#eff it ( mobile )

[comehereduck]

The Sanrio collab with Junji Ito has reminded me the Tomie was also chopped to pieces like Nie Mingjue, so what if instead of becoming a fierce corpse like normal, his pieces also regenerate into more da-ges

[anderwhohn]

Semi-hiatus continues...

I've been having to play caregiver for my mom 24/7 for the last couple of weeks when the rest of my immediate family came down with COVID again. Mom's still non-weightbearing, and her next appointment with orthopaedics is still a bit over a week away, and with no one available to relieve me for a break at all, I can't go home (despite only living next door), and I struggle to type on mobile due to hyperhidrosis and touchscreens not really playing well together.

Once I'm where I can get back to my desktop more regularly again, I'm going to work on the end of the year stuff that got disrupted by mom breaking her ankle and needing surgery and whatnot, if I can manage to get enough time to actually rest properly as well while I'm there (I need at least a month vacation at this point, as it's been a daily thing since December 1st and has been extremely stressful for reasons I don't want to go into right now.)

So while I can't really reply to things, you ARE welcome to send things to my inbox and/or request interactions through the form (linked in the pinned post). It'll at least give me things to think about and daydream over, maybe do some plotting via discord (albeit very slowly between difficulty typing & random interruptions from mom and such). In other words, I'm bored as hell and I miss being here, but I can't handle writing on a tablet for long enough to actually rp via mobile (not to mention my tags are a bitch to handle on mobile).

[asamiontop]

I can figure this out for myself of course. This was just an excuse to make a poll. And to let y’all know what’s coming 😁

[marsdemo]

has tumblr been immensely slow today for anyone else or nay..

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, repeal the app tax

Today (June 7), I’m keynoting the Re:publica conference in Berlin.

Tomorrow (June 8) at 8PM, I’m at Otherland Books in Berlin with my novel Red Team Blues.

Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals is money, not content. Talking about the news, excerpting it, linking to it, quoting it — these are all beneficial, normal news activities. If you can’t talk about the news, it’s not news — it’s a secret.

But tech does steal from news. A variety of monopolistic tricks allows tech to interpose itself between reporters, publishers and outlets, and the audiences they serve. By creating chokepoints between the news and its audience, tech can extract gigantic sums from the news.

And because the news itself is dominated by the same kinds of extractive, vicious, gigantic corporations, the shit flows downhill: the first victims of attacks on news profitability are news workers — reporters, technical staff, illustrators, photographers. A news outlet has to be really starving before it turns to the money claimed by vulture capitalists who buy distressed debt, or hedge funds who roll up papers, or wealthy owners.

Anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. Tech’s ripoffs have reached a breaking point, and there’s a broad coalition of journalists, media companies, audiences and politicians ready to do something about this. Now the question is: what should we do?

Whatever we do it should:

Maintain broad access to the news;

Make it easier for new news outlets to pop up;

Make it easier for new tech outlets that carry the news to pop up, too.

It shouldn’t simply transfer funds to bond holders who own newspaper debt, or shareholders of media companies, or billionaire dilettante news proprietors. It shouldn’t make the news and tech into “partners”: we want the press to hold tech to account, not join forces with it.

A month ago, EFF and I started publishing a five-part series of policy prescriptions “saving the news from tech.” Part one was the “curtain raiser,” setting up the whole program:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Each week since, I’ve published a specific policy recommendation. The first one was breaking up the ad-tech industry, on the lines suggested by Senator Mike Lee’s AMERICA Act:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Next was passing comprehensive privacy law, which would kill off surveillance ads and force a switch to “contextual ads” (ads based on what you’re looking at, not who you are):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Both of these proposals are aimed at reducing the share of ad money claimed by tech, especially the ad-tech duopoly of Google/Meta. Ad-tech claims more than 50% of every ad dollar spent, thanks to their chokepoint on ads. The ad-tech market is a cesspool of fraud, abuse and creepy practices. Fixing ads would make everyone better off, by freeing us all from ubiquitous commercial surveillance, and it would make the news better off, letting the news claim a much larger share of ad revenues, whether they are large media brands or independent reporters covering a niche subject in depth.

