#liberate the internet

[direct-actions]

Liberate the Internet -- Levels of Control

I've been thinking a lot about the way the internet has shrunk to just a few major platforms that can boost or silence us at a moment's notice.

I wanted to make a post talking about different types of platforms and the ways that they control what we see or say.

(disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this and am trying to start a conversation, so if you have more information or corrections please reblog and add / put in the comments / message me)

I'm not saying everyone needs to become experts on self-hosting (I don't know too much about it myself). There are options for people at all levels. So let's take a look.

Algorithms and Rules

This is your TikToks and your Facebooks. Here, all it takes is the algorithm being tweaked to suppress keywords or accounts and suddenly your content isn't being seen.

The pros here of course is that when you're not actively being suppressed, you have a much higher chance at reaching new people vs other options.

Moderated Spaces

Today, these platforms are generally separated into individual communities (think, MightyNetworks/Circle, Discord, forums, etc.). Reach is limited and niche, and content moderation is generally done by human beings instead of algorithms (with some exceptions).

The pros in these spaces are that you have stronger connections to people who will see your content, but your reach is narrower. As a community you get to decide what happens inside your group, but with the platform itself still in control, they could easily shut down an entire community if they wanted to.

Website Builders / Hosting

This is your Wordpress blogs, Blogger, and even Neocities, etc. Here, the website is mostly yours. You get to decide what's on it. Your content isn't being directly moderated or censored. But you're still part of a larger platform that helps connect / promote your site to others.

Pros here are of course you have MUCH more leeway in what you can post / share. Cons are that there is a lot less chance compared to some others for your website content to reach people. Also, your blog / site can in theory be disabled by the host platform if they decided to.

There's also using something like GoDaddy or IONOS or some other website hosting thing. There's a lot of variety and crossover in this area but basically the website belongs to you more than say a Wordpress Blog would. In theory the web host could decide to drop you but I think that's pretty rare.

Self-Hosting

This is now territory I'm not very familiar with but you could in theory fully host your own stuff making it harder for anyone to shut you down. There's even creating your own internet networks but that's way beyond me. (Really cool tho, I'd love to learn.)

Email Lists

This one is very different but I think really important. Email lists / mailing lists are not just for businesses wanting to promote their latest sale or latest online course. This is one of the most DIRECT ways you can have access to your followers if they're interested in what you have to say. No matter what happens to any platform, if you have their emails you will likely retain the ability to contact them (unless email is somehow destroyed but at that point I think we'll be having very different conversations)

(This could even be physical addresses or an old-school mailing list)

---

I bring this up because I'm really interested in moving toward a more autonomous and networked internet, and I think it's going to be necessary in the years to come.

Look up digital gardens for an example.

And if you're hoping to create / share anything online, consider diversifying the kinds of platforms you use, and pushing followers to places where you have more control over what you can share, and getting their emails.

[uncanny-tranny]

I think it's completely ethical for a child of influencers to sue their parents for non-consentually making them a child influencer

[whetstonefires]

Hey you said something about the my hero academia creator being unhinged about sexism, do you mind explaining?

I tried to write like, a thorough explanation of this and it just got longer and longer and longer and I have not touched this series in actual years and yet I've still got all these receipts a;lkjk;lfasd.

So rather than trying to build the whole massive case, here's a pared-down version. It's normal to have sexism in media, and shounen manga especially. Everyone does it. The level and mode and intentionality and so forth all vary, but of course it's there.

What's not normal is to have lots of varied and interesting female characters with discernible inner lives, and on-page discussion of how sexism is systemic and unjust and holds them back in specific ways, and then also deliberately make consistent sexist writing decisions even where they don't arise naturally from the flow of the narrative.

Horikoshi is actively interested in gender and sexism, he's aware of them in a way you rarely see outside of the context of, you know, fighting sexism. He is hung up on the thorny issue of what women are worth and deserve and how power and respect ties into it. He genuinely wants, I think, to have Good Female Characters, and not be (seen as) A Sexist Guy!

But. He doesn't actually want to fight sexism. He displays a lot of woman-oriented anxieties, and one of the many churning paddlewheels in his head seems to be that he knows intellectually that morally sexism is bad, but emotionally he really feels like it ought to probably be at least partly correct.

There are so many things I could cite, and maybe I'll get into some of them later, but the crowning item that highlights how the pattern is 1) at least partly conscious and deliberate and 2) about Horikoshi's own weird hangups rather than simply cynical market play, is Mineta Minoru.

