People fleeing Twitter have turned to Eugen Rochko’s alternative. He says social networks can support healthy debate—without any one person in control. Eugen Rochko looks exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users. […]

by Productivity Hub on November 21, 2022 via thefreeonline

People fleeing Twitter have turned to Eugen Rochko’s alternative. He says social networks can support healthy debate—without any one person in control.

Eugen Rochko looks exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.

Rochko began developing Mastodon shortly after leaving university in 2016. He was a fan of Twitter but wanted to create a platform not controlled by any single company or person, reasoning that online communication is too important to be at the whim of commercial interests or CEOs. He believed that the lack of profit motive and canny design could discourage harassment and abuse, and provide users more control.

Instead of creating a single unified platform, the the protocol that Mastodon uses, called ActivityPub, allows anyone to use open-source software to boot up a server that hosts a Twitter-style community with its own rules.

Together those servers, and other, non-Mastodon ones, form a collective of interlinked communities dubbed the “Fediverse.” People can join a server that matches their interests and community standards, but also connect with users on other servers, or block all content from a particular server completely.

Twitter Users Flock to Other Platforms as the Elon Era BeginsNovember 3, 2022

Mastodon grew slowly after the first code was released in 2017, appealing mostly to free software enthusiasts.

Then Elon Musk took control of Twitter for $44 billion. His promises to weaken moderation, deep staff cuts, and chaotic changes to the platform turned many dedicated Twitter users off the platform.

In the past few weeks, Rochko says, some 800,000 new Mastodon accounts have been created, overwhelming popular servers and flooding existing users’ timelines with introductions, questions, and complaints from newbies.

Last year, donations to the nonprofit that runs Mastodon and where Rochko is CEO totaled 55,000 euros; it spent only 23,000 euros.

Since Musk took over Twitter, Rochko has been working long hours to keep his own server, Mastodon.Social, running, while also preparing a major upgrade to Mastodon, but he took time to videochat with WIRED from his home in Germany. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Will Knight: What have the past couple of weeks been like?

Eugen Rochko: People probably want to hear that it’s been great—all this growth and success—but I would prefer to be watching from the sidelines. There is more work, there are more fires to put out. It’s incredibly stressful. I’m pulling 14-hour workdays, sleeping very little, and eating very little.

Tired of Twitter? Join Me on Mastodon.November 15, 2022

The whole story coincides with the process of releasing a new version of the Mastodon software. You have to put a lot of focus into that. And then suddenly, you also have to deal with responding to press inquiries and running social media accounts to take advantage of the opportunity.

Despite the challenges, is it gratifying to see that Mastodon is where people turning away from Twitter have headed?

Yeah, it was good and gratifying at an objective level. I would love to just lean back and just enjoy the fact that so many new people are using Mastodon, like Stephen Fry. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to lean back and enjoy that. There has been an increase in funds due to all the new Patreon donations in the past 10 days, it’s been unprecedented.

What did you make of Elon Musk poking fun of Mastodon in a recent tweet?

Honestly, it was really a good thing for us. It’s free advertising, and he’s just making a fool of himself. I could barely see the screenshot because the screen was so dirty, but I think he was making fun of somebody having trouble posting after signing up.

Continue reading “People fleeing Twitter>.. The Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment”

Forward> The Case of Daniel Baker: Online Speech and Community Defense

On January 15th, 2021, two men received a knock on the door of their Tallahassee apartment from someone claiming to be delivering a Postmate parcel… Moments later, their door crashed open and a percussive grenade ignited as FBI swarmed in with guns drawn…

This was the arrest of US military veteran, YPG volunteer medic and instructor of yoga and jujitsu Daniel Baker on charges of inciting violence at Florida’s state capital. On October 12th, 2021, Dan Baker was sentenced to 44 months in Federal Prison for “interstate communication of threats” for his facebook posts and his militant anti-fascism, including his time fighting Daesh or ISIS in Rojava.

To Support Dan: see below Essay

********

Intro: We all live in a Story- a social and historical context we rarely think about. For instance that women, half of humanity, are still systematically discriminated and oppressed. Dan Baker has been studying in prison and here makes a brilliant attempt to frame a new HER-STORY.. read on, it could change your life.

