Fleeing the digital old country
For reasons that may be obvious at this point, my mother is thoroughly sick of Facebook and wants to leave the site. Unfortunately Facebook is the thing keeping her in contact with friends and family she'd otherwise never see, so she needs a different way to keep in touch with those people.
One of the options she's looked into is Friendica, an open-source and decentralized social network with much of the same functionality as Facebook. But while my mum at 71 years old is pretty tech-savvy, most of her Facebook friends can't say the same — to them, the process of navigating the Fediverse is a daunting proposition.
Of course, the big reason that platforms like Facebook are so easy to use is that the company is handling a lot of technical and logistical decisions for you. Which means they can make those decisions in their best interest, instead of yours.
And the moment that becomes a deal you can no longer tolerate, you really only have two options: you can switch to a platform you control — with all the technical overhead that requires — or you can switch to a new platform that somebody else controls, and hope that this time the benevolent dictator stays benevolent.
Video Appearance: Date Me, Dammit!
I periodically co-host on the YouTube series Date Me, Dammit!, where my friends Annie and Maq play through dating sims of varying quality. We've just started a run of the game Fatal Hearts, which makes vague gestures at being a Dracula adaptation and is stuffed to the gills with confusing minigames.
You can watch the first episode on YouTube here.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty vs the Machine God," Chapter 1
The first chapter of "Jay Moriarty vs the Machine God" is now on Ko-fi and free for anyone to read. Subsequent chapters will be posted on Tuesdays as supporter-only posts. You can also get the entire novelette as an ebook.
This Week's Links
Why This OnlyFans Model Posts Machine Learning Explainers to Pornhub
Dar said she makes more money on YouTube overall because that’s where she gets more views, but in addition to higher rates, an added benefit of posting to Pornhub is that Pornhub is not likely to ban her for sharing adult content elsewhere on the web.
Platforms Systematically Removed a User Because He Made "Most Wanted CEO" Playing Cards
On December 14, James Harr, the owner of an online store called ComradeWorkwear, announced on social media that he planned to sell a deck of “Most Wanted CEO” playing cards, satirizing the infamous “Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards” introduced by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2003.
The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
More fic readers means more people in fandom, right? Instead, I read post after post talking about how distant writers felt from these newer readers—how impersonal and lonely the act of fannish creation has become.
My mum also has a side-hustle reselling rare/discontinued product from an MLM called Epicure. Epicure has just gone bankrupt. The vibe in my parents' house is like the end of that movie The Big Short right now.
-K
