@silverpill @p Doesn't surprise me Evan was involved in that once again. But Gleason actually figured something usable years prior to that with the NSFW MRF. You could easily host an API server and use some local selfhosted model for detection.
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@phnt @p Curiously, Gleason was supportive of the proposal, although at the time he already moved to Nostr (IIRC).
Also, some strange things started to happen in the aftermath of closing that PR. I started seeing vague posts expressing moderation concerns on Codeberg and SocialHub (in this thread, for example: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506). People suddenly started talking about adding a CoC, etc etc. But every time I asked what this is about, there was silence.
@silverpill @phnt
> Curiously, Gleason was supportive of the proposal
Is that curious?
> Also, some strange things started to happen in the aftermath of closing that PR. I started seeing vague posts expressing moderation concerns on Codeberg and SocialHub (in this thread, for example: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506). People suddenly started talking about adding a CoC, etc etc. But every time I asked what this is about, there was silence.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
> Curiously, Gleason was supportive of the proposal
Is that curious?
> Also, some strange things started to happen in the aftermath of closing that PR. I started seeing vague posts expressing moderation concerns on Codeberg and SocialHub (in this thread, for example: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506). People suddenly started talking about adding a CoC, etc etc. But every time I asked what this is about, there was silence.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
@silverpill @phnt Okay, well, to be fair, the timestamp on the "Scope of the socialhub policy" post is August 1, 2023, and the "PhotoDNA Attestation extension" is from August 4, but I think that was possibly preemptive, because he posted this on August 18:
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/9
> Thanks. So, if I have a problem with how someone is behaving in PRs on codeberg, what do I do next?
And then in https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/12 and https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/13 , he made it explicit that this was about the PhotoDNA discussion.
And he directly retreats into "But think of the optics of not thinking of the children!"
> I ended up withdrawing the PR. I had adapted the proposal in the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Child Safety report into a FEP to start the discussion process. I was attacked personally in the comments, and the FEP wasn’t allowed to be merged. I don’t think it helped our movement to have such vigorous opposition to developing CSAM filtering standards.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/9
> Thanks. So, if I have a problem with how someone is behaving in PRs on codeberg, what do I do next?
And then in https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/12 and https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/scope-of-the-socialhub-policy/3506/13 , he made it explicit that this was about the PhotoDNA discussion.
And he directly retreats into "But think of the optics of not thinking of the children!"
> I ended up withdrawing the PR. I had adapted the proposal in the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Child Safety report into a FEP to start the discussion process. I was attacked personally in the comments, and the FEP wasn’t allowed to be merged. I don’t think it helped our movement to have such vigorous opposition to developing CSAM filtering standards.
@p @phnt @silverpill > I was attacked personally in the comments
A lying little freak it turns out eh. 🇨🇦 🥖
A lying little freak it turns out eh. 🇨🇦 🥖
@fish @phnt @silverpill Yeah, the guy's a cock, right?
Incidentally, @strypey shows up in some of those threads and says sensible things.
Incidentally, @strypey shows up in some of those threads and says sensible things.
@p @fish @phnt @strypey @silverpill huh, so hachyderm's insanity was sponsored.
wait, is the whole federated blacklist mandate sponsored bullcrap
wait, is the whole federated blacklist mandate sponsored bullcrap
@icedquinn @fish @phnt @silverpill @strypey
> :blobcatderpy: wait, is the whole federated blacklist mandate sponsored bullcrap
Yes. See top post; hopefully the thread loads. Only ~100 posts at present.
> :blobcatderpy: wait, is the whole federated blacklist mandate sponsored bullcrap
Yes. See top post; hopefully the thread loads. Only ~100 posts at present.
@p @fish @phnt @strypey @silverpill my patience for Current Things is extremely limited and you pasted an opus 
i no longer read 500 pages of the fall of man per day
i no longer read 500 pages of the fall of man per day
@icedquinn @fish @phnt @silverpill @strypey The short answer: IFTAS/Oliphant/Social Web Foundation/Newsmast/Fediblock/etc. are all the same people, modulo some regular well-meaning people, and are all funded by the Malthusian nihilist cabal.