HerStory

from Mongoose Distro Nov 2022 by Dan Baker via thefreeonline illustrations added

This essay is being written from prison. I am a political prisoner, which has made me strong in my convictions and allowed me to define myself and uproot patriarchal, racist, sexist, hierarchical, specieist and capitalist conditioning. But the programing has done damage deep within my mind, so I must struggle daily to change and grow in a more wholesome direction.

Herstory – by Dan Baker

Mongoose Distro – Contains material solely for the purpose of achieving breakdown of prison through disruption

I offer this self criticism, that I still regularly catch myself thinking and speaking from a sexist perspective.

For example my cell mate, a gay black man named Muhammad, tested me with a simple riddle, which I failed. His riddle went like this: “A boy and his father are in a car crash. The father dies. He is taken to a hospital but the doctors says ‘I cannot operate on this boy for he is my son!’ Who is the doctor?”

Obviously the doctor is the mother, but in my exhaustion at the end of a day of fitness exercises and stress in prison, I was assuming the doctor must be a man, as I thought it was a gay, progressive riddle. The riddle can be told with the mother dying in the car crash and the father being a nurse, a traditionally female role.

So I still have a lot of work to do, if sexist tendencies come out when I am tired. This shows the depth of the patriarchal conditioning of my childhood, and the years of work I must still put in as a man to overcome that.

Being a man I am fundamentally unfit to teach anyone about feminism, only women can teach us about feminism, and that is how I learned. This essay is part of my efforts to become a better man, a better member of my community, a better person in general, all gender aside, and to internalize and share what the brave and capable women of the YPJ have taught me.

I hope men who read this will pass these words on to other men and do their own research, write essays and send me a copy so we can grow together. I would love for women who read this to offer me criticisms and teach me more about feminism, and I also need to hear from all of the other genders and everyone in between each gender.

This work is incomplete until we have liberated transgender comrades, the full spectrum of gay friends and welcomed into the community everyone who does not easily fit into a male or female category.

All of our fates are bound up together, and a bundle of sticks will not be broken.

The purpose of this essay is to acknowledge that a war against women exists, to share Her Story and to motivate all conscientious people to support the perennial rage of women, the most oppressed population. The Women’s Revolution in Iran, Rojava, Haiti, North America and the Chiapas needs all our support and efforts.

In this essay I will draw on the writings of Abdullah Ocalan, Mikhail Bakunin, Voltairine de Cleyre, Sam Dolgoff, Louise Michele, Lucy Parsons, Ruth Kinna, Jeff Conant, Comandante Durito, Subcomandante Marcos, “Strangers in a tangled wilderness” (a collective),  Maxwell Schnurer, Pattrice Jones, Lynne Segal and Tom Wetzel, among others.

I am simply expropriating their beautiful thoughts, realizations and ideas to paint a broad picture. I take no credit for the progress they have forged for us. I do take responsibility for all the faults of this essay.

Recent events in Iran, Haiti, North America, Rojava and the Chiapas mountains have inspired me to raise my own hoarse voice. I am most deeply moved by the liberation struggles of women, vulnerable populations and animals.

All of these beings liberation are connected, as I will prove here shortly. This relates to the women’s struggles in Iran, and the Women’s Revolution is the foundation upon which all Revolutions are made.

The workers of the world will win or die depending on how well women and animals are liberated.

This essay will go in chronological order from ancient times to the present day struggles and explain why and how we resist patriarchy, support women and can win liberation for all beings in this lifetime, while creating the conditions for total liberation in the future.

In ancient times Neolithic society was based on women’s emotional intelligence, which is better developed than men’s analytical intelligence.

Women have a stronger bond to life, being creators, mothers and complex social beings. But women are more than sister, mother, daughter and lover, and all men have a responsibility to see each woman and other genders as more than these gendered labels- as members of the community, as professionals and comrades and defenders and so on.

Continue reading “Herstory – by Dan Baker”

For years I’ve been warning that by throwing away the opprtunity to destroy the nazis in 2014, when they were weak and disorganised, Putin had committed Russia to having to ultimately fight a major war against a NATOstani army in Ukranazi uniform.

Now the very same blowhard armchair generals – the Faker and Martyanov – who called me a “troll” for saying so, aver that upwards of 70% of Ukranazi frontline forces are NATO regulars in Ukranazi uniform.

