Spotify takes Apple to court in the EU

Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify:

It’s why, after careful consideration, Spotify has filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission (EC), the regulatory body responsible for keeping competition fair and nondiscriminatory.

Good. After reading through his post and their website – especially if it all is true – they have quite a good case. I’ve been complaining, for years, about iOS’s anti-competitive policies. I am glad someone is finally going to try to get Apple to loosen its grip.

While Spotify’s main objection is the tax Apple puts on apps and services in the Store my main objection would be not allowing me, the customer, to choose my own browser, mail client, music player, etc. I really hope this is the last straw and many more complaints somehow make their way to Apple’s legal department.

Mastodon in April

April hasn’t ended but Eugene Rochko wanted to share what has happened thus far with Mastodon during the month. It is an interesting post. Always neat to see explosions like this from the inside. Like this bit:

So, April, huh. Twitter changed the reply system, which everybody told them they shouldn’t do, and then removed the iconic egg avatar for new users, and suddenly all of my work of telling people that one day Twitter would do something they didn’t like and they’d need a viable alternative paid off. Mastodon caught on on Infosec Twitter, which is both huge and influential, and (somehow, I do not quite understand how) also French Twitter. France really likes free software and decentralization, as it turns out! Think explosion of users from 20,000 to 42,000 in the span of two days. Most importantly, this offset a wave of press attention, from French journals to tech journals to non-tech journals. I had phone and text interviews with The Verge, Mashable, Wired, Engadget and more. I actually don’t remember exactly, because I chose not to read the resulting (or any) articles for the sake of my mental health. (On the other hand, my mother collected them all). The Mastodon band has playfully acknowledged the project. We also witnessed the birth of a meme of a man not being able to be found by William Shattner.

Most people would likely say that The Verge was the start of the wave. But Eugene shows us it wasn’t. Totally worth reading the entire post.

April 25, 2017

How to support Mastodon

Don’t know what Mastodon is? Read my Observations on Mastodon post first.

I’m all in over on Mastodon for #woollyweek. I thought I’d take a moment to jot down all the ways you can support Mastodon even if you’re not running your own instance, aren’t a programmer, or have a ton of time.

Support a major Mastodon contributor. Find someone on the contributors list and support them in some way. Money helps but also following them on Mastodon, thanking them, sharing their posts, can also help. Personally I back Eugen Rochko who is the lead contributor. You can too via his Patreon.
Support your instance. Each instance of Mastodon costs money to run. Usually each instance links to a way to donate from their home pages. Personally I support Valentin Ouvard‘s Mastodon.cloud since that is the instance I use. You can too via Patreon.
Support the apps you use. In addition to the main Mastodon web app you may use a mobile app like Amaroq on iOS or Tusky on Android. If you do, these are built by different people than Mastodon itself. Personally I’ve contributed to John Gabelmann who developer Amaroq (which is excellent btw). You can contribute to Amaroq too via Paypal.
Support the support staff. A few instances have brought on additional support persons to help them manage the community. When hundreds of thousands of new people are added to a new community and platform within just a few weeks there are tons of questions to be answered, problems to solve, and messages to communicate. Personally I’ve contributed to maloki. Even though she is the support person for Mastodon.social (an instance I do not use) I see her role as broader than a specific instance’s support. You can support her too via Patreon.
Support the community. There are a ton of ways to do this. Here are just a few: post original content to Mastodon, start conversations, participate in conversations you didn’t start, boost an interesting post or two, help to welcome new users, if you see negativity try to help turn it around, and if you notice any abuse let your instance’s Admin know.
File bug reports. This software is still very much under active development. You may have noticed your instance being updated several times in recent weeks. With the entire platform under so much strain from the attention it has received, now is likely the very best time to find issues and report them. You can do so by signing up to Github and adding an issue there.
Take time to clearly understand Mastodon so you can teach others. Don’t just read the headlines on popular tech news sites. Dig in and learn what Mastodon is, how it works. Then, when you hear a conversation about Mastodon you can accurately describe these things to others. Mastodon isn’t a Twitter killer as the press likes to position it as. So be sure to help spread good information about it.
Be inclusive. Mastodon has exploded in France and Japan. Rather than complain about your local instance’s timeline being filled with a language you do not understand, embrace the cultural diversity and try to learn a little of those languages or use a translation tool. You’ll likely learn something!
Have fun! Take time each day (or week, if you’re busy) and poke around the community to find things you enjoy. Try to have fun with it.

You might be thinking “I don’t have enough money to contribute to all of these things!”. Yes, you probably do. This morning I bought a small coffee at Starbucks. It cost me $2.50. If I didn’t buy this small coffee once per week that’d add up to $10 a month. If I spread out my patronage to each of the above people I can give a few dollars per month to each. Just these few dollars can go a very long way. Over 480,000 people have signed up to Mastodon. If just 5% of those people decided to contribute $10 a month that’d be $240,000 a month.

If you like something and want it to exist, back up that desire by trying to contribute to it in any small way that you can.

April 25, 2017