As the U.S. sinks into dictatorship -- malevolent rule by corrupt politicians and oligarchs -- the institution I know the best has almost completely failed to recognize, much less counter, the threat. Big Journalism will be remembered for its cowardice and capitulation. theguardian.com/world/commenti…
as Italian, this worries me much. What can we actively do to prevent this outcome in countries like ours, where autocracy is leading the way? It's not rhetorical, I honestly don't know.
FROM DAY ONE, if not before. This obscene circus has been worth too many clicks. Let’s not forget network TV for creating & boosting his mythology thru trash like The Apprentice.
2 Russian trolls in this thread. I expect all your posts are affected by this?
For those wondering, open antt5 in his home server.
As for the collapse of democracy. I'm 68 and began wondering in my 20s if the post WWII effect and shaming the far-right, would last my lifetime. I think that Russia/Putin are behind almost all of what's happening today. Horrible people and we need to start telling them.
Big Journalism is big business. Businesses in capitalism are de facto dictatorships.
Liberals, right alongside conservatives, by vehemently opposing socialism and its values over the decades perpetuated business-as-dictatorship-of-the-owner instead of democratic management of the workplace.
Journalism as a business was a dictatorship in the US from the very beginning, thus, couldn’t be trusted to guard against a government level dictatorship anyway.
Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).
In very large part because the media have been effectively commandeered by those with nefarious agendas.
Way, way too tempting for a means of influencing public opinion to be a tool for the powerful - those rich in wealth and power and profoundly poor spiritually.
> The report identifies the UK as a “new autocratiser”, driven by “a substantial decline” in freedom of expression[…]. “In the UK, it began [with] the Elections Act 2022 […]” Lindberg says. “The Policing Act 2022 decreased civil rights and free speech. The Online Safety Act 2023 was used to penalise online speech […]. The Higher Education […] Act 2023 increased demands [to] police free speech. What’s worrying is that once the democratic backsliding begins, it’s often hard to stop.”
The goal isn't to protect children, the goal is to de-anonymize every comment and action on the internet, associating it with a legal ID, by eventually requesting official identification from every adult using a computer.
Some politicians have already stated this plainly.
This leads to censorship of anyone criticizing their government.
This leads to repression of marginalized people, especially immigrants, people of color, and trans and gender diverse people.
This leads to self-censorship of any comments or actions that could be interpreted against the system. Such as speaking out against fascism and authoritarian surveillance, or defending human rights publicly.
This leads to total control of the population and its tools of communications.
This leads to the end of democracy, centralizing power even more in the hands of a few.
This is why I advocate for #CyberRiot and sabotage to show them that we control the computer and will take power back from them. Action must start now or we will be fighting from the back foot, again.
The craziest thing to me is that there is no way a thing like this wouldn't ultimately hurt children far more than anything they are *claiming* it supposedly prevents.
Like how does that not just automatically become a deal killer for all these bills?
It’s those in power who want this. To increase their control over us. And then there are those stupid idiots who say: ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. Go ahead.’
It's kind of preaching to the choir here. Mastodon seems to be a haven for peeps, either by vocation, or life circumstances are attuned to the problems this will cause.
I see semi supportive comments showup even on general tech sites, where I feel they should know better. For the general population? I don't know what it would take to get them to oppose "protecting the children"(lulz). If all this(looks around, stretches arms) doesn't cause alarm, I don't know what will.
In the US, we need to fight against KOSA, which is advancing in our legislature.
The Kids Online Safety Act Will Make the Internet Worse for Everyone
This bill won’t bother big tech. Large companies will be able to manage this regulation, which is why Apple and X have agreed to support it. In fact, X helped negotiate the text of the last version of this bill we saw. Meanwhile, those companies’ smaller competitors will be left scrambling to comply. Under KOSA, a small platform hosting mental health discussion boards will be just as vulnerable as Meta or TikTok—but much less able to defend itself.
Lawmakers who support KOSA today are choosing to trust the current administration, and future administrations, to define what youth—and to some degree, all of us—should be allowed to read online. KOSA will not make kids safer.
@nixCraft@mastodon.social thus the only valid reaction is to *proactively refuse to comply* and *actively sabotage such cyberfascidt efforts!
- I mean, what's next?
- #Russia's #Roskomnadnozr demanding *"#KYC"* of #Users for using #WiFi?
- *"P.R.
Everything we need to do to stop climate breakdown, we also need to do for national security. Energy saving, more renewables, more electricity storage and interconnectors, electrification of transport, heating, cooking and industrial processes, plant-based diets. We win on all fronts.
Just had a sighted person tell me they often use features, clients and programs that were made for us, they don’t use screen readers, but they use accessibility features, even when they do not have disabilities, but also clients like a blind Mastodon client, or a text editor designed with screen readers in mind such as the ones I list on my Tools page at the end, as an example, because they said, the interface is 1000 times cleaner, there’s a lot of keyboard shortcuts, clutter free interface, even though the UI is basic, speed, less bloat, and a whole host of other things including, but not limited to, and never having to put up with distracting animation nonsense. You know software development has vastly sank in quality when sighted folk are using blind clients. To see the tools and stuff I use, go to sightlessscribbles.com/tools/ #Programming #Software
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there's the curb-cut effect, where everyone benefits from an accessibility improvement, and there's sometimes just a nicer aesthetic, like a wristwatch where you feel the time.
