@wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 1w ago

YouTube refusing to show ads for the #Musk documentary is a very bad sign. Everybody thinks that when the TV networks and streamers bend the knee, FCC dissidents like Kimmel or Colbert can just put it up on YouTube. That's not going to last. Also YouTube is obviously going to be the last of the big video networks standing when the dust settles. Competition among the billionaires is a joke. Y'all better start fighting to make #owncast and #peertube matter like yesterday.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4w ago

How about we switch out Soldier Field and the Museum of Science and Industry? Finally get MSI onto the museum campus and let the #ChicagoBears truly become the Monsters of the Midway. They can build what they want in a good location in Chicago and near the lake. #Chicago #NFL

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Most people want to have private online conversations. Some also want to post publicly. I get wanting to be able to use the same account for both but trying to let everyone do so seems to be creating more problems than it solves. Lots of confusion and anger and a ton of effort to build more nuance and moderation capacity into the tools we already have and need to keep somewhat simple to encourage adoption. Perhaps build on #matrix and #ActivityPub separately. Have users list both accounts.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Mastodon@mastodon.social I don't get thinking of servers as a community, except to the degree something like the fans of a podcast start a server to talk to each other AND figure out the fedi. but communities are insular and that's the opposite of interoperability. and everybody will soon have friends off server that they feel like are part of their community. a server shares mod policy. in order to avoid centralization, when no other sensible division makes sense, let's separate servers by locality.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Sorry I want more information about the research #Fauci was involved in and how the government made decisions in response to #Covid. But I also hate that algo media means pumping empty conspiracies brings in attention that can be turned into political power and profit.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

The reason corporate platforms and algos are winning is because we do not boost enough. Lots of creators now know those places suck, but they get attention there. It's a trade-off. imo they'd give up a lot of that attention if it wasn't like 1/10th of the time that you liked something, you shared it publicly. But instead let's say half. C'mon people. Boost long videos, podcasts and articles. Even links to books and movies. Not just pics and short posts and clips. #SocialWeb #DemocracyOfReach

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce@mastodon.social @kaspi@rollenspiel.social sit in a bar with a Nazi. he's talking quietly with friends. when they get too loud, the bartender tells them to quiet down and they do. everybody at the bar has a nice night. vs the Nazi refuses to be quiet and the bartender does nothing and normies leave and it becomes a Nazi bar. vs the Nazi refuses to be quiet and gets kicked out. vs the Nazi never gets loud but you go tell him to GTFO not cause you heard him across the room but you just don't want him there. then what?

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social afaik Trump doesn't even enforce e-verify because wealthy business owners don't want him to. unless they can get robots to do it or enforce some kind of near or actual slavery, this isn't going to happen.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 1mo ago

We talk about fedi instead of mastodon because we understand the difference matters. consider who on #bluesky focuses attention on the company instead of the ATmosphere and what effect that is having on millions of users who never think about decentralization. especially the people who work for the company but claim they are really there because of higher ideals, not getting paid.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

An actual sexual assault is much worse than everything that has come out before. So far there's no reason to think she is lying. So it probably did happen and he shouldn't be the candidate even though I like his professed politics. But this never should have been a concern of people outside of Maine. And Dems there loved him. It's also just really stupid that they have RCV but use it poorly. He should be 1 of 5 viable candidates right now, not the only Dem/left option. #GrahamPlatner

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

This is very useful re hashtags on fedi. When I click on one, I want to see everything by everyone on fedi that isn't blocked by myself or my server. Like I imagine that I'm seeing every post by visiting a subreddit. Sorted reverse chronological. All recent conversations on that subject. I assume that's what most here want, but I know some definitely do not. And I know it's very difficult to do on a not-even-that-huge-yet decentralized network. #SocialWeb #hashtags https://tag-federation.online/

How Widely Do Hashtags Federate?

See how far a Mastodon hashtag spreads: compare how many tagged posts different servers can actually see.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

AI will tell you that Zeus isn't real but when asked about God, it responds "that's a personal question". #atheism

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

This isn't just true of AIs. Algos are enough. We change based on what we pay attention to. The 20th century was all about letting big media owners decide. The fedi lets us decide together. While social media with algos promises the computers will do so in order to serve us best, they are owned by biased humans. Consider how many negative posts about them you've seen go viral.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social let me strongly disagree re the big audience. imo that's the entire point of decentralized social media. the entire world as our audience is the goal. for everyone to participate in deciding what info, ideas and art deserves attention. to steal that power back from the wealthy, the owners of mass media and social media platforms and advertisers. being public with boosts is what's special here. forums etc imo should be called social networking. vital but they serve a different purpose.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