@p @fish @phnt @strypey @silverpill and here i thought humans were just collectively stupid, as they tend to be
@p Reminds me of what Chapman says in the first essay I ever read on Meaningness;
"... you could recognize sociopaths and eject them. Geeks may be pretty good at the recognizing, but are lousy at the ejecting. Mops don’t recognize sociopaths, and anyway don’t care. Mops have little investment in the subculture, and can just walk away when sociopaths ruin it. By the time sociopaths show up, mops are numerically most of the subculture."
@strypey
This is just yet more division. @p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @silverpill
@light
> This is just yet more division
Maybe, or is it a legitimate example of the paradox of tolerance? Where tolerating sociopaths in the fediverse dev community (instead of identifying and ejecting them) ends up reducing the capacity of the community to be inclusive?
@strypey @light @p @fish @phnt @silverpill that isn't what popper wrote even though it is deeply misquoted.
the paradox of tolerance is an open society always contains the possibility that people vote away their open society. it is the sine qua non of an open society. once you have thought police "to protect democracy" you no longer have an open society. and have extinguished your liberal democracy.
the society protects from violence against extreme opinions and vigilance protects against voting the extreme opinions in to place. you can't get rid of it without no longer having the thing you are trying to protect.
nobody seems to have ever read the book.
the paradox of tolerance is an open society always contains the possibility that people vote away their open society. it is the sine qua non of an open society. once you have thought police "to protect democracy" you no longer have an open society. and have extinguished your liberal democracy.
the society protects from violence against extreme opinions and vigilance protects against voting the extreme opinions in to place. you can't get rid of it without no longer having the thing you are trying to protect.
nobody seems to have ever read the book.
(1/?)
@icedquinn
> nobody seems to have ever read the book
I admit I haven't (I must), but I did investigate what Popper actually said;
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
@strypey @fish @phnt @p @silverpill @light
if you read the book, the context of this claim is after 25% of the book goes on about how much popper hates plato and spent chapters reiterating "plato's republic is authoritarian as fuck, actually"
the stuff about limited tolerance is spoken in direct context of people exiting a classical authoritarian society and discussing the dangers of grognards sliding society directly back in to hierarchical strong man cultures.
people don't read it and decide it means calling randos nazis but it was spoken with the very real and ongoing concern throughout time of people rotting democracy back in to dictatorships.
poppers smugness is that if violence is off the table, then reason holds for the best argument, and the best argument is empirically the open society, so they have the advantage of self-demonstrating being the best outcome and not needing special favor.
the whole book is very much against authoritarian solutions to problems. unlimited tolerance is spoken next to societies that literally did the "someone is a threat to our power with their words, kill them" behavior people actually misquote the paradox to justify.
if you read the book, the context of this claim is after 25% of the book goes on about how much popper hates plato and spent chapters reiterating "plato's republic is authoritarian as fuck, actually"
the stuff about limited tolerance is spoken in direct context of people exiting a classical authoritarian society and discussing the dangers of grognards sliding society directly back in to hierarchical strong man cultures.
people don't read it and decide it means calling randos nazis but it was spoken with the very real and ongoing concern throughout time of people rotting democracy back in to dictatorships.
poppers smugness is that if violence is off the table, then reason holds for the best argument, and the best argument is empirically the open society, so they have the advantage of self-demonstrating being the best outcome and not needing special favor.
the whole book is very much against authoritarian solutions to problems. unlimited tolerance is spoken next to societies that literally did the "someone is a threat to our power with their words, kill them" behavior people actually misquote the paradox to justify.
(1/?)
This is all out of context, because what I'm proposing clearly isn't "authoritarian solutions", but systematic defence *against* them. But since we're arguing the toss ...
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @silverpill @light
> (1/?)
WE HAVE TO GET YOU MORE LETTERS
YOU CAN ATTACH AN 8MB JPEG TO POSTS BUT YOU CANNOT HAVE ENOUGH LETTERS TO TYPE FOR SOME REASON?
> (1/?)
WE HAVE TO GET YOU MORE LETTERS
YOU CAN ATTACH AN 8MB JPEG TO POSTS BUT YOU CANNOT HAVE ENOUGH LETTERS TO TYPE FOR SOME REASON?
