@elfburgerman@mastodon.social

Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jul 20, 2026

Replying to @fesshole@mastodon.social

@fesshole@mastodon.social I don't mind a bit of child labour, but introducing children to Meta is really bad parenting.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jul 18, 2026

Replying to @DGI@graeber.social

@DGI@graeber.social Do workers have to identify their own bullshit job for it to be one??? Most people working in advertising probably think they're awesome even though we're #AdvertisingOurselvesToDeath ...

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jun 07, 2026

Replying to @gotofritz@hachyderm.io

@gotofritz@hachyderm.io @RnDanger@infosec.exchange @AccordionBruce@mastodon.social @orionkidder@writing.exchange @grammargirl@zirk.us Language can be used as one of the most dangerous tools we have because it shapes the way we think (and thus our future) mostly on a subconscious level. The more subtly a word misleads, the more difference it can make in practice.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jun 07, 2026

Replying to @grammargirl@zirk.us

@grammargirl@zirk.us I'm opposed to your use of 'AI'. An LLM is not an intelligence, even though that is what people call it. Every word the industry likes for its own products probably helps to mislead the public. Every form of anthropomorphisation of LLMs should be banned.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jun 05, 2026

Replying to @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Seems like a good way to get women who can't take care of the fetuses in their bellies to get an abortion...

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · May 12, 2026

Replying to @veronica@explains.social

@veronica@explains.social

use adtech

I guess the people who use adtech just don't value privacy.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · May 10, 2026

Replying to @pluralistic@mamot.fr

@pluralistic@mamot.fr Thank you for clarifying. It seems to me 'anarchist' could just as well refer to 'lessons'. In Germanic languages that are less sloppy than English, this would've been one word with anarchist referring to 'piano', and two with it referring to 'lessons'.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · May 05, 2026

Replying to @Daojoan@mastodon.social

@Daojoan One outcome is an exception to this rule, because masses without means surely can ignore things out of existence. Freedom lies in the ability not to do things ;-)

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @falcennial@mastodon.social

@falcennial@mastodon.social Ads are evil. They should all be banned. #AdvertisingOurselvesToDeath

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe

@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe The problem is that people don't realise that that cloud being owned by a private company is a problem. We need our digital infrastructure to be a common (just like our physical infrastructure, education and journalism, healthcare, and security guard). We need our society to be social.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @tante@tldr.nettime.org

@tante@tldr.nettime.org Every adult should receive a UBI, not just the ones getting an education.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @evanwolf@mastodon.social

@evanwolf@mastodon.social @Daojoan@mastodon.social The mint makes money. Other companies should create value.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @Daojoan@mastodon.social

@Daojoan@mastodon.social If we abolish all advertising except word-of-mouth, companies will have to excel at what they do to survive... (A good example is the expensive, maybe the most expensive vodka, which tastes worse than most other vodkas. The creator put more care into the bottle than the drink, and sold his company ten years after creating it, making a ten-million-dollar profit, according to his goal. He would've kept it if he loved it.) #AdvertisingOurselvesToDeath

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange

@0xabad1dea When we accept real, ordinary people with extremely ridiculous views as normal, we really have a problem.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @csaetre@techhub.social

@csaetre Well worth a quotation here and there.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @elfburgerman@mastodon.social

@manlycoffee Regulating Big Tech is like playing whack-a-mole, or, as the Dutch would say, mopping while the tap is running.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @manlycoffee@techhub.social

@manlycoffee Why regulate Big Tech if we can boycott it? (Also, why write about banning kids from social media? Kids are only banned from adtech, which is at best quasi-social and shouldn't be indicated with a term that fits platforms in the fediverse, which are truly social in every aspect. Words matter...)

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @Richard_Littler@mastodon.social

@Richard_Littler

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 13, 2026

Replying to @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange

@Em0nM4stodon Why regulate what should be boycotted? Age verification can't be applied to platforms that have stopped existing because everyone started ignoring them... If Canada does as Australia does, it won't actually ban social media for children, but adtech, which is at best quasi-social. Australian children are still welcome to use social media, you know: all the platforms in the fediverse.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 12, 2026

Replying to @fox@front-end.social

@fox @anildash Users are not addicted to social media. Media that are social don't addict people. Adtech does. Stigmatisation can motivate people to choose alternatives to the big tech. Please stop calling quasi-social adtech 'social media' and start calling it what it is. After all, language shapes the way we think, and the way we think shapes our future.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @phwolfe@scicomm.xyz

@phwolfe @Haste @odd I'm curious about that collaborative...

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @bethmckinley@mastodon.social

@bethmckinley @rmq The biggest thing we should all learn from the attention economy is that (methodically) ignoring things is an important part of the total of our communications. After all: what doesn't get attention can't grow because of it.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @phwolfe@scicomm.xyz

@phwolfe @odd @Haste I wouldn't call people who chase clicks 'journalists'...

