@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
Timeline
Post
Remote status
Context
50
@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
@p @icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @strypey @light
The point I am trying to make is not about Mastodon specifically. It's about network effects. I believe that in case of a network split almost all developers and users will defect to the Mastodon side, even those who are making fun of Mastodon today.
It's not going to be like Gab.
Of course, this situation is mostly theoretical, I don't expect it to happen within the next 2-3 years. And obviously, I don't think that we should be especially concerned about being cut off from the Mastodon Network. I am talking about building a viable alternative.
@silverpill @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @light That would be a very funny user base implosion. Because both sides actively don't like each other.
@silverpill @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @light The will surely love that decision. Bsky users already hate bsky leadership and Fedi is too complicated to them in their own words. Mastodon thinks they aren't decentralized and doesn't like the bsky leadership. Now they can hate both.
Tbh, picrel is probably the best solution anyway.
bluesky-refugees-grass.png
Tbh, picrel is probably the best solution anyway.
bluesky-refugees-grass.png
BealtaineGoat Is it finally shutting down?
@Eiregoat @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @strypey @silverpill @light @coolboymew It shutting down would be a net negative. You don't want those people here.
Why not? Inevitably one of their new instances will forget to defederate us and we can have another journo.post.
What if they join our instances though? 
...
...
@Deplorable_Degenerate
> What if they join our instances though?
Instances are like pubs. People like to hang out in different kinds of pubs, and that's OK. A pub stops being what it is if the social centre of gravity shifts. But that just means it becomes something else, and that's OK too.
As long as our city has space for many different kinds of pubs, everyone can find 1 or more they enjoy.
@icedquinn @fish @phnt @sampler @p @silverpill @Eiregoat@nicecrew.digital @light @coolboymew
@strypey @Deplorable_Degenerate @icedquinn @fish @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
>A pub stops being what it is if the social centre of gravity shifts. But that just means it becomes something else, and that's OK too.
I disagree with this, instances are communities and those that try to shift the culture of the community unnaturally should be expelled from it and find another community. This is how hostile takeovers of communities happen and has been called invading or being a disruptive guest in forums for a reason. You will get kicked out of a pub for being disruptive as well.
>A pub stops being what it is if the social centre of gravity shifts. But that just means it becomes something else, and that's OK too.
I disagree with this, instances are communities and those that try to shift the culture of the community unnaturally should be expelled from it and find another community. This is how hostile takeovers of communities happen and has been called invading or being a disruptive guest in forums for a reason. You will get kicked out of a pub for being disruptive as well.
(1/?)
@phnt
> those that try to shift the culture of the community unnaturally should be expelled from it
Sure, but that's clearly not what I'm talking about. Culture change in any community is slow but constant, as the people in them change. If some people leave and others join, this contributes to the same effect. The social centre of gravity in a loose-tie community is always shifting.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
(2/?)
@phnt
> You will get kicked out of a pub for being disruptive as well
Sure, but not for being at one end of the bell curve of people who hang out in that pub. Well, unless it's one of *those* kinds of pubs. But a growing city has space for those too, for people who want to be insular;
https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/
These are all perfectly fine variations in the pub life of a city.
(3/3)
I mean, I remember when the cluster of people represented in this conversation arrived in the fediverse en masse. Mainly by joining quitter instances which ... weren't really the right pub for them. What did the veterans do? Did we try to have you banished from the city altogether?
No. We helped you set up your own pubs, and then some of you started Pleroma (and postActiv, RIP), or forked Misskey, etc. The tension between your needs and ours was handled creatively, to mutual benefit.
@strypey
>Sure, but that's clearly not what I'm talking about.
>The social centre of gravity in a loose-tie community is always shifting.
I misunderstood what you meant in that case.
>https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/
I'm very conflicted about that post. It has a point that "Fediverse" outside of people developing it means very little (usually called the Mastodon™ network anyway) since it is a half-split network at this point. On the other hand it actively promotes this split, even gives it a name. The Fediverse the writer and I want are different in that regard. Fediblock effectively turning into a harassment tool with minimal value instead of its supposed original goal can probably be attributed to that.
