Really good write-up.

RE: Too many cooks:

And that means people who are more likely to be harassed also end up having to do more of the work to prevent harassment.

This is true and a genuine problem, but also a lot better than the alternative, which is the commercial platforms where nobody gives a shit about them and they are harassed on a daily basis with nothing much they can do about it.

On Twitter, community notes were hailed as a success for giving the Community an entirely toothless form of moderation. On the Fediverse, the community has been given real teeth.

RE: Guilt by association

This has happened with several beneficial alternative technologies in the past, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the dark web and end-to-end encryption.

Nice reminder to spread the word about the wonders of P2P, Tor, and E2EE. Some people will always believe in the propaganda of the capitalists and the authoritarians seeking to undermine these technologies, but they are all very much alive and well, and I think most people are fine with the ideas of having their nude selfies or whatever protected under E2EE.

Likewise, for sure Elon Musk will try to tell people the fediverse is full of pedos. Coming from him, that puts us in the same club as that diver who saved a bunch of children in a cave in Thailand. So in that sense I guess the point about commercial capture is more relevant: I’m more worried when people like Musk pretend to be our friends. But in all honesty, I’m not very worried about that either. I still rock an entirely independent e-mail provider, even after everything Microsoft and Google has done to undermine that technology.

We have all these ideas about universal human rights, and we are trying to wish them into existence. So we teach them to children as if they are something they should believe already exists, not as it’s an ideal we are working towards.

I think the idea is that it will make people more protective of human rights, but the flip side is that people seem very reluctant to see the cracks in the fiction they have been sold. And then when/if they realize the state of the world they often become jaded, acting as if the realization that it’s all a fake construct is somehow the greatest insight on earth.

And then, if they’re good people, they start working to make the fiction just a little bit more real.

If we want to talk about why European countries have blood on their hand we could keep going all day.

I’d push back a little against the notion that nobody cares. You don’t have many (any?) political allies who are willing to stand up against dictatorships and let go of their cheap oil supplies, but you do have people and organizations who care.

The International Criminal Court did, among other things, issue an arrest warrant on Netanyahu. I think we have managed to establish international law, but not yet international justice. As a result it’s easy to give up and consider it all to be false promises and lies, and to a degree that’s not entirely wrong. But I nevertheless believe that current-day international law is the greatest achievement we have made since the second world war, and establishing international law is the fundamental first step towards international justice.

I have a lot of friends working for various international organizations, and while it’s one hell of an uphill battle, I can assure you that there are people out there working tirelessly to try to make a change. And despite everything, most European countries are still supportive of the ICC and in favour of establishing an international legal order.

If we want to be hopeful about Europe, it has to be judged by it’s commitment to that promise, and not by the corrupt, narcissistic, or plain moronic leaders who are way too frequently put in charge.

Ah, well, fuck. Then I don’t really have a positive spin on it.

Maybe the US crashing and burning will at least limit US influence on the Arab world, opening at least a slight hope for improvements in the region in the long run. It’s a weird world - yesterday it was Europe and the US against the rest, today Europe stands alone and Russia is paralysed in Syria. Maybe tomorrow we’ll see genuine alliances between Europe and countries in the Arab world that are not entirely built around exploitation and sucking up to dictators.

Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.

I hate myself for being pedantic, but: You haven’t emigrated yet. Immigration is coming, emigration is leaving.

I’m guessing you’re from Iran? The only good thing I can really say is that they’re as afraid of you as you are of them. But they are fucking terrifying, and as you well know you’re right to be careful. I can’t believe the stuff we seemingly choose to turn a blind eye to coming from foreign authoritarian regimes on European soil.

This looks pretty ideal in my opinion.

I think it’s fine as long as:

1. Your bot is clearly marked as such
2. It only post to communities where it has explicitly been made welcome, either after you talking to the admins or in a community you run

A lot of people, myself included, are hesitant to take the time to look at content if nobody took the time to manually share it. But for a use-case like you mentioned, for a local community that is too small to be established naturally any time soon, I think it could make sense. Especially for local news — YouTube videos should maybe still go through a human screening before being shared.

That’s my five cents, anyway. :)