Egregoros

Signal feed

API Docs
Timeline

Post

Remote status

Context

35
silverpill

silverpill

@silverpill@mitra.social remote
Open link

@p This is a good analysis, and I can confirm that there is indeed some coordination between the organizations and people you mentioned. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy, though. I know some of them well enough to conclude that it is a not a single organization, but a loose group. Some of them seem to be fake, but others seem to be sincere in their convictions.

I'd like to share a couple of additional links you may find interesting:

- https://about.iftas.org/yoel/

Remember this guy? Given the timing, I suspect that some of these projects were supposed to be sinecures for former Twitter employees.

- https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/pulls/140

This is a draft of a FEP about mandatory CSAM scanning. As one of the FEP repo maintainers, I immediately raised concerns about privacy, centralization, etc. That made me persona non grata at W3C.

silverpill

silverpill

@silverpill@mitra.social remote
Open link

@phnt @p Curiously, Gleason was supportive of the proposal, although at the time he already moved to Nostr (IIRC).

Also, some strange things started to happen in the aftermath of closing that PR. I started seeing vague posts expressing moderation concerns on Codeberg and SocialHub (in this thread, for example: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506). People suddenly started talking about adding a CoC, etc etc. But every time I asked what this is about, there was silence.

pistolero

pistolero

@p@fsebugoutzone.org remote
Open link
@silverpill @phnt

> Curiously, Gleason was supportive of the proposal

Is that curious?

> Also, some strange things started to happen in the aftermath of closing that PR. I started seeing vague posts expressing moderation concerns on Codeberg and SocialHub (in this thread, for example: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506). People suddenly started talking about adding a CoC, etc etc. But every time I asked what this is about, there was silence.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT
pistolero

pistolero

@p@fsebugoutzone.org remote
Open link
@silverpill @phnt Okay, well, to be fair, the timestamp on the "Scope of the socialhub policy" post is August 1, 2023, and the "PhotoDNA Attestation extension" is from August 4, but I think that was possibly preemptive, because he posted this on August 18:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/9

> Thanks. So, if I have a problem with how someone is behaving in PRs on codeberg, what do I do next?

And then in https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/12 and https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/13 , he made it explicit that this was about the PhotoDNA discussion.

And he directly retreats into "But think of the optics of not thinking of the children!"

> I ended up withdrawing the PR. I had adapted the proposal in the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Child Safety report into a FEP to start the discussion process. I was attacked personally in the comments, and the FEP wasn’t allowed to be merged. I don’t think it helped our movement to have such vigorous opposition to developing CSAM filtering standards.
Strypey

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz remote
Open link

@p Reminds me of what Chapman says in the first essay I ever read on Meaningness;

"... you could recognize sociopaths and eject them. Geeks may be pretty good at the recognizing, but are lousy at the ejecting. Mops don’t recognize sociopaths, and anyway don’t care. Mops have little investment in the subculture, and can just walk away when sociopaths ruin it. By the time sociopaths show up, mops are numerically most of the subculture."

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

@icedquinn @fish @phnt @silverpill

Q.U.I.N.N.

Q.U.I.N.N.

@icedquinn@blob.cat remote
Open link
@strypey @light @p @fish @phnt @silverpill that isn't what popper wrote even though it is deeply misquoted.

the paradox of tolerance is an open society always contains the possibility that people vote away their open society. it is the sine qua non of an open society. once you have thought police "to protect democracy" you no longer have an open society. and have extinguished your liberal democracy.

the society protects from violence against extreme opinions and vigilance protects against voting the extreme opinions in to place. you can't get rid of it without no longer having the thing you are trying to protect.

nobody seems to have ever read the book.
Strypey

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz remote
Open link

(1/?)

@icedquinn
> nobody seems to have ever read the book

I admit I haven't (I must), but I did investigate what Popper actually said;

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/paradox-tolerance

@fish @phnt @p @silverpill @light

Q.U.I.N.N.

Q.U.I.N.N.

