Gonna Re-Share this resource… PLEASE forward to individuals who may need it! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/digital-security-and-privacy-tips-those-involved-abortion-access

And Jellyfin has third party music player apps for android and IOS.

Jellyfin’s the way to go IMO, screw Plex and their constant BS.

MIT≠FOS

GNU is Free and forever free software… MIT not so much.

https://fossbytes.com/open-sources-license-type/

Point being, any forks of GNU will have a free version available, MIT carries no such limitation… making it a corpo favorite.

You can call it open source, but Free and Open source is questionable.

Any “Decentralized” Solution that is not F.O.S. free and opensource was never “Decentralized” at all.

When your platform advertises itself as decentralized, and a simple “host bluesky instance” search results in articles telling you to join the main instance’s waiting list… that sounds too stupid for me to give them the time of day.

I am surprised anyone uses or takes them seriously.

This is very true, I have hosted my own email before and if you are doing it yourself and not going through a big player like google to host it then your stuff sometimes gets treated as suspect by filters. Used to beg people with Gmail accounts to flag my emails as “not spam” whenever it showed up in the spam folder.

True, if they integrate with federation in good faith it won’t matter that much for those not using them. But until we see what they do I won’t hold my breath on Facebook doing something in good faith.

Both memmy and mlem have been great in their own ways thus far. Both are in testflight and getting regular updates, in addition to the news about sync there is also news about another new one called artemis that is aiming to be apollo styled.

This is true, and line is king in Japan and yet I believe the most common third party messenger app in the US is Facebook messenger despite its obvious flaws. Why, because it has more features than sms, and most people already have an account.

No matter which way you slice it, companies that can profit off communication will try to wall off their market share. Which is one of the things the fediverse aims to cure.

True, but if GDPR has taught us anything… smaller firms will bend over backwards to comply and the largest ones will make cutouts, bend the rules and treat fines like fees to play. I think having the law in the US would be the best way to protect US citizens. In addition, I think it would be able to have more teeth being the country where a lot of these companies were founded and most importantly where they bank.

Alternatively, imagine a world where the US government passed a “privacy bill of rights” and also required online platforms to be freely interchangeable via open protocols like ActivityPub.

Won’t happen any time soon, and if you ask why, go read !news@beehaw.org for a little bit and come back.

Important not from that article:

It’s not the first time we’ve seen big tech companies attempt to trademark common terms or goods. However, a study by the Tech Transparency Project found that Apple filed more trademark oppositions over a three-year period than Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook combined.

If you think trademarking of common terms is a bad thing at all, apple seems to be the worst among big tech firms.

P.S. this “Android Authority” article put apple in the correct light in my opinion after reading it, and I use a lot of Apple products.

It isn’t even their logo, they are trying to copyright images of apples.

“We have a hard time understanding this, because it’s not like they’re trying to protect their bitten apple,” Fruit Union Suisse director Jimmy Mariéthoz was quoted as saying by the outlet. “Their objective here is really to own the rights to an actual apple, which, for us, is something that is really almost universal… that should be free for everyone to use.”

Well think of the iMessage example for a second, other phone manufactures wanted to extend upon SMS with RCS to enable cross-platform read-receipts, better image quality on messages, and more… and you can use RCS between various android phones, but apple has not yet adopted RCS. Then because of the pre-existing market share of iPhones being so high, if you want read-receipts, high quality image messages, and more you with most of your contacts will either have to convince all of your friends and loved ones to use a third party app or cave and get an iPhone.

The features don’t have to be revolutionary, they just have to find ways to flex their market share with their features. And their market share is almost destine to be huge if they put any meaningful effort or money behind it.

I think among other issues would be the Gmail-ification and iMessage-ification of the fediverse. What I mean by that is open standards like email are dominated today by many people using Gmail accounts as it is popular, “free”, and comes with a ton of features. Then google started “walling off their garden” by adding features that only work between gmail accounts. Similarly, apple also took the open standard SMS and started adding on features only available between other iPhones.

What we might see is some of the coolest features the fediverse has ever seen, but it will come at the cost of most users ignoring or dealing less with “irrelevant” things not on meta ran instances.

Hope we can resist such a change, but that is what I am concerned about.

Here is a crazy idea, Pay Workers A Livable Wage and price goods accordingly… that is the easiest step forward as I would be tempted to ask for more because profits are unpaid wages.

Very true, the fascist playbook they ARE using is pretty simple. Find a marginalized community, vilify and lie about them, and push them out of public life. The more marginalized they make said community, the easier it is for them to justify more Draconian ways they can treat them.

UPS workers, along with all workers, unquestionably deserve a fair share, if not the entirety, of the value they generate for their employers. Unfortunately, our existing systems often fall short in recognizing this fundamental principle. However, one powerful recourse available to them is the exercise of their rights as workers and union members through strikes. The strike is commonly regarded as the union’s most potent tool, akin to a muscle that atrophies if left dormant. To forge a better future, we must actively encourage greater union participation and urgently pass the PRO Act to safeguard workers’ rights.

Daniel Ellsberg’s life serves as a stark reminder that the US government is not impervious to deception and propaganda, particularly when it comes to combating socialism, even when it goes against the wishes of the majority. Ellsberg, a former military analyst, exposed the lies and cover-ups surrounding the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret government study. His brave act revealed a pattern of misinformation employed by those in power to justify military actions and suppress socialist movements. Ellsberg’s actions highlight the importance of critical thinking and holding government accountable, reminding us that even democratic institutions are susceptible to manipulation and distortion of truth.