deleting Twitter, removing Oculus, and deplatforming YouTube
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I’m doing a 366 Day Challenge, and am 254 days in! You can follow along on my PixelFed account.
So I’ve been feeling more of a push to extricate myself from extractive platforms like Twitter. This is while I handle the additional burdens of moderation that come with running my own alternative space, tech.lgbt.
Part of the problem for me is that I don’t like leaving data lying around. This is why I have saved account credentials for hundreds of sites that I never use. Not everyone offers a real deletion method. Twitter, for instance, has an API to manage tweets, but limits you to accessing the most recent 3200 of them, or using individual IDs to manage the rest. You can delete your Twitter account, but they want to leave all of your content up. That’s not how I roll. I want to be a good guest and clean up after myself before leaving.
The problem is that Twitter turned off the archive download feature that powers all of the deletion tools after the big hack that they suffered a few months ago. Well now it’s back! Also, only slightly surprising to me, is finding out that the mastermind behind the hack is a teenager from Florida, with an accomplice in Orlando. And since Florida has open hearings, but they are being done via Zoom, a totally obvious zoombombing followed during the hearings for bail.
…Aaaanyway, I’m still there @davidWolfpaw, but I’m slowly culling things from that account, as well as dropping other ones that I never use anyway. It still provides some functional value, albeit value that has diminished over time for me.
If you want to try cleaning up your account, I used tweetdelete.net, paying for the service to upload old Twitter data. I’m a bit bummed that I only found out about a tool that lets you get more granular control and host yourself, Semiphemeral, after I used this service.
Oh also I was a dummy and bent my iPad earlier this week because I lowered my standing desk onto it. Do I sound like an out of touch techie yet?
lol oops
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Ok, so that was a tangent, but one that lets me crow about being above some social media while acknowledging its importance in our online lives. Or I guess also letting me roll a few articles that have been personally interesting to me into an introduction. Now how about a few other reading suggestions for your weekend?
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The Little Cards That Tell Police ‘Let’s Forget This Ever Happened’ – Katy Way, Vice
Younger david actually had one of these cards given to me by a family member, and I thought that it was bullshit then too (and never had reason to use it, but doubt that I would have). I used to trawl a forum devoted to “police courtesy” because of some of the ridiculous stories that people posted while being shocked that they’d actually have to pay fines for breaking the law, when they have a cousin’s wife’s stepson who is a cop.
This shit is bad. Knowing cops doesn’t make you a better person, and this just exacerbates the issue with uneven policing.
Never Say Wolf – david Adger, Nautilus
As someone you may call a slight wolf enthusiast, as well as a minor linguistics buff, I was surprised that I was unaware of the taboo history of the word wolf around Western Europe.
Facebook halts Oculus Quest sales in Germany amid privacy concerns – Kyle Orland, ArsTechnica
I know a few people who have already given up their Oculus VR headsets in favor of other companies after Facebook announced that they would be requiring FB login to use the devices in the future. As my husband can attest, even before the October start date for all new devices and accounts to require a FB account to use the devices, you can’t really do much with them without one in the first place.
I’m not one for VR as it exists right now, but I see the promise that it can provide. I really don’t want to let one of the most toxic and abusive tech and social companies in the world dictate terms to users like this, nor contribute to an alt-right shitlord who spends his days building surveillance/murder drones for the military now.
Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work – Spencer Soper, Bloomberg
Oh the world that we live in. The systems governing modern capitalism are fucked and oppressive, but the ingenuity shown by those trying to live under it is impressive.
The Making of a YouTube Radical – Kevin Roose, NYT
Yes, this is an old article that I’d already read, but I am pairing it with the companion Rabbit Hole podcast, which we finally listened to this weekend. If you consume the same kind of “social tech is kinda bad, yeah?” content that I do, not much of this will be new. Still, it was engrossing and a reminder in this hell year that we’ve had these issues for a while. Plus, the article has some cool animation effects that make me think that maybe not all web design is bad.
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What if Digimon had beaten Pokémon? – Polygon
I loved the Digimon anime when I was younger, though never got into the games. I love the creative thinking that went into the prognostication of an alternative future here where Digimon reigns supreme in the humans battling with animals genre.
Fun fact: that show and the site fanfiction.net directly contributed to my longest friendship and my becoming a furry.
How Covid Reveals The Ghoulish Reality Behind Anti Homeless Propaganda – SOME MORE NEWS
I really don’t know the argument to get those with the power to make the changes necessary to ameliorate the houseless crisis in America. Nor how to make the rest of us more compassionate. Counter-propaganda? Beating up Ted Cruz? Who knows.
These Aren’t Laws | Bad r/Legaladvice – LegalEagle
I started following LegalEagle for the pop-culture legal deep dives. He makes a lot of guest appearances too and clearly knows how to work the platform over at YouTube. That means at some point every creator has to spend some time critiquing subreddits, but at least I learned something!
I used “deep fakes” to fix the Lion King – ontyj
I mean they’re all CGI anyway, so why not lean into the aesthetic of the original that made people go see the new movie anyway?
Just look at ALL THE WAYS how DOGS DIG HOLES – You have NO IDEA HOW FUNNY THIS IS!
Just gonna end on a video for pure enjoyment.
Do you dig holes in a funny way? Email back if you want to share that or any other interesting things that you found online!
Hey look, the weekend! Make a bit of time for yourself where you can 💝
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