #algorithms magnify societal biases.

Here's a striking example. Enigma is an #infosec conference that works hard at gender diversity. Yet the most viewed talks are almost all by (white) men. https://www.youtube.com/c/USENIXEnigmaConference/videos (switch to the "popular" tab).

If users are 5% more likely to click on thumbnails conforming to the stereotype of an infosec expert, the algorithm will reflect that in its recommendations, and also *compound* that bias over time.

This needs to be better known.

No identity verification, & 8 bucks for a verified account?
Get ready for the new Twitter cyber criminal playbook: use stolen credit card to buy verified Twitter account, impersonate real customer support channels, trick users into handing over account details in DM, account takeover.

I keep seeing tweets from the new Twitter team saying the focus will be on "proof-of-humanness" which misses the biggest problem right in front of them: how the heck they're going to verify people, brands, companies, emergency services, and official notices are who they say they are with a reduced workforce (and their AI tools don't work well enough to automate this problem for them). The everyday user isn't concerned with proof-of-humanness, the everyday user just wants their needs met: ie, the everyday user wants to make sure they're tweeting at the real airline team to get their luggage found, and they don't want to get scammed in the process.

Microsoft sued for open-source piracy through GitHub Copilot

#opensource

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-sued-for-open-source-piracy-through-github-copilot/

🚨The Department for Education has committed such a serious breach of the law in its prolonged misuse of children’s personal data that it merited a fine of £10 million

(The only reason the fine was not levied was because it would go to Govt anyway, so it is arguably pretty pointless as a remedy for public sector breaches - see thread below for more on this!)

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2022/11/department-for-education-warned-after-gambling-companies-benefit-from-learning-records-database/

#UKPolitics #ChildrensRights #DataProtection #DataPrivacy #ICO #Privacy

Hey folk - making fun of people who find Mastodon difficult and claiming that it "weeds out anyone too stupid to use Mastodon" or "they're too attached to Twitter so their opinion of Mastodon is suspicious" is really not the move.

Firstly, this was the kind of rhetoric that got me infamously racially harassed my first few hours on Mastodon back when it was super new.

Mainly though - it's unneeded superiority, it's ignoring very valid accessibility concerns, and it's just straight up exclusionary.