Notices by Carey Lening :blobcatverified: (privacat@dataprotection.social)

In retrospect, I shouldn't have bothered writing an article regarding #defederation, the #fedipact and the #fediverse because this brilliant gem (back from the 'Endless September' Usenet days) says everything I want to say and then some. Everything old is new again, the same tribalism and existential fears remain. We are creatures of short memories and strong, deeply-felt fears.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060223165423/http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter03/ch03_.html

I encourage anyone (regardless of what side you're on) to read this. H/T to @wendyg for sharing this on the Hellsite):

@silverwizard
Well that escalated quickly. Good to see that the response to someone with a different view is to tell people to go away. Kinda demonstrates my arguments about gatekeeping.

Anyway, enjoy your life. I'm sticking around for now, but feel free to block me!

@ploum @dangillmor @matthieu_xyz

@silverwizard @ploum @dangillmor @matthieu_xyz

I'm getting a lot of related questions and tend to write novel-length responses, so I post what I responded to @ploum

https://dataprotection.social/@privacat/110622529595459640

@silverwizard @ploum @dangillmor

I have written more negative shit on Meta than I care to recall. I am _painfully_ familiar with how bad Meta has, and continues to be. Here's an example: https://careylening.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-splinternet

My problem with a 'ban-first' approach is that I worry that in order to be effective, any bans will require secondary banning of any instance who doesn't play along. Now, there may be a technical solution here that wouldn't splinter the Fediverse, as @matthieu_xyz has pointed out (https://calckey.social/notes/9gj7tlydaw0v89bu). I am 100% for that sort of thing, because that gives everyone agency, not just a minority of admins (minority in the sense that there are like 20k servers on Masto) majority power over teh federated network.

This is why the house party examples being floated don't fly, btw.

@silverwizard @ploum @dangillmor

The odds of this being a 'serious' question are low, and if you read my post history at all, you'd know the answer. I'll leave you with this.

https://dataprotection.social/@privacat/110621509323840950

@onepict @ploum

Thanks for the response, and your thoughts. I will admit, I don't agree with a lot of it, but I do get where you're coming from. I think there's some degree of fractal complexity in these systems that many miss (I wrote about the problem of fractal complexity here: https://careylening.substack.com/p/test-post-thing).

Some disclosures: I (briefly) worked for Meta in 2018-2019, when they were trying to rehabilitate themselves post CA/pre-GDPR. I naively thought I could change some of the particularly odious bad behaviors and practices, and it only took me a few months to realize that this was about as effective as me trying to sprout wings and fly.

Part of the reason is that Meta isn't a monolith anymore; it's a messy, fragmented clown car of a system, a pile-on of various hacks, experiments, deprecated-but-not-yet-deprecated code, forgotten interconnections, and abandoned promo endeavors and efforts. Nobody at Meta knows what data Meta has (and I mean this very literally - they literally cannot comply with a DSAR effectively because they have _no_ clue about what their code is actually tracking, or at least that was the case in 2019).

It's the equivalent of assuming there's a single world order who controls the "System". This shit is so big that while there might be people who know more, nobody (or no single team) knows everything, or even most things. Assuming that conscious efforts to destroy the AP/Fedi are being made by some shadowy leadership group is ascribing WAY too much intelligence and foresight to a group of people who probably thought it would just be cool if they could get on this AP/fedi bandwagon and siphon away Twitter users.

And like, really, I think that's what the main end-goal is. To siphon away Twitter users by showing that Threads will be more like the social network people had on Twitter, back when everyone was on Twitter. FB knows it can't achieve that on its own, so they're going to coopt whatever system might give them an edge.

You hinted at this in a later comment, and I think it's the most realistic basis for any of the P92 efforts. Or, even more cynically: A few people at Meta thought they could get a promo from this.

@ploum @onepict I mean, expand that to logical conclusions: What phone do you use? Was it created by a corporation? What brand of computer do you own? What car do you drive or bike do you own? What food do you buy, what news do you read ... I could go on.

If they're all soulless robots, why aren't you out there living off the land, instead of online? Why support any of them if they're all entities that "nobody control(s) anymore" ?

@ploum @onepict When I see generalizations like "We should fight corporations" or "We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it" uncritically mentioned without any nuance, I respond with the same lack-of-nuance generalizations.

Asserting that it's all bad, or that only the right people should join (those that share 'the values behind' the Metaverse' (without any articulation about what those might be!) isn't any more helpful.

So after wading into the debate yesterday based on an article written by @ploum (and posted by @dangillmor), and the larger #fedipact controversy, I decided to share a slightly more coherent version of my thoughts. I still think unnecessary #gatekeeping and preemptive #bans suck and will cause a helluva lot more damage to the protocol than Meta likely will, but as always, hope others who differ in their thoughts will engage in some healthy debate, and not just resort to calling me a troll for having a different opinion than them.

https://careylening.substack.com/p/the-fediverse-metapocalypse-and-preemptive

While visiting the local pub (Doyle’s Corner, here in Dublin), Husbot spied the following on a table lamp. I was mildly drunk when I took the picture, but essentially, the caption admonishes people from stealing the lamp because it doesn’t have a standard charger. But that isn’t the interesting part.

The INTERESTING part is the label at the bottom of the lamp. The caption reads: “Stealing me will be considered permission to post the cctv footage on our social media”

You guys, I honestly laughed out loud at that one.

Since I was (mildly) drunk, I decided to inquire if the management had ever followed through. The manager, a very amiable Irish lad named Tommy, admitted that he had, on one occasion done this. He told the story of how a woman and her kid absconded with a lamp, whereupon he posted a torso-only photo of the woman — blurring out her face and that of the kid.

For added hilarity, he threatened to post increasingly less-blurry images of the woman until the lamp was returned. Less than a week later, the lamp and the bar were reunited, none worse for the wear.

Whether the woman was ever identifiable to others beyond herself is a question I’ll leave to the reader.

Consider this a little reminder that you can run into data protection issues in any circumstance, even at your local boozer.

@tlholley2
I mean, he's a black boy in Mississippi. There's not much of a question there, when you look at how cops generally have a 'shoot first, ask questions later' approach to dealing with POC.
@inthehands

I have seen some absolutely terrible bills in my 43 years, but holy shit, the Restrict act might be the worst. Absolutely bonkers dystopian nonsense with terrifying implications.

@wbm312
A few of us have been looking into this, especially @kathryntewson ... The entire DnP website is littered with inaccuracies, misclassification of the law, bogus promises, and little clarity. ICYMI:
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/24/the-worlds-first-robot-lawyer-isnt-a-lawyer-and-im-not-sure-its-even-a-robot/

##test## ~~test~~ #test#

@simonzerafa
Hah. @apps added some new features (some version of quote replies, and for the testing, the ability to write in markdown). I was curious if they worked on my phone, and they don't.

That said, I think it's conditional on the instance/service I'm connected to.