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @strypey @silverpill @light
Tweets having 140 character limit made sense before smartphones, when we used Twitter via sms (text 40404) . Not sure why Mastodon castrates itself for any reason other than fetish.
Does any Mastodon instance have Twitter-like text messaging or did they ever? I remember statusnet had xmpp built in but I don't think we ever had proper texting set up. (Maybe this is something revolver should consider)
As long as Mastodon is wearing a chastity belt, the char length be 140 instead of 280 (tweets 2.0 - now twice as much) / 500 (toots are almost twice as big as tweets 2.0 but 500 is a nice round number) because it's a number that actually makes sense
maybe they can get government funding from EU to implement sms integration to make it easier for the government to protect their users.
Tweets having 140 character limit made sense before smartphones, when we used Twitter via sms (text 40404) . Not sure why Mastodon castrates itself for any reason other than fetish.
Does any Mastodon instance have Twitter-like text messaging or did they ever? I remember statusnet had xmpp built in but I don't think we ever had proper texting set up. (Maybe this is something revolver should consider)
As long as Mastodon is wearing a chastity belt, the char length be 140 instead of 280 (tweets 2.0 - now twice as much) / 500 (toots are almost twice as big as tweets 2.0 but 500 is a nice round number) because it's a number that actually makes sense
maybe they can get government funding from EU to implement sms integration to make it easier for the government to protect their users.
@sampler @icedquinn @fish @p @strypey @silverpill @light The reason is Gargron was autistic about his vision of a Twitter replacement and posts longer than 500 chars look ugly in the UI. It's a problem that will never get fixed because Mastodon desperately wants to be a Twitter alternative including the way it looks and displays threads.
The actual solution would be to widen the post view and decrease post text size, but that is too much to ask.
@phnt @sampler @fish @icedquinn @light @silverpill @strypey
> posts longer than 500 chars look ugly in the UI
They look just fine in FediBBS. He should try having a better frontend. (Tweetdeck has always sucked.)
fedibbs.gif
> posts longer than 500 chars look ugly in the UI
They look just fine in FediBBS. He should try having a better frontend. (Tweetdeck has always sucked.)
fedibbs.gif
@p
> WE HAVE TO GET YOU MORE LETTERS
If multi-post threads really bother you I can switch to my Friendica account. I keep forgetting I have it, and I *hate* the cludgy interface with a burning passion. But if you *really* need me to ...
> He should try having a better frontend. (Tweetdeck has always sucked.)
The default Masto interface is modelled on Pinafore and has been for years. Although the one modeled on TD is still there as an opt-in.
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light
> If multi-post threads really bother you
Not really, it just seems like at some point, tagging overhead eats the limit. Even Twitter stopped doing that, like, tags and links stopped counting towards the character limit. Mastodon *could* do the former because tags are an extra field (and more or less unconstrained).
I do think that it does make threads harder to read and participate in (by increasing the likelihood of duplication: if you have two paragraphs and the second one covers something relevant to the first, but people that go chronologically see the first one and then write a different version of your second paragraph before finding your second paragraph; this can compound, it is very funny when it does), but I'm just pokin' yer ribs, I ain't tore up.
> The default Masto interface is modelled on Pinafore and has been for years. Although the one modeled on TD is still there as an opt-in.
Ah. I mean...you see the UI that I wrote and use, I'm not sure what Pinafore *is*. (And if it gives you an idea, I used to use the bitlbee Twitter backend as my only Twitter interface. Until they killed off *all* alternative clients, you could have a reasonable time with Twitter by treating it like an IRC channel.)
> If multi-post threads really bother you
Not really, it just seems like at some point, tagging overhead eats the limit. Even Twitter stopped doing that, like, tags and links stopped counting towards the character limit. Mastodon *could* do the former because tags are an extra field (and more or less unconstrained).
I do think that it does make threads harder to read and participate in (by increasing the likelihood of duplication: if you have two paragraphs and the second one covers something relevant to the first, but people that go chronologically see the first one and then write a different version of your second paragraph before finding your second paragraph; this can compound, it is very funny when it does), but I'm just pokin' yer ribs, I ain't tore up.