The writer has stated Mineta is his favorite character. Mineta is also designed to be hated--that is, he is a particularly elaborate instantiation of a character archetype normally deployed to soak up audience contempt and (by being gross and shameless and unattractive and 'unthreatening') make it possible to include a range of sexual gratification elements into the narrative that would compromise the main characters' reputations as heroic and deserving, if they were the actors.

Good Guys don't grope girls' tits and run away snickering in triumph, after all. Non-losers don't focus intense effort around successfully stealing someone's panties. Nice Girls don't let themselves be seen half-dressed. And so forth. You need an underwear gremlin for that. So, in anime and manga, longstanding though declining tradition of including such a gremlin, for authorial deniability.

Horikoshi definitely uses him straight for this purpose, looping in Kaminari as needed to make a bit work. And yet he has Feelings about the archetype itself.

The passages dedicated to the vindication of Mineta, then, and the author's statements about him, let us understand that Horikoshi identifies with the figure of the underwear gremlin. He understands the underwear gremlin as a defining exemplar of male sexuality, at least if you are not hot, and finds the attached contempt and hostility to be a dehumanizing attack on all uh.

Incels, basically.

It's not fair to write Mineta off just because he's unattractive and horny (and commits sexual harassment). Doesn't he have a mind? Doesn't he have dreams? Doesn't he have human potential?

So what's going on with Horikoshi and gender, as far as I can figure out, is that he knows damn well that women are people and are treated unjustly by sexist society, but however.

He also understands the institutions of sexism as something protecting him and people like him from life being nebulously yet definitively Worse, and therefore wants to see them upheld.

So you get this really bizarre handling of gender where obviously women's rights good and women cool, women can be Strong, and the compulsory sexualization imposed by the industry isn't them or the author, and so forth.

But also it's very important that in the world he controls, women never win anything important or Count too much, and that jokes at their expense that disrupt the internal logic of their characters are always fair game, that women asked about sexism on TV will promptly get into catfights amongst themselves, and they are understood always in terms of their sexual and romantic interests and value, and sexual assertiveness and failures to perform femininity well enough are used to code them as dangerous and irrational, and that the sexy costumes are requisite and will never be subverted or rebelled against--at most they might be circumnavigated via leaning into cute appeal.

And that Yaoyorozu Momo, who converts her body fat into physical objects, is being frivolous when she wants to use money to buy things instead (rather than as sensibly moderating her Quirk use) and is never encouraged to eat as much as possible at every opportunity to put on weight and even shown being embarrassed by hunger (even though Quirk overuse gives symptoms that suggest she's been stripping the lipids out of her cell walls or nervous system to keep fighting) and always, no matter how many Things she has made, has huge big round boobies.

[chaiaurchaandni]

</3

[decolonize-the-left]

.....does anyone else get the vibe that the limitless expanse of the internet, media, and consequent ability to interact politically, spiritually, and apathetically with people locally and globally maybe had an influence not only on the individual's relation to the collective but also their ability to participate in it and see their significance to it?

Can we talk about it?

Like I feel like as some who was a frontline activist and now is a disabled social activist who dabbles in radicalizing liberals... The wall I and my peers continuously keep running into is the collective feeling that someone else will do it.

"it" being whatever action.

For me it's signing a petition, protesting, donating, community organizing (both online and offline).

We get tons of interest on stuff. Interest which very rarely translates to doing more than showing a poster to the friend theyre with before trashing it, reblogging a post, or hitting "interested" or like when we post local events.

And on All these platforms posts gets to a point of "enough" responses where ppl just stop responding and sharing, too.

On Tumblr you see this a lot with donation posts and people constantly having to make new ones. Cuz they're getting notes, but not tangible assistance that will help them. And the reblogs stop because there are so many notes that ppl start assuming that the goal was met or will be met soon.

But that isn't what's happening. And like I said this isn't just with donation posts or money so the answer isn't "well ppl are broke" which would be an easy and sensible answer.

Honestly, I've been thinking that with so Many people easily accessible online with so many opinions and varying levels of popularity and followers that it's easy to lose yourself in them. Especially now when so much of life takes place online.

It's so easy to think you're just one of those many people. ....So surely nobody would notice if you were being a little facetious, right?

Gonna be real, it seems a lot to me like a lot of people are trying to hide their lack of integrity through the anonymity offered online.

And like sure maybe nobody would notice if it was just a few people being facetious about supporting something but it's SO MANY (in my experience? Upwards of a thousand once) and Everywhere. Online, offline, and apps.