Not that it matters much these days anyway since the two halves barely talk to each other now, but I still want the Fediverse where breaking federation isn't a design goal (signed fetch domain enforcement) and where the content users see is controlled by the user and not by the instance administrators as it usually is the case in the Mastodon side. It's not something that will probably ever become reality, but it's a worthy goal I think. The wild west banter I like isn't something everyone can handle though.
>These are all perfectly fine variations in the pub life of a city.
All it boils down for me is: "I don't agree with the Fediverse you want, but I won't try to prevent you from having it." I'm fine with anyone being here as long as they aren't disruptive guests in the community I'm in. If they want help, I'm happy to help.
>What did the veterans do? Did we try to have you banished from the city altogether?
>No. We helped you set up your own pubs, and then some of you started Pleroma (and postActiv, RIP), or forked Misskey, etc. The tension between your needs and ours was handled creatively, to mutual benefit.
Sadly this ability to handle tension seems to be mostly gone now. You see the desire to resolve conflicts and tensions rarely, instead the network keeps irrationally burning more and more bridges between the already split islands of what are the remnants of the Fediverse of the past.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
>Sure, but that's clearly not what I'm talking about.
>The social centre of gravity in a loose-tie community is always shifting.
I misunderstood what you meant in that case.
>https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/
I'm very conflicted about that post. It has a point that "Fediverse" outside of people developing it means very little (usually called the Mastodon™ network anyway) since it is a half-split network at this point. On the other hand it actively promotes this split, even gives it a name. The Fediverse the writer and I want are different in that regard. Fediblock effectively turning into a harassment tool with minimal value instead of its supposed original goal can probably be attributed to that.
Not that it matters much these days anyway since the two halves barely talk to each other now, but I still want the Fediverse where breaking federation isn't a design goal (signed fetch domain enforcement) and where the content users see is controlled by the user and not by the instance administrators as it usually is the case in the Mastodon side. It's not something that will probably ever become reality, but it's a worthy goal I think. The wild west banter I like isn't something everyone can handle though.
>These are all perfectly fine variations in the pub life of a city.
All it boils down for me is: "I don't agree with the Fediverse you want, but I won't try to prevent you from having it." I'm fine with anyone being here as long as they aren't disruptive guests in the community I'm in. If they want help, I'm happy to help.
>What did the veterans do? Did we try to have you banished from the city altogether?
>No. We helped you set up your own pubs, and then some of you started Pleroma (and postActiv, RIP), or forked Misskey, etc. The tension between your needs and ours was handled creatively, to mutual benefit.
Sadly this ability to handle tension seems to be mostly gone now. You see the desire to resolve conflicts and tensions rarely, instead the network keeps irrationally burning more and more bridges between the already split islands of what are the remnants of the Fediverse of the past.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
(1/?)
@phnt
> Fediblock effectively turning into a harassment tool with minimal value instead of its supposed original goal
I would say it's been both simultaneously. Which is why it needs to be replaced by a standard protocol that keeps moderation decentralised, but enables newbie admins/mods to find and use automated support provided by veterans.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
(2/?)
I got much less worried about IFTAS when I started looking into the details of what they're building;
https://wedistribute.org/podcast/trust-safety-jaz-michael-king/
Bear with me as I lay out a nonpartisan case for what they're doing.
(3/?)
The video posted elsewhere in this hellthread demonstrates that there is a need for newbies setting up fediverse servers to have a simple way to protect themselves from spammers (including griefers). The obvious example is people spewing racist bile (no one needs to see that kind of low-effort toddler dickwaving). But from my POV, it equally includes identi-Moonies haranguing me for being a racist just for being in this conversation, or talking to folks from the 'Dark Side' at all.
(4/?)
Supporting newbie admins/mods - and especially self-hosters running single-tenant instances - is particularly important if we want a fediverse of many small-to-medium instances. Rather than having most people corralled into a handful of proprietary corporate instances (eg Threats), whose owners can afford to do adequate moderation in-house.
(5/?)
It would be easy to dismiss IFTAS as an attempt to impose BS-style centralised moderation on the fediverse. But I think that's a mistake. They're trying to solve the same problem, yes, but in a much more fediverse-esque way. Using standardised protocol plumbing that admins/mods can opt-in to, unlike the ATmosphere where BS's labeler is imposed on the whole network.
