Notices by Kurt (flglchicago@mas.to)

Quoting as a reminder to myself not to overreact and to behave better. Cancelling the exit as amends have begun. https://mas.to/@FLGLchicago/112400872060902640

@evan @augieray Aight. I’m sorry too. Thank you for taking the time to come back to this. Intersection of bad moments for both of us. We could both pay more attention to how we react to and frame things. Too much at stake here, both in the real world and on services like this, and if we have differences they’re not as important as the consequences of the practical outcomes we unintentionally contribute to in our less than stellar moments.

@augieray @evan It’s like listening to Dorsey and then Musk in the other place, and I was happy to leave there after 15 years. Nobody needs it.

@evan @augieray Seriously feel like leaving this place after seeing this today.

@augieray @evan And then the guy tries to edit and delete, as if he could erase.

@MikeImBack @evan @augieray I disagree with that logic from its foundations, having seen the awful practical outcomes of that kind of positioning over the decades. But that’s not what I’m objecting to here: it’s the premise that this president “loves war.” It’s either a childish or a repulsive take, or both, and it’s Musk-level whackadoodle hyperbole, useless and dangerous.

@tokyo_0 Thanks for the kind support. Life's too short and all that. If it's a nomad life, it's a nomad life.

After a third try here, my time in the Fediverse is over, prompted by an unfortunate run-in with one of the people who helped develop this place. Nothing like being summarily dismissed by a whackadoodle founder, eh? Seems familiar though, and I left the other place after 15 years so this won't be hard. If we're connected here, you can find me same name same handle at Bluesky; my running account is same name same handle on IG and Threads.

For everyone still invested in trying to build the Fediverse, and the community here, good luck. Choose your partners wisely, and treat your audiences well.

@evan @augieray And that’s a childish take that sadly gets you blocked. Absolutely ridiculous to say that the current US president loves war, and such poor judgment that it makes me question everything you say and do here including motivation.

Re-upping this as the Threads federation discussion heats up again in the Fediverse. https://mas.to/@FLGLchicago/111614347656735577

@tchambers So, even if Meta chooses not to try to impose moderation standards on Mastodon servers, or it’s not possible, and even if Mastodon admins wouldn’t comply anyway, do you really think for a moment that Meta will federate with Tumblr, or Flipboard, or any other former or semi or current commercial platform, without imposing requirements on them? Center of influence shifts quickly and entirely from the Fediverse as it is currently known, to a new universe with Meta at the absolute center.

@tchambers Guess we’re all going to find out if there is a fence in their minds.

@tchambers I don’t see how they take in Fediverse content and place it into an environment advertisers would be comfortable in. Brand safety requirements alone are onerous. If Threads cannot evaluate individual accounts or posts in real time, they will have to block domains wholesale.

@tchambers Right, so they will turn it on its head: Fediverse has no systematic approach to this, so we have no choice but to require ours. If ActivityPub needs to adjust protocol to accommodate, we’ll wait, forever, as long as we have air cover for regulatory challenges.

@tchambers If that’s the case, I don’t see how Meta would be able to fully federate given some of the business requirements I mentioned in my post. Then a loose association to the Fediverse, for Meta, becomes a regulatory out as long as they can push undesirable accounts on someone else.

15/

I say inevitably because machined intelligence layers are the only way Meta can moderate at scale, and beyond simple signals they are likely, if they haven’t already, to develop a reputation scoring framework like most of the other platforms are doing. Say hello to Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1, “Nosedive.” (Watch on Netflix or look up the trailer on YouTube.)

13/

Now, I can always go back and start over on Threads. The account was an alternative presence and I really wasn’t that far into it—but what if it was large and longstanding? And suppose Threads had been fully federated, and had not only filtered my account on their own Meta services, including “accounts by the same user,” but had sent signals to other services and domains in the Fediverse that they considered my account to be a spam account, and any account linked to it to be a spam account.

12/

Thankfully it is a new and small profile I had started from scratch without having an Instagram base for that username, and still I had been slowly building followers and getting engagement until I had made those posts about mas.to. After that, and through today, nothing: no new followers, no comments, no likes, complete silence. When I went in to check from another profile, every single outbound post and comment was invisible.

11/

Minor incident, right? Possibly a misunderstanding, blip in the spam filters, easily remedied. Maybe Threads just backed off from a petulant business policy. But, and here’s where it really becomes problematic: a week later, the Threads account from which I made the posts is itself now, and still, marked as spam and/or malicious content, and because of that the account is essentially unusable.