James Brown: Jonathan Lethem Rolling Stone Story With Godfather of Soul via @wallabag@fosstodon.org https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/being-james-brown-rolling-stones-2006-story-234764/?print=true

rollingstone.com

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Lazarou@mastodon.social imo the Nazi bar analogy only holds where algos exist and unwanted tagging (replies etc) isn't moderated. where decent people can be bothered till they leave, even if that just means being forced to overhear crap. the web is full of horrible sites we almost never visit. horrible people we rarely notice share our streets. we have processes in place to limit exposure, while not exiling them. we can do the same here. now he is bombarded by Elon and never sees my anti MAGA posts etc.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Lazarou@mastodon.social @gabboman there should be one decentralized social media network with everyone on it, like the web. but also where pushing yourself into feeds, like spam, isn't tolerated. ultimately, it can't be X or bluesky cause those both won't really be decentralized ever. my brother is MAGA. I'm sure most of us have family that wouldn't be treated well here if they honestly expressed themselves and boosted stuff they liked, even if they weren't intentionally bothering anyone. that has to change.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Being a jerk on social media is a negative to weigh against a candidate's possibly great policy positions. But our stupid media environment makes being a jerk a path to the attention needed to run in the first place. And our stupid electoral system means voters usually have few other options to vote for anyway, without supporting a spoiler candidate. If you want less dirtbags, make the media and the electoral systems better. cc @aselrod.bsky.social https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-dirtbags-wont-save-us/

Liberal Currents

The Dirtbags Won’t Save Us

There is no path out of our present crisis offered by the exaltation of callousness.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to on www.threads.net

@mosseri fully fucking federate.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

I can't think of anything else right now except that I just created an #APnative article using #ghost. How to explain what that points to for the future of social media but really all of how we determine together what deserves attention. Which has huge civic and cultural implications. I'm just stuck. #SocialWeb

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Group chats are not part of social media. It's not microblogging, it's our social news feed. We're thinking about this all wrong. Until we focus more on the boosts, the algos will keep growing and driving people away while big money continues to dominate public attention, debasing our culture and civics. #SocialWeb

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

Replying to on threads.net

@jdickerson love this. only wish you weren't on Substack. there are alternatives like #ghost. and the fedi instead of threads...

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@fediforum@mastodon.social how do people interact online? imo they either talk to people they know or try to get public attention. social networking vs social media. these two goals usually take different tech and norms. both can and should be done without the abuse that arises out of a search for profit without the taming influences of competition (made possible by decentralization and interoperability) and proper regulation. fedi is built to be big but dominated by people who want it to be small.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

We have access to infinite information, opinions and art. But what shapes our culture and civics is what we pay attention to. While that's somewhat a function of life experiences and education, it's mainly what gets pushed at us and whether we're willing and able to pay any possible fee to consume the digital work. That's the focus of #DemocracyOfReach. Independent creation, distribution and consumption. We decide together what goes viral. Creators get fairly paid, directly and automatically.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social some things are more valuable than others, like the wheel over previous tech. we should spread it out of our concern for public interest. I'd say the same regarding a business that does good work etc. the problem is when that spread is biased for some reason. paid to say it or they are related etc. I'd say it's also bad when the method of spreading the info biases which messages get spread. but also yes, most things are more subjective. and human value should not be judged this way.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@fedify@hackers.pub is it possible to make your site readable with @wallabag@fosstodon.org? It's the best #ReadItLater app. imo the fedi's killer app is in being the attention layer for independent media.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@tchambers@indieweb.social and all I'm saying is that these differences matter and while I want full interoperability, it matters which protocol is most widely adopted. imo the full view of the network as available in the bluesky app view is great, but there's a centralization cost if this continues. as you wrote in your updated article about fedi sins, we're making progress. I wish more AT people were helping with that instead.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@tacticalgrace.justtesting.org @masnick.com attention is the battleground. decentralized social media is our weapon. unless we think about it this way and value the goal of collective democratic control over how we all understand society, I fear our technological choices and a lack of support from public interest groups, won't get us there.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

The Speech (2007) via @wallabag@fosstodon.org #Obama https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2007/the-speech/

chicagomag.com

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Does #MAGA know that #AndrewTate raped #LaurenSouthern? I've found that the best way to push back on their bullshit is to get them to think about the mistreated that they otherwise don't care about, as their own family. The empathy that their favorite celebrities somehow shut off, gets flipped back on. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/andrew-tates-empire-of-abuse

newyorker.com

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

The Freedom of Value - How Value-for-Value Fixes the Monetization of Information | dergigi.com [imo we need a fedi fiat not crypto] via @wallabag@fosstodon.org https://dergigi.com/2021/12/30/the-freedom-of-value/

dergigi.com

The Freedom of Value - How Value-for-Value Fixes the Monetization of Information | dergigi.com

How #Bitcoin and #Value4Value fixes the monetization of information.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

#Iran is communicating through #telegram.

How about governments instead run their own websites that support #ActivityPub and allow for their public statements to be boosted to the world without any intermediaries involved?

Somehow we've devolved back to AOL keywords.

liberal.city

Liberal City

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

"Capitalism’s biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action."

#economics #capitalism

https://evonomics.com/how-capitalists-corrupt-capitalism/

liberal.city

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@kaspi@rollenspiel.social you should feel as bothered by someone saying that stuff on fedi as you do about all the horrible websites that exist. without algos and when nobody is tagged and it's posted on a server you're not on, it should be completely ignorable. we don't try to police the web in the way we do fedi, otherwise I'd be unable to browse nice sites cause I also browse bad sites (my server is blocked because of which other servers I federate with).

