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   Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:54 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

   Time for some game theory (but actually)

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:51 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     @misc
     Yup. This is •the• question. And we need to answer it regardless of what happens with Threads, because it’s not a Threads question — it’s a fundamental fediverse question.

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:52 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     So far, the Fediverse has been a relatively safe haven from this kind of stuff. Largely because there just aren’t enough LOTT sleeper agents here that siccing them on someone here would have the same powerful effect as on those other platforms.

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:52 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Enter Threads. So far it’s not federated, but it does have LOTT, and there’s no indication that it’s going to take them down. Fast forward a couple months. Threads federates. Many instances block them, but a lot of vulnerable people are not on those instances. Now, thousands of LOTT followers on Threads are able to descend on anyone on the Threads-federated instances.

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:52 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Ok, so round one: LOTT on Threads calls out a target, probably on mastodon.social. The LOTT minions, mostly on Threads, but maybe some strays scattered around the fediverse, descend on their latest victim. Moderation teams are overwhelmed trying to take it all down, but eventually they do. It subsides and hopefully the victim is ok. What happens next?

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:53 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Disclaimer: I know very little about anything I’m about to talk about, including the dynamics of “brigading”, the nitty gritty of ActivityPub federation, and game theory. I’m just going to go step by step, slowly, and ask people to correct me along the way.

   • Embed this notice
     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:11:53 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Here’s my understanding of the initial conditions: we have Libs of Tik Tok, which I’ll use as a shorthand for similar accounts. LOTT has 100s of 1000s of followers across various platforms: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. They basically put out a hit on someone, call them a groomer or whatever, name their handle on a platform. The LOTT followers on that platform spring into attack.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:22:22 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     @misc
     Very curious to see where you’re going with this, what ideas you and others bring.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:52:46 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Dan Seitz

     @Dseitz
     I mean, they have in the sense that Threads do not even support federation at all yet. So mastodon.social has defederated from Threads in the same way that they’ve defederated from the grapes in my backyard. (Or you mean preemptively?)

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:52:53 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Round 2B: Let’s say mastodon.social doesn’t defed from Threads after this first incident. (Assume they’d probably demand a concession from Meta, but maybe it’s a weak countermeasure.) I don’t know if it’s likely, but one can imagine LOTT Threads users start signing up for mastodon.social, and use that as the base for their next attack. I guess at that point mast.soc gets mass fediblocked. So now we’re split, and vulnerable.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Dan Seitz (dseitz@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:52:53 JST Dan Seitz

     in reply to

     @misc

     Actually I think mastodon.social has already defederated from Threads but don't quote me on that!

   • Embed this notice
     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:52:54 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Well, a lot of things could happen, but let’s take two specific paths. There will be a ton of pressure on mastodon.social and other big instances to defederate from Threads. Either they do, or they don’t. Let’s say … they do.

   • Embed this notice
     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 03:52:54 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     Round two: the Fediverse is once again more or less sealed off from Threads. But now we’re on LOTT’s radar. They start talking about the fediverse as a cesspool of groomers, probably conflate it with scare stories about the “CSAM problem”. It’s all too easy to imagine. They call on their followers to create accounts on Masto instances. Now what?

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     Jesse Baer 🔥 (misc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jul-2023 06:28:52 JST Jesse Baer 🔥

     in reply to

     So I guess that leaves me thinking that as long as federation happens at all in the first place, it maybe doesn’t matter that much who defederates when after that? Once they taste blood they’ll be here, and we have to find better protections than obscurity. But I’ll stop here and invite people to jump in.