social.wildeboer.net is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Mastodon instance for people with Wildeboer as their last name

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IMHO: If you want to fight (proto-)fascism and centralised, authoritarian regimes by relying on centralised infrastructure that can be blocked/outlawed/spied upon by said regime, you are doing it wrong, IMHO. Decentralised solutions, while coming with a more demanding learning curve, have proven to be far more resilient and sustainable. So have your fun on Bluesky, TikTok etc while you organise resistance here :)

(and please ignore the obvious troll in the replies that tries to tell you I'm not to be taken serious because I have a job)

Read the whole thing:
"Protect your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one. Read Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that. Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others, the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi. It is."

theguardian.com/commentisfree/.

The Guardian · How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth worldBy Carole Cadwalladr

@jwildeboer I remember talking about these things as part of "computational literacy" discussions/interviews with several journalists (non-political) in the UK, who almost exclusively thought I'm a nutcase framing my understanding of the term also from that bigger POV... The way I see it is that having grown up in the GDR, I'd developed more of a sensitivity to these issues from an early age (hidden antenna on the balcony, illegally listening to RIAS Berlin radio, watching western TV only under headphones so that Stasi neighbors wouldn't hear...). In my experience, people who grew up in western countries and only ever knew clichés/propaganda of the East just often had (still have) a far too blue-eyed belief in their systems and their inherent supposed benevolence...

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@toxi Yes, many people in the western world grew up being told that The Government was good and though some corrupt elements existed, that would be solved. Many could never imagine how even well meant systems can be abused to turn against those they are supposed to protect. That blind eye can have real and dangerous consequences. I am not a doom person. But I notice, similar to you, maybe a bit earlier when things move in a wrong direction.

@jwildeboer Couldn't have said it better! More widespread awareness, education and application of privacy & autonomy-related tools, topics/methods are such an important part of how these systems (democracies) can/must be kept/made more honest. Instead, the framing of "nothing to hide, not a problem" has largely taken over to erode these efforts, with large demographics actively choosing temporary convenience, also fueled by the promise to glean some benefit nuggets from network effects of these centralized platforms... As long as this attitude doesn't change, we all are stuck to some extend. Especially for the self-employed, artists, crafters, etc. participation in these platforms is often somewhat mandatory and directly linked to livelihood. But I also do think a first/interim step of cutting the cord to these platforms is to start diversifying. None of this has to be a zero sum game (not for people/users, at least)...

@toxi I also have a Linkedin account for job related things. But I am very aware of what I post there. Here I am a private person (that doesn't really hide anything). My instance is configured to auto-delete posts after a few days, which obviously won't stop an adversary to follow me and store everything I say in their own archive. So I participate in the online world but I am very aware of the risks of abuse. For the real private stuff I mostly rely on pen and paper. And Signal :)