Notices by Greg Slepak (taoeffect@crib.social)

Interesting thread. Had an LLM summarize it for me:

This conversation is a deep-dive "tinfoil" analysis (as the lead participant calls it) regarding the perceived centralization and "capture" of the Fediverse by government-linked organizations. The participants, largely from the "Free Speech Extremist" (FSE) wing of the Fediverse, argue that a network of non-profits is working to destroy the decentralized nature of the platform.

Here are the top insightful points, including the offensive and controversial commentary:

The central premise is that organizations like IFTAS (Independent Federated Trust and Safety), Newsmast, the Social Web Foundation, and FediMod are effectively the same entity. The users refer to these as "glowies" (a slang term for undercover government agents or intelligence plants). They argue these groups use a "sockpuppet" strategy—spinning up multiple 501(c)(3) organizations to create a false sense of consensus for centralization.

Participants claim these organizations are funded by "Malthusian nihilist cabals" and government entities like USAID, the Ford Foundation, and the German government.

• Insight: They argue that IFTAS uses biased "needs assessment" surveys to manufacture consent. The surveys allegedly ask leading questions (e.g., "Do you suffer mental health problems from unmoderated content?") to justify the implementation of automated, centralized blocklists.
• The "Individual Eleven": The conversation identifies eleven specific instances (including hachyderm.io, cosocial.ca, and social.coop) as "astroturfed" projects designed to steer the Fediverse toward corporate-friendly governance.

A major point of contention is the use of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) detection as a pretext for surveillance.

• Insight: The users suggest that IFTAS and the Social Web Foundation are pushing for mandatory attachment scanning (like Microsoft’s PhotoDNA). They argue that while no one wants to host illegal content, the requirement to use centralized scanning tools is a "wedge" designed to eliminate server admin autonomy and introduce backdoors.
• Offensive Point: One user notes that pedophiles ("nonces") seemed to disappear from the network exactly when USAID funding for detection tools dried up, implying a cynical connection between the "problem" and the "solution."

The conversation references a German government PDF that reportedly describes the Fediverse as "The Hydra on the Web."

• Insight: The participants claim the German government is frustrated because they cannot use laws like NetzDG to easily take down decentralized PeerTube or Mastodon instances. This has led to a shift in strategy: instead of direct legal action, they are allegedly funding "Trust and Safety" orgs to regulate the network from the inside.

The user p@fsebugoutzone.org provides evidence that Newsmast is scraping the Fediverse not just for posts, but to map "follower/following" relationships.

• Insight: They view this as an OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tool disguised as a social utility. By mapping who talks to whom, these organizations can identify and isolate "extremist" nodes more effectively.

The participants discuss how figures like Evan Prodromou and Jon Pincus react to criticism.

• Insight: When technical or privacy-related holes are poked in their proposals (like the PhotoDNA FEP), these leaders are accused of retreating to "hugboxes," claiming personal harassment, and attempting to get their critics banned from platforms like Codeberg. This is described as "identi-Moonie" behavior—prioritizing identity and optics over technical merit.

@p @lainbot @whereverbot

RT: https://fsebugoutzone.org/objects/ad4d151b-a6a1-4694-94dd-f4e60461e7f7

@silverpill Does mitra not suffer from this? @phnt was saying in the issue:

Yes, this is a problem for any database running on PostgreSQL that is constantly being written to. Database growing in size and database bloat are unavoidable facts of running a database.

@silverpill I dunno, see Phantasm's most recent reply here. He claims this isn't a problem that's unique to #pleroma:

This is regular maintenance that is also done on every day databases, nothing special. The table bloat is a side-effect of how Postgres works and you can never get rid of it completely.