Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈 @stefan@mastodon.technology
- PM work
- https://cthechange.com
- Creative
- https://stefanferreira.com
#Digital tech project manager | #web | #civictech | #opendata | #opensource | #humanetech
Joined Jan 2018
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
What blows my mind about Mastodon is not so much its design or tech.
It's that people there read content that interests them and click links. I'm so used to the complete passivity, even apathy, of Twitter users, that what people do on Mastodon never ceases to amaze me.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
Google has 80+ "free" products... which means that YOU are the product. I wrote a series of articles that will help you see what they know about you (which is WAY too much) and guide you through de-Googling your life. It's never too late for #privacy.
https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/reducing-my-google-footprint/
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
I wrote a blog post about capitalism in the context of Javascript and frameworks, and how we'd benefit from bringing Ruby values to the ecosystem putting humans front and center in the experiences.
https://omakase.craftweg.com/javascript-experiences-upon-ruby-values
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
If you're currently on a massive server like mastodon.social, you might want to consider moving your account to a smaller server.
You can keep your followers when you change servers, here's how to do it: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/107939441820299376
You can find reliable servers at https://joinmastodon.org/communities (all the servers listed there agree to the covenant at https://joinmastodon.org/covenant). Try to pick one with fewer people.
There are lots of good things about smaller servers:
-Better moderation, because there are more staff per member.
-Smaller servers tend to have more personality, with a village feel.
-The local timeline on smaller servers is much more readable.
-Smaller servers protect the Fediverse as a whole from being taken over, because lots of smaller servers are harder to buy than a few big servers.
-It's easier to make a difference on smaller servers. It's easier to discuss things with the admin and other members.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
🇬🇧 The EU's #chatcontrol draft law presented today means fundamental rights terrorism against trust, self-determination and security on the Internet.
You can read my detailed assessment here: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-chat-control-bill-fundamental-rights-terrorism-against-trust-self-determination-and-security-on-the-internet/
Lazy autumn mornings.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
Every six months or so for the past several years, I've been doing a thread on Fedi about where to buy ebooks other than Amazon. It finally occurred to me that I could write it once, put it up on website, and update as needed, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel.
So, here we are. (And in spite of the title, this isn't JUST about eBooks)
https://jessmahler.com/where-to-buy-ebooks-other-than-amazon/
(Please share your own links in replies, I'll add them to the list as I have spoons.)
@_manpat I learned my photography basics on labour-of-love hobbyist sites like these. Beautiful.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
apparently my elderly neighbor has been maintaining a personal website about the history of UK photography and it is an incredible piece of work.
apparently he still uses some piece of adobe software from the 90s. there is so much care and effort here, and its such a pristine image of the early web being still updated 😭
@spicytamazon I'm still experiencing little bits of FOMO (although less so as time goes on). But the immense improvement in my mental well-being more than makes up for that.
@PaulaToThePeople I thought this was a good dissection of his misguided views https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/26/elon-you-have-no-idea-what-the-hell-youre-talking-about/
@larand I follow some useful official accounts and some activists, etc. Still wanted to see their updates but I didn't want to be tempted by anything else. So I wiped all my old tweets but kept the account and set up two carefully curated lists which I've added in Tweedeck. I find there's less temptation to go look at anything else with this interface. I have it on desktop only and I check it once or twice a day, treating the two lists read-only RSS feeds.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
The makers of @pixelfed, the Fediverse photo sharing platform, have just created a slick new guide to the Fediverse at:
It's got a list of Fedi projects, a list of mobile apps for Fedi platforms and an opt-in directory of people to follow.
The directory is particularly interesting as it works very differently to FediFollows or Trunk. You add hashtags to your profile plus a special extra hashtag #Fedi22, then submit your profile to the site, and it will become searchable for the tags in your profile.
(And, yes, Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, see here for details: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/108215973331591896)
Uspol, social media
What a painful reminder today that the world needs a rebalancing of power - in big ways & in small ways, and at every level of society.
So much of what’s messed up relates to our broken information spaces: dividing us, distracting us and corrupting our political systems.
None of this will be news to you, I’m sure. Just placing it here to recommit myself to finding better ways, with you - both digitally and otherwise.
Lazy labour days
The Khoi called her Camissa: “The Place of Sweet Waters”.
She looks very different today in the wake of colonialism and industrialisation, but on a quiet morning you can walk around and still imagine that you’re sensing the great spirit that drew her original inhabitants here .
WARNING: cheesy sunset
The autumn light in #CapeTown always gets me
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
PSA: The "verified" symbol you see on Twitter etc means absolutely nothing on Mastodon or the Fediverse. On here, symbols like 
are just custom emoji that anyone can use and put after their name. Don't be fooled! 😁
There are ways to verify your identity on here, but the symbol is not one of them.
The easiest way to verify your identity is if you have a website that people already know is yours. You can paste a special code into your website which will verify your address and it will turn green on your Mastodon profile (see here for instructions: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106274105538953001).
Alternatively, you can set up a server as a subdomain of your known website address. For example, the European union set up their own Mastodon server at https://social.network.europa.eu, and we know it really is the EU because the server address is part of the EU's well-known europa.eu domain.
Stefan Ferreira 🏳️🌈
boosted
Folks who are trying to convince friends to try out the Fediverse: I strongly recommend not talking about what's wrong or evil about other sites/platforms. Instead, perhaps try focusing on how much better it feels here, how much more human, more diverse, more organic it can be.
- PM work
- https://cthechange.com
- Creative
- https://stefanferreira.com
#Digital tech project manager | #web | #civictech | #opendata | #opensource | #humanetech
Joined Jan 2018
