Thatz your sharpnez! Thatz your powa!

I’m really happy for Eugen’s success, and am grateful for his essential contribution to widespread adoption of the ActivityPub protocol, even though I don’t agree with him on a lot of things.

I think it was honest for him to acknowledge Google’s role in sidelining the XMPP protocol, and while I don’t want to quibble about the other mitigating factors, I do take issue with him comparing the trajectory of ActivityPub with SMTP with the visible adoption and mutually assured destruction of major corporations in maintaining email’s nominal interoperability.

If people haven’t read it yet, they should check out (already Fedi-famous for his article on Enshittification) Cory Doctorow’s article Dead Letters – about how it is impossible for even a well-known public figure with access to the best server infrastructure and technical know-how to run a small private email server hosting completely legal content serving nothing resembling spam in the age of Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Outlook. There are several ways that federating with Meta can kill this movement, and ActivityPub becoming the new email is one of them.

Basically, if we allow Meta, BlueSky, and Twitter to federate, the very network effects Eugen mentions make it more valuable for them to federate with each other than any smaller server. Predictably they will underfund moderation staff who make errors or their faulty algorithms automatically de-federate smaller servers due to false-flagging spam. Small operators will have to work harder and harder until it is basically impossible for them to overcome the error or fix the problem and re-federate. Eventually small groups that aren’t directly sponsored by one of the giants will be weeded out, as their users migrate to more reliable services. Even if the disconnections and undelivered messages are not the fault of the sysops, they will be scapegoated, and eventually more and more will throw up their hands and leave the rigged game.

While having a protocol you championed become the defacto web standard may feel like a great accomplishment, the Fediverse will never be a “Social Web” until the tools we use to communicate are incapable of being taken from us by corporations. Eugen’s vision of a social media ecosystem where any small developer can write a platform and have access to the entire ActivityPub network is at odds with his enthusiasm for the emailification of ActivityPub.

There are social obstacles to building the “Social Web” and as good as the Activity Pub protocol is, the true technical solution is Solidarity.

Whoops, already posted.

It’s an instance of Invidious, which does not use ActivityPub. Invidious is software you can host to portal to YouTube while preventing most of google’s ability to track and advertise.

Sorry, my mistake. It feels like the recent flare up was more recent.

Big ups for Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians. Great book.

I think it’s great that you’re such a big fan of Amy Schumer that you’ve endorsed her terrible take on this. I can’t say I’m that big a fan, but I love some of her comedy. Her realistic military game sketch is a great bit.

I’m not arguing or debating with you. That’s not what I’ve done, and I won’t do it. I’m talking past you.

while glorifying the other

I hope everyone who reads your words can recognize that you’re mischaracterizing my statements, and acting in bad faith. Anyone who encounters this exchange can use it as evidence that you are not worth serious engagement.

I don’t think you’re as dense as you pretend to be. But for anyone deceived by straw-manning and performative confusion used as a rhetorical trick, let me be clear.

Using human shields has a specific an codified meaning; all humanitarian organizations who have investigated Hamas or any other Palestinian defense organization have found no evidence of this war crime. International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm.

Killing civilians is wrong. It is wrong when Hamas does it, it is therefore much more wrong when Israel, which has more resources and claims moral superiority, does it on a much larger scale, not just through retaliation bombings the last few weeks, but from before the seige of Gaza going back to the Nakba - massacring civilians, assisting their allies in massacring civilians, poisoning wells, using siege tactics to create an open-air prison and starvation conditions in Gaza, murdering activists, protesters, and journalists by the dozens. In their most obscene moments Israel has murdered children playing on a beach near a hotel populated by international journalists, and protected those murderers with their highest courts, but even more insidious is the culture of arbitrary detention and imprisonment of palestinian children. Not only does the IDF show complete disregard for Palestinian life when choosing their bombing targets, the inhabitants of Gaza rely on potable water and electricity from Israel – and now the Israeli authorities have them cut off. They have built an apartied system, and have engaged in collective punishment.

[Graph demonstrating the difference in scale of civilian deaths by the IDF and the lopsided human toll the Palestinian people have paid over the conflict]

As a commenter living in the west, my opinion has little influence on the tactics of Islamic authoritarians. Israel is much more sensitive to western public opinion. We are complicit with Israel’s crimes if we do not resist.

Hamas has little in common with the French Resistance. But the Palestinians are just as human as the people of Oradour-sur-Glane, and collective punishment is wrong whether it is done by Israel’s criminal leaders trying to distract attention from their political blunders, or Nazis. Apologia for collective punishment and disregard for human life is justification for fascism.

