iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yeah! I've been following it for a while, and I'd love to get more involved. Time to start advocating >:D

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There is always work like this being done, and are *groups* of people coming together to do it. But it has compromises. A friend recently referred to me getting a bsky after stubbornly planting myself on a furry fedi instance as "finally grew up and got on bsky" It stung. It's not a new feeling.

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But it's complicated high end work. So how do we contribute? Get people rallied around it? Excited about it? And yeah! I could contribute other parts to it and I really should (thanks for the push), but you know what also demotivates me from doing so? Feeling like no one in my circles will care.

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Here's another subtlety. Some people bounced of Fedi because it lacked "private dms" and there was a lot of FUD spread about that. Soatok is a furry cryptographer who has been designing a key piece of tech to enable end-to-end encrypted messaging on the Fedi. Just to get people back there.

Took me literally one post to get swamped with authors/accounts to follow and recommended works. There are *so* many furry hackers already. My favorite *class* of meme is references to this fact. They're just...elsewhere! Or don't post about it as publicly. So bubbles are a part of it.

Story in three parts told in a twitter thread from the Linux account. "UwU me wants more pets" followed by "Sorry everyone! I'm asking the furry to resign as an admin", then another followup hours later of "In recognition that furries are 40% of the Linux userbase this decision has been revoked"

There was a period of time I thought the community had a severe lack of fiction writing and wondered why more furries didn't become writers and thought I could fill that niche. Which is *very* wrong. I'm ashamed of it. But my circles are all streamers, visual artists, and hackers.

...but this started with being surprised more furries don't become hackers and make these spaces and us as a community support them. Sine *did* that, and it did not work. I don't think its perspective needs reframing, I think its experience is an invaluable resource. I certainly resonate with it.

So, when Sine says "everytime one of us tries, we fail", I think we need to focus less on the "one" part and more on the "everytime _we_ try, we fail" sentiment. I know you're trying to speak widely, and I do think *generally* we need to fight against individualist tendencies...

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Cohost.org was a site made by a group of people and had over 200k users. I recall Mythic was a vocal advocate for it when Twitter was sold. That's a good example of coming together as a community to do something. I don't think this is a case of being a singular hero. It failed. Funding/burnout

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I think...Sine was part of the team that made cohost.org... I'm kinda inclined to give it's experience more weight here, given the site failed due to lack of funding iirc.

Talk to the people in your life and be annoying about it.

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Literally the first convo I've had about Discord today with a normie, they thought it was a good idea as it'd protect kids from pdfs But when asked how they couldn't say. When explained how it wouldn't do that they doubled down on needing to do *something* because it's problem they've heard about.

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Yeah! We should talk more next time we see each other c:

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My attitude has been kinda the standard "message your senators and keep on them" and talk about it to people willing to listen (which is also hard) but I'm honestly eyeing the backdoor. I don't want to have to do a Tor-backed self-hosted thing...but might as well have it ready eh?

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Dang I missed that, I'll have to find it and give it a read. And being realistic: I sadly agree... given ::gestures widely:: And then me puffing out my chest about my senator when also I know how much centralist democrats and petrochemical money influence my local elections.

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Social media age verification laws in the United States - Wikipedia

My bad, it was Louisiana not Mississippi, and Arizona's still hasn't passed yet. But also.... seems even worse than I thought. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_...

en.wikipedia.org

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Yes. Get angry. Threaten their *revenue* but also get angry at your leaders. It's not just Discord and it's not going away. I emailed my senator about this trend a while ago and got a whole "as a father with daughters, blah blah blah" and you bet your ass I'm voting his ass out as soon as I can.

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Discord is doing an IPO and I guarantee they don't want to do this (it costs money). But they're gonna weigh that against having to enforce blocks for *entire* states. Not to mention other such regulations in the UK. And looks like the EU wants to do this too.

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But also consider this. Can one post/read porn on Discord without verifying you are, in fact, over 18? Have the age-verification laws in Mississippi or Arizona been repealed yet? What about other states pushing similar laws through? Is age-verification "free" or does it have an operational cost?

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IMO we need to do both. We need to pushback because this is part of a larger effort of control, but also being to *just leave* is also more powerful and more resilient.

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