And the thing that makes it weird is that every one is assuming that people are being more helpful than they are. That more people are showing up.... Even though they themselves are not showing up either. Like I said reblogs for donations stop, shares stop, and only a handful of ppl show up to events irl. You can literally compare reblogs to the signatures when a petition is being shared.

Wanting to show up isn't the same as showing up.

"People" are not coming to change or show up to the revolution. It's you. You are the people. You are the people that need to show up. Not just as a notification on my screen but actually, because you think someone else will have enough integrity to show up for you but they don't.

Your integrity matters.

You matter so much. I don't know what it is behind this mass behavior that has y'all acting otherwise but I'm telling y'all right now that YOU and the choices that YOU make matter. The events that you choose to spend your time at and how you spend your energy and protecting your rights matters!

That isn't some "im just another drop fighting an endless battle in the ocean" kind of deal.

I'm telling you from experience: there is no ocean! We are in a fucking drought and every drop matters.

Show up. Nobody else is doing it on your behalf.

.......or is it just me? Has anyone else noticed this

[sparksinthenight]

My letter to Biden about KOSA

You can use the following letter as a template to send to your representatives. Or you can write your own letter.

Dear President Biden,

My name is ______ and I am a ______ in _____. I am writing to you to ask that you please oppose the Kids Online “Safety” Act. This act harms children, especially queer or abused children , and allows children to be indoctrinated into their parents’ worldviews.

Children, especially teenagers, deserve the freedom of the current internet. They deserve to listen to many different viewpoints, to hear the stories of many different people, to learn about many different experiences. They deserve to meet many different people and learn from them. They deserve to interact with many different forms of art expressing many different viewpoints. This allows them to form their own ideas and opinions about the world and become their own people. It broadens their horizons and makes them more open minded.

If parents are given control over what children learn about on the internet, then many parents will ensure that their children are not exposed to any views that contradict their own.

This will make it so that future generations can no longer learn more than and become better than older generations. The only thing making our society progress is younger generations learning more and becoming more accepting than older generations.

LGBT+ children under KOSA will often be stopped from accessing resources that help them learn that being LGBT+ is okay. Many children won’t be able to go against their parents’ homophobia and learn to love themselves. This will lead to many mental illnesses and suicides.

Also, abused children often go to the internet to access resources that teach them that what is happening to them is bad and they deserve better, and to access resources that help them escape. Their parents of course will not allow them to access these resources under KOSA.

Thank you for reading my letter and please take my concerns to heart.

Sincerely,

[nyaskitten]

Saying Palestinians don't deserve support because there's homophobia there is fucking disgusting, like there are Queer Arabs too dumbfuck! Israel is super fucking homophobic, but you're okay with that bullshit? Fuck off.

[very-lost-hobbit]

"US proxy war in Ukraine" Beating u with lead pipes

[edenfenixblogs]

Reminder! But be aware that many Jews use the term Zionist/Zionism in a way that you do not understand it/are not familiar with! Many Jewish people who you would define as Zionists and/or people who have all the same politics as you may:

1. Call themselves Zionists because it is a term with deeply individual meanings for many Jews

2. Not call themselves Zionists, but bristle at hearing the term “Zionist” be used as a pejorative because the history of the word Zionist being used as an antisemitic dogwhistle in leftism, communist Russia, and Arab extremist organizations (and because I am Jewish and on the internet I will state explicitly that no, of course I do not think all Arabs are extremists. I do not think all Muslims are extremists. I do not tolerate Islamophobia in any way on my blog or in real life. If I see a single even somewhat questionable instance of maybe Islamophobia in any replies here, you will be blocked and reported. I am taking the time to educate about Zionism as a dogwhistle, because I have chosen to tolerate a certain amount of feedback as a Jewish person. I am neither Arab nor Muslim so it is not my place to extend an olive branch of understanding regarding Islamophobia to you nor do I have any interest in doing so. I wholeheartedly condemn anti-Arab and Islamophobic hatred. As we all should)

3. Actively call themselves anti-Zionists because they define the term Zionism in a way that includes occupation, genocide, and expulsion

4. Actively call themselves anti-Zionists but still believe that Jewish people as an ethnoreligous group are inherently indigenous to the lands around Jerusalem while ALSO considering Palestinians to be indigenous to that same land.

5. Actively call themselves anti-Zionists because they oppose the formation of any religious state whatsoever, but still believe that Jews deserve to reside where they are right now without forced expulsion.