The Last Days Of Ukranazistan LIV — Raghead The Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist

by Declan Hayes on November 21, 2022 at Strategic Culture via thefreeonline

Let’s take Kherson and FTX as two examples of NATO’s censorship of the hard and soft wars over Ukraine.

Let’s take Kherson and FTX as two examples of NATO’s censorship of the hard and soft wars over Ukraine. British and Irish state controlled media have shown hours of smiling citizens greeting their Ukrainian liberators in Kherson, just like they welcomed their “liberators” in 1941.

We’re Hunting Them Down and Shooting Them Like Pigs — Strategic Culture.” How Ukrainians are taking brutal revenge on the collaborators@

Scratching only a little further, we find that the spokesperson for those liberated Khersonians was the Kiev based head of a Nazi death squad, who had only recently arrived, along with the Azov “liberators” in Kherson.

@DenisRogatyuk, spokesperson for liberated Khersonians was the Kiev based head of a Nazi death squad, recently arrived, along with Azov “liberators” .

Further, by scrolling through Twitter, never mind Telegram, we come across countless incidents of Ukrainian liberators torturing and dispatching those accused of collaborating with Russia.

Though the mutilation and murder of Russians and other minorities has been a constant motif, British and Irish state media never deem it newsworthy, thanks in no small part to how the biased reporting of Norma Costello, Sally Hayden and countless other Lord and Lady Haw Haws has made the murder of Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Russian and Iraqi civilians at the hands of NATO’s proxies of no account whatsoever.

For me, and billions like me throughout the world, that partisan censorship, for which Julius Streicher and Lord Haw Haw were both hanged at War’s end, is grossly and criminally morally offensive beyond words.

Take next my own recent crime of posting a graphic of FTX’s criminal enterprises onto my Facebook timeline.

Continue reading “Fact Check Ukraine> / Proof how US Wars are Launder Scams to steal public money/”

on Nov 22, 2022 from Navdanya International at Children’s Health Defense. via thefreeonline

Corporations are exploiting the climate crisis to push costly, unproven and often dangerous technological fixes, but the real source of the crisis is really a symptom of the broader ecological crisis being perpetuated by an extractivist and profit-driven system.

Vendana Shiva: What’s Missing from Climate Debate

By Vandana Shiva, PhD Navdanya International […]

“The polluters are trying to use the crisis they have created, to make profits from pollution through tricks like ‘net-zero,’ increase the violence against the planet with geoengineering, and continue the violence against the earth and our bodies through ultraprocessed lab food.

[…]

Climate change is really ecological collapse

Time is critically running out for climate action. In a year when oil and gas companies will have hit historic record-high profits, with the sector set to close out the year at $4 trillion, and unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, Puerto Rico and Nigeria, the world is no closer to reducing climate emissions or remedying ecological destruction.

Many have now even begun to question the point of the yearly Conference of the Parties meetings, as according to the United Nations Environment Programme, even if current climate pledges are met in full, we would still see global heat rise above the 2.5 degrees Celsius (36.5 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold, leading us into further unprecedented climate chaos.

[…]

The climate emergency we are facing is part of several interlocking crises involving our health, our soils, ecosystems, our society and the biodiversity on the planet. It is a symptom of the broader ecological crisis being perpetuated by an extractivist and profit-driven system.

[…]

We cannot talk about climate change without addressing industrial food systems

The way we produce, consume, distribute food has a huge impact on the health of the planet, and hence climate.

[…]

Industrial agriculture and globalization have been one of the main reasons the Earth’s cycles have ruptured. Due to land use change, agrochemical pollution, monocultures, genetic ecocide, plastic contamination, fossil fuel use, long-distance transportation it is now one of the largest causes of planetary destruction.

It’s worth watching this commentary by Vandana Shiva. She calls out the ‘war on cash’, social credit systems, the WEF, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab and The Great Reset.

“If ever there was a time for humanity to wake up, now is the time.”

pic.twitter.com/iXnl3kZrHf

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 22, 2022

It has caused ecocide and biodiversity loss, soil desertification, erosion and contamination. It has caused mass water pollution all throughout the water cycle, greenhouse gas emissions and a rupture or imbalance of the nitrogen, water, methane and carbon cycle.

Continue reading “Vendana Shiva: How Big Capital is Hijacking desperate Climate/Biosphere Defense for obscene profits”