Social Media
- “Here’s why Substack’s scam worked so well” by Annalee Newitz, March 17, 2021.
- “Don’t call it a Substack” by Anil Dash, November 19, 2024.
People who are only leaving Twitter now: Are you okay? I can’t imagine the amount of noxious nonsense you were exposed to over the past couple years. That can’t have been healthy. I hope your recovery goes well, despite the shit show that is Trumplandia.
Orange Oaf’s ongoing assault on American democracy is ironically narrowing our attention to America first.
Am digging the increase in Pixelfed posts boosted into my Mastodon timeline lately. The fediverse rules.
Quoth Aviel Roshwald: “It’s not officially fascist until one could be shot for saying that it is.” /sarcasm 🫠
The totalitarian impulse evident in Orange Oaf’s efforts to put federal employees—and Republican legislators—through a loyalty test can also be seen in some discourses on the left. The struggle is existential, for some more than others, but that doesn’t mean that good ends justify all means.
Deactivated my Facebook account without deleting it outright because Messenger.
James Ball, “Is Anyone Out There?,” Prospect, September 14, 2024, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk….
Lede: “Dead Internet Theory says that you’re the only human left online. It started out as a conspiratorial joke, but it is edging ever closer to reality.”
By creating nodes of empathy and anger, social media helps to overcome the cynicism and paralyzing fear that authoritarian states foster. It also boosts the humanizing power of laughter born of caricature.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), chap. 9.
Are the settings to deactivate or delete one’s Facebook account impossible to find because Meta doesn’t want this to happen? Or are they just really bad at everything they do?
📺 Comedian Josh Johnson does it again with a new 45-minute set called “Why They’re Turning on Elon.” As always, he gets where he’s going in ways you won’t be expecting. youtu.be…
Zuckerberg’s post today makes me extra glad I dropped Threads in October. I just wish more people had had Fediverse-sharing enabled at the time so I could maintain connections, at least indirectly, via Mastodon.
One thing Threads is still doing right, at least for now: there’s no password wall, as on Meta’s other properties. Still, anything I link to there will be indirectly via a web archive because there’s no telling how long the platform will remain open.
🦋🤖 “A polite disagreement bot ring is flooding Bluesky — reply guy as a (dis)service” by Amy Castor and David Gerard (Pivot to AI).
An Old Putin Meme – 'Weaponizing Ridicule'
Here is a once popular meme in Russia that the thin-skinned Putin banned, thereby making it more popular (artist unknown). This is one of the examples that J. Michael Waller offers in “Weaponizing Ridicule” (Military Review, Sept.–Oct. 2017). His findings, it seems to me, are relevant to how we could deal with the big orange lump.
Maybe friends shouldn’t let friends use Substack for their blogging and newslettering. You see, Substack is an active propagator of the disinformation and intolerance that is poisoning us.
I have a few entries in my blogroll that use this service. I read them with RSS to avoid some of the more insidious effects of the platform, but I’d be happier if these authors took their writing elsewhere.
“Wissenschaftler fordern Umstieg von Musks X auf Mastodon” von Christian Schwägerl, RiffReporter, 18.11.2024.
Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler fordern, das in Deutschland gegründete Social-Media-Netzwerk Mastodon zur Basis der deutschen Wissenschaft zu machen und Elon Musks „X“ aufzugeben. Die Rückkehr von Wirtschaftsminister Habeck zu X sehen sie skeptisch.
The pace of things on Mastodon and Bluesky might have picked up a little too much for my wellbeing today. My post-election nerves are still raw.
How many of you blog history or history-adjacent topics, if not exclusively? I know many lost the habit to social media. Between that and the ruptures caused by Twitter’s murder, I’d like to get a better handle on the current situation and also to start highlighting such work.
I’m not a fan of phrases like “as a historian, you know…” or “should know…” Replace “historian” with any other noun for a profession, nationality, sexuality, generation, or what-have-you, and the addressee will likely experience irritation. There’s presumption in the phrase, intended or not.
I want to be able to block thumbnails in my socials that contain an image of Mr. Rotton Orange or of certain of his cheerleaders, starting with Mr. Cyber T. Bin.
Does anyone know of any community Mastodon servers in #NewHampshire? I’m happy on mine, which is based in Germany, but I need to start connecting with people locally or regionally, too, just as I need better information. Tips about other Indieweb or Fediverse hangouts also appreciated. Thank you. 🫎
Am wondering how the “resist” energy we had in 2017-21 could have been infused with an absolute indifference toward the fool at the center so as to deny him the attention and status he craves. And how could that have been accomplished in a social and legacy media environment addicted to eyeballs? But the circus never stopped. Indeed, we seem to be stuck with it whether it plays at the White House or in a jailhouse.… Meh. I’ve got some voting to do. 🗳️✊🇺🇸
I just torched my Pixelfed, Instagram, and Threads accounts—Pixelfed because it doesn’t do much more for me than Mastodon already does, Instagram and Threads because I’ve had it with Meta, even if I’m probably stuck with Facebook for the foreseeable future.
I see History of Knowledge has migrated from WordPress.com to Hypotheses.org. Given all the nonsense that Automattic has been putting its clients through, I am glad. It should have a nice long life on that platform.
The current domain, historyofknowledge.net, points or forwards there, although I don’t know if it will over the long term. Fortunately, the new domain pops right up on a DuckDuckGo search for “History of Knowledge blog” – https://historyofknowledge.hypotheses.org.
I see the team has also enabled comments. Given what’s happened to Twitter, this makes a lot of sense. Of course, I’d love to see them actually leave Xitter for Mastodon, Bluesky, or even Threads.