A faux "Eternal September" turns into flatness
Part 3 of Mastodon, two years later
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
The next installment of Mastodon, two years later
Contents:
Poll: What are you looking for in the Fediverse? (6/N )
You can check more than one -- and if you've got other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. If you're using the official Mastodon app, you can't see longer response options in the poll; check the end of this post for a copy.
(Yet another poll in the last starting at https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113383744966314976, because I keep getting good suggestions suggestions about things to include!)
* Cats
* Dogs
* News and current affairs from my own country
* Connecting with like-minded people
* Effective moderation where issues I report are taken seriously
* A pro-LGBTQIA2S+ environment
* A way to interact with people who know me but would prefer to stay anonymous
* Communicating with government agencies
* Not getting locked into a single platform
Poll: What are you looking for in the Fediverse? (5/N )
You can check more than one -- and if you've got other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. If you're using the official Mastodon app, you can't see longer response options in the poll; check the end of this post for a copy.
(A followon to the parent polls starting with https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113383744966314976, because I got several more great suggestions about things to include!)
* World news
* Sports news and discussions
* Privacy tips (inluding for elsewhere online and in the physical world, not just for here)
* Tarot, Astrology, Magic, Occult
* A place where people agree that trans rights are human rights
* An anti-racist environment
* A place where I can feel safe
* Interacting with people from different countries
* Learning and improving my skills at new languages
* Amusement and whimsy
Poll: What are you looking for in the Fediverse? (4/N )
You can check more than one -- and if you've got other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. If you're using the official Mastodon app, you can't see longer response options in the poll; check the end of this post for a copy.
(A followon to the parent polls starting with What are you looking for in the fediverse, because I got several more great suggestions about things to include!)
Poll: What are you looking for in the Fediverse? (3/N )
You can check more than one -- and if you've got other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. If you're using the official Mastodon app, you can't see longer response options in the poll; check the end of this post for a copy.
(A followon to the parent polls starting with What are you looking for in the fediverse, because I got several more great suggestions about things to include!)
@snarfed.org oh intersting! @quillmatiq is (I believe) still the only person I've intereacted with here, Bluesky, and on Threads (where I'm almost never active) and always has interesting things to say ... so looking forward to it!
@snarfed.org Thanks for doing this ... a thoughtful post as always. It's a great distinction between a (useful!) hobbyist project and a supported infrastrcture project. The open question of "who makes the decisions" relates to what I was discussing in the previous post.
Agreed with your suggestions of the kinds of entities that could be good homes for this. It looks different if it's at a for-profit corporation like Flipboard or a revenue-generating non-profit like Ghost as opposed to a multipolar non-profit organization like IFTAS (if it's in scope) or SWF. If and when soebody does take it over I think it's crucial to continue to prioritize safety, as you very much have been doing. Obviously that's IFTAS' charter, and @mallory@techpolicy's focus on minimizing harms aligns with that as well, so perhaps some kind of partnership makes sene
And in general I think bridging, as a mechanism to connect fediverses (and subnetworks within a fediverse), hasn't been explored much. For example bridging could be a good way to deal with the likely partition of today's Fedivese once Threads starts two-way federation. Of course the "Big Fedi" view of a partition is that it's a bad thing, but unless and until platforms such as Mastodon can provide better tools for people to protect themselves (which may or may not be on the horizon), LGBTQIA2S+ people at risk of being targeted from hate groups like Libs of Tik Tok that Meta gives free rein to will be safer on instances that are transitively defederated. Meta's asymmetrical bridge -- opt-in for people on Threads, opt-out for instances and people in the rest of the Fediverse -- doesn't address that risk; and making it opt-out in both directions wouldn't help. So either Big Fed cuts itself off from LBGTQIA2S+ people, or some other approach is needed. Bridging, perhaps? So I certainly hope whoever takes over Bridgy Fed is thinking about stuff like this.
@tchambers @mackuba @markdarb @mmasnick @mike @hallenbeck @evan @jaz @chrismessina @bnewbold
@tchambers I certainly agree that fediverse polls are far from scientific and have multiple biases ... and, these polls are from months ago, and didn't have a huge number of responses. Still, they're a data point, and consistent with other qualitative data (some people here have a very strong antipathy to Bluesky) ... but yeah, certainly by no means proof of anything.
