Notices by Erik Moeller (eloquence@social.coop)

#AaronSwartzDay 2024 is live now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

First guest: Ryan Shapiro, #FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People (https://propertyofthepeople.org/).

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Ryan Shapiro not holding back: "It's not just the malignancy and greed of these people, it's how unfettered they're going to be in enacting their odious plans."

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Ryan Shapiro recounting his early career: "The FBI tried to put us in prison as terrorists for doing things like undercover investigations of factory farms.."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

#AaronSwartzDay

"I started submitting thousands of [FOIA] requests and it started to work. Started to map out the FBI's strategies for noncompliance." - Ryan Shapiro explaining his use of Freedom of Information Act requests.

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

"We were able to show that years before the JSTOR investigation and prosecution [of Aaron Swartz], the FBI had been preposterously looking at Aaron in the context of an al Qaeda anti-terrorist investigation" - Ryan Shapiro on his investigative work using the Freedom of Information Act (#FOIA)

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

"At its core, the FBI is a political force that primarily targets the left, ignoring or outright aiding the right". - #FOIA expert Ryan Shapiro at #AaronSwartzDay

Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

"A failed coup is just a dry run for the next time. January 6 coup plotters have succeeded. Those who planned the January 6 coup are now preparing to assume unprecedented power. [...] My assessment of the present situation: absolutely catastrophic. [...] It's not about accountability now, it's about survival." - Ryan Shapiro

#AaronSwartzDay

Watch live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Ryan Shapiro: "My real fear with #FOIA is not that it's going to go away, but that it's going to be increasingly lopsided" due to Trump-appointed judge simply denying requests that pertain to the regime.

#AaronSwartzDay

Watch live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

Next up, my colleague @nathan from @freedomofpress
giving the annual update on @securedrop:

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

"At its heart, @securedrop is a whistleblowing platform that allows journalists to receive files and messages from anonymous sources." - @nathan giving the annual "State of the Drop" update at #AaronSwartzDay.

Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

@nathan now discussing the SecureDrop Workstation based on @QubesOS.

"When you open a file that someone sends you, these submissions open in a burner VM. It spins up in a new virtual machine where you can look at the submission. When you're done, you just click the X button, it disappears, like it never existed in the first place."

#AaronSwartzDay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo

It's really okay to stop sharing screenshots from X dot com. That website is weird

Honestly, using #Phanpy feels a lot like using the #Mastodon web UI if it had been in 2 years of additional development. Lots of stuff people have been asking for, beautifully implemented.

Give it a try if:
- you've been overwhelmed by a reply thread on Mastodon because it's all just a big flat mess
- you'd like to see quoted posts actually unwrapped
- you'd like to see threads as threads
- you'd like to see notifications bundled

And yeah, it's all open source.

https://phanpy.social/

This is a big deal:

The W3C, founded in 1994 by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has quit X and declared the fediverse to be their primary social media channel. Follow them at: @w3c

The future of the open web is .. the open web.

Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) shut down their >600K follower account on X back in September, with a final Homer Simpsons "fading into the bushes" GIF. Navigation links to Twitter/X have been removed from https://www.raspberrypi.com/.

They maintain a very active presence here on the fediverse.

If you've never hurt of Raspberry Pi, it's a pretty big deal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

Germany's federal anti-discrimination agency has pinned a departure notice on their X account.

"As a state institution, the anti-discrimination agency has a role model function. Therefore, staying on X is no longer justifiable for us. All ministries and other public bodies should ask themselves whether it is still acceptable to remain on a platform that has become a disinformation network and whose owner spreads anti-Semitic, racist and populist content."

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-anti-discrimination-agency-quits-x-over-anti-minority-posts-2023-10-11/

There have been so many "final straws" but I hope that if you still have a personal account on his terrible website, Musk promoting a German political extremist party with literal nazi ties is it. Especially looking at #journalists that for some reason seem to feel like they have to continue to maintain a personal presence there. (I understand that organizations will be the last to go, but individuals - if you have any control at all, delete your :birdsite: account.)

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-immigration-migrants-germany-far-right-extremism-twitter-x-2023-9

This is a really nice touch recently added to Mastodon: when you search for profiles, it now shows you if they've completed link verification for a domain.

All the more reason for folks who want to verify their identity on Mastodon to do so. See https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification for docs.

When you're talking about Linux, it's okay to say that it's "open source".

It's okay to say that it's "free software".

It's okay to call it "GNU/Linux", "Linux", or to mess up its name.

It's okay to refer to it as "the one with the friendly penguin".

Part of RMS' legacy has been an incessant obsession with terminology and pedantry, overshadowing far more important shared objectives which are fundamentally emancipatory in nature.

Pedantry is not activism; it is alienating, not emancipatory.