For non-Jewish people using the term anti-Zionism, I urge you to really think about what Zionism actually means to you as a term. Like what do you think that word is? What kind of person do you think a Zionist is? What assumptions are you making in the use of that term and is it fair to expect every Jewish person to agree with that definition and why do you feel that way?

And before anyone comments on me or makes assumptions about my stance.

I do not call myself a Zionist!

I deeply oppose the current government of Israel. I had the opportunity to go on a birthright trip to Israel, and declined to go because I do not support the subjugation of Palestinians. I also chose not to go, because at the time there was a spate of bus bombings. I have family in Israel that I have never met and cannot meet because I refuse to go there out of both personal fear AND political unrest AND political/moral opposition.

I support sovereignty and equal rights and liberation and self determination for all Palestinians. I believe Palestinians are indigenous to the land.

I also believe Jewish people are indigenous to the land. Since Hadrian’s expulsion of the Jewish people from Israel/Judea in 135 and the resultant formation of Syria Palestina, there has been no place that Jews have existed that has considered them foundational parts of society or that has not expelled us. We have always been considered settlers. There is no other place in which we could even conceivably BE indigenous besides the levant. I believe that the “whiteness” of modern Jews of European descent is a product of millennia of expulsion, resettlement, and relocation. I know for a fact that PoC Jews have also REMAINED in the region since the expulsion in 135 and if they’re not indigenous to there, then who on earth is?

I believe that indigeneity does not expire. I believe that the fact that Jews sing daily prayers about their history in Israel/the levant is pretty strong evidence that Jews all over the world have never lost their connection to the region. I believe that two thousand years is a long time.

I believe that it could not matter less whether Jews or Palestinians were there “first.” What matters is the strong cultural ties BOTH cultures have to the levant. What matters is that civilians have a safe government that they can trust not to commit genocide against them. To expel them from the land of their ancestors. To banish them to settlements.

I believe colonialism is wrong. I believe imperialism is wrong. I believe there’s even more I need to learn even after living in this conflict and diaspora my entire life. I do not believe that the land that exists there right now needs to be called Israel. I only believe that there needs to be safeguards in place at a governmental level that explicitly protects the sovereignty, safety, and legitimacy of Palestinians and the Jews who live there. There must be guardrails to prevent genocide against both groups. There must be some formal institutional mechanism to ensure the safety of both parties.

I believe that none of these ideas are in conflict with one another.

Anyone telling you that the solution is straightforward is lying or has plans to harm a large number of people. You are not special. You did not invent the perfect idea that no one thought of that magically solves the issues of statelessness, fear of displacement, expulsion, or genocide. If your plan only involves helping one group without regard to the needs of the other, it is a bad plan. If you don’t believe that Jews should be expelled from Israel, is that Zionism? If you believe Jews should have self determination and representation within government that protects their interests, is that Zionism? Even if the same self determination and representation exists for Palestinians? If you are a hardcore anti-Zionist and believe that Jews do not belong in i/p at all, where do the Jews go?

Where are the Jews indigenous to that isn’t Israel? Where do they go. Europe doesn’t want us. The rest of SWANA doesn’t want us. We certainly are not indigenous to the Americas. It’s been awhile since there were expulsions from Asia (as far as I know), but they did happen there. And Asian countries have very rich indigenous histories of their own that we have no place in. The United States is increasingly violent to us and is certainly nobody’s idea of a Jewish homeland.

If your argument against Zionism is that Jews don’t belong there, where do we belong? If your argument against Zionism is that Jews don’t deserve to ever leave diaspora and should not have self determination or protection, why not us too? Again, I have no desire to go to Israel!!! I have actively rejected offers to visit Israel!!!

I don’t call this set of beliefs Zionism. I don’t believe there is a term for this set of beliefs. But someone else might disagree. And that’s the point. I’m not shaming anyone who does or does not call themselves a Zionist.

[cyanomys]

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

truth in advertising laws covering online store search results would do sooo much damage to enshittification

like if i search "gluten free" it should be illegal for walmart for instance to include items that are not gluten free in the results of that search

if it's super important to have "associated terms" or w/e included that could be an option for customers to opt into i guess but this thing where you HAVE TO pick through 5000 irrelevant items to find the 3 that actually meet the search criteria should be illegal

also if you sort by price and it does not actually sort by price (as none of the big shopping websites do anymore seems like) that should be illegal too.

thank you for coming to my old man yells at cloud talk but also i'm right.