> The default Masto interface is modelled on Pinafore and has been for years. Although the one modeled on TD is still there as an opt-in.
Ah. I mean...you see the UI that I wrote and use, I'm not sure what Pinafore *is*. (And if it gives you an idea, I used to use the bitlbee Twitter backend as my only Twitter interface. Until they killed off *all* alternative clients, you could have a reasonable time with Twitter by treating it like an IRC channel.)
(1/?)
@p
> tags and links stopped counting towards the character limit
In Mastodon there's now a cap on how many characters each tag, link and @mention use up. One of the few benefits of this is limiting people's ability to spam me with massive numbers of links, tags and/or @mentions.
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light
> In Mastodon there's now a cap on how many characters each tag, link and @mention use up.
As usual, they appear to have done something ridiculous.
> In Mastodon there's now a cap on how many characters each tag, link and @mention use up.
As usual, they appear to have done something ridiculous.
@p
> they appear to have done something ridiculous
Huh?
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light Using *character* count to limit *tags* is really effin' stupid, especially given that you could just limit the number of tags if you cared about that. Doing it by character count is, like...you could do this in nginx already anyway. It's really stupid.
@p
> Using *character* count to limit *tags* is really effin' stupid
Why? What serious problem(s) are caused by doing it this way?
@strypey @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @silverpill @light For one thing, short names on short instances producing short tags. They've enshrined as behavior some half-assed incorrect encoding of the *intended* behavior and this is how you end up with crusty, shitty behavior that is *mandated* because otherwise it doesn't *work*.
This is why Mastodon should be completely ignored by protocol implementors: they want to be the Mastodon Network, fine, let them. Stop letting them stomp on protocol design because someone on a jithub issue whined until someone did the dumbest fucking implementation that solved half of the wrong problem. It is time to cut them loose.
This is why Mastodon should be completely ignored by protocol implementors: they want to be the Mastodon Network, fine, let them. Stop letting them stomp on protocol design because someone on a jithub issue whined until someone did the dumbest fucking implementation that solved half of the wrong problem. It is time to cut them loose.
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @strypey @light
>It is time to cut them loose.
It is becoming clear that this is not going to happen. Just look at the list of "Consent-respecting quote posts" implementers: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/044f/fep-044f.md#implementations
Pleroma is next: https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/pulls/7875
I don't think it will be any different with FASPs and encryption.
@silverpill @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @light
This does not implement anything meaningful in the spec and only makes quotes work on Mastodon (because they even fucked up that which worked for years before their attempt).
Trust me when I say that if the proper workflow as envisioned by Mastodon gets implemented in Pleroma, it gets patched out by most larger Pleroma instances almost immediately. Myself included, so if Nicole doesn't make it a toggle, I will. Nobody but Mastodon wants this, and I don't want the Twitter copy of hidden replies either.
@phnt @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @light Good to know that you're against fully supporting Masto-quotes. But I don't see a meaningful opposition anywhere in the network. Like, what's the plan? Let Mastodon/W3C do their thing until incompatibilities accumulate and the network splits? That's exactly what they want, to defederate "problematic" implementations into a tiny echo chamber.
@silverpill @phnt @icedquinn @fish @sampler @strypey @light
> Like, what's the plan? Let Mastodon/W3C do their thing until incompatibilities accumulate and the network splits?
They are not meaningfully a part of the fediverse at this point. They have made a Twitter. It is no longer a platform that you use to communicate with friends: it is a broadcast-only circle-jerk and when it fails to be a broadcast-only circle-jerk people that want to "control the experience" and that can't distinguish between startup dipshittery and tech built by people to communicate with each other. Look at the early posts by the hachyderm dipshit, that guy's like "Oh, this isn't going to work, we have to eject these people and we have to make it advertiser-friendly because if we don't then fedi will never replace Twitter!" I don't want to replace Twitter with a shitty clone of Twitter: I want to replace Twitter with something good.
