Notices by shiri (shiri@foggyminds.com)

@tillshadeisgone @welshpixie I had my instance on open registration until last year (closed because I couldn't guarantee reliability until after I moved to someplace safer)... and honestly it's a hard balancing act.

Those with open registration are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network and usually with the awareness that any friction in registration will drastically reduce adoption... But then you get situations like this which are an extremely valid reason against...

Given that the open registration problem won't practically go away outside of whitelist only networks (which are inherently very small)... we really need better tools to manage these instances from the outside (since we can't control the inside)

I'm genuinely curious what ideas people have that could help?

I've been mulling over the idea of figuring out a system for collaborating on blocklists so moderators or users who trust eachother can expand their response time and power to quickly shut down these problem users. (Yes, I'm aware that blocklists also get used to compile lists of people for various reasons, but that's just assholes using a random tool that's not even good at that job)

This makes me think that maybe we need settings on the various platforms to do things like hide users under a certain age. Or maybe blocklists of problem email addresses so they can be blocked from registration without also having to set up a new email account?

Basic gist: the NSA, FBI, etc are now actively targeting anyone expressing leftist sentiments or even just being pro-trans rights even if they haven't committed a crime.

It directs them to "investigate, prosecute, and disrupt", again regardless of whether we've committed a crime.

truthout.org/articles/national…

Note: this is a copy/paste because I am so incredibly worn out emotionally I've been sobbing since Sunday over the whole situation. But what use is having a gofundme if I don't get it in front of people.

I hate spamming this out, but it's the only way this works, especially on AP-Fedi.

Gist is I need to get out of the state for my safety, and that's easier said than done with my disabilities, debts, and other limits.

My lease is up in mid-October, I really want to be able to just go straight from here to Washington State and even 2/3rds of this goal will make that happen... but the clock's ticking.

gofundme.com/f/assist-a-jewish…

#lgbtqia #lgbt #MutualAid #trans

@m @Polychrome problem is that I have no ability to survive undocumented, no program means no aid and eventually getting deported back here anyways. I'm impoverished, disabled, and don't have much market value on paper.

So right now just trying to get someplace as safe as possible and praying for maybe a civil war once I get there...

I think people overseas often don't realize how trapped we are and how hard it is for most of us to move around. Or that the americans you're most likely to meet are the wealthier entitled fuckwads who are well off enough to be able to travel.

@guyjantic @bnewbold @cwebber I think they acknowledge that a few places in their article that AP might be able to have it, they just don't think it's built for it.

Personally, my gripe with Bluesky in general is that I'm in the crew that only think it's decentralized when there are no major pillars. In AP the only server outage that matters to my connectivity is my own... but Bluesky has big backbones that can't be casually run... and they wouldn't be bad if they weren't mandatory.

Like I'd be much more welcoming of Bluesky if the environment was set up in a way that you could still use it without that big relay in the middle... because I think that big relay is the problem, it's too much control.

Mentioning things like Google it's like if the web relied on Google search to run, Google goes down and 90% of your bookmarks stop working. (Which is more fucked up because that's what happens for a lot of people when Amazon goes down...)

Likewise i think doing a big search feature like that for AP would probably be more of a companion or subset protocol rather than working within AP proper (ie. you'd have the option to use it and to submit your profile/posts to it, but it wouldn't be required functionality for your server to be usable)

@silverwizard @neil has anyone actually established a better system really?

Not going to argue that LE doesn't have it's problems, or even just the underlying SSL system in general.

LE thanks to ease and being free without much "competition" it has the crucial problem of hosting far too high a proportion of the the certs for the whole internet.

SSL in general has the problem of CAs getting hacked and issuing fraudulent certs.

Only improvement I can think of in that security at all is maybe double-certified certificates? (require you to go through two wholly separate providers with the same key to have a valid key and requiring both to sign for any updates to go through and maybe a certificate chain for whenever it changes hands)

Beyond that it's always a cludge, people aren't going to check them themselves, they're not going to manage certificates themselves... so you just have a preauthed group of keys installed in your system, trust them to be above board, and then trust the providers of those keys to be above board. Honestly shocked we haven't had more issues, but that's kinda how security goes.

@atoponce ... so you prove "someone" lacks all intelligence by challenging their math disability?

It only has a handful of cognitive functions, none of which are good at math. Honestly, it does better than I expected.

@rvkennedy @JorgeStolfi @kcoyle @immibis @pluralistic @funcrunch that's got a number of things jumbled.

The debt ceiling has nothing to do with the central bank or printing money, it has to do with the government issuing bonds (taking on more debt).

The dollar value drops internationally because a failure to raise the debt ceiling also means the government defaults on it's debts. It's international debts are still in USD, so those debts are worth less if the US threatens to not pay them.

@HistoPol @chronohart @ploum @jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @snarfed oh yeah, EEE is definitely something to watch for, it doesn't mean don't connect though... just don't trust.

If it benefits them then Bluesky will kill federation in a heartbeat.

@informapirata @luca it used to work with a different protocol, Friendica has been ActivityPub based longer than Mastodon has been alive.

Always remember that Mastodon is well established to be a poor neighbor in the AP community, not supporting the full spec and often implementing their own non-standard solutions.

@luca @informapirata Some platforms have specifically gone out of their way to support Mastodon's non-standard functions... that doesn't make them standard or a platform as deficient for not supporting them.

A lot of that has to do with the relationship between them, where many of those are newer platforms inspired by and emulating Mastodon. Friendica on the other hand is one of the old school platforms that looooong predates Mastodon, so supporting any of their non-standard stuff is a monumental task (it's easy to support something when you're starting from scratch)

Like I said before, all of that is non-standard functions that the vast majority of the fediverse doesn't even support.

I think you might be confusing ease and possibility. Few people even when moving instances within the fediverse are going to have that option (save for those moving between two instances of the same platform).

It's not whether there's some convenient tool to move your posts or other data.

It's about whether after the move you can still get the same updates and talk to the same people.

Think of it in terms of the oldest surviving federated network: changing email accounts.

Before SMTP (the federated email protocol), you had to have accounts on every server with people you wanted to talk to. After you only had to have one account, but could readily move about the network to other servers if you got fed up with your server's bullshit or another offered better services.

(And for the record, public bridges with no opt-out methods exist for email as well)

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed The alternative is making a new account and re-adding the same people.

I had to do that when I moved from Mastodon to Friendica.