I guess mastodon.social? Its not only the Brazilians, its also BTS army, and the japanese community. They also went to Bluesky instead of Fedi. Maybe the fediverse is too euro-centric?

Maybe at some point swifties could join the Fediverse?

“Bluesky has managed to grow significantly bigger than the fediverse at this point, with around 5 times as many monthly active users, as well as onboarding the Brazilian community. It seems to me that it is worth reflecting on why that is, and how the fediverse can better show itself as a good, ethical social network that people would like to join.”

Yeah, why is that? On the one hand, LGBTQ is strong in the Fediverse, and tech nerds of course. But other than that … the Fediverse never had this kind of cultural momentum.

Thats sad. I’m sure mozilla could have pushed the Fediverse

I read it only in parts. Apparantly, there actually is a dollar-galleons-exchange rate carried out by Gringots.

“Consider first the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate (i.e. the exchange rate between the muggles’ money and the wizards’ money), which is not mentioned explicitly in the original 7-volume Harry Potter books, but we know from the books that the Gringotts handles such exchanges (Rowling, 1999a, p. 50). Based on information from three sources, we estimate that the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate is about $7.30/Galleon.”

The best of these sources is Rowling herself I think: “Third, in an interview on March 12, 2001, when asked by Rebecca Boswell, ‘What is the approximate value of a galleon?’ J.K. Rowling’s reply was ‘About five pounds, though the exchange rate varies!’ (Source: https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2007/02/04/wizard-money/, accessed June 6, 2022.) We conclude therefore that the Galleon–Dollar exchange rate is about $7.30/Galleon.”

Arthur Wesley after all also bought a muggle car and bewitched it.

I read the books. But yeah, the name could have been improved … just Wiz Tech for example.

No no, there is actually a whole economic going on and someone analyzed it: https://academic.oup.com/ooec/article/doi/10.1093/ooec/odac004/6646895

And its not so different and similary flawed than that in our world ;)

Idk. I mean, we all basically know how an engine works, how a coffee machine works, but these little magic devices that are supposed to work with these “microchips”. You can easily take apart an engine, but if you take apart a smartphone, you never find the bits …

You can probably exchange it. And I mean gold should count anywhere

I tried to base it on the advertising of the 50/60s. Its a bit thick …

Ok, now I get it. It’s an interesting concept. However, I think usability is a trade-off here and that means limited scalability. The average user wants to join a server and that’s it. I continue to place my bet on the federated concept ;)

Then if its filtered - why is it better against cencorship?

Ok, but can they also delete it once its through? Either all incoming messages are checked beforehand and are filtered by the admin, which is even worse of the bad censorship in the Fediverse nostr fans keep crying about, or its passed through and the user has to deal with toxic content. I’m not sure how that should work. The moderation has to happen somewhere, it sounds like nostr is heaving that onto the user.

Usually, if people say “its the best from both worlds” actually means “there is a tradeoff, but I like this adjustment of the tradeoff more”. If you want less “censorship”, which is ok, you use nostr, but have to live with a worse moderation situation.

Have they by now come up with a way to moderate things?

Ok, so she allies with some weird people. Didn’t know that and its not great, but it doesn’t make her a fascist. Being a fascist corresponds to a fascist mindset. I think her books, opinions and also the fantastic beast films show that she has liberal mindset, and she is strongly against fascism.

But I hear you, I guess the whole cultural fight has a bigger urgency for you. I’m also panicking that we really drift towards fascism again. But for me, I analyze the problem different and therefore draw different conclusions.

For me, this is about a bigger conflict within the democratic forces in general and especially within the Left. For years now, the common mindset was that of deconstruction, that of dismanteling structures and hierarchies. However, turns out that if you see in every structure and hierarchy the possibility for “colonialism” and “micro-aggressions” and you dismantel that on and on, you end up with no structures, which, surprise: leads to evil, anti-democratic structures to develop. For me, the Post-Colonialist-Left has lost all credibility after the terrorist attack by the Hamas on Israel, because many of them openly appreciated or at least downplayed it. Antisemitism is a problem on the left.

So yeah, Rowling has a point that anti-liberal-tendencies have grown over the years, as holds for a limiting of free speech (Salman Rushdie also signed the letter that she signed a few years ago calling for more free speech). But for me, this comes from the post-colonalist-left, which is currently kind of shattered anyways (and also right-wing-populism, of course). However, Rowling argues that the queer/trans movement is anti-liberal and that’s also were she loses me, because thats a talking-point of the right, on which, like you said, they only too eagerly jump on. In russia, they have declared LGBTQ as a terrorist group, which is really bad for the people there.

But the forces that are pro-democracy quickly need to unite again. In this sense, from my point of view, by building something that is not perfect from the beginning, I do something to strengthen liberal democracy, which is also good for trans people.

Look, first of all I’m not trans, I don’t know how its like, and you have my sympathy. The inzident with the H.P. fans harassing you sounds horrible and I’m sorry it happened to you.

Independent from this, I don’t think the world of H.P. itself is transphobic, if it was written by a different author there would still be things to critize but not more than many other childrens books. Also, I think that the fandom can free itself from Rowling in the sense that it becomes an independent thing from the author. For example the Lord of the Rings Series by Amazon Prime did some central things different than Tolkien. I think that’s how cultural development happens in contrast to just boycotting it. On the other hand, while Rowling still earns money from it and spends it for bad causes, there will always be a moral dilemma. But I’m willing to take the consequences of that moral dilemma in this case, because I think the H.P. fandom could be really good for the Fediverse and grow it, and a big Fediverse will be good for the world.

Additionally I have to add that, imo, throwing fashists and neo-nazis like David Duke into one bucket with Rowling is problematic, if not borderline totalitarian (and also just tasteless), because she simply isn’t. She is very conservative, but not a fascist. Fascists see certain groups of people as less human or not even humans at all, Rowling always said her arguments have nothing to do with the humans themselves, which is a crucial thing.

But none of them is anywhere near the popularity of Harry Potter. In the german-speaking area, his dark material and Earthsea are even less common.

Already figured that one out myself but thanks anyways. Yeah, would be nice to have an open alternative there

It’s so powerful to get more HP fans in more leftist spaces so they can incept those ideas.

That could prove to be harder than expected. I tried to reach out to r/harrypotter but they won’t let me put an advertisement post there :( Turns out that not so surprisingly, these fansites are kind of closed up themselves and until they open themselves up to AP, too, they will be very reluctant to any fediverse clones of them …

I’m now trying to reach out to other fansites. Let’s see.

So discussion of the text would be allowed in literature section. Just not if it were transphobic?

No, I meant that it wouldn’t be put to discussion if it were transphobic. It would need to be decided just like for any other book. I just don’t want to pre-empitively outrule the book because I don’t know it AND because the situation hasn’t arised yet.

But yeah, we can assume that it would happen. Its a fair question. Probably I or the mods would have to do some reading and then decide. But that holds for any controverse book.

Now, the question is, if in doubt, would I rather ban the book discussion or not, I would be on the side of allowing it, because banning books from discussion is a very radical step and then see if any transphobic comments pop up around it.

I mean frankly, you are gonna have the community regardless what I or any other trans person say, which is your right.

That’s true, it was never up for discussion; I mean, it was some work to put it up. But I’m interested in your opinions around it. Just because it will not be a safe place for queer folks (I have neither the resources nor the skills), it can still be a generally welcoming place to them (hopefully).

But what are these other franchises? I seriously don’t know any that strike the same nerve as H.P.