@icedquinn@blob.cat remote
Open link
@strypey @fish @phnt @p @silverpill @light
if you read the book, the context of this claim is after 25% of the book goes on about how much popper hates plato and spent chapters reiterating "plato's republic is authoritarian as fuck, actually"

the stuff about limited tolerance is spoken in direct context of people exiting a classical authoritarian society and discussing the dangers of grognards sliding society directly back in to hierarchical strong man cultures.

people don't read it and decide it means calling randos nazis but it was spoken with the very real and ongoing concern throughout time of people rotting democracy back in to dictatorships.

poppers smugness is that if violence is off the table, then reason holds for the best argument, and the best argument is empirically the open society, so they have the advantage of self-demonstrating being the best outcome and not needing special favor.

the whole book is very much against authoritarian solutions to problems. unlimited tolerance is spoken next to societies that literally did the "someone is a threat to our power with their words, kill them" behavior people actually misquote the paradox to justify.
🐝🐝🐝

🐝🐝🐝

@sampler@freebeerextremist.com remote
Open link
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @strypey @silverpill @light
Tweets having 140 character limit made sense before smartphones, when we used Twitter via sms (text 40404) . Not sure why Mastodon castrates itself for any reason other than fetish.

Does any Mastodon instance have Twitter-like text messaging or did they ever? I remember statusnet had xmpp built in but I don't think we ever had proper texting set up. (Maybe this is something revolver should consider)

As long as Mastodon is wearing a chastity belt, the char length be 140 instead of 280 (tweets 2.0 - now twice as much) / 500 (toots are almost twice as big as tweets 2.0 but 500 is a nice round number) because it's a number that actually makes sense

maybe they can get government funding from EU to implement sms integration to make it easier for the government to protect their users.
Phantasm

Phantasm

@phnt@fluffytail.org remote
Open link

@sampler @icedquinn @fish @p @strypey @silverpill @light The reason is Gargron was autistic about his vision of a Twitter replacement and posts longer than 500 chars look ugly in the UI. It's a problem that will never get fixed because Mastodon desperately wants to be a Twitter alternative including the way it looks and displays threads.

The actual solution would be to widen the post view and decrease post text size, but that is too much to ask.

Strypey

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz remote
Open link

@p
> WE HAVE TO GET YOU MORE LETTERS

If multi-post threads really bother you I can switch to my Friendica account. I keep forgetting I have it, and I *hate* the cludgy interface with a burning passion. But if you *really* need me to ...

> He should try having a better frontend. (Tweetdeck has always sucked.)

The default Masto interface is modelled on Pinafore and has been for years. Although the one modeled on TD is still there as an opt-in.

@icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light

pistolero

pistolero

@p@fsebugoutzone.org remote
Open link
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light

> If multi-post threads really bother you

Not really, it just seems like at some point, tagging overhead eats the limit. Even Twitter stopped doing that, like, tags and links stopped counting towards the character limit. Mastodon *could* do the former because tags are an extra field (and more or less unconstrained).

I do think that it does make threads harder to read and participate in (by increasing the likelihood of duplication: if you have two paragraphs and the second one covers something relevant to the first, but people that go chronologically see the first one and then write a different version of your second paragraph before finding your second paragraph; this can compound, it is very funny when it does), but I'm just pokin' yer ribs, I ain't tore up.

> The default Masto interface is modelled on Pinafore and has been for years. Although the one modeled on TD is still there as an opt-in.

Ah. I mean...you see the UI that I wrote and use, I'm not sure what Pinafore *is*. (And if it gives you an idea, I used to use the bitlbee Twitter backend as my only Twitter interface. Until they killed off *all* alternative clients, you could have a reasonable time with Twitter by treating it like an IRC channel.)
pistolero

pistolero

@p@fsebugoutzone.org remote
Open link
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light For one thing, short names on short instances producing short tags. They've enshrined as behavior some half-assed incorrect encoding of the *intended* behavior and this is how you end up with crusty, shitty behavior that is *mandated* because otherwise it doesn't *work*.

This is why Mastodon should be completely ignored by protocol implementors: they want to be the Mastodon Network, fine, let them. Stop letting them stomp on protocol design because someone on a jithub issue whined until someone did the dumbest fucking implementation that solved half of the wrong problem. It is time to cut them loose.
Phantasm

Phantasm

@phnt@fluffytail.org remote
Open link

@silverpill @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @light

https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/pulls/7875

This does not implement anything meaningful in the spec and only makes quotes work on Mastodon (because they even fucked up that which worked for years before their attempt).

