A language gripe which I haven’t mentioned lately is the treatment of “media” as a singular. I’ve given it up as a lost cause, but it damages discourse. People often think of “the media” as one thing. Obviously there are many media. This blog is a medium for information, no less than CNN is. But in common use, you don’t qualify as a medium unless either you’re a big corporation or a fortune-teller. Similarly, there’s a tendency to count people as “journalists” only if they work for a “medium” (or is it “a media”)? This leads to the idea that freedom of the press applies only to properly credentialed and accredited journalists and media.
This trend appears in Article 17 of the EU’s proposed Media Freedom Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation has strongly criticized.
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The first article I came across on the Supreme Court’s 303 Creative LLC decision was an outright lie, claiming the Court had ruled businesses can now refuse service to same-sex couples. Creating panic is what a lot of news sites do best, and lots of people on social media are helping to spread the misinformation. What it actually ruled was this:
The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado
seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. In the
past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they
thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment.
War and Peace. Crime and Punishment. We the Living. Are all of these classic novels now unacceptable? Based on reactions to Elizabeth Gilbert’s no longer forthcoming The Snow Forest, it appears so. They’re set in Russia, and to a certain online mob such novels can’t be endured.
Elizabeth Gilbert was set to release her next novel, The Snow Forest. It has become, according to Time, “the target of review bombing, a practice where online users post multiple negative reviews on social media and review sites.” Faced with that reaction, she has pulled it from the publication schedule.
What was the problem? “The historical novel, which centers around a family in the 1930s that finds refuge from the Soviet government in the woods of Siberia, received backlash online from Ukrainian readers who criticized her for publishing a book set in Russia amid the Russian war in Ukraine.”
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Since I’ve commented on the 2023 China Worldcon and the bid for one in Egypt, I should mention that the odds of my attending the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, which were already low, have dropped to near zero.
The government of the UK has stomped on the right of mere commoners to criticize “His Majesty,” just when the world’s eyes were on it. I’m not calling for a boycott, but I don’t feel like setting foot in the UK if I don’t have to.
Security Minister Tugendhat declared, “The coronation is a chance for the United Kingdom to showcase our liberty and democracy, that’s what this security arrangement is doing.” The showcase has included suspicionless detention, bans directed at specific people, and restrictions on Internet speech. Volunteers in a women’s safety program were arrested for handing out rape alarms, because they could in principle be used to disrupt events. The charge: “Conspiracy to commit public nuisance.”
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With the explosion of Mastodon use, some people may have come across Bookwyrm, a federated network that uses ActivityPub protocols. It’s supposed to be something like a decentralized alternative to Goodreads. I was excited about it at first, but fortunately was quickly warned about its license. It’s unsuitable for me, for independent writers, and for advocates of freedom. I thought about whether I should even mention it, but decided I should post a brief warning.
The problem is write at the top: “This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles.” Software licenses that restrict who can use the software and for what purpose are almost always a bad idea, even when the restriction isn’t inherently bad, as it is in this case. Open-source code which only some people are allowed to use isn’t open-source.
Most obviously, it implicitly excludes publishing houses and self-employed authors. Organizations that aren’t employee-owned are explicitly excluded. That’s worse than senseless. Depending on how you read it, it could also exclude people who live by capitalist principles, such as giving value for value and rejecting governmental control over what can be published. 🚩
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Originally I wrote this piece, in a slightly different form, for a non-public journal. If you’re a writer who’s looking to add Mastodon to your communication and publicity resources, you might find it useful.
Mastodon is a federated system for making brief, usually public posts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, the system doesn’t belong to any one owner. Anyone can set up a server (also called an instance), and it’s fairly easy and cheap if you have a little tech knowledge. It’s like FidoNet from the days of BBSes, before the Internet was open to the public, or like Usenet.
Mastodon is built on open-source software and is part of a larger system called the Fediverse. There’s a video sharing system of sorts, but it hasn’t really caught on. Hosting video is much more daunting than hosting messages and images.
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The more technical an issue is, the easier it is to report it incorrectly. Today I noticed a widely retweeted claim that Parler had sent the email addresses of all its users in a message related to Kayne West’s acquisition of the service. Here it is:
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When you report or comment on a news story, the first step is to understand what it says. Low-quality websites have ways of appearing to say more than they do. They aim to create a panic and attract links. A careful reading may show there isn’t much substance to what happened.
Let’s look at a Daily Mail article claiming that an application called “New Profile Pic” “hoovers up your details.” A careful reading shows that doesn’t mean much.
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Robby Soave is making a name for himself among the younger generation of libertarian journalists. His Tech Panic addresses many of the overblown concerns and bad recommendations about social media. The attacks come from both the right and the left, and they’re disturbingly similar even though the two sides hate each other. They’re often attacks on free speech as such. 
I should mention that I don’t like the big social media platforms very much. Rather than go off on a major rant, I’ll just leave it at that. I make minimal use of Facebook and have given up on Twitter, and I’m not biased in their favor.
Politicians often demand the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The bulk of the CDA was declared unconstitutional, but Section 230 remains as protection for hosting companies and their users. It says, basically, that websites aren’t responsible for user-posted content. There are some exceptions; for instance, hosts have to take down child porn as fast as they can. But if a user violates a copyright or libels a person, the liability falls on the user, not the host.
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