Matt Panhans @mpanhans@librem.one
Economist. Antitrust policy; industrial organization; history of economics
Joined Mar 2020
Matt Panhans
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Friendica is a free open source federated social network with a Facebook-style interface, and part of the Fediverse. You can follow the official blog at:
➡️ @news
The official site is at https://friendi.ca/
Some good up-to-date instances include https://libranet.de and https://squeet.me
Installation guide for self-hosting: https://friendi.ca/resources/installation/
The @fedilab app is compatible with Friendica accounts.
#Friendica #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Facebook #Alternatives #FOSS #FLOSS
Matt Panhans
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Matt Panhans
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I have some great news about Boston Public Schools and free software. You may know that my Co-op has been hosting some Boston Public School courses over the summer using free software.
Assessments of student progress shows that the teachers that stuck with BBB had better assessment scores for their students!! Especially the Math teachers. Scores were SIGNIFICANTLY higher by about 10-15 percentage points and it is believed that is because BBB allowed for student engagement more than Zoom did.
Matt Panhans
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Wanna help further convince the devs at DotsMesh to implement #ActivityPub and be part of the #fediverse?
Am mentioning 'further convince' because they're already quite positive. Their platform is at its early beginnings. Ideal to get the integration going at this stage, I'd say 😃
I've created an issue with some AP resources to get them going. Please if you like to see them on Fedi, give some love ❤️ to the issue and place your upvote or heart!
Matt Panhans
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Matt Panhans
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What's a good alternative to Google Forms?
Starting a new organisation called "Members For Cooperation Between Cooperatives".
The name explains it pretty well. The idea is especially to organise rank-and-file members of big and old consumer cooperatives to advocate for them to cooperate more with new, small worker cooperatives.
If you are interested in joining (it's free!) let me know :)
Experts with the Transition Integrity Project ran a simulation of Trump refusing to concede defeat in the 2020 election. Such a situation could get ugly. But one conclusion was the influence of Fox News and Facebook.
"These people [Murdoch and Zuckerberg] will hold the state of the republic in their hands, potentially."
This for me is the problem with FB. *No person* should have so much power. And that is why we need the Fediverse and a decentralized social web.
Matt Panhans
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I'm tired of social networks and want to read more through RSS.
So I suggest that we regularly share our favourite feeds with the tag #RSS. For each feed, we explain why we like it.
I start with https://hnrss.org/frontpage?points=100 which provides every news on HackerNews with more than 100 votes.
I like this feed because it allows me to have a quick glance at what is trendy in the tech world. I also sometimes found interesting read I would not have found otherwise.
@lightweight The connection I see is that the implication is the same: we need policies that go beyond antitrust, because breaking up big firms might only be a temporary reprieve. We ultimately need policies or movements that encourage innovation of new organizational forms.
@lightweight Thanks for sharing your blog! In short, I think it's spot on in characterizing a problem with corporations. The FSF article focuses on tech platforms, where issues of market dominance are especially pronounced bc of network effects and data barriers to entry. Breaking up with antitrust, however, doesn't really help. The market might just tip again to another platform. What is needed is a change in business model, and that's the connection to your post.
@nightpool@cybre.space @1br0wn @doctorow @cwebber But even if this happened, FB wouldn't play nice. If open social protocols had been established earlier, we could be in the equilibrium described in the article, with people on whatever social platforms they liked best. Instead we're stuck in this inferior equilibrium. But I think the transition cannot involve FB w/ its business model. We need to start from scratch. And I think the Fediverse is the most promising path to realizing that superior equilibrium.
@nightpool@cybre.space @1br0wn @doctorow @cwebber I've seen interoperability as a compelling tool to inject competition into tech platforms for a while. FB beat the competition in the early 2010s and was rewarded with profits; but today it is profiting because users are locked in. Interoperability would give users more ability to switch and multi-home to try new services. If this had been in place, I'm sure people would have switched from FB during #StopHateForProfit. But it's hard to coordinate that move.
Matt Panhans
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Matt Panhans
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@lightweight I work in antitrust and sometimes related to tech issues, and I also agree that this resonates. Antitrust is just one tool, and it has some uses, but there remain some fundamental problems it cannot fix
Matt Panhans
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The problem with this whole Epic/Apple/Google debacle is I'm having trouble telling which multi-billion-dollar corporation truly has the best interests of me, the consumer, at heart.
Matt Panhans
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Here's a photo displaying all the government-funded inventions that Apple compiled into its devices, which subsequently everyone clapped at saying "look what the free market did!":
Matt Panhans
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Together with Europe's largest hosting provider @ionos_cloud, we bring you a near-instant deployment of Nextcloud, providing secure document exchange and collaboration, audio/video chat, calendar and email and more! Get started today!
https://nextcloud.com/ionos/
Matt Panhans
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There is no scenario in which a user of Instagram should expect to have biometrics gathered.
We must stop victim blaming people, as done in comments and posts about the Instagram situation.
This violation of trust is solely in the hands of #Instagram / #Facebook and all actors involved in the illegal gathering of biometric data.
Working together to fight those that illegally invade #privacy is a path to victory.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/instagram-accused-of-harvesting-data/
Matt Panhans
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In case you missed it, I wrote a little something about the Small Web on Friday.
What’s the Small Web?
Exactly.
Read on… ;)
Economist. Antitrust policy; industrial organization; history of economics
Joined Mar 2020
