We Joined Mastodon. Here’s What We Learned About Privacy and Security

“If you’ve been considering signing up for Mastodon, here are some things we have been thinking about as we take the leap.”  #Technology [Link]

Online mobs are now coming for student journalists

“Targeted online harassment has become a pervasive threat to newsrooms across the country. A 2019 survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists found that 85 percent of respondents believed their career had become less safe in the past five years and more than 70 percent said they experienced safety issues

I told my team to pause our $750K/month Twitter ads budget last week

“I’ve seen a lot of technical and ideological takes on Elon Twitter but wanted to share the marketing perspective. For background I’m a director at a medium sized b2b tech company (not in finserv anymore) running a team that deploys about $80M in ad spend/year.”  #Twitter [Link]

How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence

“Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.”  #Society [Link]

Slocan Statement

“The following is intended as a starting point, a first draft towards establishing a shared charter that would serve to protect, support, and enrich the nascent Fediverse.” A necessary, characteristically thoughtful start from Blaine Cook.  #Technology [Link]

Tweet you again someday

I’ve locked down my Twitter account and removed syndication to the platform. I won’t be posting there regularly. A lot would need to change for me to meaningfully return. You can still find me in plenty of places, which are listed on my homepage. I’m actively posting

COP27: Sharp rise in fossil fuel industry delegates at climate summit

“Campaign group Global Witness found more than 600 people at the talks in Egypt are linked to fossil fuels. That's more than the combined delegations from the 10 most climate-impacted countries.”  #Climate [Link]

A guide to potential liability pitfalls for people running a Mastodon instance

“This is not about just creating a Mastodon account: it's for people who are running a Mastodon server. If you just made an account on someone else's server, you can safely ignore this.” This is actually great advice for anyone running an online community, on Mastodon

What is a globalist?

A word I’ve seen used frequently by people across the political spectrum, particularly since Trump’s election in 2016, is globalism. At first, I understood it to be a kind of alternative to nationalism: thinking on a global scale rather than prioritizing your own nation first. But the more

Coding

Tracking Mastodon user numbers over time with a bucket of tricks

“I’ve set up a new git scraper to track the number of users on known Mastodon instances over time.” Great little tutorial on gathering data and building a really interesting graph out of it.  #Coding [Link]

CBS News Pauses Twitter Posts 'In Light of Uncertainty' Over Platform

“In light of the uncertainty around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution, CBS News is pausing its activity on the social media site as it continues to monitor the platform.”  #Twitter [Link]

I’ve been thinking a lot

“Web people can tell you the first site they ever saw, they can tell you the moment they knew: This, This Is It, I Will Do This. And they pour themselves into the web, with stories, with designs, with pictures.” This piece on web people vs startup people resonates for