Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Yesterday, our mod team began receiving a number of reports about one of our users, who had repeatedly expressed criticism of #TheBadSpace. To the best of our knowledge, this exchange involved a series of comments on a thread about the prospects of collective, decentralized blocklists, followed by a post on their own timeline in which they called out The Bad Space, listed the instances participating as Sources for its rating system, and linked to an article on the subject that was critical of the project. The post framed Kolektiva's inclusion on The Bad Space list as an 'attack on our community', and could be reasonably construed as an effort to rally users to respond to this 'attack.'

While some members of our mod team were already familiar with the controversy around The Bad Space, and the litany of accusations of anti-Black racism and transphobia/transmisogyny associated with these debates, this understanding was not equally shared across our team. It should be mentioned that our moderation team is composed of volunteers who do our best to keep on top of the moderation load as best we can, when we can. Several times since 2020, we have been caught off-guard by a snowballing controversy that most of our active mods needed some time to learn about and properly understand.

In an effort to avoid further escalation and division, and to avoid contributing to a new wave of harassment of Black and trans Mastodon users, one of our mods temporarily froze and limited the #Kolektiva user's account yesterday. This was done to give our team time to all research the issue and discuss it collectively (because that is how Kolektiva operates, for better or worse).

The post calling out The Bad Space and its partipating Source instances has been removed for violating of our code of conduct - specifically our policy against targeted harassment.

We realize that people are going to be upset with Kolektiva actions. Unfortunately, we see that as fairly unavoidable in situations like this.

Members of the Kolektiva mod team share concerns about the potential abuse of power that stems from centralized block lists, and the way that these threats can be magnified by the personal biases of the instance moderators who are tasked with deciding who gets included on these lists. That said, we also fundamentally respect instance operators' right to decide who they want to federate with, and we understand and appreciate the important role that tools like The Bad Space play in seeking to address the very real oppression and harassment faced by marginalized communities on the fediverse. As anarchists, we understand these efforts as manifestations of the principles of autonomy and voluntary association.

As we research this issue further, we encourage people to reach out to members of our mod team to share past or current examples of anti-Black racism or transphobia related to this issue, particularly if you think it provides pertinent context to this current situation.

We thank people for their patience and support, and encourage everyone to avoid playing broken telephone and otherwise furthering divisions between already maginalized groups.

Finally, we refer people to our About section, and specfically to the sections on Targeted Harassment, and the headings SAFETY AND DANGER ON THE FEDIVERSE and DEFEDERATING FROM OTHER INSTANCES.

https://kolektiva.social/about

#FediBlockMeta #KolektivaMod

The pandemic really highlighted the correlation between essential jobs and low wage jobs

the 'use a password manager' stat (27% of respondents) is grim.

“Prop. E is an extension of the policies that were created that criminalized Black and brown communities by over-policing us, over-charging us and pushing us deeper into the cycles of incarceration,” @youngwomenfree's Lucero Herrera said. #NOPEonE https://missionlocal.org/2024/02/prop-e-foes-demonstrate-outside-y-combinator-hq/

The Kids Online Safety Act may have been revised, but it’s still a censorship bill. Student journalists are one of the groups it will censor. https://freedom.press/news/the-kids-online-safety-act-will-censor-student-journalists/

While some people might think that the Nginx/Freenginx CVE controversy has some hidden benefit to Russian intelligence, if you see a CVE for HTTP then you can seed where that bug sits. Putin on the risk.

#security #nginx

David Farrier today tells us of how Brian Houston, the rich pastor of Hillsong fundamentalist church, tweeted “Ladies and girls kissing” to his 10,000 followers this week. It seems he thought he was doing a google search, this fine upstanding Christian man who demonises gay people for their sin.
He then quickly deleted the tweet (but of course not before screen capture and replies) and 16 minutes later let everyone know ‘I seem to have been hacked’.

You couldn’t make this shit up.

Buying residents’ geolocation data? A swarm of police drones overhead? Robot dogs? San Francisco Police could pursue any of these and much more without accountability under Prop E, EFF’s Saira Hussain tells @reasonmagazine. #NOPEonE https://reason.com/2024/02/22/proposition-e-would-make-it-easier-for-police-to-surveil-san-francisco/

Reddit's S-1 filing makes it pretty obvious why it wants to go public -- net loss of $90 million last year and $160 million the year before. Also, there will be multiple voting shares of course, so even if you buy stock you will have zero say https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm

The indictment of journalist Tim Burke is bad news for press freedom. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-burke-indicted-tucker-carlson-fox-news-kanye-1234973771/

#Forgejo v1.21.6-0 was just released! This is a security release.

We strongly recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible. Read more in the companion blog post https://forgejo.org/2024-02-release-v1-21-6-0/.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

Be sure to check out our latest open positions. Currently we're looking for a Rust Developer and a Browser Software Engineer to join our team. 🌐 Work remotely from wherever you are in the world.
💬 Find out more and apply: https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/

For every hour the IRS audits those making more than $10 million, the agency is finding $13,000 of unpaid taxes, according to data in the fine print of a new government report.

There — now you know the real reason the GOP is trying to defund the IRS. https://www.levernews.com/sirotas-signals-yes-13-000-per-hour/

NEWS: I'm writing a new TOXIC AVENGER comic for Ahoy with art by Fred Harper. Back after 30 years—a hideously deformed story of superhuman size and strength!

Full story at Hollywood Reporter:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/new-the-toxic-avenger-comic-1235832395/

Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and SpaceX are all fighting in court to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional.

All three companies have a disgraceful history of worker abuse and union busting.

They can’t stop workers from organizing, so now they want to destroy the whole system.

Section 702 is up for renewal and now is our time to fight warrantless surveillance. Show your support and help EFF unplug big brother with one of our NSA Spying t-shirts: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/nsa-spying-shirts-are-back-just-time-tell-congress-reform-section-702

Solidarity continues for Peppy and Krystal.

Learn more about their case, donate if you can, and write to Peppy: freepeppyandkrystal.blackblogs.org

Free Peppy and Krystal! Free Em All!

This is a newspaper for conservatives who still want to be invited to big city parties. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/02/15/americas-assignment-editor/

I literally lol'd when I read that sentence. This whole article is wild. It's like the children's picture book version of geo-politics. I wonder if this guy still believes in the tooth-fairy too. Since when has the US ever shied away from supporting dictators? Ever heard of Saudi Arabia? And thinking that politicians care about democracy is just 😂

https://archive.is/43oIx#selection-1641.175-1641.326

The Age of Immorality; Foreign Affairs.

Looking over the NPR website this morning, you would never know a genocide was on-going. You would know that the Palestinians and Israelis are fighting, but aid is being dropped to the Palestinians, and both sides are using the bodies of the dead as bargaining chips. Reminds me of a poll from a decade ago or so that found that the people in the US worst informed about current events were people who got their news from FOX...followed closely by the NPR audience.