Notices by Eric Shields | ?assTransitKrow (eric@federation.krowverse.services)

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Eric Shields | ?assTransitKrow (eric@federation.krowverse.services)'s status on Monday, 06-Mar-2023 02:09:40 JST

So now that #NoFediMetaFebruary is over, here are some developments that I was keeping track of that I refained from commenting on at length:

* On Scraping and Authorized Fetch *
Authorized Fetch on Mastodon is a discoverability nightmare. Many APIs are locked down, impacting my ability to run custom frontends. The framework of Authorized Fetch also prevents decisive actions against scrapers, who can now access REST APIs unauthenticated, which [Peter Hessler] believes takes power away from Masto Admins who don't want to be scraped. The Krowverse agrees, and currently forces the flagship instance to make manual connections on Nineties Mysteries. Mastodon users do not seem to have the option to turn their AP relays off. This would improve moderation and server performance.

* Misskey's Flagship instance bans GNU Social Japan *

* Some companies are heeding the call to make their own nodes. Good for them! *

* @silverpill works on a FEP that will decouple user identity from server identity *

* Instances begin to host Nostr relays alongside the Fediverse *
Nostr is a competing protocol that is serverless and relies on public relays and privately held keys to assert user identity. Users who lament the moment they'd have to choose a server to join the Fediverse now don't have to. However, some instances are hosting their own Nostr nodes and have raised concerns about private key leaks should a relay get compromised.

* Search crawl gone wrong - an apology *
I launched a Yacy instance that indexes my own posts on the Fediverse and have adjusted my robots.txt to explicitly allow it to crawl. I didn't refine the depth and on my first crawl, and I unintentionally scraped thousands of Fediverse posts. I destroyed the entire index and started fresh. At this time, it scrapes blogs that interact with my instances and some RSS feeds that were suggested to me back in 2019. I am profoundly sorry and if you see a post that I did NOT delete, notify me IMMEDIATELY and DO NOT USE a Google relay to do it and I'll Thanos snap it out of existence.

*GoToSocial Excludes The Help it needs*
GoToSocial refuses help on ideological grounds even though it could harm its ability to federate and meet the goals stated in its request for funding by NLNet, and it boots SPC's @Moon from contributing.

* Wildebeest leaks private messages deliberately *
Wildebeest, a Fediverse client created by Cloudflare, stirs controversy by leaking private messages and insists it is by design, causing some outrage and driving some to block the Wildebeest user agent. While a fix was made, the damage has been done, and for some who have consistently bashed Cloudflare, namely @verita84 and @dsfgs, they likely feel vindicated by this latest development. I generally do not share sensitive content in private messages and opt for chat, since it forces one on one conversations and implemented differently.

* Ilja Space finally has a custom Favicon! Now we wait for @lanodan to follow suit. As well as some 3,000 other Mastodon instances. *

* Reminder - Mastodon Green has the same problems as Wildebeest *
Consider your options and avoid federating with instances that incur technical debt and disrespect your privacy.

* GO language considers adding telemetry to toolchain *
I mentioned this because BloatFE relies on this toolchain, and I might consider JS-free frontends that do not use GO. Suggestions welcome.

* Misskey drops chat features *
Akkoma had previously dropped the features because they claim it was poorly implemented. I have yet to see someone elaborate on what was poorly implemented. I'm suggestible. This means that only Pleroma and Soapbox users have access to the feature, as well as instances that re-enabled it with a patch. I do not think this feature should be dropped as it's the closest implementation to a proper direct message. Direct messages should be named "mentioned messages" to more accurately reflect its scope.

* The Krowverse Social Network is Expanding! *
I am getting ready to launch Inside Your Computers Tech Federation, a Limited Federation instance like KSF, but just for tech discussions. You might have already seen the preview.