Notices by simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social), page 6

@williampietri
I doubt it's about misogyny. Nor would I bet on that anouncement either.

Not only did Musk already retract earlier anouncements, it would kick the Twitter/X app off the Google and Apple stores as both require of apps to contain a blocking feature. So Musk would lose that access.

W/o block, many people would leave Twitter/X which would hurt its ad business. But even more importantly, he needs to keep the user base in Twitter/X's transformation into a fintect/banking platform.

@stigatle
Happy birthday and a Happy New Year!

@stigatle
Wow! Wheelchair-gliding. I never heard about that. Wonderful idea!

@stigatle
That must have been awesome. I guess the boat pulled you both to a certain height, than the row was notched and you did your gliding. Was there some instructions regarding directing the parachute? Anyway, true holidays. I only wonder what you did with the kids and the pet. Uninterrrupted fun-time for both parents is hard to come by. So whom did you bribe?

@stigatle Indeed.

@stigatle
And you said you were looking forward to 4 weeks of holidays and quality time with the family. :-)

Detox, my friend, and run with the kids. :-)

The difference between Russia under Yeltsin and Russia under Putin can be depicted in the difference between Anna Politkovskaya and Margarita Simonyan.

Corynne McSherry, "User Generated Content and the Fediverse: A Legal Primer" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer

[Interesting for every admin, operator, and owner of an instance that resides in the U.S.]

#fediverse #sources #resources

@stigatle
... and now I see that I follow you from my mastodon.social account to activitypub.stigatle.no So we have at least this mutual subscription. Great! And don't you bother finding out what is going on with the gnusocial.jp account. :-) No longer your construction site! :-)

@stigatle
No, I subscribed to activitypub.stigatle.no (I may have subscribed earlier to the yummi account).

@stigatle
I cannot subscribe to you from gunsocial.jp. But as I am mutually subscred to myself between gnusocial.jp and mastodon.social, the earlier exchange was transmitted to gnusocial.jp

@stigatle
... and yes, I can see that you subscribed to the mastodon account of mine. My subscribing is not displayed.

@stigatle
Yes, this arrived on Mastofon (although I still see the "cancel follow" and don't see that I follow you).

@coupland @JamesGleick
To follow the rules of "my" instance doesn't mean I can automatically reach people on other instances, esp. when "my" instance blocks the other one. So don't talk nonsense that confuses people who haven't been around here for years.

@JamesGleick
For many it's far better to communicate inside one social medium, even a "closed" one, than to deal with the hassle of what can and can not be said on one instance in the #Fediverse or another, blockwars being one result of such "decentralisation".

To many #Threads may be the right thing to escape the negative effects of #federation.

That you don't understand why some ask to follow them over to Threads may be due to a lack of technical understanding of federation.

🚨 Kolektiva.social SECURITY ALERT 🚨

This is an alert for Kolektiva.social users. Please read this post in its entirety!

In mid-May 2023, the home of one of Kolektiva.social's admins was raided, and all their electronics were seized by the FBI. The raid was part of an investigation into a local protest. Kolektiva was neither a subject nor target of this investigation. Today, that admin was charged in relation to their alleged participation in this protest.

Unfortunately, at the time of the raid, our admin was troubleshooting an issue and working with a backup copy of the Kolektiva.social database. This backup, dated from the first week of May 2023, was in an *unencrypted* state when the raid occurred and it was seized, along with everything else.

The database is the heart of a Mastodon server. A database copy such as the one seized may include any of the following user data, in this case up to date as of early May 2023:

- User account information like the e-mail address associated with your account, your followers and follows, etc.
- All your posts: public, unlisted, followers-only, *and direct ("DMs")*.
- Possibly IP addresses associated with your account - IP addresses on Kolektiva.social are logged for 3 days and then deleted, so IP addresses from any logins in the 3 days prior to the database backup date would be included.
- A hashed ("encrypted") version of your password.

