it is amazing how so much tech gets unremittingly worse year on year at whatever you once used it for and less pleasant to use and more bound up with creepy politics as well as personal and environmental harms and yet also still less productive of actual goods and these are somehow great visionaries

Don’t threaten me with a good time

Yep. "Drag" is fantastic. I saw her in a tiny venue on the "Drag" tour that was so intimate and small that it felt like what it must have been like to see the jazz greats in tiny clubs.

No way! What a great story! I've seen her twice in concert. She has such an incredible voice.

How did you like the show?

As a former indie reporter/editor, it's exciting to see enterprising journalists forge their own trail. Sadly, I am mystified by your recent coverage decisions that seem to be more about chasing clout than informing the public. It also makes me question your motivations with the Epstein survivors.

tl;dr Decency begets decency even if the platform is evil.

There's nothing revolutionary about this approach. It's pretty well-worn lessons from online community moderation/human-computer interaction work.

And it does work with doses of humor, genuine care, and clear repercussions for poor behavior. Plus gaming the FB interaction system to goose sociality.

It's "mutual aid" without calling it mutual aid which too often feels exclusionary and performative. Neighbors use the page to post pop-up gatherings to grab coffee, take a walk, join library events, plan free events, etc. Several coordinated efforts to help a disabled homeless woman last night.

Step 5: Resist FB's constant push to add AI tools to the page to extract more behavioral data. I'm open with my community about the harms of automated content moderation. Everyone is 100% on board because we have built community not yet another place online to bitch and confirm our priors.

Step 4: We created weekly rituals to build solidarity among residents (owners and renters), businesses, and public institutions in the neighborhood. The page is filled with helpful information, links to support services, and fun "buy local" posts that reinforce an inclusive neighborhood culture.

Step 3: With the community-derived culture and rules in place, the moderators and I worked up levels of interventions to nurture the vibe and communicate actions for rule-breaking. We kept everyone informed by adding actionable suggestions to the rules to circumvent problems, e.g. do this, not that.

Step 2: I used the poll results to draft a new set of community values to embed in the page "rules". The draft was submitted to the community as a means to better guide our discussions and productively work through any inconsistencies/lack of clarity. We collectively designed our culture.

When I took the reigns of the 10-year-old page earlier this year, the online community had moments that verged on the worst of NextDoor. Ugly comments, flame wars, lots of bitching and moaning -- you know the story.

Step 1: I ran a series of polls to gauge interests, concerns, ideas, and needs.

I'm the admin for a mid-sized rust belt neighborhood page with 4500 members. Our section is fairly demographically-balanced (age, race, ethnicity, income, sexuality, and religion). We are bordered by a distressed city neighborhood with a high poverty rate and a more stable middle income suburb.