repost
· · to read

I must admit I am torn about Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD. Originally I thought this a great idea. But over the years, my views have changed a bit. I see companies wave flags on this one day, and a week later, all is forgotten and they’re back to their old ways. So like many accessibility awareness things, #GAAD has become a day for marketing pushes, making a lot of noise without followups. And the few companies that do follow up on their marketing gibberish, are those that would do it anyway. They don’t need a day like #GAAD, but it gives them a chance to do some more focused marketing on those days anyway. So yeah … While I think that this is a good cause per se, the thing it has turned into I don’t like as much.

—@Marco

repost
· · to read

One time someone called me a technologist and it felt so bad and wrong that I moved to Oregon and started growing weed.

I worked in tech, but I was never a technologist. Tech is boring. People are what’s interesting. Tech is just something we use to get to the people.

When you forget that, as many tech leaders have, that’s when the bad things happen.

—@fraying

repost
· · to read

Hey folks. Everyone–EVERYONE–can get got by a scammer at some point.

When we blame folks who get socially engineered for their carelessness or lack of vigilance, we’re making it less likely that people will self-report when they got got, and perpetuating the myth that all we need is vigilance to avoid scams.

The narrative that only fools get scammed helps scammers. Don’t fall for it.

—@Annalee

repost
· · to read

I am a very happy #Microblog customer – and if you look on #FediDb, they are one of the top Fediverse-enabled platforms (in the top 6) and just launched the ability to post to both Mastodon/Fedi and #Bluesky.

They are having a virtual yearly event online #MicroCamp and it's about to kick off. And @Onmyom will be one of the keynote speakers.

cc: @manton

Go see it here: https://micro.camp/

—@tchambers

repost
· · to read

#Barcelona, #Meta‘s Twitter competitor, will be ready by summer.

And lest you believe #ActivityPub integration was just some rumour, think again. In a slide, Meta confirms that Barcelona will indeed be decentralized and will be compatible with Mastodon.

Everyone who thought that AT protocol would easily win over ActivityPub, and that #Bluesky would kill Mastodon just because a few influencers joined doesn’t understand the sheer marketing power and pull that Meta has at its disposal.

But believe me, I’m not exactly cheering on Meta here. Generally, where Meta goes, shenanigans happen. I simply don’t think Meta is capable of releasing a product without dark patterns.

Nevertheless, I don’t think the Fediverse is even close to preparing for what will happen once Barcelona starts federating.

We should all be taking Barcelona very seriously.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/19/23730070/instagram-twitter-app-competitor-leak

@socialmedianews@venera.social

—@atomicpoet

repost
· · to read

Public Notice

Lots of reports of crypto spam attacks coming in from multiple instances today.

Seems like the bad guys are getting kinda worried about Mastodon.

Instance admins are taking this very seriously and working hard to fend off the attacks.

What can you do? If you see a crypto scam post, don’t engage with it. It’s just a bot anyway. If you block and report the post it will help administrators isolate the attacker account.

We got this!

#CryptoSpamAttack #CryptoSpam

—@mastodonmigration

repost
· · to read

In an exclusive interview, I sat down with Libo Cao Meyers, a top engineering executive at Apple, and talked with her all about her having polio, immigrating to America from China, working in tech, her new memoir, and giving back to the disability community.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenaquino/2023/05/18/how-a-disabled-chinese-immigrant-turned-polio-and-ableism-into-becoming-an-apple-executive-and-author/

—@steven_aquino

repost
· · to read

#Google just announced that going forward, any account not logged into for two years gets deleted.

This means huge amounts of rare or unique #video is about to disappear from #YouTube as accounts get flagged as inactive, such as when the user dies. Families’ #HomeMovies (often posted by an older relative for their family’s benefit), historical footage, rare #television clips, etc. What an incalculable loss to human #history and culture!

If there are videos important to you on someone else’s video channel, find a way to download them. And if you have rare #media of historical importance, consider leaving it to institutional #archives or lending it to archives for digital preservation.

—@StevenCapsuto

repost
· · to read

Hugops to every other #mastoadmin having to deal with this spam wave. We have been fighting is on mastodon.social for days, and were forced to close registrations yesterday until we could emergency-deploy countermeasures.
Unfortunately, this made them realise they are other servers in the Fediverse to target.
If any admin needs help fighting this, please ping me either on the server admin discord, or directly here, and I will gladly help.

—@renchap

repost
· · to read

Great NPR article over the weekend on Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame, the blind chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I highly recommend you read it! Key sentence, “How do you define disability?
It is not the presence of the impairment, but it is the social and attitudinal barriers that are hindering our performance.”
Link: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/05/13/1174089463/when-getty-began-losing-her-vision-as-a-girl-she-was-told-her-life-was-over-wron
#blind #NFB #LowVision #disability

—@NothingLeftOfMe