Notices by Dan Gillmor (dangillmor@mastodon.social)

It will be pathetic, but unsurprising, if political journalists and editorial writers eagerly buy into the notion that Trump has decided to become a gruff but cuddly national grandfather who brings us together.

The press has routinely done stenography to amplify obvious cons (e.g. the "New Nixon", "compassionate conservatism" and the like).

Look at the record -- just once, journalists -- before you do it again and, this time, grease the path to dictatorship.

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/15/trump-shooting-republican-convention-speech-rewrite

It is an ongoing disgrace that journalists continue to support Musk's evil business. If you know a reporter who's using Twitter, please tell him/her to stop disrespecting the audience, and the craft.

https://www.notus.org/media/elon-musk-x-politics-addicted-twitter

The cops who tortured a bogus murder "confession" out of a man -- even threatening to kill his dog along the way -- are still employed by the Fontana, Calif., police department. The city's taxpayers paid for the $900,000 lawsuit settlement.

https://www.sbsun.com/2024/05/23/fontana-pays-nearly-900000-for-psychological-torture-inflicted-by-police-to-get-false-confession/

This tells you everything you need to know about police impunity.

Notable that the UN has moved to Element (Matrix protocol) as the basis of its messaging.

I'd like to see tech journalists do some serious coverage of Matrix, which seems to be a genuine alternative to the centralized, rapacious tech giants that spy on their customers for a living.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-united-nations-ditches-big-tech-in-a-bid-for-security

Elon Musk controls Twitter. He is a right-wing extremist who actively engages in and promotes lies and loathing. He has made it clear, again and again, that he hates the press (unless it's favorable to him). As NBC News explains, his site welcomes Nazis. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020

All of which makes me ask again, with growing despair, why journalists continue -- by actively participating on Musk's site -- to actively support this evil man's business.

It is essential to stop using Chrome.

Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.

Given Google's overwhelming presence in the browser market, this is unconscionable.

We should all despise the ad-tech business, and have no sympathy for the companies getting whacked by Google's actions. But we should not permit one monopolist to replace them all.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-googles-corporate-paternalism-browser

Holiday season retro fun: https://dosdeck.com/ brings back MS-DOS games in browsers. No installation necessary.

Limited selection for now, but I promise some happily wasted hours with the original Commander Keen, among others!

Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemetic post on the deadbird site shouldn't come as a surprise.

Nor, at this point, is it even slightly shocking that journalists continue to support Musk's business by pouring their work into his vile operation.

But it's definitely disappointing, even dispiriting.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/media/elon-musk-antisemitism-white-people/index.html

That "smart lighting" from Philips is about to spy on you in new ways you can't control -- naturally the company is claiming it's to protect you. This is Trump-level lying.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/09/22/philips-hue-force-users-upload-data-to-cloud/

Now Musk wants your biometric data and employment history, but hey no problem!

Meanwhile, Big Journalism supports Musk in every possible way by pouring their work into his increasingly toxic platform.

Vital new feature has been added to Mastodon!

I just made my account widely searchable -- thank you to the Mastodon team for this!

Not available on all instances, but several large ones -- notably Mastodon Social -- have added it already.

It's in Edit Profile / Public Profile / Privacy & Reach and looks like this:

Twitter's move to break embedded tweets for anyone who isn't logged in -- in other words, requiring people to sign up for an account and tracking them online -- should be enough for any ethical journalism org to stop using it.

I'm joking, of course. Journalism orgs are among the most ardent members of the surveillance-industrial complex.

It's hard to explain beyond a gut sense of this, but I would worry more about google.social than facebook.social in the fediverse.

But I would vehemently oppose any moves to pre-block new servers just on the grounds that they might be bad.

And I would welcome the opportunity to leave Facebook entirely if I could connect -- via Mastodon or whatever ActivityPub tool I use -- to the people there whose social media world starts and stops on that site.

@timbray Linux dock: left.

Erdogan regime tells Twitter to censor tweets in Turkey (almost certainly those opposing his reelection). Musk says "Hell yes!"

This comports with Twitter's new policy (since Musk took over) to say "Hell yes" to all censorship request from governments.

Mr. "Free Speech" indeed...

Mozilla's Firefox is walling off each site's cookies from other sites, which is helpful for privacy. I block ALL third-party cookies and use add-ons that further protect me from the increasingly evil ad-tech industry's relentless spying.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/firefox-rolls-out-total-cookie-protection-by-default-to-all-users-worldwide/

Musk and Murdoch together at the football game is a gathering of today's most powerful anti-democracy media barons. And it's a reminder that journalists who would never consider working for Murdoch's Fox "News" -- at least he pays for his content -- are still toiling for free to support Musk's rancid trollsite.

If Musk "steps down" as Twitter CEO, per his latest bogus "poll", some things to remember:

1) He'll still be in control. The owner sets the policy the CEO carries out. The owner decides in the end.

2) He lies incessantly. Nothing he says can be trusted, ever.

3) Big Journalism will breathlessly cover the charade as if it meant something, and will continue to support a man who loathes honest reporting and has contempt for genuine freedom of expression.

I don't think journalists (in general) -- and certainly not the organizations they work for -- fully understand the threat Musk represents to the future of free expression and journalism itself.

Begging him to reinstate the banned accounts is pure folly. It is bended-knee supplication to a sociopath who now controls a powerful media company. But the power of his company depends in no small degree on keeping journalists there.

Leave. Now.