Sebastian Greger
is
@sebastiangreger
Constructively critical sociologist and digital artisan – bringing together social science and design to innovate, consult and educate on human-first digital strategies: inclusive, privacy-protecting, and sustainable. (he/him)
sebastiangreger.net is part of the Fediverse and this is my ActivityPub profile. For more, see about and my journal or resources.
86 followers
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Alternatively, enter my user ID into the search field of your Mastodon instance or Fediverse application:
@sebastiangreger@sebastiangreger.net
…and there is of course also the classic RSS feed or my email newsletter if you prefer.
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With great interest, I discovered the comprehensive guide “Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization” by Urban Institute: it approaches the topic from general considerations on the role of #a11y in process and artifact, diving all the way into specific examples showcasing how things should be done in an inclusive way.
IMHO this should be a required reading for anyone working with data visualization.
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This text by @ploum made my morning: https://ploum.net/2022-12-05-drowning-in-ai-generated-garbage.html
…these are opaque algorithms introducing unfathomable bias and tailored to be “liked”, but they also rely on what they are fed – that is even more difficult to be held accountable than the algorithms themselves, especially once they start to feed themselves with their own output.
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Whenever dealing with personal data, it is safest to assume that any “anonymous” data (in a layperson’s terms) likely is, in fact, pseudonymous.
In this fascinating case study of re-identification, Hagen Echzell locates the Norwegian prime minister from supposedly “anonymized” Covid tracing app data – identifying her smartphone based on known moves in the real world.
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I love finding this kind of inspirational nuggets: The website of @collinsworth https://joshcollinsworth.com/ has a neat little button to globally disable animations on the page. A tiny bit of inclusive design that may well make somebody’s day.
https://sebastiangreger.net/2022/12/accessibility-in-action-reduce-motion-button
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While Mastodon promises to solve some of the problems of centralized social networking – and may inevitably create new ones in the process – the sudden popularity of the ActivityPub protocol led me to reflect about how I want to partake in that. I ended up connecting this blog to the Fediverse as an experiment.
https://sebastiangreger.net/2022/11/this-website-now-on-fediverse
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Ah, this is just down my alley regarding technology non-use, luddism and related perspectives:
The stories of people who consciously resist new technology in favour of older versions. The reasons are manifold, but a lot of it has to do with ownership, control, or nostalgia. Sometimes, the old is simply better than the new …in the eye of the individual, at least.
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A software installing a custom font to be able to sniff for it in the browser is one of the more nasty examples of website user fingerprinting I’ve heard of in a while. (And IMHO an ePrivacy violation as well, unless asking for explicit consent.)
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As much as I am fascinated by the subject, and passionate about promoting that it is an abuse of designers’ power of influencing people’s behaviour, I deeply dislike the term “dark patterns”.
What I really like about this long-form analysis by Amy Hupe is that it highlights how it is not up to somebody not affected by hurtful language to judge whether it is appropriate or not.
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The “MastodonDataProtectionGuidance” repository by @privacat@dataprotection.social aims to be a Data Protection/Privacy Guide for Instance Admins of Masto/Fedi services. The work-in-progress “Mastodon Privacy Guide” already contains a lot of good pointers about challenges and potential pitfalls.
https://sebastiangreger.net/2022/11/bookmark-mastodondataprotectionguidance
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@aral presents an example how the massive amount of communication involved with federation can turn operating a Mastodon instance into a liability.
This makes me think about the CO2 footprint of federated networking as well…
https://sebastiangreger.net/2022/11/bookmark-is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed
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Reposted https://front-end.social/users/matuzo/statuses/109530470735135539:
“when we construct the digital world to the limits of the best devices, we build a less usable one for 80+% of the world's users.”
“The Mobile Performance Inequality Gap, 2021” by @slightlyoff
https://infrequently.org/2021/03/the-performance-inequality-gap/
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Replied to https://mastodon.social/@mhaseneyer/109524201949351199:
Is there a minimum #ActivityPub implementation (preferably plain old #PHP w/o tons of frameworks)?
Would like to investigate what is needed to connect a common default website to Fediverse.
@mhaseneyer I am collecting some resources and insights re “natively” connecting a blog to the Fediverse at https://sebastiangreger.net/resources/misc/activitypub – maybe that could be of help? (Living document; I add to it whenever I find/learn more…)
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Reposted https://vis.social/users/frankelavsky/statuses/109520110410599538:
Some exciting news:
I helped contribute a chapter to a whole book on data visualization and accessibility and it is FREE! 📊 📖 🎉
Amazing co-contributors include: @shepazu, @fossheim, @larenelg, @mmazanec22, @tink, Dax Castro, and Liz Hare.
Please note: Connecting this blog directly to the Fediverse is an ongoing (live) experiment. Things may and will break at times. If you want to build something like this yourself, check out my resources and learnings:
Misc » ActivityPub