Notices by Jon (jdp23@neuromatch.social)

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116841848684568048

How can fedi help fight bad internet bills? (1/N)

If you haven't read Christine's "What happened to the fight for the internet?" (linked in the quoted post), you really should. You can see some of my initial thoughts about Christine's excellent post in the replies, including an observation that people on decentralized social networks can potentially play a big role in pushing back on bad internet bills, but to date haven't had a lot of impact.

So let's make things concrete. What can fedi do to push back on KOSA and age verification bills that the US Senate is just about to vote on, C-34 in Canada, the social media ban in France, upcoming C. hat Control 2.0 in the EU, or whatever bad internet bills are in place wherever you are?

#fediverse @general

Aurora at Snoqualmie Point, Washington, 10:45-11:15 pm

#aurora #WAaurora

More aurora pics, from Snoqualmie Point, Washington, 10:45-11:15 pm July 3.

(Hopefully the color on these is better, the previous ones wound up getting very ashed out somewhere in the conversion process)

#aurora

Sure!

SMTP stands for Straightforward Mastodon 'Tivity Pub, and it's the mapping of Mastodon's database to the ActivityPub standard that you may have heard of. (It's not called SMAP because in Latin SMAP is a synonym for 'Jack Dorsey'.). In this thread I shall ... (1/666)

@cwebber

Interesting ...

My quick reaction is that the different potential levels of blocking in AT Protocol are a complication, and so are the multiple paths of access. A couple of specific examples:

Bluesky PBC controls the PLC directory, so if they blocked an did:plc account at that level it would affect access to 100% of the network. But did:web exists as well, and the blocking there is done by DNS authorities or whoever controlls the domain if multiple people are using it. If 99% of accounts currently use did:plc (I just pulled that out of the hat, and have no idea what the actual numbers are), that means B(1) = 99 ... but it also means that it's trivial for anybody blocked to create a new did:web account and evade the block. Then again, this is a situation where (if I understnad correctly) there isn't "credible exit" -- you can't convert a did:plc to did:web, so you'll lose your data and network.

Similarly, looking at the MIssissippi situation, where Bluesky blocked access at the app level. 99%+ of the people currently use the app; Other apps don't block, and VPNs exist, so it's trivial to evade the block ... but a lot of people don't know this. So is that B(1) = 99, or B(1) = 0, or ...?

I also wonder if a single overall number for the whole ATmosphere obscures important differences between different subnetworks. If Bluesky PBC's Relay and AppView block a PDS, then that PDSs. users are arguably essentially cut off from the "Bluesky network" (whoever that's defeined). But, their own internal connectivity might be a lot less affected -- if for example they've got their own custom AppView. Then again they also potentially have their own internal choke points. So Blacksky's B-index (or Gander's, or Spark's) is different than Bluesky's, and I'm not sure about aggregating them.

@bnewbold

Glad it was useful! It certainly is interesting work -- a lot to think about here ...

Agreed that did:web is very niche. I was discussing this with Rudy Fraser and he pointed out that there are shadow copies of the PLC directory (in fact rsky-relay currently uses its own copy), so if Bluesky PBC when away it could probably be rebuilt. So the current B-index has different implications in terms of the power of their administrative discussions and the impact of a financial collapse.

In terms of the what-ifs, I tend to look at things through a threat modeling lens. Sometimes threats can be prvented mitigated proactively; other times, it makes more sense to wait and do the mitigation and recovery afterwards.

I had seen the fedi hosting anlaysis when you did it (although it didn't click until now that you were the same person). Instance blocklists are another place where there's been concerns in fedi that relate to the B-index. A couple of years ago there were concerns that The Bad Space would somehow get used as a blocklist for the entire fediverse. These particular concerns were somewhat unrelaistic -- as I said at the time

"The Bad Space includes mastodon.social on its default blocklist – and mastodon.social is run by Mastodon gGmbH, who also maintains the Mastodon code base. Mastodon's not going to adopt a default blocklist that blocks mastodon.social, and Mastodon is currently over 80% of the fediverse. So The Bad Space isn't going to get adopted as a default by the entire fediverse."

But the underlying issue is real. One specific threat is that Meta has talked about providing moderation tools for fedi (out of the goodness of their hearts of course, nothing to worry about here) and it wouldn't surprise me if they embed their own blocklist as part of it, and maybe even over time make that a requirement for federating with threads.net.