Maybe I'm naive and I haven't dug deep enough into the technical details to see the evil. If so, by all means, educate me.
Replies
6(6/?)
@phnt
> Sadly this ability to handle tension seems to be mostly gone now
There's a lot more partisanship, for sure, something that comes with a larger population. But the veterans are still here! Still trying to get people to talk to each other and find win-win solutions that enable us all to peacefully coexist, instead of muttering in dark corners spreading scuttlebutt about each other.
(7/?)
One of those veterans is Evan P who was one of the founders of the original fediverse. Creating identi.ca, StatusNet which became GNU social, and pump.io which was the basis of AP. Yes, like all the veterans who were here before you lot, Evan's socially liberal and has very little time for alt-right brainworms. But we're also carefully nonpartisan when it comes to the tech.
I would be very concerned about what the SWF or SocialCG had planned if Evan wasn't such a prominent actor in both.
(8/?)
Jaz is a different story. An arrival on one of the 2017 ships, so not an OG like Evan, DeadSuperHero and Mike McG, or even CLM. But not, as often characterised, an opportunist who turned up as part of Eternal November.
Yes, Jaz is part of Newsmast as well as IFTAS, and toot.wales. But relatively speaking we're still a tiny dev community, so it's neither surprising nor suspicious that some really enthusiastic people have their fingers in a lot of pies.
(9/?)
I mean shit, if we're going to be wary of people for turning up all over the place, I'm suspicious AF!
I'm a longtimer at SocialHub (from before it was reestablished at the current subdomain), and at fediverse.party, where I'm now Lead Goose. I mouth off regularly in the Fediverse Ideas repo, and the.socialmusic.network. I turn up in a bunch of fediverse-related Matrix rooms, etc, etc.
(10/10)
What can I say? I'm autistic AF and the verse is one of my special interests. Maybe the same is true for some of the people getting shade cast on them here?
I don't want to propose anything radical but ... Have any of you tried the same kind of calm and reasonable discussion we're having here with any of the people you're suspicious of?
That said, some people do seem to be here to seed division, notably Pincus. But they tend not to contribute anything other than fountains of invective
@strypey
>but enables newbie admins/mods to find and use automated support provided by veterans.
I don't think "veterans" should have a say in moderation of an instance they aren't on. The instance administrator/mod team should do the moderation and that's it. The issue with outsourcing your moderation to someone, like Evan wants, and IFTAS and others are pushing (even Mastodon with its new grant for FASPs and content scanning), is that you have to fully trust those people and keep them constantly in check to not overreach/overreact/get biased etc. To use their favorite word, you need very good governance around those people. Worst of all, IFTAS is completely non-transparent in their moderation aggregation sources, receipts or reasons. They are a black box you either fully trust or don't trust at all. I'm very tempted to set up a throwaway instance just to have a look at their walled of CARIAD thing that requires admin privs to your instance.
>replaced by a standard protocol that keeps moderation decentralised
FIRES is that, but immediately after it released to the public in a usable form, I've already seen what people are interested in it. Namely Oliphant and his island networks (read: isolated echo chambers) project. I would be fine with FASPs and FIRES, if there wasn't such a large opportunity to misuse this for state-level censorship of the network years down the road. Something like Pleroma MRF which can optionally talk to some API server to make decisions, is something very similar in nature, but smaller in scope. It can still be abused, but it doesn't have that large of an impact and certainly not influence when compared to size of Mastodon.
>But from my POV, it equally includes identi-Moonies haranguing me for being a racist just for being in this conversation, or talking to folks from the 'Dark Side' at all.
Yeah that sadly happens and its those tensions and refusal to resolve conflicts I talked about. From experience you cannot be the bridge between the two "sides", it is simply impossible to walk the thin rope. One post with a slightly out of place joke and your efforts are now worthless.
>The video posted elsewhere in this hellthread demonstrates that there is a need for newbies setting up fediverse servers to have a simple way to protect themselves from spammers (including griefers).
