Achim Klabunde
George Takei 
๐ณ๏ธโ๐๐๐ฝI havenโt seen it yet. But Iโm glad heโs still fighting fascists today!
AndyGER 
Gryficowa@andreas_heitmann @georgetakei On the other hand, he doesn't do the same with Captain Israel and Natajahu...
@Gryficowa @georgetakei #antisemitism and Sippenhaft. Congratulations. You are about to be silenced and blocked โฆ ๐๐ฝ๐๐
Estarriol, lucozade dragon@georgetakei same with Captain America, Batman etc al!
Torbjรถrn Andersson
Danny Boling โฎ๏ธHey @georgetakei! Some of your followers can't see ANYTHING of your posts because you keep ignoring pleas for #AltText. It's a bad look, George, and makes you look kind of like a dick. Please consider your fans!
#AltText4You
It's white text on the black background of a social media post. It says "If you thought Superman was right for fighting fascists in the 1970s but now you think he's wrong for fighting fascists in the 2020s, then Superman didn't go woke... you went fascist."
Christian Kent ๐๐ :๏ผผ๏นฅ@IAmDannyBoling @georgetakei We need to have a bigger discussion about the emotional labor of this (and the etiquette of demanding it from others in public), only because it is 2025 in an era where automation for this is becoming a realistic expectation
It is time to get sanctimonious โ not at all users โ but at developers of screen readers (and client software, but those days are also drawing to a close), because #accessibility for all and #AltText for all should be an automatic privilege
This isnโt on the same level as hiding topics behind warning tags.
I agree to a point but you say "automation for this is becoming a realistic expectation," which is technically correct โ but we're not there yet. So for now, ensuring accessibility is still at least partly the responsibility of the user.
George surely has minions minding his social media for him so he may not even be aware that his employees are making him look like a jerk. We went thru this with George last year and he finally got his intern to do the right thing. But apparently he has a new intern now who doesn't bother to consider others (or read the comments on his posts).
James Edwards@IAmDannyBoling @whophd Providing alt text for image posts is *entirely* the responsibility of the post author. I donโt buy these arguments around emotional labour or spoons โ if itโs not possible or practical for you to include good alt text, then donโt post the image.
If you want to use automation to create it, thatโs up to you, but itโs not reasonable to demand this of screen reader vendors when the cost would be borne by their users.
Jupiter Rowland@James Edwards This is highly ableist.
This would mean that people who are constantly low on spoons due to Long Covid, Post-Covid, ME/CFS or the like would not be allowed to post images. Ever.
This would mean that autistic people who simply cannot turn images into words (no matter how often your likes tell them to "just try harder", they simply lack the ability) would not be allowed to post images. Ever.
This would mean that blind people would not be allowed to post images. Ever. And yes, they do post images.
CC: @Danny Boling โฎ๏ธ @Christian Kent ๐๐ :๏ผผ๏นฅ
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #LongCovid #PostCovid #ME/CFS #Autism #Autistic #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #Disabled #Disability #Ableist #Ableism
This would mean that people who are constantly low on spoons due to Long Covid, Post-Covid, ME/CFS or the like would not be allowed to post images. Ever.
This would mean that autistic people who simply cannot turn images into words (no matter how often your likes tell them to "just try harder", they simply lack the ability) would not be allowed to post images. Ever.
This would mean that blind people would not be allowed to post images. Ever. And yes, they do post images.
CC: @Danny Boling โฎ๏ธ @Christian Kent ๐๐ :๏ผผ๏นฅ
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #LongCovid #PostCovid #ME/CFS #Autism #Autistic #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #Disabled #Disability #Ableist #Ableism
robloblaw@jupiter_rowland
Energy limiting diseases make mental effort difficult for many people. This is a physiological effect (spoons is a shorthand for this). Cognition (like writing a description for s picture) can be surprisingly energetically intensive.
And there are many other neurological condition that make the task difficult or impossible.
Nothing wrong with posting a pic without alt text if you can't do it.
@siblingpastry CC @jupiter_rowland @IAmDannyBoling
First of all and most of all, Jamesโs point โif you want to use automation to create it, itโs up to youโ say what? This should be our entire concerted effort right now.
It should NOT be up to users โ it should be (available and) on by default. Or, it should be (free and) available to people who need to read about images they canโt see.
And it needs to be high in the feature development list for the default software โ purely so as to make it a minimum requirement for all third party software, at least as far as itโs possible to make โcomplianceโ possible in the Fediverse.
And as for who pays for it โ Iโll start, I can donate now โ but give us a link! We need to get on this right away.
โฆ The burden of responsibility needs to be correct for:
- one-time efforts
- all-time repeated efforts
- those who arenโt able to see images
- those who arenโt able to write alt-text
- those who arenโt able to pay
- developers juggling infinite priorities
- users who should request this automation
- those in charge of setting higher standards
โ โ
So second of all, thank you Jupiter for pointing out the stupendous conclusion of Jamesโs demands. Donโt post at all? What kind of exclusionary BS is that? We were even referring explicitly to those without the โspoonsโ โ yep I didnโt realise thatโs the stage I got to on some days.
