Tag: freedom

Fight For The Future: Battle for the Net

On July 12, 2017, we fight for the internet. Again.

I know. Didn’t we just do this? Well we did, and we have to do it again.

What Is Net Neutrality?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers don’t get to control what we see and do online. Think of it like if your phone company got to decide what numbers you could call and when. Back in 2015, we managed to get fairly strong net neutrality laws from the FCC (the US Federal Communication Commission) which stopped Internet providers from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—”fast lanes” for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.

Isn’t that like TV?

Yes it is! On your TV, you can only watch the stations you pay for. Now imagine the Internet that way. The problem though is that we don’t just use the Internet to watch movies. We use it to work, to develop code like WordPress, and to communicate world wide with like minded people to do all of that.

What’s the battle for?

Comcast and Verizon want to end net neutrality so they can control what we see and do online. It’s that simple. They want it to look like TV so they can say that we can’t work with our fellow developers in Serbia or Iran. They want to monitor all our communication with those people as well (which in the case of WordPress isn’t really a hinderance but still…).

What can we do?

Fight back!

Change your websites so people see the damage being done. Inconvenience the hell out of them. Make everyone notice and get them aware. Even if they watch Fox News.

The Fight for the Future has started the Battle for Net Neutrality just like they did in 2014 with The Great Internet Slowdown and like they do today with Blackout Congress.

How do we fight back?

Add the Battle For The Net Widget to your website.

If you’re running WordPress, I made a Fight for the Future Alerts Plugin, which lets you decide which alerts you want to show. It currently only supports the upcoming Battle for the Net and the Blackout Congress, but I plan to add other on-going events as they occur.

You can also use the Cat Signal which dynamically loads the right alert for you at the right time. The reason this is different is that not everyone wants to run an extra javascript all the time on their websites. Page speed is important after all. Plus they may not want to show every single alert.

3 July, 2017
WordCamp US – LGBT+Allies Tribe Meetup

Thanks to the undying energy of Tracy Levesque and the dollars from many donators (including DreamHost), there will be an LGBT+Allies meetup on Friday night at WordCamp US. Yes, NEXT Friday. So if you don’t have plans, or if you just want some big gay friendly hang time, we’re inviting everyone to come hang out with diverse WordPressers at Philly’s most welcoming gay bar.

You don’t have to be gay to come, but you have to be gay friendly.

WordPress is welcoming to people of all cultures, beliefs, and sexualities. In celebration of our community, we decided to have an unofficial (non WordCamp sanctioned) meetup of the LGBT WordPressers and their straight allies. The celebration will be during WordCamp US at Stir Lounge, Philly’s most welcoming gay bar.

We’ll have most of the place to ourselves with delicious food from The Khyber Pass Pub and an open bar.

This event is made possible by our generous sponsors!

YIKES, Inc. • DreamHost • WPEngine • rtCamp • Cornershop Creative • Automattic • 1SEO.com

Bring your rainbow pins and your smiles.

Personally, I think now, more than ever, it’s important to know where your tribe is and that we’ve got your back.

You can get a ticket (for a whopping $0) at lgbtwp.ticketleap.com

25 November, 2016
The Privilege of Privacy

Ask 100 women online where the live, and the majority will give you a vague answer.

California.

Chicago.

LA.

Orange County.

Those are enormous locations. While you probably could have found me in Chicago, if you asked enough people, you’d need to know a lot more than just the city. And now? Good luck. Most of my neighbors don’t know me. Their kids do, go figure, but it’s not the 1950s anymore.

The longer a women (or any minority) has been online, the less likely they are to want to talk about their location online. At least not in public. We get used to the constant, low level, shit throwing people say. People will ask what kind of ‘creature’ we are for posting a Vine, or call us ‘the hot one.’ It’s something I’m constantly pushing back at, and being vocally against, but it’s me against the world, and sometimes it’s a Sisyphean struggle.

But that doesn’t mean some people don’t have my home address. It means the people who do are people I trust and respect. I know that they won’t generally just show up at my house (unless there’s a crisis).

So what happens when you know, say, that I live in New Jersey and someone mentions WordCamp Jersey in a public chat?

You shut the hell up and don’t say “Hey, Ipstenu lives there, you should ping her!” No, you ping me directly and say “Hey, Billy was talking about WC Jersey. I thought you mentioned living nearby. Did you know about that?” And that way you give the public information to the private individual.

This seems to be an odd concept to people who come from a place of general safety and security. Yes, I’m talking about you, heterosexual cisgender white christian men. They tend to be the most flagrant abusers of personal information that I’ve seen online.

When I ran a forum, I had a rule that basically read like this: People’s personal information is just that, theirs and personal. If they say “I live in Wyoming” that’s cool, but you don’t get to speak for them. And yes, I banned people for violating that after they were warned.

Most of the time, personal information that is privileged is obvious. If I run a website, I have your IPs and email. I don’t give them away to ad collectors without your consent because that’s just a shitty thing to do. It’s unethical. In some places it’s illegal. That’s why you’ll get disclaimers on what information is tracked, or notes about how to opt-out.

