Mistrust in twitter future? Go for Mastodon

This post was originally published at https://blogs.fsfe.org/pbenavent/2022/05/07/mistrust-in-twitter-future-go-for-mastodon/

Late weeks has been full of notices around Twitter and Elon Musk. No need to compile how the things has been going.

If the latest changes in its ownership makes you mistrusting the future of twitter (whenever the reason is) consider to join Mastodon.

Mastodon is a social network decentralized, based on free software. There’re odds for sure, not so many people, you got to learn a new app and behaviour, more segmented interaction IMHO.

But there’re a pros very importants; privacy respectful, no selling personal data or meta-data, free software and not rule by a private company but for a community. One more reason (a big one for me) more focused content and higher quality, I would say.

Do you want to know more about Mastodon. Check this video:

Estadísticas sin Google en WordPress

Hace un tiempo que este blog (que nadie lee) dejó de utilizar estadísticas de Google. La razón era que si no actúas como piensas, acabarás pensando como actúas, o lo que es igual, si se está preocupado por la privacidad era incoherente emplear las estadísticas fáciles y gratuitas que Google sacrificando la privacidad de quien visitase el sitio.

He encontrado el plugin de Komito Analytics gracias ver el perfil de su CTO porque re-publicó (retwiteó para los que emplean anglicismos) un tweet (aquí me quedo con el anglicismo) que envié sobre software libre.

En su web afirman que la privacidad no debe preocuparnos porque no almacenan ningún dato, lo suyo es un software de análisis, pero no un servicio web.

¿Quién está detrás de Komito? Si visitamos la web de Komito encontramos que además de este plugin, se ofrece más software abierto (open software) desarrollado por Datamart. Se trata de desarrollos orientados a la analítica de datos, su tratamiento y presentación.

El plugin se añadió hace una semana así que próximamente podré opinar, de momento sería prematuro.

Actualización: Grave error por mi parte… el plugin tenía buena pinta y no muestra estadísticas en el panel de WordPress. La decepción ha impedido una investigación profunda porque el tiempo ha sido invertido en una alternativa de la que habrá nota en breve. Parece que permite anonimizar a los usuarios aunque almacena, igualmente, la información en las estadísticas del buscador irrespetuoso con la privacidad.

Why I remove the AddThis plugin?

I’ve being using the AddThis plugin in WordPress for a quite time. I’ve have decide to eliminate it for coherence reasons.

I started to use Privacy Badger in Firefox and I realize that the AddThis give a way to make easy to share the posts I wrote but the payment is (as many others things that are for free in the Internet) they collect information about the people browsing this site, no matters if the post is shared or not.

So, as long as I’m Free Software Foundation Europe supporter (consider collaborate with FSFE) and I’ll found myself better if erase it. This are my two cents to improve your and my privacy.

Dropbox on its own datacenter

I wrotte in 2015 about Microsoft will buy Dropbox, was I wrong?

Yes and not. There were a serious threat for Dropbox according its depence from Amazon and, and that time, there were doing things togheter with MS that pointed easily to a possible adquisition.

The changes came from both companies; Microsoft started a strong positioning towards Cloud market and Dropbox started to take off from Amazon its infrastructure. Dropbox goes public and economical argues become more and more important. The truth affects both lines: going public and on the other hand keep themselves independent on its own datacenter. They both go togheter.

Netetiquette and Blogging

There was a time when people writes FAQ about net-etiquette… I’ve no longer see this FAQ nowadays.

The company former known as a Yahoo! developed its own blogging (Yahoo 360) platform as a response to the emerging and dominant Blogger. As a part of the new era in the company Yahoo 360 has disappeared, so, I received a mail for three times that I want to share as an example about how to deal kindly with a request.
Disclaimer: I don’t know who’s supporting Blogging.com and I’m no sponsored by them (and by nobody) but they deserved this note.

Remember, toujours la politesse.

Hi Pere,

I wanted to reach out to you one last time. Please see my previous email below, if I
don’t hear back from you, I’ll assume my suggestion isn’t of interest.

Thank you for your time, apologies if I’ve been a nuisance at all.

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 10:50 AM, Tom Howard wrote:
Hi Pere,

I appreciate you’re busy but I just wanted to follow up on the email I sent you the
other day; a copy is included below for reference.

On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 11:01 AM, Tom Howard wrote:

I found a broken link Pere and thought you’d want to know.

You’ve got a link to Yahoo 360 (http://360.yahoo.com/) here on your site –
https://www.benavent.org/wp/page/24/ which is a defunct initiative that allowed you
to publish a blog on the Yahoo platform.

The URL just goes to the homepage now which isn’t all that useful if any of your
visitors are looking to start a blog.

Perhaps you could update your page and point people to Blogging.com? We have a handy
step-by-step guide to starting a blog which people might find useful –
https://blogging.im/howtoblogguide.

I hope this helps.