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The Nexus of Privacy

@ thenexusofprivacy @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Posts
86
Comments
135
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • About federation with Threads: how is it possible that lemmy.world is federated?

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  • Here Are the Secret Locations of ShotSpotter Gunfire Sensors

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  • And, it gives cops another excuse to overpolice Black and brown neighborhoods.

  • Cyberbullying Gone Global: Fediverse Spam and Operation Beleaguer

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  • There have been other waves, it's just that once they get shut down everybody loses interest and moves on. The PR for the one of the changes Mastodon just made was implemented in May 2023 after the Doge spam wave. And here's a June 2019 post talking about exactly the same kind of attack: "The problem we are experiencing is the spammer signing up on random open instances and sending spam remotely."

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    A different strategy for promoting the Threadiverse

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  • A very good idea! https://startrek.website/ took this approach, it'd be intersting to check in with them to see what they learned.

  • Steps towards a safer fediverse

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  • I had shared the draft version here a few weeks ago, and this incorporates some of the feedback -- including "This goes against everything the Fediverse stands for" 😎

  • Steps towards a safer fediverse (DRAFT)

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  • No, as the article says at the very beginning, it's that I think a big reason that fediverse isn't growing is its failure to deal with safety.

  • Steps towards a safer fediverse (DRAFT)

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  • Nonsense. Instance blocklists are used across the fediverse today. They're certainly not a perfect solution but they have the advantage of actually existing. See Blocklists in the fediverse for a lot more discussion.

  • Inside Biden’s secret surveillance court

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  • Politico is known for its bias, but I'd say this is a fairly accurate article -- Alfred is an outstanding reporter. But you're certainly right, this is an issue that cuts across party lines.

  • Instances in the free fediverses should consider "transitive defederation" from instances that federate with Meta

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  • Indeed, the entire point is that instances should decide for themselves -- I say it multiple times in the article and I say it in the excerpt. If they think that you federating with Meta puts them at risk, then they should defederate. And yes, it says more about the instances making the decisions than it does about Meta -- Meta's hosting hate groups and white supremacists whether or not people defederate or transitively defederate.

  • Instances in the free fediverses should consider "transitive defederation" from instances that federate with Meta

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  • It's good feedback, thanks -- I thought I had enough of explanation in the article but maybe I should put in more. Blocking Threads keeps Threads userws from being able to directly interact with you, but it doesn't prevent indirect interactions: people on servers following quoting or replying to Threads posts, causing toxicity on your feeds (often called "second-hand smoke"); hate groups on Threads encouragiingtheir followers in the fediverse to harass people; and for people who have stalkers or are being targeted by hate groups Threads, replies to your posts by people who have followers on Threads going there and revealing information.

  • Instances in the free fediverses should consider "transitive defederation" from instances that federate with Meta

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  • And complement the FediBlock tag with FediBacon! It's got success written all over it!

  • The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

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  • Agreed that people who need strong privacy should use something like Signal (or maybe Matrix or XMPP). And also agreed that RSS feeds are a privacy hole on most of the fediverse; Hometown and GoToSocial both disable them by default, Mastodon should do the same.

    Nothing prevents malicious actors who want to make enough of an effort from creating accounts on instances (or for that matter Matrix chat rooms). But that's not feasible for broad data harvesting by Meta.

  • The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

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  • Yeah, as I say in the article Mastodon makes other decisions that are also hostile to the idea of consent, so I also agree that they see it as contrary to their mission. In terms of large tenants, though, Mastodon changed the defaults to put sign people on mastodon.social, which as a result now has 27% of the active Mastodon users, so I don't think that's the basis of their objection.

    And no, consent-based federation doesn't rely on people being kind and open. To the contrary, it assumes that a lot of people aren't kind, and so the default should be that they can't hassle you without permission. It's certainly true that large instances might choose not to consent to federate with smaller instances (just as they can choose to block smaller instances today), but I don't see how you can say that's not even federation anymore. Open source projects approve PRs and often limit direct checkins to team members but that doesn't mean they're not open source.

  • The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

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  • As you say though it's only shared to any other instance listening. The point of consent-based federation is that you get to choose which instances do and don't get to listen. So if your comment hasn't been sent out out to other instances, they don't have it.