This week’s installment turns to subscription revenues. When Steve Jobs launched the Ipad in 2010, he set himself up as a daddy figure for the traumataized press, promising them a return to subscription-based business, with seamless payment processing through the apps in his walled garden:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

But since then, the mobile duopoly of Apple/Google has simply recapitulated the abusive extraction of the ad-tech industry, but for apps. Both companies charge a whopping 30% to process in-app payments, and both companies have strict rules banning app makers from evading this 30% app tax by steering customers to the web to complete payments:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

The companies — nominally bitter competitors — have nevertheless converged on this 30% vig, allegedly without any anticompetitive collusion. Apple uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to lock people into using its App Store, threatening anyone who reverse-engineers its devices to add competing stores with five year prison sentences under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Google’s Android does have a facility for “side-loading” apps that aren’t in its app store, but the company uses a web of commercial requirements and technological tricks to prevent a competitor from emerging:

https://theplatformlaw.blog/2023/05/24/why-the-proposed-commitments-offered-by-google-to-the-uk-competition-authority-regarding-in-app-purchases-are-wrong-and-will-make-the-situation-of-app-developers-worse/

The result is a massive transfer from the news to tech: payment processing normally costs 2–3%, but these companies manage to take a 30% bite out of every subscription dollar collected in-app. Some very large outlets like the NY Times can drive readers to sign up on the web and escape the app tax, but the additional friction costs even these large publishers a fortune in lost subscribers — and smaller outlets have even less leverage over readers and are corralled into paying the app tax, making it a regressive tax indeed.

Unrigging the mobile payments market would produce good results far beyond the news, of course. Games publishers, independent creators, and office and productivity app makers would all benefit from no longer having to pay the app tax. And so would their users: these app makers are passing on most of those payment costs to us, and we end up paying them, because there are only two major mobile platforms and they both charge the same app tax.

In the EU, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will force app stores to open up, paving the way for alternative app stores:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloading-apps-store-third-party-eu-dma-requirement

In the US, there’s proposed laws like the Open Apps Markets Act, which is likely to be reintroduced in this legislative session:

https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-blackburn-and-klobuchar-introduce-bipartisan-antitrust-legislation-to-promote-app-store-competition

The mobile duopoly hate this, of course, and claim that forcing them to permit rival app stores would put users’ security at risk. It’s true that this could happen, but it doesn’t need to: security and openness are compatible:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

Next week, I’ll conclude the series with a post on applying the end-to-end principle to social media, to prevent platforms from holding a publication’s subscribers hostage in order to extract “boosting” fees from media. Once that’s out, we’re going to gather all these posts into a single, downloadable PDF, suitable for sharing with the news junkies in your life, your friends in the media business, and your elected reps.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

[Image ID: EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'open app stores' are greyed out.]

[girlhorse]

i think im too autistic to work in corporate grooming environments

[glitterizedocean]

Y'all I just got deep into Lily's garden and Merge Mansion lore and I'm not okay

[lefae]

Right, so, while conditions are favorable for typing on mobile (medical issues make doing so difficult),a few quick things about the PC situation:

My desktop is my primary source of *everything*, from entertainment to communication to what little income I have available to me as someone who is disabled, chronically ill, and unable to work. For it to be out of commission is extremely stressful, especially since I'm wholly responsible for fixing it myself, as I don't have any local friends with IT skills and have no money nor transportation for taking it somewhere to be fixed by someone else.

I'm trying to prevent data loss as much as possible, which is easier said than done when I don't have enough storage space to spare on any working drives to properly back things up. A lot of my creative files are backed up in various clouds, but not all of them due to limited space provided by free services.