I intend to have a platform to communicate with friends and strangers. I don't really care if Mastodon decides to create a desert and call it peace. They have fundamentally different goals. Nobody complained when Gab fucked off (and they were, in many cases, fucked off before that: https://pastebin.com/E0k5fcd6 ), but somehow Mastodon is important? Go look at what they're putting onto the network: https://mastodon.social/explore .
gab_fears_the_fse2.png
gablins-fear-fse.jpg
trannydemonhackers.png
> Like, what's the plan? Let Mastodon/W3C do their thing until incompatibilities accumulate and the network splits?
They are not meaningfully a part of the fediverse at this point. They have made a Twitter. It is no longer a platform that you use to communicate with friends: it is a broadcast-only circle-jerk and when it fails to be a broadcast-only circle-jerk people that want to "control the experience" and that can't distinguish between startup dipshittery and tech built by people to communicate with each other. Look at the early posts by the hachyderm dipshit, that guy's like "Oh, this isn't going to work, we have to eject these people and we have to make it advertiser-friendly because if we don't then fedi will never replace Twitter!" I don't want to replace Twitter with a shitty clone of Twitter: I want to replace Twitter with something good.
I intend to have a platform to communicate with friends and strangers. I don't really care if Mastodon decides to create a desert and call it peace. They have fundamentally different goals. Nobody complained when Gab fucked off (and they were, in many cases, fucked off before that: https://pastebin.com/E0k5fcd6 ), but somehow Mastodon is important? Go look at what they're putting onto the network: https://mastodon.social/explore .
gab_fears_the_fse2.png
gablins-fear-fse.jpg
trannydemonhackers.png
@Mammal @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey Nothing of value was lost.
There was a lot of the same hand-wringing: "they're the most active instance!" and it's like...do you want to see that activity? For at least a month, the *majority* of their activity was a single account that posted three times per second. I saw the bot, killed the bot, could not tell Gab about the bot because Gab blocked FSE. (Gleason was working at Gab at the time, I told Gleason and offered to help Gab quell the bot problem and told him to pass along the offer to Colbert; Gleason agreed but Colbert says Gleason never relayed the message. At the time, it was in my own interest to stop the flood at the source because Gab was essentially DoSing FSE by constantly flooding us with bot shit. I got to do k-means and come up with interesting ways to automatically detect bots, I was having fun.)
And now it's handwringing, what if we lose Mastodon? What *if*? They're as bad as the Gablins. There are people using fedi to communicate and there are people using fedi to broadcast and try to push their agenda and, you know, fuck the latter category.
FSE vs GAB.jpg
blockfse.png
blockrecommendation.png
fse--subversive_neonazis_and_communists.jpg
gold.png
high_iq.png
make_fediverse_great_again.png
whole_mentality.png
There was a lot of the same hand-wringing: "they're the most active instance!" and it's like...do you want to see that activity? For at least a month, the *majority* of their activity was a single account that posted three times per second. I saw the bot, killed the bot, could not tell Gab about the bot because Gab blocked FSE. (Gleason was working at Gab at the time, I told Gleason and offered to help Gab quell the bot problem and told him to pass along the offer to Colbert; Gleason agreed but Colbert says Gleason never relayed the message. At the time, it was in my own interest to stop the flood at the source because Gab was essentially DoSing FSE by constantly flooding us with bot shit. I got to do k-means and come up with interesting ways to automatically detect bots, I was having fun.)
And now it's handwringing, what if we lose Mastodon? What *if*? They're as bad as the Gablins. There are people using fedi to communicate and there are people using fedi to broadcast and try to push their agenda and, you know, fuck the latter category.
FSE vs GAB.jpg
blockfse.png
blockrecommendation.png
fse--subversive_neonazis_and_communists.jpg
gold.png
high_iq.png
make_fediverse_great_again.png
whole_mentality.png
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @strypey @silverpill @light @Mammal
“For at least a month, the *majority* of their activity was a single account that posted three times per second. I saw the bot, killed the bot, could not tell Gab about the bot because Gab blocked FSE.”
Gab used to have a bot account called “jsheistydiety” that posts hi-res screenshots of low res boomer memes at multiple times per minute. And it had a comped yellow circle during imagocaust 2024.
@StarProphet @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @strypey @silverpill @light @Mammal
> Gab used to have a bot account called “jsheistydiety” that posts hi-res screenshots of low res boomer memes at multiple times per minute.
