Notices by shiri (shiri@foggyminds.com)

@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.

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed missed this earlier, but the way out isn't usually account migration, that's a very specific and non-standard function that Mastodon implemented (Mastodon has a bad habit of only half-implementing ActivityPub and then rolling out it's own features and forcing everyone else to comply with their non-standard nonsense... they're kinda the internet explorer of the fediverse)

The way out is because you can leave without severing connections. I'm not saying you won't have to re-add people... but that you still have the option to re-add people. If someone deletes their Twitter account... they lose access to everyone that's only on Twitter. If Bluesky is bridged (and no ifs ands or buts, open bridges will exist despite people's complaints) and they delete their Bluesky account... they'd still have access to those same people.

The whole reason Facebook sticks around and maintains enormous power is because so many people don't have the option to leave without making themselves second class citizens in their communities. (Literally the only reason I have a facebook account... if I could access them over fedi, I'd delete my account in a heartbeat)

Closest "user level" version of "whitelist mode" would be to require follow requests and only share to followers, never public.

From your descriptions, you really don't want whitelist mode either (you're basically defederating yourself and cutting off practically everyone).

The ideals you expressed, like I said elsewhere, are basically impossible to achieve. You have to pick your sacrifices... either you're posts federate to platforms you don't like... or your posts don't really federate at all.

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed @m

Because if the user is primarily associating with the Bluesky community (ie. someone who left Bluesky for Friendica) that may be the first place they find you. They may also not be tech savvy enough (or just not care) to realize it's an AP account they can bypass the bridge to reach.

It was also to highlight that the moment Bluesky starts federating... they stop being the only ones on that protocol, many many Friendica instances are ready to immediately federate with Bluesky as soon as that happens.

Once the plugin updates, I know I'm one of them. There's a number of people who chose Bluesky over anything else that I'd look up and add to my follow list.

After that, some time later there will be AT only servers cropping up, basically AT's equivalent of Mastodon will appear. It'll eventually likely turn into it's own ecosystem with some people preferring one over the other for this or that feature (like some people may prefer the fact that AT has a proper verified user system as opposed to AP... which just has a weak hacked version)

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed

For journalists the value of the fediverse is in not getting silenced. It's here to amplify voices in that fashion so that nobody can be silenced, for good or ill (ie. you can block Nazi instances so you don't see them, but you can't stop a Nazi instance from existing or sharing content).

If you operate in a "I control where my message goes" manner, then you're operating in a manner that can be very easily silenced. It drastically limits your reach.

It's one of those fundamental things where you can't have it both ways, control over your reach is inherently limiting to your reach.

And when talking about the fight against fascism, uncontrolled spread is very much preferable as they can't silence you. If you are careful in your security you can post from an account until the fascists shut down your server... but the post will still be out there floating around. And you can just as easily stay on the network by starting a new account every time they shut down a server... they'd have to shut down the whole network to stop you.

Bridges make it even harder for them because then you can also jump between platforms and if they can't shut down your server they'd have to shut down every single bridge... which new ones can be started with trivial ease (a lot less work and resources than starting up normal instances).

There's nothing they can do to you over a bridge that they can't already do without a bridge, in fact they have less control through a bridge. But you on the other hand have your voice amplified even further.

Additionally the whole fediverse gets stronger as it encourages development on both sides, if one starts lagging behind in features/quality it permits users to move without "leaving" the fediverse.

If Bluesky starts pumping hardcore propaganda and silencing leftist voices... then the bridge offers a light, showing the abuse and giving them a way out that doesn't involve starting over from scratch.

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

Thing is that only the opposite is possible. Because standards are open anybody can join. When this bridge goes live, you might be followed by Friendica instances over the bridge because the AT Protocol is a true fediverse even if it was designed by a corporate entity and it's first server was a corporate server.

But once that goes live, they also have absolutely no control over it after that. They won't have control or access to your posts between two AT instances unless one of those is the original Bluesky itself.

And because protocols are open, there's nothing that can be done about that... without again limiting reach. Your only option to broadly exclude certain entities from the fediverse is to put the entire fediverse under a central control... but then you're at the whims of whomever controls it and we're back at the same problem as before with Twitter, Facebook, and the like...

@HistoPol @jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed @m

Unless it was recently added, groups are not a thing on Mastodon itself. I do know in the Mastodon side of things a lot of people use Guppe: a.gup.pe/ for groups, which work in the same fashion as Friendica groups, just with no moderator/admin.

In the case of the groups, all 3 have it in their description that they're groups.

Because Mastodon has no support for groups there's no indicator anywhere other than the description that an account is a group account.

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

@f4grx @snarfed.org @csepp you just woefully misunderstand what you're working with then. This is a federated platform, the entire platform is opt-out by default.

Your freedom of choice on the fediverse is very simple: unless you're on a whitelist server (in which case it only federates with pre-approved instances and no one else), then you have consented to your posts being federated, you have made the choice to have your posts federated.

Federation doesn't mean "my posts will only be on activitypub", it means "my posts will be freely accessible to everyone".

Your response here makes it very clear that you have no familiarity with how the fediverse works, how bridges work, or even the history of the fediverse.

Everyone actually behind the development of the fediverse is keenly aware of bridges like this and accepts them as a natural part of the fediverse. The original developers of the fediverse see them as a blessing to the fediverse.

Your complaints about consent and being "forced against our will" are akin to the people who go to a waterpark and complain about not consenting to getting wet... by being here you have consented to this. It's not anyone else's fault that you joined a federated platform with no understanding of what federation means.