Notices by jerry (jerry@blog.infosec.exchange)

Lately, not an hour goes by without someone asking me about what infosec.exchange is “doing about Threads”. There’s a lot of mis- and dis-information running around the fediverse as of late about Threads beginning to federate, along with some legitimate concerns. This post is not about my personal views, but rather my plans for Threads and some instructions.

At the moment, Threads.net is silenced (aka limited) on infosec.exchange. That means that infosec.exchange accounts won’t see threads.net posts or accounts, and threads.net accounts can’t follow infosec.exchange accounts without approval of the person being followed. This gives people the ability to search for a threads.net account and bypass the warning to follow them. From there, it is like interacting with any other fediverse account. That works fine for now as there are not many threads.net accounts exposed to the fediverse, but it doesn’t scale very well for people who want to interact with threads.net accounts in the future.

The big picture plan for threads.net on infosec.exchange is this:

1. Silence threads.net – done
2. Enable the authorized_fetch feature on infosec.exchange to prevent the normal flow of posts from accounts blocking threads.net to Threads’ users and systems – done (note: this in no way prevents people, including Threads, from accessing your public posts. Public posts are public and can be accessed via the web site directly, RSS, and and so on.)
3. Encourage people who do not want to interact with threads.net or have their posts visible to Threads’ users to block the domain threads.net. – This post is kicking off that campaign. See below for instructions.
4. Create a new instance (name will either be infosec.space or infosec.cafe, still deciding) that will fully block threads.net. This should be completed by Jan 1, 2024
5. Encourage infosec.exchange members who are not comfortable with other infosec.exchange users interacting with threads.net to migrate to the new instance or to some other instance that fully blocks theads.net. This campaign will start once the new instance is available.
6. Remove the threads.net silence/limit on infosec.exchange. This will happen 60 days after step 5.

Q&A

Q: I think you are a terrible person not blocking threads.

A: I am sorry it didn’t work out between us. I am but an imperfect human trying my best to navigate a complicated world. There are other instances that may be more to your liking.

Q: Will the new instance block instances that don’t block threads.net?

A: I do not currently see value in this beyond being punitive to other instances, so no, there are no current plans to do that.

Q: I’ve been told that instances will collapse once threads starts federating. Aren’t you worried about that?

A: I worry about many things. This isn’t one of them. For sound technical reasons.

Q: What if no one wants to use your new instance or what if everyone leaves infosec.exchange due to your poor decision making?

A: I save a lot of time and money.

Q: What happens when $terribleaccount on threads.net starts harassing people?

A: I will block the account, just like I do today.

Q: Aren’t you worried about the moderation of threads.net?

A: Not really. I get to deal with problematic instances and problematic people all day, every day. If it gets to be too much, I’ll reassess.

Q: How do I block threads.net on my account?

A: This is how:

These instructions are how to block threads.net via a web browser. Some mobile apps also expose this feature and some don’t, and I don’t really have the ability to create instructions for the 20+ different mobile apps.

Step 1 – search for threads.net

Step 2 – Select a threads.net account:

Step 3 – Click on the menu next to the account name in the profile view:

Step 4 – block the domain

That’s it.

https://blog.infosec.exchange/2023/12/27/threads-and-infosec-exchange/