So, that's something I saw; I suspected that the Gab Trends was gamed so I did some analysis but it was really difficult to get some sort of clean view of Gab Trends (clickwrapping plus downtime plus their shit was difficult for both humans and bots to read). But I found this group of accounts that would all post the same set of Pepes and then randomly they would post the same link as all the others did, and then that link would show up on Gab Trends.
There was some recipe bot that would shit recipes scraped from recipe sites and the guy was claiming to be a Vietnam War sniper (his account was something like "sniperss"), right, a member of a unit that didn't exist during the Vietnam War, and now he's a "hotel chef" and he purported to be posting his own recipes but he wasn't even using the same units consistently; his top posts were all spelled and punctuated properly but his replies were all weird shit definitely not written by an American and he'd end them with "thank you,,david", weird shit. So I noticed a lot of accounts had that pattern, their top-level posts were
The most reliable indicator was that the bots would engage in some really easy-to-analyze behavior: they'd post uniformly around the clock (humans sleep), the overwhelming majority of their activities would be posts/reposts. That is, very few likes and very few replies to people that didn't tag them, very few follow/unfollow/block; this is expected of spambots, right, they aren't going to put any effort into something that doesn't put something on your screen, but they would reply when you interacted with them because it's worth their time to evade detection. So their replies read like they were written by offshore clickfarm dudes, like someone was running a few hundred bot accounts and then they'd send the replies to some sort of centralized place, right, like so they could reply "no im not bot" or "thank you,,david". You could plausibly run a massive farm like that, like several hundred accounts per guy. (They didn't have an obvious commercial interest, so it's possible that people were right with their suspicion that Gab was using clickfarms to look more active than it was.)
But the behavior made it easy to detect them: I wrote a little script that would look at all of the activity an account did, look at the ratio of normal activity to broadcast-style activity and how flat their activity was over 24 hours, and then draw a sparkline graph so I could visually inspect. This was really helpful for identifying bots, no ML stuff required even. And then once that was easy to do, I could do k-means clustering to see who was following them, and I iced about a hundred accounts on FSE that had posted just gibberish or nothing at all but were following only Gab spambot accounts. (I hated the spam and it actually cost me money by forcing me to upgrade boxes on Frantech, but it was fun to come up with bot-detection stuff.)
> And it had a comped yellow circle during imagocaust 2024.
I don't know what that is, like I heard something had to do with making image-posting a "Pro" feature, but I also don't really have any interest in Gab except where they intersected with fedi.
> Gab used to have a bot account called “jsheistydiety” that posts hi-res screenshots of low res boomer memes at multiple times per minute.
So, that's something I saw; I suspected that the Gab Trends was gamed so I did some analysis but it was really difficult to get some sort of clean view of Gab Trends (clickwrapping plus downtime plus their shit was difficult for both humans and bots to read). But I found this group of accounts that would all post the same set of Pepes and then randomly they would post the same link as all the others did, and then that link would show up on Gab Trends.
There was some recipe bot that would shit recipes scraped from recipe sites and the guy was claiming to be a Vietnam War sniper (his account was something like "sniperss"), right, a member of a unit that didn't exist during the Vietnam War, and now he's a "hotel chef" and he purported to be posting his own recipes but he wasn't even using the same units consistently; his top posts were all spelled and punctuated properly but his replies were all weird shit definitely not written by an American and he'd end them with "thank you,,david", weird shit. So I noticed a lot of accounts had that pattern, their top-level posts were
The most reliable indicator was that the bots would engage in some really easy-to-analyze behavior: they'd post uniformly around the clock (humans sleep), the overwhelming majority of their activities would be posts/reposts. That is, very few likes and very few replies to people that didn't tag them, very few follow/unfollow/block; this is expected of spambots, right, they aren't going to put any effort into something that doesn't put something on your screen, but they would reply when you interacted with them because it's worth their time to evade detection. So their replies read like they were written by offshore clickfarm dudes, like someone was running a few hundred bot accounts and then they'd send the replies to some sort of centralized place, right, like so they could reply "no im not bot" or "thank you,,david". You could plausibly run a massive farm like that, like several hundred accounts per guy. (They didn't have an obvious commercial interest, so it's possible that people were right with their suspicion that Gab was using clickfarms to look more active than it was.)