The share of fediverse population on instances that don't block Bridgy Fed is useful in that it tells us the percentage of people here who could opt in to Bridgy Fed ... but I'm not sure what it tells us beyond that. Did Eugen consult with a wide variety of people on .before deciding whether or not .social and .online should block Bridgy Fed? hahahaha. So at best it tells us what admins have decide to do ... but also, in a lot of cases not blocking it reflects not having thought about it yet (as opposed to making a decision not to block it) and I'm not sure how that could be separated out.
A tale of two prototypes
Part 2 of Mastodon, two years later
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
The next installment of Mastodon, two years later
Contents:
Here are a few polls from earlier this year. At the time, quite a few people (although certainly not a majority!) wanted their instance to block bridges to Bluesky even if they were opt-in. https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/112157748382633585
And as for Mike's point
To date, the only community that seemed to get upset by bridges was... this one?
I don't think the community was upset by the concept of bridges. The (very predictable) firestorm was over consent and died down once Ryan decided to make it opt-in. And in a situation where one community values consent, and another community is all-public so consent is assumed, it's not surprising that only one community was upset!
@darius also with my pedantic hat on, your approach very much aligns with the principles in https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(23)00323-9, which is good! I'll update my original post to mention that.
@darius got it. that makes sense then.
@darius thanks for taking time time to write it up so thoroughly and get feedback! It seems like a great tool -- I was impressed by the demo at FediForum -- and I really appreciate you thinking so deeply about the privacy aspects and taking a conset-based approach. I certainly hope that this sets the bar for future projects.
Opt-in at the server level makes a lot of sense to me, and I like the specific approach you described in your reply to @djsundog ... it's a mechanism server admins are already familiar with. The discussion of how you can't leverage existing opt-in/opt-out signals makes it clear that trying to do so would compromising user privacy (and also exposes a limitation of the current design -- not your issue but something I hope developers think about).
Scrubbing the data is a great example of data minimization, and the example makes it easy to understand. The exceptions you list all seem very sensible,
A question about the additional opt-out mechanism ... does this do anything more than the admin undoing the opt-in by unsubscribing? If not, then it might be overkill ... although certainly nothing the matter with having an email-based opt-out as well.
Poll: What else are you looking for in the fediverse?
You can check more than one -- and if you've got other suggestions, please leave them in the comments.
(A followon to What are you looking for in the fediverse because there were some otherthings I should have included!)
Poll: What are you looking for in the fediverse?
(You can check more than one response ... and if you've got other suggestions, leave them in a reply!)
Poll: how would you describe Mastodon and the migration from Twitter that started in late 2022 after the acquisition?
(You can check more than one reponse. Or, if you've got other descriptions, please leave them in the comments)
For my take, see Mastodon could have leaned into what it's good at
Mastodon, two years later
A continuation of Mastodon: a partial history
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
A continuation of Mastodon: a partial history
A lot of good stuff is happening in the fediverses!
There really is a lot going on!
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
Including:
And that's not all! The last section of the article briefly touches on @kissane's work on revealing the fediverse's gifts, Weird and the Leaf protocol, @newsmast's Channel.org and the Patchwork fork, @Flipboard bringing @19thnews and hundreds of other publishers to the Fediverse, Bandwagon, a proof of concept integration of Faircamp into Hubzilla, Mastodon 4.3 ...
There really is a lot going on!
9 things the Social Web Foundation could do to prioritize safety (if they decide they want to)
Will they? Time will tell!
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
Here's the list:
Will they? Time will tell!
I for one welcome Bluesky, the ATmosphere, BTS ARMY, and millions of Brazilians to the fediverses! (UPDATED)
Bem-vendos aos fediverses!
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
With another surge to #bluesky in progress, here's an updated version of an article I wrote last month. I now go into a bit more detail about how Blluesky's starter packs, custom feeds, and moderation services help newcomers, using #Blacksky as an example. It's a different approach to community than fedi's instances, and potentially very complimentary.
Also I moved the lengthy terminology section to an Appendix. it turns out that's not everybody finds it the most interesting aspect of the situation, who could have predicted?