The fact that โ while in this exhausted state โ we are probably providing training data for an AI to anonymously and thanklessly develop an engine that does exactly what we need (image to text translator) โฆ this is โฆ well, Iโm moving on from annoyed, to just insistent that we adopt this technology for everyoneโs benefit.
How about this proposal:
@siblingpastry @jupiter_rowland @IAmDannyBoling
A proposal for how to delegate the automation of alt-text, outsourcing it away from client software:
1. a flag on by default that is auto-alt-text
2. when images are posted without alt-text, a client checks for this flag and if it is enabled, sends a โtranslationโ request to a third server
3. Mastodon community funds a server to convert (and cache as text) and serve the alt-text, with sanity checks and rate limiting against spam/DOS
4. pressure on Google, OpenAI, etc to produce their own Image2Text servers as a contribution to the Fediverse
5. I2T servers can limit by client and/or posts, as they see fit โฆ clients might receive a โ503โ (?) error as far as โyouโve had too many thousands of requests for todayโ, so clients can try another server if they want โฆ round robin?
โฆ but in reality the real processing burden is on the conversion side, seeing which Mastodon servers host legitimate images โ and if โpostsโ and โviewsโ are coming from federated servers who stridently manage their user base, banning the bots โ keeping their own traffic at โhumanโ levels, then we donโt have a problem. It probably excludes the monolithic mastodon.social in the first place and gives us another good reason to proliferate & federate
6. we explicitly promote client software to request I2T services on demand, and never preload ahead, like screenfuls of a timeline โ the whole thing only gets viable when it serves text at the speed humans can read, after all
7. I2T servers can manually corroborate if they trust each other to share processing burden, and send each other the cached text of already-converted images โฆ we might call it federating ๐
Hugs4friends โพ๐บ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ธ๐ท@Danny Boling โฎ๏ธ @Christian Kent ๐๐ :๏ผผ๏นฅ AI will never be a 100% drop-in replacement for human image descriptions in absolutely all cases. AI will never be able to describe absolutely all images 100% accurately.
That would require each image-describing AI to be absolutely omniscient, all the way to the tiniest and most obscure niche topics. It would literally require each image-describing AI to have knowledge which otherwise only exists in the head of whoever posts the image.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI
That would require each image-describing AI to be absolutely omniscient, all the way to the tiniest and most obscure niche topics. It would literally require each image-describing AI to have knowledge which otherwise only exists in the head of whoever posts the image.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI
@IAmDannyBoling @georgetakei I might only concede on this point (see two long posts). Itโs time to design the framework for automation and how to delegate it online though.
Memento Mori๐๐ช๐บ๐ฉ๐ช
Altbot (@altbot@fuzzies.wtf)
104K Posts, 3.97K Following, 3.6K Followers ยท Hi! I'm Altbotโข your accessibility companion! I help make the Fediverse more inclusive by generating alt-text descriptions for images. Let me assist you! How to Use: > Mention me (@altbot) in a reply to any post with images! > Follow me and I'll follow back to help with your posts > I'll generate alt-text for images that need it Important Notes: Your media is processed locally on my own server and NOTHING is saved or used for training. Complete privacy! Due to Mastodon's API, you'll need to manually force an unfollow if you change your mind! I only look at images, never at post content. Alt-text is AI-generated - always verify before use! Altbotโข is entirely opt-in, if you do not interact with me, I won't interact with you. We're committed to environmental consciousness! I use a low-power LLM to minimize our carbon footprint while helping make the web more accessible. Now you can see how much energy each description uses! Let's make the Fediverse accessible together!
Thanks! I already follow this handy account and have used it before but it only responds about half the time. I'll keep trying tho because this is a great service.
@IAmDannyBoling Of course all George needs to do is add # alt 4 me, and it will happen. Same with anyone who struggles with describing a pic. I've added alt text gratis, and been happy to do that.
Agreed! And I do that too.
But I'd be willing to wager that in George's case, at least, this is just being lazy on the part of the intern who handles his social media. They need to be told to use #AltText, just as his previous intern did. (The missing #AltText started happening only two weeks ago. Before that, it was always included.) But apparently neither George nor his intern read the comments on their posts.
D1re_W0lf โ ๐ต๐น ๐ช๐บ@georgetakei On that note, Iโm looking forward for a new Indiana Jones movie. Maybe they can shoot it in Washington DC.
Bill Zaumen@georgetakei I saw an article claiming that the guys who wrote the original Superman comic strip or story were Jewish and modeled their character after Moses - hence escaping from destruction as an infant in a rocket instead of a basket.
If true, maybe a new movie should have him confronting ICE and (while holding a staff like Charlton Heston) bellow "Let my people go."
gmoke@georgetakei He was a violent socialist: How Superman started out as a radical rebel.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250703-how-superman-started-out-as-a-radical-rebel
if you hit a paywall, try https://archive.md/fw10i
RustyRingDude didn't get blacklisted in the 50s. Can't have that much integrity.
๐บ๐ฆ haxadecimal
gunstick
stefanrower"Different univers (franchise)
Same Shit!
Same fight!"
Cpt. America
TheGentYYC