🚨 👉 As a precaution we highly recommend that all users on Kolektiva.social *change their password immediately* to a new, unique, and strong password.

We sincerely apologize to all our users and regret this breach. In hindsight, it was obviously a mistake to leave a copy of the database in an unencrypted state. Unfortunately, what would otherwise have been a small mistake happened to coincide with a raid, due to bad luck and spectacularly bad timing.

We understand that our users and other people on the Fediverse will have a lot of questions. We will try to answer them as best we can, but please be patient and bear in mind that we may be overwhelmed with messages, and may be delayed in responding or unable to provide answers to certain questions for legal or technical reasons. As a security culture reminder, it can be extremely harmful to the individuals charged and to our community to openly speculate on the Internet about alleged criminal activity or about what law enforcement may be able to do with seized data. Our present awareness is that the seized Kolektiva data is unrelated to the federal investigation and prosecution and we are exploring legal avenues to have the seized data returned and copies destroyed.

Thank you for your understanding and solidarity :black_sparkling_heart:

👇 Please see our replies to this post for additional information (1/?) 👇

Two additional points:

If you are a kolektiva.social user and have already enabled Two-factor Authentication on your account you should also reset that, just like your password. (Also consider that it's a good idea in general to set up Two-factor authentication, if you are able, to secure access to your account!)

Please see our previous post for full context 👆

Why did we delay in notifying our users? After extensive internal discussions and advice from multiple movement lawyers, we made the difficult decision to delay informing our users, since an earlier public statement could have made the situation worse in a number of ways.

To be clear, the physical Kolektiva servers were not targeted or affected by the FBI raid. Our actual, live servers are encrypted, in that the hard drives are encrypted at rest. We have no reason to believe that any Kolektiva.social data has been compromised, outside of the database back-up that was seized. Our admin's various electronic devices and other drives were encrypted, and we swiftly rotated all passwords and keys as appropriate for any potential breach like this. In other words, we have no reason to believe this is an evolving threat to our server integrity, or our users' data security.

So then, why are we asking users to reset their passwords? The seized database did not contain user passwords, it contained hashed user passwords. To better understand why we recommend users change their password, here is a good explainer: https://www.troyhunt.com/we-didnt-encrypt-your-password-we-hashed-it-heres-what-that-means/

Without offering any excuses, we also think it warrants mentioning that the seized data would be similar to data obtained in any raid or other unauthorized access of any typical Mastodon server. It is the same data any cooperating instance admin can hand over willingly when requested. Unfortunately, there are serious limits to what admins of Mastodon instances can do to protect the data of their users. Users should always take precautions to protect the privacy of information, especially any sensitive information, they share on the Fediverse or anywhere else on the Internet. We hope that if nothing else, this situation serves as a learning experience for our users, and others on the Fediverse. It certainly has for us. For an intro to operational security on Mastodon, we strongly recommend checking out this guide: https://distro.f-91w.club/masto-opsec/

Going forward, we will continue to explore our legal options. Ideally, we would be presenting a comprehensive list of internal changes, policies and best practices that we plan to implement to avoid outcomes like this in the future. These are definitely conversations we have started having, and intend to continue, but we also want people to be aware that we're a small volunteer collective, and we are dramatically affected by these events. Things may be slow to develop. We also have to keep Kolektiva.social running and pick up the slack now that we are missing a crucial team member 💔 .

Our admin's legal situation is shitty, but they currently have the support and legal representation they need. We will post any information or calls for support if that becomes appropriate or needed.

As many understand, our political movements are currently facing high levels of state repression, which has resulted in an increase in digital and other forms of surveillance, raids and arrests, false and overblown criminal charges, increased use of pre-trial detention and lengthy prison sentences. At times like these, political movements are tested and solidarity and security culture become important touchstones for our work to make the world a better place for all.

Thank you again for your understanding, solidarity, and time taken to read all this.

«Unnamed

Some roads are unnamed, unmarked, unpaved.
They lead to a forest or a meadow or a gully – never to a city.»

— Sparrow