Trust me when I say that if the proper workflow as envisioned by Mastodon gets implemented in Pleroma, it gets patched out by most larger Pleroma instances almost immediately. Myself included, so if Nicole doesn't make it a toggle, I will. Nobody but Mastodon wants this, and I don't want the Twitter copy of hidden replies either.

Replying to @silverpill@mitra.social
🐝🐝🐝

🐝🐝🐝

@sampler@freebeerextremist.com remote
Open link
@silverpill @icedquinn @fish @phnt @p @strypey @light
The nice thing about quote retweets is they let people repost without necessarily putting it in on their timeline. If your account is followers only and all your posts are followers only but you retweet public posts there is still data leaking.


Pleroma slept on the implementing quote retweet, so I even though it took Mastodon like 6 years to add them, it's our punishment that we need to stick with their way of doing them because we dropped the ball.

Replies

4
Replying to @sampler@freebeerextremist.com
Beer Engineer

Beer Engineer

@sicp@freebeerextremist.com remote
Open link
@sampler @silverpill @fish @icedquinn @light @p @phnt @strypey

> If your account is followers only and all your posts are followers only but you retweet public posts there is still data leaking.

I'd be cool to give people more fine-grained control of scopes at the user-level, and I don't think anyone can force you to federate an RT, but there's no foolproof way to solve "data leaking" when something has to leave its origin. Superficial ways of making things not show up might be enough to satisfy most people: personally I'd like it if I didn't have to look at one-sided conversations on my timeline because it's private and I don't follow everyone involved. But people are bound to complain when they find out something doesn't *really* work the way they expected it to. And that's what's going to happen with Mastodon's proposal.

> it's our punishment that we need to stick with their way of doing them because we dropped the ball.

I don't like the idea of being punished over a feature I never liked anyway. I think QRTs are stupid and if anything I'd gut them out, but I get this is mostly a culture-clash between people who treat fedi to varying degrees more like Twitter and people who don't. But at least QRTs as they are now work exactly the way you'd expect them to, and Mastodon wants to do something else that won't.
Replying to @sicp@freebeerextremist.com
Phantasm

Phantasm

@phnt@fluffytail.org remote
Open link
@sicp @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @silverpill @light Just the fact that people complain about leaking data on this network is proof that trying to prevent it is a never ending battle. Truth is, you cannot enforce what is effectively DRM on your posts in this network, this network is purely operated on implied trust everybody puts on all instance administrators without even thinking about it.

https://evilmaid.net/blog/trusting-trust-fediverse/index.html

Also related to more scopes, Pleroma develop now support scoping of repeats ported from Akkoma. IMHO a dumb feature that shouldn't exist, but to each their own.

>But people are bound to complain when they find out something doesn't *really* work the way they expected it to.

Once again, "We must not claim to prevent what we cannot prevent." Warnings that posts may leak when trying to compose a lockpost or a DM are the only solution to that. Users will freak out, but that's the reality. You cannot lie yourself out of reality.
Replying to @phnt@fluffytail.org
Beer Engineer

Beer Engineer

@sicp@freebeerextremist.com remote
Open link
@phnt @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @silverpill @light

> https://evilmaid.net/blog/trusting-trust-fediverse/index.html

Good writeup.

> Also related to more scopes, Pleroma develop now support scoping of repeats ported from Akkoma. IMHO a dumb feature that shouldn't exist, but to each their own.

Neat. I also think it's dumb but I figured it's the kind of thing people'd want anyway. People can do dumb things as long as I don't have to join them (QRTs, private posts)

> You cannot lie yourself out of reality.

Again as long as I don't have to, if they want to screw everyone else out for choosing not to drink the kool-aid then I say let them: I share the sentiment if there was a big netsplit I can't imagine shedding any tears; nobody can make me upgrade anyway and I think its funny there's an overtone on their side of a netsplit being a worst-case scenario whereas over here most people are indifferent to the idea.
Replying to @sampler@freebeerextremist.com