There is a lack of documentation on how to host a Fediverse instance in general, which is something I would like to work on eventually. Something like resurrecting fediverse.express and making it more resource-centered then getting started centered. That said newbies will probably first join an instance and then consider making their own, which makes the moderation/defederation decisions visible to those users (even when Mastodon blocks access to those without an account) besides being able to ask others.
It is a need for sure, but I think there's more important needs than that currently.
>Supporting newbie admins/mods - and especially self-hosters running single-tenant instances - is particularly important if we want a fediverse of many small-to-medium instances.
100% agreed.
>It would be easy to dismiss IFTAS as an attempt to impose BS-style centralised moderation on the fediverse. But I think that's a mistake. They're trying to solve the same problem, yes, but in a much more fediverse-esque way. Using standardised protocol plumbing that admins/mods can opt-in to, unlike the ATmosphere where BS's labeler is imposed on the whole network.
I'm very hesitant with this considering their weird funding through various US and EU government agencies. Considering that Mastodon now received grants to implement these very shortly after they were released to the public, sponsored by some agency you've never heard of which has ties to the German government. It can be an honest and genuine interest in helping the Fediverse, or government-sponsored control of a decentralized network. Which one is it to you, I will leave you to decide:
https://fsebugoutzone.org/objects/55b92e72-d82f-4e9c-a730-34d09d071a99
https://fluffytail.org/objects/d89c0322-5c9d-43ae-81bd-b0eadeed6626
And now different parts of the same thread:
https://fluffytail.org/objects/dcd4037d-ed55-47d2-8919-ecbeae6b5db9 (Excerpts I took from Jaz's recent blogpost which I recommend to read for more context to this thread and IFTAS in general: https://jaz.co.uk/2026/03/13/there-are-a-million-fediverses-and-theyre-all-regulated/)
>Have any of you tried the same kind of calm and reasonable discussion we're having here with any of the people you're suspicious of?
https://fluffytail.org/objects/9acf376e-c018-4a6d-baad-154167628cc4 (I and @silverpill tried two months ago to have a similar conversation with Evan, I ended up getting blocked by Evan. Besides that my account is deactivated on Mastosoc after replying to a post made by Pincus (his Privacy Nexus blog to be precise), which is where most of these people are. cwebber blocked me after making a darker joke about ActivityPub extensibility and rubber law paragraphs a year or more ago which I'm fine with, I can be unhinged at times and was much more in the past. I have alts and now also SH if I really want to insert myself into a discussion, so none of this bothers me.)
>Maybe the same is true for some of the people getting shade cast on them here?
I would certainly want to know that, but so far everyone that is involved in this (Evan) and doesn't block me or this instance already for reasons was very touchy about the subject.
>I mean shit, if we're going to be wary of people for turning up all over the place, I'm suspicious AF!
That's not how this works. You aren't suspicious based on what places you show up, it's the actions and language used that speak to me. Otherwise I would also be suspicious of silverpill which I'm not despite him showing up basically everywhere where there is a discussion about AP. But I get your point, I'm basically a walking red flag to some of these people when I regularly talk to @p, have fun in hellthreads, shitpost, sometimes talk to Poasties and also join AP/FEP threads when they are interesting.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew
>but enables newbie admins/mods to find and use automated support provided by veterans.
I don't think "veterans" should have a say in moderation of an instance they aren't on. The instance administrator/mod team should do the moderation and that's it. The issue with outsourcing your moderation to someone, like Evan wants, and IFTAS and others are pushing (even Mastodon with its new grant for FASPs and content scanning), is that you have to fully trust those people and keep them constantly in check to not overreach/overreact/get biased etc. To use their favorite word, you need very good governance around those people. Worst of all, IFTAS is completely non-transparent in their moderation aggregation sources, receipts or reasons. They are a black box you either fully trust or don't trust at all. I'm very tempted to set up a throwaway instance just to have a look at their walled of CARIAD thing that requires admin privs to your instance.
