blogpost: lament for the commons

4 files changed, 118 insertions, 5 deletions

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+++ b/html/blog/centralization-through-decentralization/index.html
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
 				<a href="/">Home</a>
 			</li>
 			<li>
-				<a href="/blog/">Blog</a>
+				<a href="/blog/" class="active">Blog</a>
 			</li>
 			<li>
 				<a href="https://git.starfall.systems">Git</a>
@@ -30,8 +30,8 @@
 	</nav>
 </header>
 
-<main>
-<p>An opinion piece was recently published in Wired magazine titled <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-hidden-dangers-of-the-decentralized-web/">&quot;The Hidden Dangers of the Decentralized
+<article>
+2023-05-24<p>An opinion piece was recently published in Wired magazine titled <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-hidden-dangers-of-the-decentralized-web/">&quot;The Hidden Dangers of the Decentralized
 Web&quot;</a>. It makes a lot of basic factual errors, conflates valid reasons to mistrust centralized social media with antisemitic conspiracy theories and grifts, and somehow even manages to make basic security practice out as conspiratorial. I'm not all that interested in giving it the time of day, except for one paragraph that stuck out to me.</p>
 <blockquote>
 <p>While the platforms offered by Meta and Alphabet are certainly not without issue, it is hard to deny the convenience of their established existence, which makes it possible to communicate, be entertained, shop, and more all in the same place. By contrast, users of decentralized platforms will need to download a slew of apps for everything they want to do online, because these features will no longer all exist in one place.</p>
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Web&quot;</a>. It makes a lot of basic factual errors, conflates valid reasons t
 <p>And do you know what I had 10 years ago that I don't now? Literally all of my instant messaging in one place. On my laptop, I had a piece of free software called Pidgin. On this one app, I was logged into MSN Messenger, Skype, ICQ, Facebook Messenger (which used XMPP until 2015), the IRC server for my university honors program, and Twitch chat (which is still <a href="https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/irc/">a version of IRC</a>). The only thing it didn't do was text messaging, but I carried a phone for that. One application, one unified experience, six accounts that I set up once and barely had to interact with again.</p>
 <p>It is not decentralization that results in &quot;app fatigue&quot; as this joke of an article calls it. If you want a centralized experience, you need stuff that's built to work together by design. Or that's hacked to work together, in the case of Pidgin/libpurple plugins talking all sorts of proprietary protocols like the AOL and Windows Live Messenger ones. Stuff built to make money off of you is incentivized to pen you in. Ever tried to use Facebook Messenger from the browser on your phone?</p>
 
-</main>
+</article>
 
 <footer>
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diff --git a/html/blog/feed.xml b/html/blog/feed.xml
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--- a/html/blog/feed.xml
+++ b/html/blog/feed.xml
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 	<title>Starfall's Blog</title>
 	<link href="https://starfall.systems/blog/feed.xml" rel="self"/>
 	<link href="https://starfall.systems/blog/"/>
-	<updated>2023-06-26T00:00:00Z</updated>
+	<updated>2023-07-03T19:00:00Z</updated>
 	<id>https://starfall.systems/</id>
 
 	<author>
@@ -13,6 +13,41 @@
 
 
 	<entry>
+		<title>Lament for the Commons</title>
+		<updated>2023-07-03T19:00:00Z</updated>
+		<link href="https://starfall.systems/blog/lament-for-the-commons/"/>
+		<id>https://starfall.systems/blog/lament-for-the-commons/</id><content type="html">&lt;blockquote&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.&amp;quot; -- Antonio Gramsci&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;/blockquote&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;It might be slightly overblown to be quoting an Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini to criticise the decisions made by corporate social media this past month or so, but given their contributions to fascism globally, maybe it isn&#39;t... Either way, it has been interesting to see them all seemingly competing for &#39;worst decision&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;Reddit shut off most of the clients that other people did &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; them, making all that effort and work rather pointless, and now &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14nzwkm/&quot;&gt;blind Reddiors can&#39;t moderate r/blind&lt;/a&gt; despite assurances that accessibility apps wouldn&#39;t be affected and the accessibility of the official app would be improved.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;Twitter, not to be one-upped, has now disabled the ability to view anything while not logged in, and paywalled actually being able to use the site. Ironically, even &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675187969420828672&quot;&gt;the announcement&lt;/a&gt; isn&#39;t viewable. 600 tweets a day is, well, pratically nothing? On the Fediverse, our friends who actually post daily (sometimes to stream of consciousness levels) and have conversations average about 45-60 posts a day. We aren&#39;t particularly active anywhere and still manage to hit an average of 9.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;Even Google has decided this week to do a trial run of only letting people watch 3 videos if they have an adblocker. I&#39;m just waiting for the fourth shoe to drop on Discord.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;The thing that gets me the most about all this is just how much of the past 10-20 years of culture and knowledge is just going to be lost. How many times during the protests on Reddit did we fail to find the answer we were looking for on a web search, because the answer can be found only where one person decided to share their knowledge and everyone else was relying on that? How many entertaining and teaching videos are likely going to be locked on YouTube behind obnoxious, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195925517303505&quot;&gt;energy-wasting&lt;/a&gt;, mind-warping advertising?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t pretend to have the answers for how to get more people to care about things like service continuity or not putting the majority of the English-speaking world&#39;s knowledge on a single-digit number of websites backed by corporations that are in advertising business, not the information-hosting business. Most people don&#39;t think about things like that and shouldn&#39;t have to, because it&#39;s nerd shit that people like me should care about making happen for them, they just want to go to wherever the &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt; is.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;blockquote&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;The law locks up the man or woman&lt;br /&gt;
+Who steals the goose off the common&lt;br /&gt;
+But leaves the greater villain loose&lt;br /&gt;
+Who steals the common from the goose.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;The law demands that we atone&lt;br /&gt;
+When we take things we do not own&lt;br /&gt;
+But leaves the lords and ladies fine&lt;br /&gt;
+Who takes things that are yours and mine.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;The poor and wretched don&#39;t escape&lt;br /&gt;
+If they conspire the law to break;&lt;br /&gt;
+This must be so but they endure&lt;br /&gt;
+Those who conspire to make the law.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;The law locks up the man or woman&lt;br /&gt;
+Who steals the goose from off the common&lt;br /&gt;
+And geese will still a common lack&lt;br /&gt;
+&#39;Till they go and steal it back.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;-- Author unknown, 18th century England&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;/blockquote&gt;
+</content>
+	</entry>
+
+	<entry>
 		<title>Things We Read This Week</title>
 		<updated>2023-06-26T00:00:00Z</updated>
 		<link href="https://starfall.systems/blog/2023-W25/"/>
diff --git a/html/blog/index.html b/html/blog/index.html
index 7806a6f..7dcf2a1 100644
--- a/html/blog/index.html
+++ b/html/blog/index.html
@@ -45,6 +45,12 @@
 <a href=/blog/feed.xml alt="Atom feed" class=feed-icon></a>
 