That also doesn't factor in the potential need to redownload countless software programs over insanely slow rural DSL (I'm talking the fastest speed available to be is 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload), if I have to do a fresh install and can't recover my files.

This is why I desperately need an external drive with at least 8TB of space (12 would be better, but I'm aiming for the less expensive option that will at least get the job done). That will allow me to make copies of the drive data in full, to sort the files out in order to recover everything and put them back where they're needed (and be able to keep backups as well).

As it is, I can't find my recovery flash drive, and there's no guarantee I won't lose files taking that route anyway. None of the tools for repairing Windows via an install drive are working, and so far none of the other utilities for Windows recovery that I've tried have worked either.

All this is happening during some persistent rounds of severe weather in the area - it all started when I unplugged my PC due to a thunderstorm and then plugged it back in after it passed - and while I'm in the midst of a flare-up as well. I can barely sit up right now, and can essentially only set up the utilities to run scans and try to save what I can while laying back down and dealing with massive tension headaches on top of it all.

Right now, I have $0 to put towards an external drive, whereas I'll need upwards to $150 for one (if I'm getting a 12TB one, lower capacity can sometimes be cheaper, but sometimes not, depending on the brand, make, and seller).

In the meantime, I'll still be doing what I can to try to fix things within the limits I have currently available to me, but so far nothing has really been successful, besides backing up some of my essential files from one of my drives.

[brinjalsixtynine]

I learned 2 things today:

1) Dragging the Tumblr edit button on mobile does this

2) Tumblr mobile has a neat option to convert (a section of) video into a GIF

[therapardalis]

..

soulmemes​:

sexual tension prompts.

i deleted my old blog by mistake, so i’m revamping these!! if you want to reverse them, add a +, like so: [ PIN ] + and the roles will switch! these prompts are inspired by THIS MEME! they’re designed for all muses, regardless of whether they’ve interacted before or not!

[ PIN ] : sender pins receiver against a wall. [ HANDS ] : our muses’ hands touch. (anything from grazing past or the hand holding content we all deserve.) [ GAZE ] : sender watches receiver from across a crowded room. [ GUIDE ] : in order to guide the receiver, sender presses a hand against the small of their back. [ INVITE ] : sender asks receiver into a private room with nobody else present. [ TOUCH ] : our muses touching one another discreetly but intimately in a public setting. [ LICK ] : sender licks something from their thumb or lips in front of receiver. [ SLEEVES ] : sender rolls up their sleeves to reveal their forearms. [ SMIRK ] : while interacting with receiver, sender can’t resist a smirk. [ NECKLACE ] : sender fastens a necklace around receiver’s neck, leaning in close to do so. [ CLOSE ] : our muses are in a position which leads to the sender stepping intimately closer to the receiver. [ UNBUTTON ] : due to heat or stress or other reasons, sender unbuttons the top of their shirt to reveal their neckline. [ DANCE ] : our muses dance together in close quarters. [ DEFEND ] : sender physically intervenes between receiver and a source of unwanted attention. [ TEXT ] : sender texts intimate content to receiver. [ PHONE ] : while on the phone with receiver, sender flirts teasingly during the call. [ BEHIND ] : unexpectedly, sender arrives close to receiver from behind, taking them by surprise. [ WET ] : our muses find one another in a torrential downpour of rain, both soaking wet. [ LEAN ] : sender leans tantalisingly close to receiver to retrieve something or catch their attention. [ LOOK ] : sender initiates intense eye contact with receiver. [ ALONE ] : our muses find one another alone in an isolated setting. [ ASK ] : sender asks receiver if they’re single. [ WHISPER ] : sender leans close to receiver’s ear in order to whisper something to them. [ BRUSH ] : sender reaches forward to brush a strand of receiver’s hair from their eyes. [ STEADY ] : sender steadies receiver by placing their hands on their waist when the receiver almost falls against them. [ SMILE ] : sender begins to grin at something the receiver is saying, like a big unstoppable grin. [ PULL ] : sender pulls receiver into their side as they’re walking together. [ STRADDLE ] : while sparring, sender gains the upper hand and pins the receiver in place, straddling their waist in the process. [ BLADE ] : sender, having been enemies with the receiver, places a knife to their throat, but does nothing else. [ STARE ] : while the receiver is speaking, the sender’s gaze drifts to their lips. [ UNDERCOVER ] : while pretending to be a couple for the sake of a mission or other purpose, sender and receiver find themselves giving a Remarkably Convincing performance that leaves them questioning how platonic they really are. [ AFTER ] : sender has just impulsively and passionately kissed the receiver without any warning nor apparent reason. how does the receiver respond? [ REMARK ] : after someone passes a remark on what a cute couple the seemingly platonic sender and receiver are, the sender casts a meaningful glance at the receiver, expecting them to say something about it first. [ PHOTOGRAPH ] : as someone volunteers to take a picture of them on a day out, sender instinctively wraps an arm around the receiver to steady them, holding them close for a photo that turns out to be more romantic than they were expecting. [ CHALLENGE ] : after the receiver teasingly suggests that the sender is a terrible kisser, sender immediately and fervently proves them wrong with a long, passionate kiss that leaves the receiver taking back what they said. [ LANGUAGE ] : sender begins to speak seductively and fluently with the receiver in another language. [ CONSTANT ] : after days/weeks/months/years of endless flirting back and forth, sender finally dares the receiver to go beyond flirting and break the tensions between them properly.

