

From the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook;
“The targeting of trans people - and specifically trans youth and trans women in sports - is not a policy agenda. It is a strategic operation. Understanding it as policy produces the wrong response. Understanding it as strategy produces the right one.
Jason Stanley, in How Fascism Works, identifies the targeting of vulnerable minorities as a core mechanism of authoritarian consolidation. The function is not primarily to harm the targeted group, though that harm is real and intentional. The primary function is to test the solidarity of potential opposition coalitions, to find and exploit the fracture lines, and to establish a precedent: that some members of the coalition can be sacrificed when the political cost of defending them is judged too high.
Every successful authoritarian project has done this. The question it is always asking of the opposition is: is there anyone in your coalition you will abandon to protect the rest? Because if the answer is yes, we know exactly how to proceed. We find that person. We make defending them as costly as possible. And we watch the rest of the coalition either hold together or fracture. If they fracture, we learn where the next fracture line is, and we push there.
The targeting of trans people is not the end of this strategy. It is the test. And what the test is measuring, in real time, is whether LGBTQ organizations, progressive coalitions, and pro-democracy movements will sacrifice their most vulnerable members when the pressure is sufficient.
Someone needs to make an algobot account that just boosts the trending posts every hour and tell people that that's the algorithm. 🤣
We’re happy to share that Mastodon has been awarded a service agreement from the Sovereign Tech Fund @sovtechfund 🎉
This covers five major initiatives through 2026 and 2027. We are very grateful for this support. Read about the details in our blog post.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/04/sovereign-tech-agency-funding/
Finally: Doom played over #curl
heads up #Europe, if you want #sovereignty, there is an #European #chat solution that is #decentralized, #OpenSource, free, multi-platform, multi-profile, #encrypted, it is called #DeltaChat
it is doesn't require phone numbers or any data for registration! painless setup, find it in your app store of choice
your messages and data live in your pockets and not in some 3rd party's "cloud" servers, you truly own it!
Happy ninth Mastodon Won't Survive Day to all who celebrate!
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive
Online platforms have always held all the cards.
The DSA is changing that. One clear set of rules to protect people across the EU.
🔸 It’s about choice. The DSA requires the biggest platforms to offer a feed that isn't based on your personal data.
🔸 It’s about safety. What’s illegal offline should be illegal online.
🔸 It’s about freedom. In Europe, you have the right to challenge content moderation decisions taken by platforms.
An internet that works for people.
Imagine a social network that can’t be bought, sold, or controlled by a billionaire.
A place where communities govern themselves, and your data stays yours. That's Mastodon. Join us in turning that vision into reality.
Donate to power people-first social media: #SupportMastodon
A team from the University of Zurich manipulated people on a subreddit for months with their AI bots to see "if they could change people's minds". Their bots pretended to be victims of sexual assault, pretended to be black people against the Black lives matter movement etc. massively maipulative shit. And they did not inform anyone. Nobody on that subreddit consented to being experimented on.
Their excuse "psychological manipulation of OPs on this sub is justified because the lack of existing field experiments constitutes an unacceptable gap in the body of knowledge".
When I say that I don't believe that academia is a huge help in us curbing the negative effects #AI will have, this is what I mean. The thing went through ethics boards and shit. Disgusting.