As per Facebook’s newest Transparency doodad:
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
So, it appears that Facebook has followed X and made it easier for hate to exist on its platform. Not that it was particularly difficult previously. But It’s just changed its policies to explicitly allow people to effectively target the LGBTQIA plus community. And that means… we’re back to blogging. I’m going to try and post more often here, because here, it turns out, I’m safer. And I’ll be leaving Facebook.
To be completely clear here. This isn’t about freedom of speech. Or even giving people more freedom to say what they truly mean. This is about carving out niches in hate policies so that whichever minority is currently considered abhorrent can be eradicated. I happen to be in one of those minorities.
For full transparency, here’s what I posed on Facebook earlier today.
Today, Facebook (again) became an unsafe place for me, after Mark Zuckerberg made a pledge to remove and change many of the policies that have helped make Facebook a little safer for minorities.
In addition to removing fact checking and instead choosing to rely on community notes, it’s following X and plans onremoving protections that were (frankly already) pretty flimsy when it comes to minority groups… allowing members to harass and attack folks for their identity, background, religion or nationality.
It’s being done under the guise of free speech – which in this context is actually closer to “allowing hate”.
I will be leaving. I urge you to do the same. If you stay, you are enabling the rise of authoritarian tendencies by saying it’s okay to not protect people. By leaving, you’re sending a message that you do not want a company to make money off others pain and suffering. Using Mastodon – which is decentralized and difficult to destroy – is the best way to ensure your voice remains part of a global community that cares more about the people than the profit.
If you want to engage, I’ll be on Mastodon – where I’ve been for a long while now.
Professionally (ie, my work at Transport Evolved) , you’ll find me at: https://mastodon.transportevolved.com/@Aminorjourney
Personally, you’ll find me at :
https://tech.lgbt/@[email protected]
If you want to understand how Mastodon works, you’ll find a great primer here:
https://opensource.com/article/23/1/mastodon-beginners-guide
I also plan on blogging more at www.aminorjourney.com – for my personal vlog. I suck at it, but hey, back in MY day, it’s how we communicated when ICQ was still a thing and we wanted something longer-form and more controllable than a Usenet or Bulletin Board.
I haven’t posted since September – so I guess it’s time I make an update, and I will be, after this post goes live.
Mutual friends; If you want to direct message me, there’s always Matrix. I’m there too. – usual ID.
I hope that many of you reading this have found this site because of that post. If you have, then Hi. This means hopefully more content here, but also enforced isolation for my own safety. And if you’re reading this BECAUSE of a post I made on other social media, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. Yeah, we’re going back to .rss feeds, because again, they’re safe. They’re free from hyperbole informed by usually rich white dudes wanting to maximize their shareholder profit, fuck the consequences.
The upcoming U.S. inauguration scares me shitless. I’ve already been fighting harassment online and threats of violence against myself and my team, and I have nightmares most nights about what lies in store. I don’t go out when possible, and we’re not super happy eating out. We ate out with a friend the other day, and I kid you not, I was on high alert the entire time. I’ve stopped at rest stops in Washington State where I’ve had side eyes and coughs. I can only imagine what it’s like in less progressive, more restrictive places.
The UK? Alas, it’s barely better. Friends who are they are also being targeted, and I’ve heard medical support is being withdrawn from trans people at an alarming rate. So, we’re not returning there either. And Canada? It’s darned expensive. But maybe… one day…
With the scary shit out of the way, let’s talk about more positive things. It’s been a while, after all. Over the Holidays, we had a reasonably quiet time, and my beloved started on a new Desk top for my standing desk. It’s made of local White Oak, and I helped process it. It’s still a few weeks from completion, but holy heck is the wood amazing.
I mean, look at it! It’s beautiful! It’s going to get its own drawers and storage above and below the desk surface, and combined with the changes we’ve made in the edit studio, should mean good things.
The leftmost desk is mine. Right now, it’s still got the old top on it, but eventually, it’ll get a nice, heavy-duty upgrade. I cannot wait. The right desk? That belongs to my Video Editor at TE, who is an amazing and wonderful individual who I am very lucky to have working with me.
The holidays also saw me fix one of our TVs – an LG model that was in our bedroom. We’d picked it up second hand for a few hundred bucks earlier this year, but the LED backlight blew. So, after a quick search online, I was able to pick up a new set of lights that I fitted on Boxing Day while watching/listening to Sir Patrick Stewart give his Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol performance.
The result? pretty impressive. Thanks to an iFixIt guide, I was able to pull everything apart, install the new LEDs, and reassemble. The scariest part was pulling the screen out – which brought back memories of helping Susan (my late sister) replace the memory in our parent’s very first computer – a 1998 iMac – in 1999 when I was visiting home from University.
This year, I’m working really hard to try and promote a cleaner, greener, more equitable world. I want people to learn how to work on their own equipment, to support open source and right-to-repair, and fixing the TV was the first in what I hope will be many repairs this year. I’ve got a couple of openEVSE boards to put into our JuiceBoxes – so that they can be switched over to open source rather than closed source (more on that here), and I’m also planning some more open-source goodness in other projects.
Work-wise? We’re just back at the office and I’ve felt better. I’m battling trolls (which YouTube no-longer does anything about), and honestly do not enjoy my job. I enjoy the world of EVs, of promoting a better alternative to suck, squeeze, bang, blow – but I don’t enjoy the hate aimed as the team – or at EVs. It’s only going to get worse.
But I also have plans. Plans for more Video Production work for the team, and less YouTube placation. More longer-form videos. Less trying to please the algorithm. And maybe, alternative revenue streams.
We’ve also been moving away from commercial solutions. We’ve been using Trello for as long as I can remember, but it’s become bloated and laggy. Every time I log into it (a service that charges me $500+ a year for the privilege of using) I’m bugged about turning on AI assistance, and I’m asked to upgrade to a new and shiny for even more money a month.
GSuite is also on its way out. Google hasn’t been good with people’s security, and frankly, I’m wanting to go back to our roots – to try and use more open source and community-driven software. Luckily, there’s now tech to make that easier, and we’ve already spun up some docker images for internal stuff. But email is difficult – so if you know of any good solutions from a company that respects privacy and security – for a team of five full timers (and a few aliased emails) let me know. Of course, there’s also an advantage to not having our data on a commercial server somewhere. If it’s on a server we own, it’s… less likely that someone will obtain data off it without our knowledge or permission. Yes, someone could force us to hand over stuff – but I’d rather know it was happening than not.
Finishing off my rambling, hey, let’s look at the Carvera Air! It arrived this week, and I’m so happy to have received it before..y’know..
It’s a desktop CNC machine – and I’m so ready to lean how to use it. I’m hoping that I will be able to use it to make new parts for our home projects, custom brackets for our camera truck, and more. So. yeah. Go us. Let’s just hope that the next few weeks don’t mean I’m running for the border. Because, that’s not out of the realm of possibility right about now.
I fucking hate it.
Be kind to each other, eh? It’s nicer that way. x