Notices by Kiara (hyenagirl64@yiff.life)

@riotmuffin no, I'm not saying all admins should avoid political activity. But kolektiva in particular had a LOT of organizing going on through it, and a LOT of people on it who might have been engaging in activity that could now get them in trouble. If the admin of a friends circle instance got raided for protest activities and only a couple people on there were doing organizing it wouldn't matter as much.

I'm not saying the admin could have prevented getting raided per se... just being an admin is sufficient for them to make up a bullshit reason and maybe that is part of what happened here... but I think reducing visibility and exposure is probably a good idea in a situation like that.

Like, an admin on an server of organizers should not be on the front lines, you know? That's what I'm saying. They have valuable intelligence and are running a communication hub lots of other organizing depends on.

My lesson learned from the kolektiva raid is that you probably shouldn’t make a major server that is filled with politically active leftists.

Like, the beauty of mastodon for political organizing imo is that there isn’t one central database that can be seized. By the time the *database* encryption becomes important as a line of defense, you’ve already become a target.

I’ll also point out: the individual in question had an unencrypted copy of the db? Admins can get unencrypted copies? So what happens if an admin decides ti work with the police?

This isn’t just bad luck. It’s putting all your eggs in one basket. If kolektiva had been 4 servers instead of one this would be a quarter as serious.

Another lesson that I already knew but I guess people don’t think about: your private communications with other servers aren’t private. The admins of those servers can always see them. If you want dms to be private you will need to encrypt them yourself manually. Unless there is some plug-in I don’t know about.

Another lesson: if you are the admin of a politically active server, it’s really important that the cops don’t show up at your house specifically. The moment you take on that role, and the server gets big enough, you should probably sit out on any kind of risky activities and keep your nose clean. Because if you get in trouble, so might a bunch of other people who are trusting you to keep them safe.

You’re a high value target. It’s in everyone’s interests that you keep yourself safe and incognito. Your arrest could be their arrest. Your raid is their raid.