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Mar 30, 2026

Replying to @jplebreton@mastodon.social

@jplebreton@mastodon.social We'll have an internet without advertising once we have a world without advertising. I can't wait! #AdvertisingOurselvesToDeath

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Feb 20, 2026

Replying to @elfburgerman@mastodon.social

@randahl@mastodon.social @Enea90@mastodon.social There's no harm in exploring your options and asking your audience to think along with you... I'd be curious to follow that journey.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Feb 20, 2026

Replying to @randahl@mastodon.social

@randahl@mastodon.social @Enea90@mastodon.social I want the whole world to quit all adtech. (I go a step further: every culture should rid itself of marketing by only allowing advertising by word of mouth (which includes journalism) and window dressing.) In recent years, btw, the number of content creators/outlets who earn their living directly from their audiences/subscribers has grown. You do know alternatives to the constructive aspects of adtech exist (and business models are as plentiful as our creativity is big), right?

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Feb 20, 2026

Replying to @randahl@mastodon.social

@randahl@mastodon.social @Enea90@mastodon.social Can't you earn a living in a way that doesn't harm society?

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Feb 19, 2026

Replying to @Enea90@mastodon.social

@Enea90@mastodon.social @randahl@mastodon.social Indeed, Randahl, please consider! Don't you think your viewers like you enough to follow you to PeerTube?

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Feb 19, 2026

Replying to @Enea90@mastodon.social

@Enea90@mastodon.social @randahl@mastodon.social Fingers crossed! But erm... stop calling them social! They are quasi-social at best, unlike the actually social media platforms one finds in the fediverse.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jan 21, 2026

Replying to @nickofnz@mastodon.nz

@nickofnz@mastodon.nz We're not in a recession; we're in a robbery that has the ones being robbed suffering from Stockholm syndrome. They wouldn't be helping Elon M., Mark Z., Jeff B, etc. to get richer if they weren't. If they weren't, they would completely ignore the companies of those robbers.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jan 17, 2026

Replying to @ai6yr__dup_101@m.ai6yr.org

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Why didn't you block only certain accounts? Eventhough I won't invite nazis for tea, I won't pretend they are not part of humanity. On the contrary: I need to be aware of them for my safety. They have just as much right to any type of account for purposes of communication as anyone else. I prefer a platform that lets them show what they really are over one that excludes people from the start. I only object to special favours for them. So far, Bluesky is not giving them any, is it?

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jan 17, 2026

Replying to @ai6yr__dup_101@m.ai6yr.org

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org I think I installed the bridge, but I never saw a result. It's all a bit abracadabra to me... How do I know if I turned something off without knowing if it was turned on to begin with?

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Jan 13, 2026

Replying to @Weirding_Is_Real@mstdn.social

@Weirding_Is_Real@mstdn.social It looks like we should send large troops of psychiatrists to the US. The number of people who donated money to Jonathan Ross is staggering!

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Dec 25, 2025

Replying to @WeirdScotland@mastodon.scot

@WeirdScotland@mastodon.scot To command to decide to be gay seems a bit queer. (The command to not look grumpy always made me grumpy.)

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Dec 17, 2025

Replying to @EUCommission__dup_19160@ec.social-network.europa.eu

@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu Babysteps :-)

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Dec 08, 2025

Replying to @robloblaw@mastodon.social

@robloblaw@mastodon.social @thejuicemedia@mastodon.social One way or another, we should agree on a term that catches on, because calling ad-tech platforms 'social media' has to end. We shouldn't discuss communication platforms without clearly distinguishing between harmful and non-harmful ones anymore.

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Dec 08, 2025

Replying to @thejuicemedia@mastodon.social

@thejuicemedia@mastodon.social "We all agree social media can be harmful." I don't. I only see harm from quasi-social media, not actually social media. Australia is calling quasi-social media social... That is harmful... People need to know the difference!

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Aug 15, 2025

Replying to @Klaxun@mastodon.social

@Klaxun@mastodon.social @RickiTarr@beige.party So Yoda's niece spoke!

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Aug 15, 2025

Replying to @Eh__tweet@mastodon.uno

@Eh__tweet@mastodon.uno @RickiTarr@beige.party The latter seems more likely in this case because passion is likely to come with an interest and will to excel. The person on this job probably thinks he/she just needs to keep on and carry calm ;-)

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Aug 13, 2025

Replying to @davidrevoy__dup_3654@framapiaf.org

@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Not one of the squares has horses. Not even all the squares together have horses. I hate those tests asking me for a plural with only pictures of a (partial) singular! If you want to communicate with me, do what's decent: stick to the consensus!

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Elf Burgerman @elfburgerman@mastodon.social · Mar 13, 2025

Replying to @joewo@mastodon.social

@joewo Mexico can make its own laws though... In a country where drugs are legal, no cartel needs a lot of weapons.

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