[botgal]

Any update on SB 976? heard it was sign into law but does not come into force until 2027

Unfortunately yes. Governor Newsome signed it into law sometime on Friday I believe. Unfortunately given how Newsom is, this was not surprising. Though it never did hurt for us to send in our opinions and urge to veto on the matter. And I'm very grateful to anyone who did.

And yes, you're correct. The text of the bill says it shouldn't come into effect until 2027.

"This bill, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, would make it unlawful for the operator of an addictive internet-based service or application, as defined, to provide an addictive feed to a user, unless the operator does not have actual knowledge that the user is a minor; commencing January 1, 2027, has reasonably determined that the user is not a minor; or has obtained verifiable parental consent to provide an addictive feed to the user who is a minor.

The bill would define “addictive feed” as an internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device, as specified, unless any of certain conditions are met.

The bill would make it unlawful for the operator of an addictive internet-based service or application, between the hours of 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., in the user’s local time zone, and between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., Monday through Friday from September through May in the user’s local time zone, to send notifications to a user if the operator has actual knowledge that the user is a minor or, commencing January 1, 2027, has not reasonably determined that the user is not a minor, unless the operator has obtained verifiable parental consent to send those notifications, as specified. The bill would set forth related provisions for certain access controls determined by the verified parent through a mechanism provided by the operator."

Some of the bill's language implies it Could come into effect before 2027 to a degree, at least under the idea of "actual knowledge" rather than "reasonably determined", which is what it will become starting 2027. Which is its own point of concern. But as of now it's out of our hands as far as politicians go.

You can still take some action, like maybe sending emails to people like EFF or the ACLU. But for the most part, this is in the hands of the courts to decide how far this can go.

But thank you to anyone else who took the time and effort for this irregardless. We took 3 bills fully out of the running this year alone. For that, you should be proud. No matter what else ends up happening next with AB 1949. You did your best. No one could ask for more.

[oshlet]

MS-07-EFF 'FrankenGouf', an experimental mobile suit built around a Gouf chassis that has been slowly modified as the one year war progresses, sending back valuable testing data and trialling new battlefield systems which can then be incorporated into standard federation forces.

Currently, the main armament is a prototype variable beam cannon, able to fire long range blasts or produce a sustained beam allowing it to be used as a melee weapon. The power draw is too much for the Gouf's basic reactor, so supplementary power systems have been added to the back.

