Joseph Nuthalapati :fbx:
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2019 is the year of FreedomBox Pioneer edition home servers, Purism Librem 5 smartphones and the growing Fediverse.

This year marks a point in history where people have started to rebel against the surveillance capitalist platforms threatening our democracy and take back control over their digital lives with freedom-respecting products and services.

#2019

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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅  
@njoseph I don't think it's a good idea to play up the "saving democracy" aspect, because what was considered to be democracy even in the pre-digital era was very compromised and already subject to corruption, but via the old technologies of radio broadcast and printed paper. Media barons had the power sway or even decide the outcomes of elections via monopolization of print production and distribution. In the UK 1992 election there was the famous headline "It was The Sun wot won it", and they weren't even far wrong. That is, a private company decided who ruled the country.
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Joseph Nuthalapati :fbx:  

@bob The argument is about a relative reduction in free will of the individual as compared to before.

Maybe when we have corporate-licensed neural laces installed in our brains constantly monitoring thoughts and altering them, we will look back to this age of surveillance capitalism as the good times when individuals still had some freedom to opt out. 😐

The problem is that of individual behavioral modification by external entities to various ends..

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Joseph Nuthalapati :fbx:  

@bob I don't believe there's a technological solution to the two-party problem of democracy. When your only options are a fool and tyrant, you are forced to vote for the fool to minimize damage.

No matter how much each party spends on modifying the behavior of voters and however effective its tools, if the choice is between two undesirable outcomes, the voter isn't left with much of a choice.

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Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) SE HK  
@njoseph @bob The two-party system is a specific problem of the peculiar first-past-the-post, single-person constituencies (FPTP/SPC) election model.

Party blocs appear everywhere, but they are not as extreme and devoid of choice in a proportional system as they are in a FPTP/SPC system.
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Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) SE HK  
@bob @njoseph There will always be powerful people, and powerful people will always have disproportionate influence.

The features of liberal democracy are that it allows bloodless revolutions, slow decision-making and a limited yet present check on that powerful influence, forcing some concessions to the general public that aren't as necessary in a totalitarian state.
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NIXOYE ※  

@njoseph cryptocurrencies are usable by default on a flagship smartphone by one of the biggest smartphone companies (samsung)

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harmlessgryphon  
@njoseph I see the link for these, but they're out of stock...do you know if that's because they're sold out or just not ready yet?
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harmlessgryphon  
@njoseph I tried to follow the freedombox user, but they're on mastodon.social which is a very unfriendly site that blocks other instances "for good reasons."
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Joseph Nuthalapati :fbx:  

@harmlessgryphon Hmm. I didn't know accounts from a blocked instance can't follow accounts on your instance.

Anyway, here's a workaround. You can follow the account on your RSS feed reader.

mastodon.social/@freedomboxfnd

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harmlessgryphon  
@njoseph mastodon.social is particularly virulent. I remember discovering that some time ago when I created an account there and tried to cross-follow. I made a comment about how it was difficult to follow a conversation because certain instances were blocked, and Eugen chimed in to say "for good reasons." You can probably still see that post in my profile there if it's not been deleted for inactivity.

I'll add your RSS feed to my scraper, thank you!
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Joseph Nuthalapati :fbx:  

@harmlessgryphon The kits are not available yet but I expect they will be available some time this month.

This is just my expectation and not official information since I don't speak for the Foundation.

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