It’s an interesting perspective. Historically the fediverse was more European; Mastodon is based in Germany and initially got a lot of traction in France, NLNet has contributed a lot of the funding, and there’s historically more adoption by European governmental organizations than US. But these days a lot of the energy is being driven by corporate interests (Flipboard, Wordpress, Meta, Ghost) which are primarily American (Ghost being the only exception), so that’s leading to a change of dynamics. Distressing, especially given what’s going on here in the US!

Thanks! “Feckless” is a good description of the admin response :)

Great points … and yes that is a key question!

This bill can’t pass without Democratic support … but last week, over 50 Democrats voted for it! It didn’t quite pass, but now they’re trying again … so please, if you’re in the US, please call your Congresspeople!

Here’s EFF’s action alert. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-not-to-weaponize-the-treasury-department-against-nonprofits

Yeah, a lot depends on where you live. Check out these lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmMobN4AVw And they’re far from the worst! I just did a search on “four hour voting lines” and it happened in Chicago, New Jersey, UC Irvine, Northeast Ohio …and that’s just the first page of search results.

One reason people might be annoyed by this is because it sounds like you don’t realize how many people had to wait in four-hour long lines.

Anyhow, turnout wasn’t abysmal, it looks like be down a bit from 2020’s record numbers.

Do you think the Director of CISA – who Biden appointed (and has done a great job) and Trump will almost certainly fire – lives under a rock and wants Trump to take office? Because here’s what she said:

https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/statement-cisa-director-easterly-security-2024-elections

Yes there several english-speaking instances running Misskey or a fork. Here’s the list for Sharkey - https://fedidb.org/software/sharkey

Misskey’s a vibrant colorful very interactive experience

Bluesky’s a very good Twitter alternative, at least for now, although it’s owned by a VC-funded startup so we’ll see how long that lasts

Mastodon (and even moreso forks like Glitch and Hometown) are good if you want a small-to-medium size community along with the ability to be part of broader conversations. It can be a decent Twitter alternative for some people (especially white techies) but Bluesky’s a lot more usable, easy to get started on, and diverse.

What’s the evidence you find “literally incontrovertible”?

The comparison is apt though:

• In 2020, almost all non-partisan voting rights organizations and election experts (as well as most Republicans, despite losing) were saying that there was in fact no evidence of widespread election fraud. So conservatives claiming election fraud were seen as conspiracy theorists who were spreading disinfo (either intentionally or because they really thought there was evidence).

• In 2024, almost all non-partisan voting rights organizations and election experts (as well as most Democrats, despite losing) are saying that there was in fact no evidence of widespread election fraud. So …

Sure, if it’s somebody you know or trust who’s saying this, then it’s not disinformation; agreed about helping them contact election officials and/or other authorities, and if you think it’s useful to amplify it, then I’m not trying to talk you out of it.

If it’s not somebody you know or trust, then amplifying it is quite possibly helping out a disinformation campaign.

And in any case, amplifying individual claims is very different from the unsupported claims about “millions of missing votes”, and that’s what I am trying to talk people out of.

It’s true that downballot Dems ran ahead of Harris in most states. Why do you think it’s statistically unlikely? Polls ahead of the election showed downballot Dems were more popular than Harris. Republicans focused most of their negative campaigning on Harris. Biden’s very unpopular and she didn’t try to distance herself from him (I’m not saying that she should have, I’m just observing that she didn’t). Sexists and racists were less likely to vote for Harris.

I talked about that in the article:

Don’t get me wrong, multiple voter suppression techniques actually were used to keep people from voting – purging voters from rolls, felon disenfranchisement, 6-hour lines, texts with false information, voter intimidation, voter id laws, signature challenges, etc etc etc. But that’s not what these conspiracy allegations are focusing on.

And I also discussed it in terms of the goals of people pushing these conspiracy theories:

focusing attention on an alleged fraud that didn’t occur is a good way to divert attention from all voter suppression that really has occurred and has been steadily ramping up ever since Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voing Rights Act – and got even worse this year after Republicans blocked legislation that could have provided voters and election officials with more protection.

The version on the IFTAS blog is at https://about.iftas.org/2024/10/29/5-ways-to-fight-election-disinformation-on-bluesky-and-the-fediverse/

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I can see arguments both ways. When I did the first version of this back in 2020 I got feedback from a couple of experts who emphasized the importance of getting GOOD information out to balance out the disinfo (which even with good reporting still usually doesn’t get taken down immediately) so encouraged this order … at the time we were focused on FB and Twitter but I think it’s probably still true here, since almsot all instances have part-time moderators so can’t turn things around instantly. Hard to know though …

And sorry I didn’t respond earlier, I thought I had but never hit reply.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Yeah, it’s somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It’s great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren’t any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There’s certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta’ll happen.

There isn’t direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started

Have a look here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17718832/11190856

As Strypey acknowledges, there’s a lot he didn’t know about at the time and left out. Before Mastodon: GNU Social and other early fediverses includes a lot of that.