But less understood is the concept that information you and another person discuss in private is just that. Private. It shouldn’t be. It’s basically the same thing. You are in a place of privilege where by you have access to information others do not. That privilege comes with responsibility.

So let me lay this out for you.

If someone tells you a thing in private, it’s not always yours to repeat.

If someone tells you a personal thing in private, it’s definitely not yours to repeat.

For example, if someone tells you “Hey, I think I’m gay.” you absolutely, 100%, do not EVER turn around and say “Oh, Bob? He’s gay.” That’s not your information. And that’s an obvious case isn’t it? Well, where I live is also an obvious case.

The Internet is filled with doxers and harassers and people who jackhammer Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. People are attacked online, usually on Twitter or IRC or 4Chan, every single day.

It’s your job, as the holder of privileged information, to be the secret keeper. Be the friend. Keep it to yourself. And for god’s sake, if they ask you not to repeat something, either don’t repeat it or tell them outright that you will probably forget, so please don’t tell you.

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11 November, 2016
On Trust and Money

So. Headway Themes. In the last two years, they’ve gone from being a pretty interesting drag-and-drop theme that I thought was cool but not for me to a disaster. With the recent posts by former employees, and the complaints of customers, I feel bad for everyone involved.

But this is not about how another company could have handled things better. No, this is about trust.

You see, with the debacle that ensued, while it was going on, I was looking at desktop clients for local development on my new Mac. I have DesktopServer (love it) and VVV (… love it …), but I’d been hearing about this new docker type image set up thingy called Pressmatic.

My buddy Pippin loves it, and I trust him with a lot of things. Pippin and I hate doing things the hard way, and if he found this easier to use then awesome. There was just one teeny problem for me.

You see, it was owned by one of the people behind Headway.

Now I’m not trying to tell you not to buy software becuase of a previous situation. But like I mentioned (in passing), I still don’t like to use GoDaddy because I disagree with their ethics and marketing strategy. It’s not to say they’re right or wrong, but I don’t like it, and since I don’t have to use their products, I don’t.

The big difference here, though, is that if you asked me “Should I use GoDaddy” I would tell you the truth and it’s this: Sure. Why not?

It’s hard to explain this in 140 characters, or even a chat at a crowded bar with burritos and beer. I just feel there’s a big difference between the choices I make for me, and the choices you make for you. But there’s also a difference between the choices I make because I must, and the ones I have freedom on.

There are a lot of things I personally don’t like. I had a terrible experience with United Airlines and now I don’t fly them unless I have to. I had a series of shitty discussions with Jeep and now I won’t buy them. I had a horrific Amazon shipment screw up where they wouldn’t refund my pre-ordered copy of a DVD that was broken on arrival, because the pre-order was more than 3 months prior.

It took Amazon about seven years for me to get over that.

I’m not quick to forgive, if you can’t tell.

So when I tell you “I don’t feel that I can use [whatever]” and that isn’t followed by “And I hope you don’t either” then it’s really just me, having a personal moment where I don’t like a thing or a product or a marketing choice. Where I had a bad experience.

Everyone is going to have a bad experience with something. People hate the bank I used to work for, and they hate the hosting company I work for now. It happens. People I like and respect hate choices my company has made, and I understand that. I don’t beg or plead or wheedle or even complain. I nod, I say I understand, and I ask if I can do anything to help them. Even if that helping is helping them move to a new web host.

Trust is a thing that is given, and when broken takes a long time to re-earn. Right now, the situation with Headway gives me serious trust issues with Pressmatic, to the point that today I don’t feel that I can purchase what looks like a damn nifty product from them. And it’s not because I don’t think the product is good, or that I’m trying to punish them. It’s that I have doubts that they care about the little guy. Specifically, I doubt they care about their little guys.

When I have the choice to vote with my conscience, I do. When I have the responsibility to vote for my fellow man, I do. And when I have the ability to use something that pleases my little hippy, communist, socialist heart, well god damn it, I am going to do just that.

The converse is also true.

I have freedom to chose. And so do you.

Go use GoDaddy. I’ve heard amazing things about their managed service. And Pressmatic? It works awesomely! Jeep? The new ones are kind of great for off-road stuff and the heated and cooled seats are great in summer. United Airlines? They let me switch a flight around at the last minute for now fee when I had to fly them.

But I won’t use them by choice right now. And that’s okay. Maybe one day that will change, but it’s not today. If you can’t stand those things, that’s okay too. I hope you dislike them for the right reasons, and I hope you can keep yourself away from hatred and anger, but I get that it’s hard.

Like what you like. Dislike what you don’t. Vote with your feet. Trust the ones that you feel you can trust.

23 September, 2016
Blocking Together
Out of GamerGate, the amazing Randi Harper created Block Together which allows you to block everyone associated with the nasty parts of the whole mess.

To use it, it’s two steps.
1. Sign up on Block Together
2. Click on the link to @randi_ebooks’s list and press subscribe
That’s it. Once you do that, you’ll automatically block the masses. But this goes far further than Gamer Gate. By making a blocklist of your own, you can manage the people who regularly harass, offend, or otherwise make your life on Twitter miserable.