[direct-actions]

Liberate the Internet -- creating networks off of platforms

People have been saying this for years but looking toward the future, it's important that we end our reliance on "platforms" that can easily go from enabling to silencing our voices and communication.

Don't get me wrong, we have used social media to spread information and awareness to a great benefit over the last 2 months, I am not saying we need to abandon those platforms. What I am saying is that we need to be ready for when they find a better way to suppress us or shut us down entirely. At some point it will be more work to fight the algorithms that it will to just go elsewhere.

Here is a post I saw earlier about using RSS feeds to collect everything you want to follow.

Here is a post where I talk about different types of platforms.

But I am thinking about the future here. About how we become connected, stay connected, broadcast, converse, etc. I say the more we take it into our own hands and the less power we give major platforms, the stronger our digital ties to one another.

I may be on Tumblr now, but the next thing I want to do is create something akin to a digital garden. (Read more) (How To)

I'm imagining a very near future where we not only cultivate our own spaces online, but link to each other's spaces constantly.

Ongoing dialogue where we link to a post or page from someone else's website and then write our own thoughts

Featured sites where we list the websites of our friends, people we admire or follow, etc. so if someone likes what they see on our sites, they can easily find other people who they may also want to follow.

If this sounds familiar it's because this is how social media already works, but these same principles can be applied outside of centralized platforms.

And people already do this to some degree even with things like linktr.ee where they put their own stuff but also stuff they're involved in or stuff they like/admire.

But let's do it some more.

Edit: I've created my digital garden here.

[gimmethemprimals]

btw if someone in the notes insults both of them or says something like “well both are bad but if I HAD to pick-“ I’m exploding you instantly. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!!!

[chubbymuffinclub]

isabelladavis6

I wish it was that easy to just shake off the comments and lose the people that make these comments 😅 but sometimes it’s not that easy so here’s my advice 👇

If you’ve also ever been told an unsolicited comment regarding your weight or body then I want to say I’m sorry and to remind you to not allow the opinion of someone with deep-rooted insecurities make you feel small. Don’t change yourself to please another. Don’t starve yourself of joyous food and lifelong memories because of what someone said. Don’t conform to unrealistic beauty standards to please them.

These people have never done anything for you, but your body has. It has allowed you to feel joy and release sadness. It has housed your favourite foods. It has made your heart flutter. It has taken you on countless adventures and provided you with hundreds of joyful moments of intimacy.

So don’t let someone make you question your worth.

Your body is not the problem. They are. You’ve come too far to go back now. So keep enjoying your life in your glorious body and you watch as they stare in envy because they will never learn to feel at home in their bodies as you are learning to. Don’t let anyone control your happiness because it’s not them that live in your body it’s you. So the only opinion of your body that matters is your own.

[your-queer-dad]

CALLING ALL US CITZENS, CALL YOUR SENATORS

If you've been here for long enough, you've heard about KOSA. The Kids Online Safety Act is a harmful and horrific bill that would censor content for ALL, all under the name of "protecting kids". This is the same ideology of queer people and people of colour being inappropriate or sexual divants from the 1980s, 1970s going all the way back to the 1920s. Progressive bill my ass.

So we need all hands on deck to help fight!

If you're in the US:

CALL. YOUR. SENATORS.

You can use this resource to help

TELL THEM PEOPLE DON'T WANT THIS BILL AND THAT IT'S CONTROVERSIAL.

If you're not in the US,

Here's a linktree

Get sending those emails!

AND JOIN THE SERVER FOR MORE INFO

[transsexualfiend]

The best way to challenge the problem with something is to establish how no matter what, it already exists. "Well old scientific journals about transsexualism SHOULD be burned because they're outdated!" NO JOURNALS ABOUT TRANSSEXUALISM SHOULD BE BURNED, PERIOD. But I see where you're coming from. However, those journals ALREADY ARE PUT INTO EXISTENCE, so to try and take them out as if they never existed is to erase some form of history, even if it is truly incorrect and harmful. Especially when the main goal of many scholars is specifically to USE these incorrect/outdated sources to critique and further research and debunk!! So much important research comes from people directly questioning articles/journals they thought may not be fully true, and coming to new conclusions!! - It's also why we have dates on things... For example we can say "You're citing information from a 1960s study on ___ that lacks a lot of the information we have today. There are many other journals with larger sample sizes and more thorough research that have more accurate information!" - And it's why we have context... For example we can say "This article was written by a notorious anti-trans advocate, so we can conclude that their intention with publishing this work was to advocate for trans extermination, regardless of the full scope of information that is out there."