Is missing the point your best debate tactic?

EDIT: Reposted higher for visibility:

I don’t think you’re as dense as you pretend to be. But for anyone deceived by straw-manning and performative confusion used as a rhetorical trick, let me be clear.

Using human shields has a specific an codified meaning; all humanitarian organizations who have investigated Hamas or any other Palestinian defense organization have found no evidence of this war crime. International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm.

Killing civilians is wrong. It is wrong when Hamas does it, it is therefore much more wrong when Israel, which has more resources and claims moral superiority, does it on a much larger scale, not just through retaliation bombings the last few weeks, but from before the seige of Gaza going back to the Nakba - massacring civilians, assisting their allies in massacring civilians, poisoning wells, using siege tactics to create an open-air prison and starvation conditions in Gaza, murdering activists, protesters, and journalists by the dozens. In their most obscene moments Israel has murdered children playing on a beach near a hotel populated by international journalists, and protected those murderers with their highest courts, but even more insidious is the culture of arbitrary detention and imprisonment of palestinian children. Not only does the IDF show complete disregard for Palestinian life when choosing their bombing targets, the inhabitants of Gaza rely on potable water and electricity from Israel – and now the Israeli authorities have them cut off. They have built an apartied system, and have engaged in collective punishment.

[Graph demonstrating the difference in scale of civilian deaths by the IDF and the lopsided human toll the Palestinian people have paid over the conflict]

As a commenter living in the west, my opinion has little influence on the tactics of Islamic authoritarians. Israel is much more sensitive to western public opinion. We are complicit with Israel’s crimes if we do not resist.

Hamas has little in common with the French Resistance. But the Palestinians are just as human as the people of Oradour-sur-Glane, and collective punishment is wrong whether it is done by Israel’s criminal leaders trying to distract attention from their political blunders, or Nazis. Apologia for collective punishment and disregard for human life is justification for fascism.

French resistance during the second world war knew the Nazis would retaliate; they still operated and hid within the civilian population. There are former towns in France where only crumbling stone, abandoned cars, and a plaque to the dead remains, a vow to never rebuild and never forget. Everyone was killed and their homes burned in reprisal for maquis activity.

Are you saying the French women and children murdered by Nazis are the fault of the French partisans? Is this a grey moral area for you?

I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated.

History is always complicated

Present events are always complicated

But the way this is reported in the western media is as though one needs a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights including the right that we treasure most the franchise the right to vote and then declaring that state a democracy

is actually not that hard to understand.

– Ta-Nehisi Coates

Noted, thanks.

The IDF also murdered 972 Magazine journalist Khalil Abu Yahia.

I think this is what @SlikPikker@lemmy.ca is talking about:

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000.

Since Netanyahu returned to power in January 2023, the number of work permits has soared to nearly 20,000.

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

Excerpt from For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces by Tal Schneider and published by The Times of Israel.

Don’t confuse support for Palestinians as support for Hamas.

Which supporters? This is a boon to Vladimir Putin, as world attention and aid to Israel comes at a cost to support for Ukraine.

By escalating the conflict to a genocidal ground war, Israel’s criminal leaders may have doomed not only Israelis, but the people of Ukraine as well.

Thanks for the clarification. I’ve updated my comment to be more accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority

In the Palestinian legislative elections on 25 January 2006, Hamas emerged victorious and nominated Ismail Haniyeh as the Authority’s Prime Minister. However, the national unity Palestinian government effectively collapsed, when a violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah erupted, mainly in the Gaza Strip. After the Gaza Strip was taken over by Hamas on 14 June 2007, the Authority’s Chairman Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led unity government and appointed Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister, dismissing Haniyeh. The move wasn’t recognized by Hamas, thus resulting in two separate administrations – the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and a rival Hamas government in the Gaza Strip.

David: fascistic government of Palestine (also called Hamas)

I think @Deceptichum’s point is that Hamas isn’t the government of Palestine, has never been the government has only been the ruling party of the of the Palestinian Authority from 2006-2007, and didn’t exist in the Gaza Strip before 1988. Calling the various Palestinian organizations that opposed Israel’s aggression against Arabs ‘Hamas’ and labeling them collectively as ‘fascist’ seems absurd, given Israel is the other candidate in the analogy.

Your analogy is terrible, not because people don’t understand the subversion, but because you’re wrong about basic facts.

Disproportionate is an understatement.