I’m a firm, devoted, supporter of freedom of speech. I also defend my right not to listen to someone I don’t want to hear. I don’t have to listen. Those blocklists can be incredibly useful to share with people, like your friends and people who face similar harassment, so you can protect yourself.

Sharing your block list

If you choose to share your block list with friends, Block Together will create an unlisted, unguessable URL to access your block list. You can share the URL by email or Direct Message if you want to keep it private among friends, or you can tweet the URL if you are okay sharing your block list publicly. You can always disable sharing from the Settings page. If you do so, the URL to access your blocks will be deleted forever. If you choose to share again in the future, you will create a new, different URL. If you choose to disable sharing, you need to separately remove any subscribers you no longer want, on the Subscriptions page.

Many people find that they don’t want to share their block list because they find there are accounts on it they don’t remember blocking, or that aren’t particularly abusive. This is partly because Twitter, for a long time, did not offer Mute. So if you wanted to stop seeing a merely unfunny account that gets frequently retweeted, blocking used to be the only fix. Now Twitter offers Mute, so you can Mute those accounts instead. Block Together makes it easy to remove them from your shared block list with the ‘Unblock and Mute’ button on the My Blocks page.

I don’t public share my list. I have shared it to a few people, but since I block rather than mute people, it’s very easy for people to take offense at me putting them on the list. To me, blocking someone means “I don’t chose to have conversations with you in this manner in Twitter.” There are companies of friends I’ve blocked because they follow me to Twitter after a conversation on the Plugin Repository team.

Actually for me, most of my blocked people are either people who have violently responded to social activism tweets, people who tweet me thinking that’s a faster way to get their plugin approved/reviewed, people who are implicitly aggressive towards me without taking the time to learn the whole story, concern trolls, and passionate people who have gone overboard.

Yes, I block people who ping me about their plugins. My Twitter account is not the right way to address those things. Neither is Facebook. People who cannot respect the fact that I’m not working 24/7 don’t deserve my attention. I block them, and all the begging in the world won’t change that. I block probably faster than most people would consider ‘fair’ but it’s my Twitter account, not theirs, and I have a way I wish to control access and information. I need a reason to block people, but I’m not required to explain that to everyone.

But if I make that list public, people would probably use it as leverage to harass me more or treat me worse. They have in the past. It’s the double edged sword where I want to help my friends but I need to protect myself. For now, my list will be private to people whom I know well only, and who won’t take it as offensive.
22 July, 2016
Looking Back at MovableType

For the first time in years, I looked at Movable Type.

I walked away, like so many people, in May of 2004 when the restrictions and pay requirements were too much. I’d played with b2 before and WordPress, but that was when I fully moved to WordPress. While I’d remembered that the Open Source version had been fully restored in version 3.3, I forgot that when they released v6 in 2016, they ‘terminated’ the Open Source licensing option. Again.

In doing normal research of things, I ended up on MovableType.com, and was struck by how modern and out of date the site felt.

The site isn’t mobile friendly. Or at least not iPad friendly. It does this peculiar zoom in where the content is focused but it still has a sidebar. This means flicking down to read can causes my screen to wobble side to side as well. The zoom also didn’t work consistently, making me have to fix it over and over.

That said, it has a much nicer design and layout than I expected.

I have to say, that’s a much more modern front page than WordPress.org and less cartoony than the current WordPress.com pages. The same can’t be said of navigation, which was a little confusing. If you don’t know you have to purchase to download, seeing the Software License section without clarification is weird. That should be even more obvious, I think. I shouldn’t have to click on “Release Notes” and then see Install MT on the sidebar.

Once I ended up in the documentation, I poked around and had a laugh at the software requirements.

PHP 5.0 or higher (5.3 or higher is recommended)

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The rest of the install direcrions are incredible weird and hands on. It has none of the simplicity I’ve come used to with WordPress. And please remember, I think that WordPress is far too complex for a new user, still, because WP’s NUX sucks. MT’s is worse.

What interested me the most is that, while you can’t get MT for less than $900, they have a public GitHub repo available.

Still, I didn’t install it. Instead I read the documentation to see what using it would look like, and was rather startling to read the author page on creating entries and see an interface that looked old.

It reminded me of WP 2.5. Which I guess is understandable since the documentation on how to import from WP to MT is very old. No, I’m serious, it has screenshots of what looks like WP 2.5 as their documentaion.

While I still think that MT lost out big time when they decided to separate from the Open Source community, their product doesn’t draw me in. It doesn’t look fun or nice to use, and that’s probably a reason it’s not as popular as it could be. The GitHub page has 22 contributors. WordPress 4.5, led by my coworker and friend Mike, had 298. Even the official, but not really used like that, WP GitHub repo has over 30 contributors.

I wonder how the web would have looked if Six Apart had never made the license changes.

I wonder would power 26% of the Internet in that world.

15 July, 2016