>replaced by a standard protocol that keeps moderation decentralised
FIRES is that, but immediately after it released to the public in a usable form, I've already seen what people are interested in it. Namely Oliphant and his island networks (read: isolated echo chambers) project. I would be fine with FASPs and FIRES, if there wasn't such a large opportunity to misuse this for state-level censorship of the network years down the road. Something like Pleroma MRF which can optionally talk to some API server to make decisions, is something very similar in nature, but smaller in scope. It can still be abused, but it doesn't have that large of an impact and certainly not influence when compared to size of Mastodon.
>But from my POV, it equally includes identi-Moonies haranguing me for being a racist just for being in this conversation, or talking to folks from the 'Dark Side' at all.
Yeah that sadly happens and its those tensions and refusal to resolve conflicts I talked about. From experience you cannot be the bridge between the two "sides", it is simply impossible to walk the thin rope. One post with a slightly out of place joke and your efforts are now worthless.
>The video posted elsewhere in this hellthread demonstrates that there is a need for newbies setting up fediverse servers to have a simple way to protect themselves from spammers (including griefers).
There is a lack of documentation on how to host a Fediverse instance in general, which is something I would like to work on eventually. Something like resurrecting fediverse.express and making it more resource-centered then getting started centered. That said newbies will probably first join an instance and then consider making their own, which makes the moderation/defederation decisions visible to those users (even when Mastodon blocks access to those without an account) besides being able to ask others.
It is a need for sure, but I think there's more important needs than that currently.
>Supporting newbie admins/mods - and especially self-hosters running single-tenant instances - is particularly important if we want a fediverse of many small-to-medium instances.
100% agreed.
>It would be easy to dismiss IFTAS as an attempt to impose BS-style centralised moderation on the fediverse. But I think that's a mistake. They're trying to solve the same problem, yes, but in a much more fediverse-esque way. Using standardised protocol plumbing that admins/mods can opt-in to, unlike the ATmosphere where BS's labeler is imposed on the whole network.
I'm very hesitant with this considering their weird funding through various US and EU government agencies. Considering that Mastodon now received grants to implement these very shortly after they were released to the public, sponsored by some agency you've never heard of which has ties to the German government. It can be an honest and genuine interest in helping the Fediverse, or government-sponsored control of a decentralized network. Which one is it to you, I will leave you to decide:
https://fsebugoutzone.org/objects/55b92e72-d82f-4e9c-a730-34d09d071a99
https://fluffytail.org/objects/d89c0322-5c9d-43ae-81bd-b0eadeed6626
And now different parts of the same thread:
https://fluffytail.org/objects/dcd4037d-ed55-47d2-8919-ecbeae6b5db9 (Excerpts I took from Jaz's recent blogpost which I recommend to read for more context to this thread and IFTAS in general: https://jaz.co.uk/2026/03/13/there-are-a-million-fediverses-and-theyre-all-regulated/)
>Have any of you tried the same kind of calm and reasonable discussion we're having here with any of the people you're suspicious of?
https://fluffytail.org/objects/9acf376e-c018-4a6d-baad-154167628cc4 (I and @silverpill tried two months ago to have a similar conversation with Evan, I ended up getting blocked by Evan. Besides that my account is deactivated on Mastosoc after replying to a post made by Pincus (his Privacy Nexus blog to be precise), which is where most of these people are. cwebber blocked me after making a darker joke about ActivityPub extensibility and rubber law paragraphs a year or more ago which I'm fine with, I can be unhinged at times and was much more in the past. I have alts and now also SH if I really want to insert myself into a discussion, so none of this bothers me.)
>Maybe the same is true for some of the people getting shade cast on them here?
I would certainly want to know that, but so far everyone that is involved in this (Evan) and doesn't block me or this instance already for reasons was very touchy about the subject.
>I mean shit, if we're going to be wary of people for turning up all over the place, I'm suspicious AF!
That's not how this works. You aren't suspicious based on what places you show up, it's the actions and language used that speak to me. Otherwise I would also be suspicious of silverpill which I'm not despite him showing up basically everywhere where there is a discussion about AP. But I get your point, I'm basically a walking red flag to some of these people when I regularly talk to @p, have fun in hellthreads, shitpost, sometimes talk to Poasties and also join AP/FEP threads when they are interesting.
@icedquinn @fish @Deplorable_Degenerate @sampler @p @silverpill @light @coolboymew