But the behavior made it easy to detect them: I wrote a little script that would look at all of the activity an account did, look at the ratio of normal activity to broadcast-style activity and how flat their activity was over 24 hours, and then draw a sparkline graph so I could visually inspect. This was really helpful for identifying bots, no ML stuff required even. And then once that was easy to do, I could do k-means clustering to see who was following them, and I iced about a hundred accounts on FSE that had posted just gibberish or nothing at all but were following only Gab spambot accounts. (I hated the spam and it actually cost me money by forcing me to upgrade boxes on Frantech, but it was fun to come up with bot-detection stuff.)
> And it had a comped yellow circle during imagocaust 2024.
I don't know what that is, like I heard something had to do with making image-posting a "Pro" feature, but I also don't really have any interest in Gab except where they intersected with fedi.
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @strypey @silverpill @StarProphet @light I applaud your anti spam efforts. I think ai spam was a bigger problem on gab in the past because they were trying to disguise the loss of users that killing federation represented. I can understand why gab today is being given the truth social treatment on modern fedi.
Originally the dissent memes were on discord, and they only moved to gab once discord got taken over, so gab is now like a historical host for dissent content. The regime is going to promote mainstream twitter over alt twitters.
This was the argument I had with graf which is that to survive as an alt twitter you have to have anti-regime moderation. Otherwise it's a step backwards into discord era. I'm defeded from poast because in my view they run things like a woke website and it's insincere spirit of dissent. Gab was basically a middle finger to trump, nobody was gatekeeping shit on there, the regime guys were just getting dog walked over and over again until they quit.
Originally the dissent memes were on discord, and they only moved to gab once discord got taken over, so gab is now like a historical host for dissent content. The regime is going to promote mainstream twitter over alt twitters.
This was the argument I had with graf which is that to survive as an alt twitter you have to have anti-regime moderation. Otherwise it's a step backwards into discord era. I'm defeded from poast because in my view they run things like a woke website and it's insincere spirit of dissent. Gab was basically a middle finger to trump, nobody was gatekeeping shit on there, the regime guys were just getting dog walked over and over again until they quit.
@Mammal @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey
> so gab is now like a historical host for dissent content
I went there for a few days in 2016 or 2017. I posted some images and then I wondered aloud how Gab was different from Twitter: Twitter was alleged by Jack and Biz to be "the free speech wing of the free speech party" and that was bullshit eventually. So then I saw this "Gab" thing and it was supposed to be like that but forreals this time and I checked it out and I wondered aloud, "How is this any different from Twitter? There's no real guarantee except a promise and we had that with Twitter and look how that turned out." and I got screamed at by some guy with a Bible quote in his bio and wraparound sunglasses in his avatar. I knew it was full of bots because years later, I started getting inundated with "StormGirl1488 has followed you". I didn't see any "dissent". I do know a lot of people that think ranting about Jews qualifies as dissent but I saw enough of that on fedi, I didn't need to go to another website to see that.
> Originally the dissent memes were on discord
Discord didn't exist when dissent memes were getting passed around.
> I'm defeded from poast because in my view they run things like a woke website and it's insincere spirit of dissent.
I'm not sure what this means, but before Poast arrived on fedi, people were accusing me of being "woke" or being "another Torba" and that shit didn't land on FSE and it doesn't land on Poast, though they're a little quicker with the block button. niggy (SAY HER NAME) hacked UMN and CUNY and lives on Poast and that's dissent (and a fun time).
> Gab was basically a middle finger to trump
Gab was shilling for Trump from its inception until Trump was unbanned from Twitter. I got those emails, too. I got the "Please beg President Trump to join Gab!" and then I got this one where the subject line was wishful clickbait:
president_trump_not_on_gab.png
> so gab is now like a historical host for dissent content
I went there for a few days in 2016 or 2017. I posted some images and then I wondered aloud how Gab was different from Twitter: Twitter was alleged by Jack and Biz to be "the free speech wing of the free speech party" and that was bullshit eventually. So then I saw this "Gab" thing and it was supposed to be like that but forreals this time and I checked it out and I wondered aloud, "How is this any different from Twitter? There's no real guarantee except a promise and we had that with Twitter and look how that turned out." and I got screamed at by some guy with a Bible quote in his bio and wraparound sunglasses in his avatar. I knew it was full of bots because years later, I started getting inundated with "StormGirl1488 has followed you". I didn't see any "dissent". I do know a lot of people that think ranting about Jews qualifies as dissent but I saw enough of that on fedi, I didn't need to go to another website to see that.
