Politics and News

Politics and News

Social Media is Dead, Long Live Social Media

Ramen Junkie 1Comment

And other Hyperbolic click baity headlines.

Two articles today.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/

And

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unprecedented-growth-Facebook-blocks-links-to-Instagram-alternative-Pixelfed-10237928.html

Basically, Mastodon, the Federated Open Source client for microblogging is shifting itself to be a not for profit company. John Mastodon os no longer in control. Or, he won’t be. These things apparently take a few months to do. Tangentially related, its picture centric counterpart Pixelfed, has experienced unprecedented growth. I saw one post where a Pixelfed instance was no longer allowing Instagram importing and Facebook is apparently blocking links to Pixelfed.

Both of these moves are very good for the internet as a whole, but they also feel very much sparked by Facebook’s recently policy changes. Basically, as part of its push to bown down to the incoming administration, Zuck has shown his true colors and rolled out a new policy that fact checking is no longer a thing on Facebook. Instead it will rely on “user notes.” At the same time, and more maliciously, they also changed their policies around hate speech, with specific exceptions around calling out LGBTQ people as being mentally disabled. Basically, you can’t get banned anymore for hate speech against the LGBTQ crowd.

This pretty much aligns with the plans of the incoming administration to start stripping away people’s rights as rapidly as possible, starting with transgender folks, probably pushing through on gay marriage and gay rights, and eventually layering on top a good helping of removing women’s autonomy from US society.

With the destruction facts and reality on Twitter, and now Facebook, basically, propaganda and lies are set to take over. We already saw it on Twitter.

This change isn’t the only anti-LBGTQ thing happening on Facebook. They renamed (one report said removed, one renamed) some of the Pride themes on Messenger to be more generic (Example, I want to say the lesbian pride was now “rustic sunrise” or something). I also saw some people suggest they had had various pride based badging removed from their username and profiles.

I do feel like its a bit more though, than just the new policies. But I am sure that is a lot of it. I don’t use Instagram really anymore, the algorithm has destroyed my interest in that platform, but I follow the Instagram subreddit. In the past few months, there have been a massive influx of accounts and people being randomly banned from the platform by the new AI based moderation system. It doesn’t really tell why either. Just the vague, “violation of site policy.”

So, it does seem there are still ways to get banned, but just not for LGBTQ hate speech.

Not to be overtaken by Twitter and Facebook, WordPress, has also been making a huge stink for its users lately. Its much less in the came of hate speech, but more in the area of, “Their CEO is just being a weird, petty whiney bully.” There is some sort of feud going on between WordPress and something called WPEngine, which is apparently a popular WP host, but I had never heard of it before this recent events. Like I said, it all seems very petty. Like the log in form for WordPress had a checkbox that said, “I am not affiliated with WPEngine for a bit. When people complained it was changed to “Pineapple on Pizza is good.” There have been other similar incidents.

I have been mostly ignoring it from apathy, but lately, it feels like WP just wants to bring in and potentially monetize the shit out of everything, and its got me seriously considering changing my blog platform, despite that I am hosting the software on my own VPS. I have been looking at doing some sort of static site system for a while, its starting to really feel like its time to be serious.

Politics and News

Vote By Mail Should Be Standard

Ramen Junkie 1Comment

Something I feel like I take for granted a bit is just how good my state handles everything election wise. And it’s politics in general, for the most part. I mean, like everywhere it’s full of nuts in the rural areas, but overall, it’s traditionally just been a “safe” state.

One thing that I love that is newer is vote by mail. This started back in 2020 because of COVID of course. I mean, maybe it was an option before, but it was made extremely easy in the 2020 election. Previously, like many others, I would go down to my local polling place, often at like 6:30 in the morning before there was a line and before work, fill out a sheet, stick it in a machine, and vote. I tried to vote every year, at least in November, but not always in things like Primaries.

One option when they started the initial vote-by-mail push, was basically, “sign me up for every future election”.

And this has been sooooo nice. I get ballots for every election, even off-year and off-month elections. I have no excuse not to vote at all now, the only real previous excuse being, “I didn’t know there even was an election.” Which feels like an excuse often counted on by some folks with unpopular asshole-type views on issues. It’s less of a problem for my state because we run things properly and fairly. But occasionally I see news stories about some sort of shitty law that pushes some conspiracy tier referendum or whatever but it’s on the odd year early April election that like 4 people normally show up for, instead of on the ballot during a year divisible by 4 (Presidential elections), when many many people vote and can weigh in on the idea.

That’s just one reason to push ballots out to every eligible voter.

And they really should just go out to every eligible voter. Because so many people don’t vote, and they really should. I can only imagine part of the reason is the inconvenience of actually going and doing it. Or maybe people are simply unable due to disability or other health reasons. They don’t know that these options are available, so just, provide it for them automatically.

Another likely hang-up is the whole “I don’t know who to vote for” problem. I already know who I am (and am not) voting for, so I sent my ballot back the day after I received it. I didn’t have to though, I could have held on to it and spent over a month researching every name on the ballot to make sure I vote for the right people.

I did do this as well. Ballots often have a lot fo local offices, and very often have these “Should this judge remain in office” questions. How many people can even name one judge, let alone know if they are a decent judge or a decent person. With the at-home mail-in voting, I could easily look up every judge on the ballot and decide if I thought they should keep their job or not. I had one candidate that is a piece of shit Nazi quoter and should not be in office at all, but they are running unopposed, so I went looking for possible write-in candidates for that office.

It also takes all of the time pressure off. I’m not awake at 6:30am standing in a little booth in a room full of strangers trying to fill out the sheet so I can go back home and finish getting ready for work. I have all day, all week, all month. It’s even better than making election day a National Holiday, which some have suggested. It already really should be a week-long affair, but why not just make it simple and last a month with mail-in ballots.

Of course, there are a myriad of reasons why this isn’t happening everywhere. You can’t have a media spectacle horse race if it isn’t all focused on a single day. Another major factor is that if everyone actually voted, there are some parties in this country that would never win elections at all without pulling up from their myriad of incredibly shitty stances on various issues. There is probably some potential for more actual voter fraud, if you send ballots to every eligible voter, how do you know that particular voter filled them out and not their abusive spouse or parent? How do you know they aren’t a mostly comatose 99-year-old and their kid used their ballot? That sort of thing.