I've never heard of a Mastodon client called SonarPad. Now, I did just find this program called SonarPad, that's apparently a modern Notepad plus document reader for Windows: github.com/Ambro86/Sonarpad
From their page Sonarpad is a modern, feature-rich Notepad alternative for Windows, built with Rust. It extends traditional text editing with multi-format document support, advanced accessibility features, and Text-to-Speech (TTS) capabilities. It also includes an integrated MP3 audiobook player, a bookmark system for both text and audio, and the ability to create audiobooks directly from text using Microsoft voices (Edge Neural) and SAPI5,
I can see this. Far too many developers forget how detrimental things like animations can be. And these days they'll make a, oh lets say web browser that requires your device to have good specs and all because of some fancy scale-altering feature that you might not be able to disable even, or some fancy drawer opening animation thing. All that requires good resources to function and if you don't have them, said thing lags or breaks in other fascenating ways.
Software development was sinking in quality for a while from what I've been gathering. But sighted folk using blind clients might just convince people to keep things accessible, seeing how when blind people say there's a lack of accessibility in something, we're pretty much ignored.
I always look at alt-text of images when those are available in spite of being sighted, just because it helps me understand the image's context. If I have to give one single reason why the Fediverse is so awesome, it is alt-text culture.
Ah, the good ol' curb cut effect in action. I'm of the belief that accessibility should be also understood as future-proofing (so you can also keep using your apps whenever you eventually have an accident), so testing the app with disabled focus groups, or at least attempting to dogfood the app while running an accessibility suite test, can allow users to find optimizations that can be useful for both disabled and average-abled people.
🇺🇸 USA (continued) @houstonpublicmedia - Houston, Texas PBS & NPR @azpm - Arizona PBS & NPR affiliate @RadioKansas - Kansas public radio @PBSNewsHour - PBS News Hour @WJCT - Florida PBS & NPR @KPBSPublicMedia - San Diego, California PBS & NPR @Gothamist - New York news site run by New York Public Radio @KNPR - Nevada NPR @wnpr - Connecticut Public Radio @MTPR - Montana Public Radio @cascadepbs - Seattle, Washignton PBS
p.s. All of these accounts have posted recently! If an account looks blank to you, it's probably because no one on your server has ever followed it. If you follow an account, its posts will start gradually showing up on your server too.
For Germany there is also @3sat who are very active here in the #Fediverse Not directly broadcasters but additional accounts are @Archivradio and @br_data
British grandmother with valid tourist visa locked up for six weeks by ICE.
Imagine being shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles and locked up on your vacation in your mid 60s. The scariest part is that you know this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the shit they are doing.
Nice. "Alysa Liu became the first American woman to win an individual Olympic figure skating gold medal in nearly a quarter of a century." Her father left China as a political refugee following Tiananmen. They were targeted by spies later and she's a protester herself. youtu.be/uR3QcMTwNmg?si=JXALZI…
interesting detail here is that this is all intentional: the area is a floodplain that gets flooded naturally in periods of heavy rain or melting snow. When the rail line was constructed, the rails were built on top of a dam. Apparently that was in 1880!
studio Ghibli image irl right here 🙀😹 I love how it looks, but it must be hard for people living there. (And yes I know that this general area has *historically* seen lots of flooding in the past, but I don’t think this has been normal in the last few decades, and of course, people can correct me if I’m wrong, it certainly has been getting worse since climate change)
max oakland
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •McSquank (formerly: McSquank)
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •cardy
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •> As the U.S. sinks into dictatorship
A little bit alarmist there mate.
earthman doesn't like this.
antt5
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Elisabetta
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Johan Diederik
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •You’re hitting the nail on its head indeed.
Vluciamonteirop
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Gregory Dodwell
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Grant
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •2 Russian trolls in this thread. I expect all your posts are affected by this?
For those wondering, open antt5 in his home server.
As for the collapse of democracy. I'm 68 and began wondering in my 20s if the post WWII effect and shaming the far-right, would last my lifetime. I think that Russia/Putin are behind almost all of what's happening today. Horrible people and we need to start telling them.
Mirishuli
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •CynAq🤘
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •@aral
Big Journalism is big business. Businesses in capitalism are de facto dictatorships.
Liberals, right alongside conservatives, by vehemently opposing socialism and its values over the decades perpetuated business-as-dictatorship-of-the-owner instead of democratic management of the workplace.
Journalism as a business was a dictatorship in the US from the very beginning, thus, couldn’t be trusted to guard against a government level dictatorship anyway.
martin lentink 🇪🇺 🇺🇦📎
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Truth Or Consequences ✅ 🇺🇦
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufact…)
Manufacturing Consent - Wikipedia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Neil Moffatt
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •In very large part because the media have been effectively commandeered by those with nefarious agendas.
Way, way too tempting for a means of influencing public opinion to be a tool for the powerful - those rich in wealth and power and profoundly poor spiritually.
SueDiOh
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •decapitae
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •aspragg
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •