Notes

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People aren’t mad at that letter and the people behind it because they hate free speech. A spooled thread.

People are at best skeptical of and at worst outraged by the free speech argument being made in the Harper’s letter because when the inevitable shit starts, (like harassment, for example), the best the people with tons of followers and clout can do is post the obligatory “of course harassment is bad” tweet and once that’s done it’s really easy to just walk away.

I have yet to see any of the people railing against cancel culture address the trade-off trans and other minorities are expected to put up with so their free speech rights can be safeguarded.

And by address, I mean in something other than an abstract fashion. Because it’s really easy to just post that “of course harassment/bigotry is bad” tweet and then just go on with your day while the mentions of the person you’ve decided to go after to your tons of followers are a complete trashfire.

If we were operating in a world where there wasn’t near instantaneous communication, like blogs for example, and we were dealing with a situation where harassment and other such could be and would be completely deleted by the original author, then I could totally understand a near absolute free speech stance and would even go along with it.

But we aren’t operating in that sphere, and as high minded as this whole free speech argument is, it’s not the people making it who are bearing the brunt of the fall-out.

And it would be nice if there were some serious discussion of the trade-offs and maybe even some attempts at putting forth solutions that ensure that everyone’s free speech is protected while also ensuring that all the bullshit can be properly addressed.

It would also be nice if there were some serious attempts at limiting what gets labeled as cancel culture.

I’d suggest narrowing the scope to people being fired for posts on their personal social media by online mobs. And by personal I don’t mean the one you do all your public relations/promotion of your work ETC. on.

Until there is some serious grappling with everything surrounding all this, including the inevitable pile-ons and other shit that happens to marginalized people online by the influencers championing the canceled, there are a lot of people who have damn good reasons to be skeptical of cultural free speech, if not legal as well.

And the general idea that a price has to be paid for freedom isn’t going to cut it. Neither is “you just hate free speech.”

Lady Antebellum is apparently suing Anita White, an African-American blues singer who’s been using Lady A for decades, because they really need to bring in the dough and they figure pretending they give a damn about racism is the quickest way to git-er-done. I think they should go with Lady Asshole. It pretty much encapsulates what’s really going on here.
Area man who attempted to get someone canceled after they called him a bedbug and was unsuccessful has some thoughts on cancel culture.
https://twitter.com/aaronhuertas/status/1279370661027332097
I can count the people who make a point of objecting to cancellations of people across the board on one hand. Unless that changes I’m chalking all the complaining about cancel culture up to: It happened to someone who is liked/agreed with and that’s the only reason the complainer gives a damn and is willing to label it cancel culture in the first place.
I bit the bullet and switched the server that’s going to hold all the Indieweb apps from Linode to Digital Ocean. Everything’s infinitely more accessible over there with regard to their control panel.

I’m to the point where I’m setting up DNS for the domain I want to point to it, which is the part I actually hate most because I hate setting up DNS so much.

In a super ironic twist, Digital Ocean’s domain control panel is way more accessible than Namecheap’s control panel so once the DNS finishes propagating so the domaon can be properly delegated I’ll be managing things from there.

The server’s timing out if I try to access it from the browser but fine for SSH and SFTP, so I’m going to wait for all the DNS stuff to get ironed out before I start digging into why this is happening. I’m hoping it’s because of a DNS screw-up. It’s easy for those to happen when using Namecheap’s DNS manager. I found it easier to update DNS via the app.

First app I’m testing is Compass. Hoping I get it all working this weekend.

Both John and I slept in today and we are getting an incredibly late start.

Now I just need to figure out how to properly thread using TWBlue.

I’ll test this with some short tweets, but I think I need to reply to the last tweet in the thread.

Let’s see if this works correctly.

@threaderapp unroll

@threaderapp @threadreaderapp unroll

This is totally awesome. You can now use Thread Reader App to publish your threads to your blog. Must support micropub. threadreaderapp.com

I’m glad to see that someone’s employing micropub to help bridge the gap between Twitter threads and old fashioned blogging.

@threadreaderapp unroll

OK, time for some straight talk about posting on social media about stuff going on at work, or even your clients. A thread which I’ll spool up once it’s done.

In an ideal world, you can say whatever you want, whenever you want, because free speech and all that.

In the real world, your employer, and yes, your clients, will absolutely search for you on Google, and if your social media posts are public, they will read them.

They will not give you the benefit of the doubt, and they will not care that you were having a bad day when you posted.

So, post however and whatever you like. But don’t be surprised if one day your employer decides you’ve violated their no social media at work policy one too many times, for any reason,

and don’t be surprised if your client decides you’re not professional enough or whatever to continue to work with you.

I can hear you now. YOu’re saying to yourself, “that’s not fair”, “free speech”, whatever. And you know what? You’re probably right.

But when you accepted that job, you also agreed to be bound by those policies you hate, and when you decided to do client work, you agreed to all the very much unwritten rules of professionalism.

And whether or not it’s fair, as things currently stand, people are judged all the time for the things they put out on social media, and it’ll probably be that way for a while.

So, go ahead and post whatever you want, but be willing to accept any consequences that may arise.

End thread.

Not content with filling key government positions with amateurs, President Trump plans to make sure every position possible can be filled with them. Oh, and they still suck at web accessibility.