Today I went to a freecycling party hosted by a friend! We all brought clothes/books/art supplies/etc we didn't want, perused everyone else's stuff and took what we wanted, and then divided any remaining items into categories to donate (e.g. one person takes all the art supplies to our local used craft supply store, another person takes all the clothes to a local thrift store, etc).
It was very fun! And I never would have thought of throwing a party like that, so I'm posting about it here to pass along the idea to others :)
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As someone who is totally blind, the Fediverse is the only place where I have ever been able to follow people such as photographers, artists, or even those who post pictures of their cats or the food they ate. The reason is that most of them use alt text. They take the time to describe the images that my screen reader can't recognise. Some write the descriptions themselves, and others use tools such as altbot. Some worry that their descriptions aren't good enough, especially when they are new at this. Let me assure you, not only are they good enough, they are extremely appreciated! If the rest of the world thought as you did, it would be a much better place. Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.
#appreciation #accessibility #altbot #alttext #blind #blindness #fediverse #gratitude #images #inclusivity #peoplewhocare #pictures #technology
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Public Social Media
The choice is clear.
Mastodon
Owned by: No one and everyone
Structure: Public non-profit
Number of distributed nodes: Thousands
Post length: 500 characters and more
Can edit? Yes
Bluesky
Owned by: Venture capitalists
Structure: Corporate for profit
Number of "distributed" nodes: One
Post length: 300 characters
Can edit? No
Daniel Lowe likes this.
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Today's #DynDNSHistory brought to you by @jtk , who asks about early or interesting abuse-related issues.
There's lots here so this one will be a thread...
The first one that jumps to mind is credit card fraud. This isn't really surprising/interesting in the later days, but what surprised me was that people used stolen credit cards even when we were just taking donations.
Like, really? You're going to abuse some kids who are just trying to run a free service? Not cool.
1/?
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Once we started doing paid services, the credit card fraud really picked up - in some cases it just seemed like they were using us to check stolen cards before using them for something bigger, other times they were really trying to get services.
I never quite understood the logic of the second one - you have to know it's not gonna last for long when you're using someone else's card. But maybe people don't notice and report the fraud?
4/?
This one led to some of the most interesting things about abuse - getting surprising new domain names! When someone bought a domain with a stolen credit card, there was usually no way for us to cancel the registration (eventually we could if we caught it fast enough, but by the time there was a chargeback it'd for sure be too late).
So, we figured - we paid for these, I guess they're ours now! I don't remember any specifics, but there was definitely some weird ones in there.
5/?
I don't remember if we ever turned any of them into actual customer domains for our free services - I don't THINK any of them happened to be good for that purpose.
Credit card fraud was a huge pain back then (not that it isn't now) - there wasn't nearly the range of intelligent analysis and risk assessment that's out there today. And as I recall we got chargebacks via fax (or had to respond via fax, maybe both). The bad old days...
6/?
Next time on #DynDNSHistory I'll talk about credit card processing - it was so much more complicated than just getting a Stripe account those days.
The hoops and shenanigans we had to go through as a small start-up doing online card processing in those early days were wild.
7/7
we’re they using you as a registrar / reseller?
I never knew that DynDNS was in that line of business.
I think your "latest" only applies from the time you started following, but if you go to my profile, you can see everything you have access to. Some of this is probably bound by federation etiquette - if you were to follow someone on another server, the system wouldn't download everything they'd ever posted.
The bullseye icon also shows all the conversations on the server you have access to.
I've been trying to settle in a bit on Friendica. Grouping my relationships into "Circles," reminiscent of G+. Unlike Mastodon, there doesn't seem to be any hashtag lists, which I miss. The interface would accommodate them though, I think.
Losing nearly all my followers is kind of tough. There's no Mastodon -> Friendica migration. On the other hand, maybe it's like a mark-and-sweep gc. The followers who actually wanted to follow me still are.
I'm still intending this to be a public instance, but I want to do some theming and policy work before I start putting it on directories.
I created this Friendica instance to be my new home now that octodon.social is shutting down in a bit. I was hoping some people would follow me from Facebook but you can guess how that's going.
I think I actually prefer the Friendica interface for my Fedi content. That was unexpected.
Huh, Octodon is shutting down? Weird, but I guess I haven't heard anything from them in quite a while.
Guess that's my backup account out, then. Not that I've really used that one since setting this one up.
Dennis Nunes
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •David Revoy
in reply to Dennis Nunes • • •Of course, I don't pretend that my ALT descriptions are perfect or accurate, but they are an extension of my own expression, with my own flaws, mistakes, and way of describing things. And well, I'm a human, not a machine, so I guess that's part of the homemade charm. 😺
wb x64
in reply to David Revoy • • •@davidrevoy @nunesdennis also, at minimum, consider that the default is something like "image." So even the difference between "photo" and "screenshot" and "meme" at least provides handles on what they're missing.
Obviously enough detail to be included in the conversation is better & elaboration on what's notable or aesthetic is best. Someone could always ask a question if they were curious, but not if they have insufficient info.
I usually elaborate on why it's nice: see attached
wb x64
in reply to wb x64 • • •mcc (@mcc@mastodon.social)
Mastodonjoy larkin 🌺✨
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 • • •James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 • • •Gary Brazzell
in reply to Georgiana Brummell • • •Georgiana Brummell
in reply to Gary Brazzell • • •