Consumers are a sleeping giant; an untapped power to demand better from tech giants, if only we had the discipline to boycott unacceptible options. If only we had the constitution to refuse injustices & prioritize the greater good above selfish short-term desires.
@woozle i've been doing the same.. feeding data into emacs org-mode docs until the data can manifest into a giant bombshell of compelling influence
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, [...] if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, [they] would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it."
—George Orwell, 1984
@Coffee i really need to read that book sometime, instead of just living in it
@resist1984 You really should. And I should reread it.
Side note:
I hate how I had to butcher that quote to fit. Yet again 500 characters is proven to be a pittance unfit for serious prose.
@Coffee one option would be to render the text as a PNG using #ImageMagick and post that (but it would have inconvenienced me since I use a non-GUI client). I think some nodes have bigger limits.
@resist1984 #Fedilab can do that, but I thought splitting it up would harm the flow. Anyway, I hope you have access to the image description from your non-GUI client. There are 1500 characters available for an image description, which makes the 500 limit on the main text even dumber.
@Coffee i didn't know there was an image description feature. Is there a field for that in the GUI web client? The #bitlbee-mastodon plugin does not show the description automatically, but if I use the "info" command to dump all status details, it appears there, but it's truncated because it exceeds IRC line limits & the plugin isn't designed to break one field into multiple lines.
@Coffee I wonder if @kensanata is aware of this.. it could be the same bug as this one: https://alexschroeder.ch/software/Post_confirmation_truncated I'm not sure if it's an IRC limit or a limit of the plugin.
@resist1984 I forget how exactly Bitlbee works, but IIRC it acts like a local IRC server, so in theory line length could be unlimited.
Looks like Bitlbee truncates to 512 bytes as per the RFC, to avoid client issues. It would be nice if it would split messages rather than truncate them.
@resist1984 @Coffee there is. Even with an OCR feature. I just tried that OCR, but at least for me it didn't work. Maybe I've blocked something essential for it – it just froze. Luckily, clicking outside aborted it…
@resist1984 After you've uploaded an image, it will be displayed with some floating buttons overlaid. If you click "edit" you can add a description and change what part of the image gets cropped. Fedilab also supports adding image descriptions.
@resist1984 hmmm i should look into a non-GUI client. Incidentally, if you ever do read 1984 maybe you'll freak out at the realization that telescreens are about to be a think and everyone is welcoming them for some reason.
@resist1984 you're on the right track, though – you just forgot the final step: ALT. Add an image description. You'll be surprised how much text is allowed for that (teaser: 1500 chars). And I bet your TUI client will show the ALT text of the image, won't it? @Coffee
@Coffee microblogging platforms are not for serious prose, use a blogging platform instead.
Nice quote btw.
@vesperto Thanks. I think me and my conversation partners should like to decide for ourselves how to best use the platform, rather than having it dictated to us by one developer.
@Coffee it's not about being dictated, it's about not being absurd. Since twitter, microblogging has always been about... short messages. Why use it "for prose" when blogs predate microblogging and serve that exact purpose? It's even in the name - MICRO blogging. Why not toot links to blog posts instead? I dislike analogies but it's like insisting on driving a car on water and bitching it can't float.
@vesperto If your argument is that doing things differently from Twitter is absurd, we have no basis for continuing this conversation.
@resist1984 it sure wouldbe nice if people woke up and realized we could bankrupt these companies overnight if we just left and went to a better source.
It's exactly what's happening right now with whatsapp. People are leaving enmasse to signal and Shitbook is panicking.
@resist1984 The majority of regular users will go with what's easy instead of what's right, while voicing a preference for the latter. What we have to do is make the better options the easy ones because the vast majority of people just go with whatever the default settings are. That's why things like Brave and Firefox are important. They might not be perfect, but they're functional, viable options for the modern internet and have much better default settings than Chrome.
Some people say they are concerned about their privacy, but as soon as some action from their side is required, those concerns seem to evaporate.
@hans @resist1984 I agree. That's why we have to make the secure options the default. When I deleted my Facebook a couple years ago I told everybody if they wanted to talk to me they could email, call or use Signal. I removed the option of using Facebook. Most people don't change any settings, so as activists we need to make sure that security and privacy are opt out, not opt in.
@resist1984 I could go on a rant about the lack of tools for organizing collective action such as boycotts.
...actually, I probably have gone on several such rants over the years, but that never seems to get anything done; so I've been putting my focus into writing them instead.
(...which is horrendously slow because I am terrible at organizing my life, but progress is being made.)