Secondary weapon systems consist of an array of four vulcan guns mounted across the torso, which provide antipersonnel capabilities as well as supplementary firepower at close range, where the Frankengouf is expected to operate. It also still possesses the wrist mounted heat-rod of the standard Gouf, further diversifying its melee arsenal.

[athena-gunpla]

HGUC 1/144 E.F.S.F Prototype Long-Range Support Mobile Suit RX-75 "Guntank"

Guntank is here!! I was initially hesitant on picking up this kit, as it's one of the older HGs from 2000. I'd seen online that it has pretty limited articulation. However I saw it in store for only $17 and couldn't pass it up.

The kit is pretty small, with only four main runners, a polycap runner, and a set of rubber treads (which admittedly smelt as though they'd been in the box since 2000). Unlike modern model kit rubber treads as you'd find in a Tamiya tank kit, they're a solid part more similar to the HGUC Gouf's heat rod, and simply clip into a hole on the bottom of the tank's road wheels. The biggest disappointment being that the wheels and tracks don't move at all.

Being a kit without any hands, the Guntank lacks any accessories, but to be honest it doesn't really need them. The guns on the hands and shoulders look really nice with a bit of weathering, although the shoulder cannons come in two halves so you'll need to deal with a seam down the middle. I used some plastic cement but you can still kinda see it if you look closely.

It's a pretty plain kit with limited surface detail for panel lining, and no sticker sheet, so I spruced it up with some decals and heavy weathering. This is a combination of the official Bandai multi-use Mobile Suit Gundam EFF decals for the Guntank, the Xingfeng knockoff decal spares for the GM Spartan, and some spare tank decals from my Tamiya kits. I think the overall effect makes it fit in super well with the busy Origin gunpla. As usual, the Bandai decals were a pain and tore pretty easily, but look pretty great on the kit.

I weathered this using a heavy sponging of black, as well as mixing some browns and my orange rust to mimic the rusty appearance on the box art (as well as cover up torn decals). I also drybrushed silver over the high points and used my Tamiya weathering sets (D and C) to add heat blueing to the guns and rust and soot everywhere else, as well as some oil stains on the rear vents.

There's a little Hayato modeled in the cockpit. Usually I'm not for painting 1/144 scale people but he's pretty prominent behind the windscreen so I gave it a go.

He's a little smudgy but I think it turned out well. Here's the image I referenced.

Now I've finally completed my UC 0079 White Base crew!

Pictured here left to right are my HGUC Ball, HGUC Cucuruz Doan's Island Guncannon, HGUC Origin RX-78-02, this Guntank, and HGUC Origin GM Missile Pod.

Overall the Guntank is a very simple and fun little build. Like any tank kit the wheels area little tedious to cut out and sand, but it's otherwise quick and enjoyable. It's a cheap kit so great to try out painting techniques on as well.

Get one today!

[sintva]

wishing   he   could   be   everything   she   needed   him   to   be,   he   really   did.   but   that   was   not   the   case,   not   yet   although   he   was   determined   to   change   that.   he'd   put   in   the   work,   no   matter   how   hard   it   would   be.   briar   honestly   saw   flynn   as   worth   everything.   maybe   that   is   why   it   terrified   him   when   she   threatened   to   leave.   “   i   get   that   …   i   may   not   be   that   guy   yet   …   ”   trailing   off   into   silence   for   a   moment,   only   to   give   him   a   moment   to   find   the   right   words.   “   i   want   to   become   that   kind   of   man,   for   you.   ”

" you want me? " she needed more from him. flynn had been through guy after guy, who just wanted to say they fucked her but didn't stick around when she needed someone to depend on. " then why can't you show me that? i appreciate the words, i do but ... i'm still all alone when i try to call you for help. " voice was shaky as she spoke, feeling all emotions rush over her.

[marsdemo]

using tumblr on mobile firefox has its drawbacks but every day i am soooo thankful to not get constantly blasted w ads like jesus chriiist

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You should be using an RSS reader

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise