breakfastmtn
@breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
Sneaking all around the fediverse.
Also at breakfastmtm@firefish.social breakfastmtn@pixelfed.social
- Comment on What exactly is the Fediverse? 1 week ago:
Wasn’t the Twitter “bridge” just bot accounts though? It’s a bit different with Bluesky because they’ve said that they completely support bridges between AT and AP but just don’t have the resources to work on them themselves. Anyway, ActivityPub co-author Even Prodromou gave an interview yesterday where he included Bluesky as part of the Fediverse because of the bridge.
Personally, I consider them to be both part of and not part of the Fediverse, I guess. I wouldn’t send someone there and I also kind of think they’re a bunch of dicks for re-inventing the wheel instead of contributing improvements here.
- Comment on What exactly is the Fediverse? 1 week ago:
I think that ATP and nostr are sometimes included as part of the Fediverse because they both have bridges that allow connection. Without the bridges they’re isolated.
- Comment on John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed 1 week ago:
Thanks!
- Comment on John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed 1 week ago:
I just got it on the dl instead
- Comment on John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed 1 week ago:
Anyone have a link that works for Canadians, you MONSTERS?
- Comment on My coffee table had never had everything but coffee placed on it. 2 weeks ago:
I was skeptical at first but your story checks out.
- Comment on My coffee table had never had everything but coffee placed on it. 2 weeks ago:
That’s just downright disrespectful to the table. Do you respect wood?
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 2 weeks ago:
I’ve never seen anything about her in particular. I think this ProPublica investigation is the most in-depth reporting on the relationship between cartels and her political party. They basically allege that cartels paid millions to buy Mexico’s ‘hugs, not bullets’ policy.
- Comment on Sooo, where did the blatant Nazism suddenly come from? 2 weeks ago:
They were always Nazis. The more mainstream-seeming “alt-right” guys were just suit Nazis. They feel more comfortable coming out in the open now, even if it’s still a bit draped in “doing it for lulz” deniability. I’m skeptical that they’re fully aware that it’ll hurt their legitimacy. They’re dug in like ticks in their echo chamber, are constantly goading each into being more openly extreme, and celebrate the push back there.
- Comment on why are they called “popular girls” if they’re typically not friends with anyone outside their small friend group? 2 weeks ago:
Hopefully this instructional video answers your questions:
- Comment on Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost 2 weeks ago:
Yes:
One, its terms of service ban content that “is violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person.” Ghost founder and CEO John O’Nolan committed to us that Ghost’s hosted service will remove pro-Nazi content, full stop. If nothing else, that’s further than Substack will go, and makes Ghost a better intermediate home for Platformer than our current one.
- Comment on Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think we’re completely saved forever but they tried making podcasts Spotify-exclusive. I remember a bunch of Gimlet podcast hosts being like “please come to Spotify to listen to us – it’s better than it used to be!” They ended up caving because people didn’t listen. Podcasting is built around RSS – even though people aren’t really aware of it – and people expect to get them this way.
- Comment on Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost 2 weeks ago:
RSS is the hero that saved us from Spotify (et at.) walling off podcasts behind their paywall.
- Comment on Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost 2 weeks ago:
Google weirdly gets a lot of credit for killing things that are very much alive and well.
- GoToSocial empowers you to have your own home on the Fediverse - with unique controlsblog.elenarossini.com ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to fediverse@lemmy.world | 23 comments
- Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghostmicahflee.com ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to fediverse@lemmy.world | 41 comments
- Comment on @fediversenews@piefed.social is replacing @fediversenews@venera.social, which will be retired in a month 2 weeks ago:
Yes.
For example, if you search for the old fediversenews url, you can subscribe to it: venera.social/profile/fediversenews/
- Comment on @fediversenews@piefed.social is replacing @fediversenews@venera.social, which will be retired in a month 2 weeks ago:
Yep, I follow a couple Lemmy communities from Friendica.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Do your parents need to know why you need to go to the doctor? Can’t you say it’s for some other, less embarrassing reason? Not that you need to feel embarrassed but I don’t think your parents will be harmed by the white lie. And it doesn’t really change the outcome for you, right?
- Comment on Where can I find information on disinformation? 2 weeks ago:
A good place to start might be a book like ‘Autocracy, Inc.’ by Anne Applebaum. Unrelated to this but her book on the Holodomor, ‘Red Famine,’ is amazing too. She’s an expert on modern authoritarianism. The book’s about autocrats in general but deals a lot with disinformation and propaganda. It’ll give you a pretty high level view of who those people are, what their goals are, and how disinformation fits into their strategies. A big part of recognizing disinfo is being able to evaluate whose interests a piece of (dis)info might serve.
You’ll find a lot of books about Russian disinformation because Russia has been the most active, the most ambitious, and the most successful at weaponizing propaganda. I’d look for books written by academics but who are writing for a popular audience. ‘Active Measures’ by Thomas Rid is an example. That book in particular goes into the origin of disinformation in the Soviet Union (the term was actually coined by Stalin) and how it carried over into modern Russia. Russia’s a good starting point too because every else has copied them like crazy – although they’re now openly collaborating, Republicans are stealing from this playbook.
Bellingcat is good resource to get into the anatomy of disinformation networks and operations. They’re the gold standard in open source investigations and have uncovered some insane shit – disinfo networks, Russia downing MH17, a network of Russian illegals (like in ‘The Americans’). Reports like this one are extremely detailed and get into the nuts and bolts of how propaganda networks are structured and how information passes through them. Their ability to track down spies using the Russian equivalent of door dash is internet MacGyver shit too.
Caroline Orr Bueno is a disinformation researcher whose newsletter Weaponized Spaces also dives pretty deep into disinformation networks, often tracing it back to a single point of origin. She links to a lot of great resources and is super accessible. She’s also awesome. I assume she’s moved on to bsky but she used to be on Mastodon and would answer any questions you had about her work. Good person!
- Comment on We are excited to announce pixeld.ca, a new Pixelfed instance run by Canadians and hosted in Canada 2 weeks ago:
Stories, not Reels. Stories are photos that disappear after 24 hours.
- Comment on How do I stop laughing at stupid shit all the time 2 weeks ago:
“Hey guys can you help me disconnect from the fire hose of human joy to appease all the grumps around me?”
We can’t and we won’t.
- Comment on You can see who upvoted and downvoted a post by viewing it in friendica. 2 weeks ago:
Raccoon for Friendica is great if you’re on Android.
- Comment on Loops by pixelfied Is Doomed to Fail Because of Daniel Supernault 2 weeks ago:
For real. Who could ever understand why Dan banned them? It’s a mystery…
- Comment on Loops by pixelfied Is Doomed to Fail Because of Daniel Supernault 2 weeks ago:
Loops was developed years ago as a component of Pixelfed and then shelved before being recently developed as a separate service. It is not 5 years old.
- Comment on Would you consider me a “dry texter”? 2 weeks ago:
How would you define “dry texter”? How would a dry texter reply to those messages?
- Comment on The Tesseract Lemmy app shows a news source ranking from MBFC 2 weeks ago:
As the person asking people to fact check the claims of weird conspiracy theorists, I’m gonna have to ask for your sources on that one.
- Comment on The Tesseract Lemmy app shows a news source ranking from MBFC 2 weeks ago:
I’m awarding you three demerits for a reply that doesn’t make sense. Govern yourself accordingly.
- Comment on The Tesseract Lemmy app shows a news source ranking from MBFC 3 weeks ago:
I think that very few of these arguments are being made in good faith. For some people, any bias monitor is a barrier to sharing propaganda as news. Others just don’t understand how to use the site properly. Or use it in a really stupid way anyway. Like this:
- Look at the ratings.
- If something strikes you as odd, run around screaming like your hair’s on fire.
Instead of:
- Look at the ratings.
- If something strikes you as odd, read the part of the report that explains the rating.
- Decide how important those things are to you and whether it’s a deal-breaker.
Others are like, ‘it’s telling me what to think, man!’ who don’t seem to understand that those pages contain a wealth of information that you can include in your decision-making (or not). They’ve convinced themselves that it’s presented as the one and only source of absolute truth, which is really just something they made up to be angry about. No one but them is making that claim.
There also isn’t another free source that has that info in one place. There’s no better place to quickly find news org ownership info, the country they’re operating in (with links to info about press freedom in that country), and their history of factual reporting. But those people don’t care – they’re just viscerally reacting to the ratings, not reading the reports.
- Comment on The Tesseract Lemmy app shows a news source ranking from MBFC 3 weeks ago:
EDIT2: Commenters have some valid criticisms of MBFC.
Here’s another in my “making friends” series of posts.
Commenters DO NOT have valid criticisms of MBFC. They are universally wrong, have no idea how MBFC works, and are too lazy to look it up. The misinfo ghouls among them are happy to repeat lies over and over until people start to accept them.
Some of these people can be pretty convincing but I urge you to actually fact check their arguments. Most of these people are just parroting bullshit they saw someone else say. The “best” of these are basically artisanal, hand-crafted AI hallucinations: high-confidence, syntactically-correct nonsense. Don’t put that glue on your pizza. If someone posts an MBFC link as evidence, click it and read it. Nearly every single time, the link they posted contradicts them and they just haven’t read it.
And ask yourself why no one ever posts peer-reviewed research backing up their claims. It’s a simple reason: it doesn’t exist. Every single piece of academic research on MBFC says they’re wrong. The MBFC conspiracy theorists can’t just ignore that body of research because it’s inconvenient – they need a compelling reason why all research to date is wrong. For their claims to be true, it would require a massive conspiracy between academics, journalists, and media bias organizations because they are all in consensus about what makes good and bad news organizations. It’s loopy, tinfoil hat bullshit.