half coffee

I’m not sure popular is the biggest goal right now. It would definitely be nice for federated platforms to gain a bigger user base, but while the tools are growing, it’s really inspiring just to think that people are willing to invest the (low or no profit) time and energy into making the internet a nicer place.

I was mormon. Thankfully my parents paid to traffic me, so I could afford to go to college and cut them off relatively soon after I got home.

I was threatened by local leaders and family if I didn’t go on a 2 year mission in another country, then when I got there, they:

• took my passport immediately and locked it in a building I couldn’t access
• required 12 to 16 hours of work a day, with discipline if productivity dropped
• refused to provide adequate food or medical care
• restricted my communication with my family
• assigned me a companion to surveil me 24/7 and report disobedience to leadership (and assigned me to surveil someone else)
• disciplined me when I was physically and sexually assaulted by other missionaries

I didn’t want to call it trafficking for a long time. I figured maybe God just had a weird way of doing things. But my spouse works at a recovery center for survivors of violence (including trafficking) and helped me realize that’s what it was.

A pretty big misconception is that trafficking has to look like selling slaves, and I agree that’s an egregious thing, but it can be a lot more broad than that.

There are a lot of resources at https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en if you’re curious. My mission experience checked just about every box for labor trafficking, and I’ve heard very similar stories from a lot of other people who have been missionaries.

The church in the ad is particularly harmful. I had to fight to get out of it, and only after they took 10% of my income for years and trafficked me. They want money, power, and control, not increased numbers at their services.

Cries in Linux

I don’t know about usual, but there is a huge wall between private/ personal and public/ professional for me. Nothing personal ends up under my own name if I can help it. Basically, I’m using my name as if it were the name of a business, and I use an alias or nickname otherwise.

Surprisingly little discourse for a nearly 1:1 vote ratio lol

Looks fun!

Maybe that was the bait…