Can the Fediverse Help Stop Bad Internet Bills?
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Activism has historically worked best on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit in the past. With the shift in those networks, we have to wonder about the Fediverse. The July 20-28 Week of Action is a good time to experiment!

Here’s how EFF desribes the situation in You Can Help Stop These Bad Internet Bills

“Red alert! For the last six months, EFF, our supporters, and dozens of other groups have been sounding the alarm about several #BadInternetBills that have been put forward in Congress.We’ve made it clear that these bills are terrible ideas, but Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation. I’m asking you to join us, ACLU, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights defenders in a week of action to protect the internet.”

Can the fediverse help? The fediverse has some potential advantages for activism on topics like privacy, digital rights, and LGBTQIA2S+ issues. So it’s worth experimenting, and the July 20-28 week of action on Bad Internet Bills is a great opportunity – to learn, and hopefully to have an impact as well.

Here’s four easy ways to help:

  1. Upvote and boost posts in [email protected] – and cross-post them to other communities and magazines where they’re on-topic
  2. On Mastodon, boost posts on the #BadInternetBills and #KOSA hashtags
  3. Get the word out on other social networks too
  4. If you live in the US, contact your legislators using Fight for the Future’s https://www.badinternetbills.com/
  • db2English
    25•1 year ago

    I think the A is for asexual… like why tf would someone not interested in sexuality care. At a certain point it’s just someone wanting attention and I think we passed it a few characters ago. Before you, gentle reader, get upset see it for yourself… these come from Google search, obvious joke ones were ignored:

    LGBT
    LGBTQ
    LGBTQ+ <- this is literally all inclusive, no need to go further
    LGBTQ2 (“two spirit”… aka furries)
    LGBTQIA+ (longest “official” acronym)
    LGBTQIA2S+
    LGBTQIAAP+
    LGBTQIAGNC
    LGBTQQIP2SAA
    LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA+

    If that doesn’t make it obvious I’ll leave you with a quote from Peter Tatchell:

    It’s great to be inclusive, but the new alphabet soup is a confusing and alienating mess — made even worse when people get into spats over missing initials or the inclusion of initials they disagree with. The longest I’ve ever seen is LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA. This is absurd. It makes us a laughing stock and devalues serious issues around sexuality and gender.

    • @[email protected]English
      10•1 year ago

      Yo just so you know two spirit has nothing to do with furries. It usually refers to gender nonconforming traditions in indigenous american communities and has largely come into favor in Canada as part of recent campaigns to recognize tribal communities and their histories. These movements have obviously existed for a long time but the revelations about atrocities committed at residential schools seems to have really pushed them into the mainstream.

      Otherwise, I think you’re thinking of “otherkin” who are not generally included under the LGBTQ umbrella, but are frequently brought up to discredit queer progress as a movement.

      • GizmoLion
        8•1 year ago

        Even without that it’s not about furries, they’re thinking of therians. Furries just think anthro animals look cute, not that they’re an animal in a human suit.

      • db2English
        4•1 year ago

        edit: this wasn’t an intended reply, I was just reading and suddenly here this comment was blank 🤷 didn’t want to leave it blank or delete it so it says “deleted by creator” and then everyone wonders why

    • @Sir_Simon_SpamalotEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      Wouldn’t we want to have it as easy to pronounce/write/remember as possible? I feel like even the people involved are not taking this seriously by making it longer and longer. It surely looks like more like a joke that way.

      • db2English
        5•1 year ago

        It’s different with nearly anyone you ask too, it’s not like there’s some standardization of the long ones. It’s literally “whatever the fuck I just thought up and you’re intolerant if you don’t respect it” happening. Which brings us right back to it being attention seeking.

        • @Sir_Simon_SpamalotEnglish
          0•1 year ago

          Exactly. How can people take them seriously this way? Well, outside their own echo chamber, of course.

    • @another_lemmingEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      This came to a logical problem of naming a coalition by several group names’ initials. And a very loose one at that. I felt the same about the flag updates.

      It is a conclusion to what they stand for and why they are created – to get united under one banner to be seen – but at the same time it counters that in how it is disunited in these exact banners, also to be seen and recognized but individually. And a rainbow flag, iirc, wasn’t meant to mean something by each colour in it, lol.

      I feel like switching to the name and a flag that don’t include that self-expansion and would just stay the same would be better – but then I catch myself realizing it is nothing other than creating another acronym\flag and asking to be argued by those who promoted these expansion for I deny their effort to gain visibility.

      Shit’s a mess.

    • golamas1999English
      3•1 year ago

      Instead of people fighting over letters maybe Pride Community.

      • @Ryantific_theoryEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        From poking around, it seems like GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) is the general successor to LGBTQ and all assorted acronyms. Obviously not as popular but it at least has everyone baked into it and doesn’t have any charged language, given the ongoing debate over whether queer has been reclaimed as a word or remains a slur.

        Though, immediately after discovering it I did see people adding an R to make it GRSM (Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities), which in theory covers every possible member of the LGBTQ+ family.

    • fearout
      2•1 year ago

      Yeah, I think that at this point there should just be an established term, not an ever-expanding acronym. Like an actual pronounceable word. Is there one besides “queer”? Similar to something-divergent, for example? Like neurodivergent/neurotypical, which became more well-known in recent years. I kinda like those.