RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115689198997943088

I’m proud to share my first blog as @Mastodon’s Community Director. Well the first one posted under my name at least 😉

Digital social networking is one of the most important threads in the fabric of our societies. Right now, we’re letting that thread be controlled by social media platforms that let advertisements for scams stay up because they’re profitable, and that use their algorithms to run human research experiments on us without our consent. That’s not the society I want.

“By making the news and truth contingent on advertising budgets we’ve created an environment where any narrative can win, as long as the storyteller is willing to pay. If we allow these conditions to continue, we will leave behind the voices that truly matter; the people and their public institutions. It is critical that those voices not be silenced forever. The promise of the #fediverse is the promise of a better way forward: free from ads and manipulative algorithms, a place built by and for people like you, where #SocialSovereignty is a right and not a privilege.”

In this thread, we asked folks to crowdsource a list of resources so you can find your local representative. Find them, contact them, and tell them this: if you care about a free and just future, and if you care about #DigitalSovereignty, you must leave X and join the fediverse.

16 November 1889 | Czech Jewish woman, Irma Fantlová, was born in Ostrava.

She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt ghetto on 26 October 1942. She was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection.
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The history of deportations of Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz & the so-called family camp created in Birkenau by the SS: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/z-getta-w-theresienstadt-do-obozu-auschwitz-ii-birkenau/gQiyl0Ei?hl=en

The beautiful opalescent nudibranch (Hermissenda opalescens), one of the most colorful species of sea slug, filmed off the coast of California by Aron Sanchez-Baranda.

Follow Aron on Instagram: https://instagram.com/waterbod/
More information on the opalescent nudibranch: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/opalescent-nudibranch

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the problem of women being sexually assaulted in public was so bad that the women used hatpins to defend themselves.

Governments were very concerned about the problem and...passed laws to limit the length of hat pins.