> Originally the dissent memes were on discord
Discord didn't exist when dissent memes were getting passed around.
> I'm defeded from poast because in my view they run things like a woke website and it's insincere spirit of dissent.
I'm not sure what this means, but before Poast arrived on fedi, people were accusing me of being "woke" or being "another Torba" and that shit didn't land on FSE and it doesn't land on Poast, though they're a little quicker with the block button. niggy (SAY HER NAME) hacked UMN and CUNY and lives on Poast and that's dissent (and a fun time).
> Gab was basically a middle finger to trump
Gab was shilling for Trump from its inception until Trump was unbanned from Twitter. I got those emails, too. I got the "Please beg President Trump to join Gab!" and then I got this one where the subject line was wishful clickbait:
president_trump_not_on_gab.png
@p @Mammal @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey Yeah Gab courted Trump, and when the Trump campaign looked at their non-bot engagement/users laughed them outta the room.
Torbu then made up some bullshit story about Trump wanting Blab censored and started barking about how freezepeach was under attack, begged for money, then set up a mirror that reposted every one of Fat Orange Carnie's CAPS RIDDLED tweets.
Pepperidge Farm 'membas...
Torbu then made up some bullshit story about Trump wanting Blab censored and started barking about how freezepeach was under attack, begged for money, then set up a mirror that reposted every one of Fat Orange Carnie's CAPS RIDDLED tweets.
Pepperidge Farm 'membas...
@SilverDeth @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @p @strypey @silverpill @StarProphet @light @Mammal I gotta ask but does a majority of mastodon even see anything said on this side of the fediverse? I was under the assumption that they've probably blanket defederated a majority of instances or people on this side of the fedi anyways.
I don't think anything changes too much in the event of a split at this point.
I don't think anything changes too much in the event of a split at this point.
@Spooke @SilverDeth @Mammal @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey I tagged like half the fuckin' glowieverse in that other post because they all block FSE before they even start up the server.
ma
@p @icedquinn @Spooke @fish @phnt @sampler @SilverDeth @strypey @silverpill @StarProphet @light @Mammal Always trying to figure out what the heuristic is that lands fse in permapreminorityreportban and dsmc just skates by.
@vii @Mammal @SilverDeth @Spooke @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey
> Always trying to figure out what the heuristic is that lands fse in permapreminorityreportban and dsmc just skates by.
IFTAS. The IFTAS people put FSE at "Tier 0".
> Always trying to figure out what the heuristic is that lands fse in permapreminorityreportban and dsmc just skates by.
IFTAS. The IFTAS people put FSE at "Tier 0".
@p @icedquinn @Spooke @fish @vii @phnt @sampler @SilverDeth @strypey @silverpill @StarProphet @light what got you on the naughty list do you think
@Mammal @SilverDeth @Spooke @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey @vii Because FSE's the one they can't kill and because I am famous and sexy and I do not have a fixation on Jewish people.
@p @icedquinn @Spooke @fish @phnt @sampler @SilverDeth @strypey @silverpill @StarProphet @light @Mammal He has a fixation on tits.
@vii @Mammal @SilverDeth @Spooke @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey Do...do you think that factors in?
Because A LOT OF THINGS WOULD LINE UP IF ALL OF THE POOP-FETISHISTS HATED ME BECAUSE I AM A TIT-ENJOYER
milk.mp4
Because A LOT OF THINGS WOULD LINE UP IF ALL OF THE POOP-FETISHISTS HATED ME BECAUSE I AM A TIT-ENJOYER
milk.mp4
@vii @Mammal @SilverDeth @Spooke @StarProphet @fish @icedquinn @light @phnt @sampler @silverpill @strypey This is not the video I meant to attach.
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