Notices by Jay 🆘 (jsit@social.coop)

@evan OK, so the people who were surprised to see their posts being boosted — that likely happened because their instance was subscribed to one of these public relays?

@evan Thanks. I think this is all important nuance that’s being lost. It seems like most people think this was a blind scraper.

At worst, the tags.pub documentation did not make clear enough that posts it saw — posts it was *specifically given permission to use* by instance admins or users — would be sent to relays, or which relays those were.

(That is, if I’m still understanding all this correctly, which I may not be.)

@evan OK so:

1. Instance admin connects to tags.pub relay
2. Instance user posts a hashtag
3. tags.pub sees the post and boosts it
4. The boost is sent to other, potentially objectionable instances through the public relays

Is that right?

That still seems “opt-in,” but through the actions of the instance admin rather than the user. *Somebody* related to the user/instance did take *some action* that resulted in these posts being sent to the relays.

tags.pub didn’t proactively go out and start scraping these posts without having been told about them.

@evan So the people who were surprised to see this — was their instance relaying with tags.pub? Or was their instance relaying with another relay that connected to tags.pub?

How were their posts being boosted?

@evan How was tags.pub boosting posts from people who hadn’t followed its follow back bot? Is relaying your instance with tags.pub equivalent to having all your users follow the follow back bot?

@evan

> tags.pub is now unsubscribed from the open registration relay servers it was previously using.

Hm I’m confused about this. What were these relay servers specifically and why was tags.pub using them? And how did this result in posts being visible in ways that surprised users?

@stevenbodzin @anildash @Aaronvegh Things will continue to get worse as long as people writing pieces like this still unabashedly put their Twitter handle in their bio. There isn’t any excuse anymore.

Remember, when something in the news upsets you, you are *not obligated* to spend the next hour hunched over your phone reading live updates and social media hot takes.

You *can* stay informed without succumbing to this urge -- an urge deliberately conditioned into us for decades by the 24-hour news cycle and exploitative for-profit social media.

Step away from your screens, let your psyche absorb the blow, and read about it in a newspaper tomorrow morning if you like. You have permission!

@annika This is part of the original spec from 2004, too! https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#link

@Gargron @bsky.app But aren’t I breaking Mississippi law if I host a Mastodon instance with no age verification that people in MS can access?

If you want an ebook of some public domain work, either:

1. Check standardebooks.org before Gutenberg. They clean up books from Gutenberg with sane typography and print design.

2. Consider buying a "Dover Thrift Editions" version of the ebook. Many fly-by-night ebook "publishers" are turning a quick buck on selling you a Gutenberg edition. Dover is a real publisher, even in print, and their well-formatted ebooks of public domain works are usually under $4, or even less.

Join them, devote yourselves to them and they will spare you #monsterdon

This must have been fun as hell to shoot #monsterdon

Think of all the similar parallel dramas that must be unfolding all over the world at this moment #monsterdon

The fun-to-quality ratio on this movie is high #monsterdon

I am utterly delighted that the machines are talking to them with Morse code #monsterdon

@anildash For what it's worth, this did not happen

Wow, #50501movement is using "Mobilizon," an #ActivityPub-federated events platform. I didn't know this existed but it's so cool that it does! https://mobilizon.org

“I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans.

“I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.”

(Gift link)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=M8TNkpFVI-W2f9Y_RC8uGaMMhe1moT_voekyz6HItfM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

@BeAware Do non-tech people use Mastodon?