@ricci @bnewbold

Maybe what the PLC question points to is that it's not an overall B-index, it's a B-index scoped to specific threats

• B(PLC, 99.9) = 1 and that's likely to remain the case for the next 6+ months

• B(Relay, 99) = 1 but that's (maybe) in the process of changing

On blocklists ... it's a can of worms. On The Bad Space, I have thoughts at https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-bad-space/ ... as far as I know few if any instances use it as a blocklist, although when I set up an instance I did used their 60% list along with Seirdy's Tier0 as starting points. Seirdy's work is extraordinarily good, the detailed receipts are invaluable, and there's a lot of value complementing the automated aggregation with personal judgment. TBS's sources prioritize safety for marginalized people -- the race aspect gets a lot of focus, obviously but it's often overlooked just how many of the TBS sources are trans- and queer- led.

My guess is that Seirdy's lists, Gardenfence, and Oliphant have the broadest usage, but I don't know how broad it is -- and I don't know how many instances automatically process updates. A complication here is thatthey're all aggregations of the blocklists of various source instances, and there's a lot of overlap on their sources; plus, some of the sources take cues from the others. Which makes sense: if an instance known for good moderation decides to block somebody, it's a good idea for everybody to look at it and make their own decisions, and if there are receipts everybody will make a similar decision. For that matter,no matter the source, a post to FediBlock with receipts will also lead to blocking by multiple instances.

I don't think any of the larger instances directly use any of the blocklists; some consult them as part of curating their blocklists, but don't treat them as ground truth. Seirdy's FediNuke and Gardenfence both had ~140 entries last time I checked (early this year), with substantial but not complete overlap, and all of those are on Seirdy's Tier0 and Oliphant's Tier0 ... but according to CARIAD, there are only ~70 instances that are blocked by 80% of the largest instances. wtf. Seirdy has receipts on the blocklist page, why would anybody not block hose instances? @jaz has links to CARIAD's stats at https://neuromatch.social/@jaz@mastodon.iftas.org/115146871066372145

EDIT clarified CARIAD discussion, thanks to Jaz' correction

@ricci

Very cool! Are these talks going to be streamed live?

@Mastodon @haubles @mellifluousbox

@anildash Excellent post! There are quite a few people I'll be sending this to

Yikes ... it's like a stereotype of a stereotype, except it's real.

Fortunately I'm happy to say that none of the clubs I go to in SF have ever asked for my LinkedIn -- or any other social media profile.

@skinnylatte

@tchambers oops sorry, I hadn't seen that post -- thanks! Something that I don't think anybody (including me) predicted was that active usage of both Bluesky and the non-Threads ActivityPub Fediverse would decrease over the course 2025.

@tchambers Interesting as always! I'm curious, what grade would you give yourself on your 2025 predictions?

More aurora, 11/11, 5:40 pm. It was darker by now, and the clouds were coming in (2/N)

#aurora

Aurora, at Snoqualmie Point Washington, November 11 - 5:20 pm It still wasn't fully dark! And a good thing too because the clouds were coming in! (1/N)

#aurora

This was just a bit after the previous picutre, so maybe 5:45 or 5:50. It's amazing how the colors change ...

#aurora

I appreciate you pointing out that even a majority of tech people who believe LLMs have utility think that the loud voices over-hyping and forcing people to use these technologies are counter-productive.

That said, this article strikes me as using the rhetorical trick of positioning centrists as the "reasonable majority." For example:

What we all want is for people to just treat AI as a "normal technology"

Really? A fair number of tech people I think are very reasonable don't see "AI" that way -- for example, viewing it as primarily a political project and/or a technology whose purpose is to reify and magnify discrimination and oppression.

So while it's true that that this more radical view isn't currently the majority, your framing winds up erasing it completely. Instead , you suggest that "reasonable" people see the utility of LLMs ... and since you didn't mention any of the ethical critiques, you also imply that "reasonable" people aren't concerned with any of those issues.

@anildash

@HauntedOwlbear great post. I saw him in the 80s, he was great live but you could also tell he was somewhat on auto-pilot on the persona.

@cwebber Also, a question about your preference. The first time I mention you in that section, I refer to you as "Christine Lemmer-Webber". After that, do you prefer "Lemmer-Webber" or "Christine"? I currently have Lemmer-Webber, but am fine with whichever you prefer. Others in the article are a mix, basically whatever people prefer.

@cwebber thanks for everything you do -- including sharing this history. It's very interesting to me, and I'll be updating the "Mastodon partial history" to link to this thread! Looking forward to a few years from now when Spritely has a history that's as long and as rich.

@cwebber done! I included a quote from the blog post at the start of the ActivityPub section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/#activitypub and linked out to the thread for history and artifacts.