Is a weblog by Emma Humphries
Abortion and Trans Liberation are two facets of our right to bodily autonomy.
Innocent until proven guilty does not work in social media.
Content moderation is not a legal process.
It is a safety process.
A legalistic process does not scale.
Blocks can always be removed once a fediverse instance gets their moderation process up and running.
Not silencing or suspending instances who allow abusers to run rampant, intentionally or not, harms people.
(Updated 2202-11-24)
This YouTube video could had been a blog post.
Sean Austin recently wrote about the internet becoming even more like TV under the influence of TicTok (a platform that launched a thousand panics) and YouTube Shorts, describing it as channel surfing through thousands of Public Access Cable TV channels.
The YouTube video essay is the Public Television show of the internet (think of Burkeās Connections and all the BBC seriousness parodied by Dianne Morganās Philomena Cunk.) It has motion graphics, citations, bespoke soundtracks, production values, and sponsorships (from the audience via Pateron, as well as questionable libertarian operations like 80,000 Hours.)
And thereās the subgenre of YouTube essayist who presents in as many costume changes as pop starās arena show.
These creators are making fantastic work, discussing important ideas (and yes, reader, I support their Patreons) and the video essay works fantastic when talking about film and tv (um, long and short form video.)
But sometimes, I wonder if what Iām watching is a blog post with cosplay, thatād be easier for me to read than watch.
This line from Nilay Patelās excellent synopsis of the Question of Twitter has been quoted often today, the first day of Nazi Space Boerās tenure as owner:
āThe essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes ā it is the thing that defines the user experience.ā
I want to expand that.
Soon after I joined Mozilla in 2015 to improve how we were handling bug reports, it became clear that Bugzilla was a social network, which also requires content moderation.
Content moderation in Bugzilla is a means and not an end. Itās noise reduction.
On Bugzilla and other public bug trackers, moderation means (non-exhaustively:)
Good moderation is important, but it means I can get to the important stuff: my friendsā posts, funny posts, good posts, or the bugs I need to take action on; instead of abuse, spam, and fake bugs.
āIām writing because Iām hoping the people who read it donāt need dollops of hope or good endings but are reading so that theyāll know what to fight, and fight even when the fight seems hopeless.ā ā Mike Davis
Mike Davisā City of Quartz changed my understanding of what power, policing, and ācriminalityā were when I read it 30 years ago. Itās one of the many reasons I ended up leaving economics.
Tariq Ali has a remembrance of him (where I found the above quote) at Verso Booksā web site.
It's a gift economy that burns ammonium perchlorate. š
A month on, Iām still pleased with my decision to get a 3D printer.
This coming weekend, the rocketry club Iām a member of will host a launch just south of San JosĆ©, and several people new to the hobby want to attend but wonāt have the kits theyāve ordered built or delivered in time.
I can have a batch of rockets ready for people new to the hobby in a little longer than it takes to print them (22 hours.)
I mentioned this model in a previous post and did a test print last month.
Iāll get them set up with recovery harnesses and streamers so all people need to do is slip on the body tube, load a motor, pack the recovery train, and put it on the launcher.
This little bit of just-in-time fabrication is great to have at hand.