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social fine, I'm an attention algo hater. And I recognize that radio and TV stations are such an algo. In a sense, those institutions are algos too. It comes back to increasing how many people decide what we pay attention to. That's what early humans with a word of mouth experience had. We all collectively decided what info, ideas and art to pass on. Mass media, now also algo media, where fewer people decide for many, is the problem. Biases what can go viral in culture. Fedi can fix it.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@paninid@mastodon.world vs competing companies that often hate them?

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 1w ago

Replying to

@not2b@sfba.social hmm, interesting. got the link?

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@tchambers@indieweb.social wouldn't having half or more of the web on Gopher made for a worse web and helped prolong the dominance of AOL etc? sorry but that's how I see it. And of course the people who came late to the party with VC backing are playing nice. they always do, until they outlast the competitors and don't fear what users will do when they enshittify. it doesn't matter how nice their team is, they will get moved out as necessary. the app view is nice but it naturally centralizes network power.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 4mo ago

This is why the middle class can't get ahead

via @wallabag@fosstodon.org

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/middle-class-cant-get-ahead

This is why the middle class can't get ahead

PBS News

This is why the middle class can't get ahead

Billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer explains why today's middle class is feeling stuck, how that hurts the whole economy and what President Obama can do about it -- with a stroke of his executive pen.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

"Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads." shouldn't everybody want to instead say something like "Follow the New York Times Opinion section at @opinion@nytimes.social." instead? I'll never understand how these enormous media entities haven't already banded together to control their social media fates. they have the power together. how long did it take for them to give up on AOL keywords and create their own websites? But it's inevitable, right?

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@alice@lgbtqia.space @ricci@discuss.systems imo this reply perfectly encapsulates the two main perspectives on fedi and the history here. community vs attention. small vs big fedi. I want old school Twitter but better and think I see how AP can be used to build that and prevent it from ever being lost again, but understand that what I want is almost exactly what the earliest users and developers here wanted to avoid. it's tough.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social so we have different goals. thus different definitions of success. I'm much less interested in my own reach or perhaps finding personal connections. I'll probably never be happy based on my own stats, but would be very happy with very few followers if when people thought and talked about social media, they meant fedi. imo that would be good for society.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@resuna@ohai.social @benroyce@mastodon.social @kaspi@rollenspiel.social Any conservative opinion posted here is likely to get you widely called a Nazi and harassed and blocked, maybe your entire server. but yes imo there is a difference.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@mackuba@martianbase.net do you have stats on how many are using non bluesky app views?

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social I'm an algo hater. I do NOT like the recommendations in YouTube, Spotify etc either. Basically commercialism, but ultimately it's other people determining what we pay attention to, like an ad. That's bad individually but very bad at a societal level, letting others decide that for the masses. While the owners might disagree, this allows them to push their worldview on us. User controlled algos are ok but will probably get corrupted. Reverse chrono is an algo like atheism is a religion.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce@mastodon.social @kaspi@rollenspiel.social I don't believe that the majority of people here want a fedi where expressing shitty opinions or boosting stuff many don't like, means it's ok to be harassed or exiled. or maybe the majority here does feel that way, but then we will never grow. which they are probably ok with, but it means the vast majority of people can't use social media or will be on platforms with algos where they get bombarded with horrible propaganda.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@resuna@ohai.social @benroyce@mastodon.social @kaspi@rollenspiel.social neither do I. that's one user getting banned from a quasi private space. what I'm concerned about is a fedi norm that supports harassment and fediblocks for opinions deemed somewhere on the conservative spectrum. for entire servers with a few users who post like that. sometimes for entire servers that federate with such servers. and while this might have personal benefit, it leads to us staying small and bad places growing. at least everyone can connect over there.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@resuna@ohai.social @benroyce@mastodon.social @kaspi@rollenspiel.social the Dem party that mostly loves killing brown foreigners? I think having shitty opinions about foreign policy which leads to mass murder is worse than opinions on trans sports but go on fedi. my view is that the view doesn't matter if you aren't pushing it on anyone. I want to talk to Zionists here. etc etc. Nazi is the term of art here. have you ever seen someone use it too broadly and people rush in to defend the conservative? they'd get punched too.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@rolle@mementomori.social imo fedi is not a platform but an attention layer for the open web. the web let everyone speak (make a post available to everyone) but that didn't mean anybody would know it existed. we still require other media systems to tell people the site etc exists. so we had universal (relatively) freedom of speech. everybody using fedi provides #DemocracyOfReach. we each decide whether the item deserves a boost or not. like we had as cavemen with word of mouth, but faster. no middlemen matters.

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william ⁂ maggos @wjmaggos@liberal.city

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Tho99@mendeddrum.org that's very cool but they could instead form a more closed group using lots of other tools, like #matrix. still uses FOSS decentralized tech. using fedi for this brings up two problems imo. few people are part of one community. so you'd have to choose or have multiple personal accounts, something we're kinda trying to avoid. a norm of loose moderation on fedi is good for attention/growth (what many news fans want here), but bad for tight communities. getting that wrong hurts both.

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