Posting black squares and flooding hashtags is one thing, but after that? Job well done, pat on the back and a drink, fellow privileged person? Not quite.
What can you do?
But What Can I Do?
Blog#1
Articles, journal entries, short stories and essays – they all end up here, in my blog.
Featured Post
In chronological order
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Another reason not to use Zoom
If you needed yet another reason not use hyped videoconferencing service Zoom, then this is it. They’re launching end-to-end encryption for calls (yay!), but only for paying users, whom are all criminals it seems.
From the Wired story:
“Free users for sure we don’t want to give that,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in a company earnings call on Tuesday referring to end-to-end encryption, “because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose.”
This is stupid in so many ways. Good riddance, Zoom.
Alternatives for your online conversation needs: Jitsi (open source and free videoconferencing tool), Telegram and Signal works too. The latter has a nice blur feature, if you need that.
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But What Can I Do?
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Twitter vs. Facebook
There’s a real difference between Twitter and Facebook, and I don’t mean in features, but in morals. Twitter, the smaller by far of the two, has (finally) applied its fact checking and terms-abiding features to the likes of US President Donald Trump, making him throw both a tantrum and an executive order (here dissected by The Verge). Facebook on the other hand doesn’t want to censor anything, which sounds nice but feels shady, especially since Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says:
We believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician.
That sort of clashes with Trump’s way of saying and doing things, and how his loyal fans have a tendency to harass and threaten. Facebook is in the wrong here, but Twitter is dangerously close to falling off their high horse. While it’s good to fact check and enforce policies on the US President, that now has to go for the whole platform. It’s unlikely any of this will end well.
⚡️ See also: My Socia Needia essay, and Services I’m Quitting.
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Bruce Sterling bids farewell to Beyond the Beyond
Beyond the Beyond, the blog by Bruce Sterling hosted by Wired, is shutting down this month. It’s been a staple for the blogosphere, so it makes me sad to see it go. Read the farewell post, and – if you were a passenger on the ride – take this moment to reminisce a bit. Also, how nuts is it that Wired didn’t pay for all that content?
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