Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow Dec 23, 2022

No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it's still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator's whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good - but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

1/

Pluralistic: What the fediverse (does/n’t) solve (23 Dec 2022) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show thread

Phillip Hallam-Baker

@pluralistic Three questions to ask those in power:

1) How did you get it?

2) On whose behalf do you use it?

3) How do we get rid of you?

It is the last one that I don't think is getting the attention needed from folk designing social media.

I have changed my Mastodon account once. It is not clear to me that I can do it easily unless I have the cooperation of the service instance I am leaving. I certainly can't stop them transferring my account without permission either.

This might sound like I am being really picky but that is exactly what security requires and I do security.