 <article class=blogpost>
+	<h2><a href="/blog/lament-for-the-commons/">Lament for the Commons</a></h2>
+	<time datetime="2023-07-03 19:00:00.000Z" title="2023-07-03 19:00:00.000Z">
+		2023-07-03
+	</time></article>
+
+<article class=blogpost>
 	<h2><a href="/blog/2023-W25/">Things We Read This Week</a></h2>
 	<time datetime="2023-06-26 00:00:00.000Z" title="2023-06-26 00:00:00.000Z">
 		2023-06-25
diff --git a/html/blog/lament-for-the-commons/index.html b/html/blog/lament-for-the-commons/index.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d24bc2d
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+++ b/html/blog/lament-for-the-commons/index.html
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang=en-US dir=ltr>
+<head>
+	<title>Lament for the Commons</title>
+	<meta charset=UTF-8>
+	<meta name=robots content="noindex, nofollow">
+	<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+	<link rel=stylesheet href=/css/terminal.css>
+	
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<!-- todo color picker -->
+
+<header>
+	<h1>Lament for the Commons</h1>
+	<nav aria-label=primary>
+		
+		<ul>
+			<li>
+				<a href="/">Home</a>
+			</li>
+			<li>
+				<a href="/blog/" class="active">Blog</a>
+			</li>
+			<li>
+				<a href="https://git.starfall.systems">Git</a>
+			</li>
+		</ul>
+	</nav>
+</header>
+
+<article>
+2023-07-03<blockquote>
+<p>&quot;The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.&quot; -- Antonio Gramsci</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It might be slightly overblown to be quoting an Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini to criticise the decisions made by corporate social media this past month or so, but given their contributions to fascism globally, maybe it isn't... Either way, it has been interesting to see them all seemingly competing for 'worst decision'.</p>
+<p>Reddit shut off most of the clients that other people did <em>for</em> them, making all that effort and work rather pointless, and now <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14nzwkm/">blind Reddiors can't moderate r/blind</a> despite assurances that accessibility apps wouldn't be affected and the accessibility of the official app would be improved.</p>
+<p>Twitter, not to be one-upped, has now disabled the ability to view anything while not logged in, and paywalled actually being able to use the site. Ironically, even <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675187969420828672">the announcement</a> isn't viewable. 600 tweets a day is, well, pratically nothing? On the Fediverse, our friends who actually post daily (sometimes to stream of consciousness levels) and have conversations average about 45-60 posts a day. We aren't particularly active anywhere and still manage to hit an average of 9.</p>
+<p>Even Google has decided this week to do a trial run of only letting people watch 3 videos if they have an adblocker. I'm just waiting for the fourth shoe to drop on Discord.</p>
+<p>The thing that gets me the most about all this is just how much of the past 10-20 years of culture and knowledge is just going to be lost. How many times during the protests on Reddit did we fail to find the answer we were looking for on a web search, because the answer can be found only where one person decided to share their knowledge and everyone else was relying on that? How many entertaining and teaching videos are likely going to be locked on YouTube behind obnoxious, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195925517303505">energy-wasting</a>, mind-warping advertising?</p>
+<p>I don't pretend to have the answers for how to get more people to care about things like service continuity or not putting the majority of the English-speaking world's knowledge on a single-digit number of websites backed by corporations that are in advertising business, not the information-hosting business. Most people don't think about things like that and shouldn't have to, because it's nerd shit that people like me should care about making happen for them, they just want to go to wherever the <em>stuff</em> is.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>The law locks up the man or woman<br>
+Who steals the goose off the common<br>
+But leaves the greater villain loose<br>
+Who steals the common from the goose.</p>
+<p>The law demands that we atone<br>
+When we take things we do not own<br>
+But leaves the lords and ladies fine<br>
+Who takes things that are yours and mine.</p>
+<p>The poor and wretched don't escape<br>
+If they conspire the law to break;<br>
+This must be so but they endure<br>
+Those who conspire to make the law.</p>
+<p>The law locks up the man or woman<br>
+Who steals the goose from off the common<br>
+And geese will still a common lack<br>
+'Till they go and steal it back.</p>
+<p>-- Author unknown, 18th century England</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+</article>
+
+<footer>
+<section>
+	<p>This site is 100% <a href=https://git.starfall.systems/web>source-available</a>. © 2020-2023 Starfall. See <a href=https://git.starfall.systems/web/tree/COPYING.md rel=license>COPYING.md</a>.
+</section>
+<div style=text-align:center>⋁/⋀</div>
+</footer>
+
+</body>