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Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

infosec-handbook.eu

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Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#171

Post by jancsika »

tylerchilds wrote: post #100
jancsika wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me the Mastodon server with the moderation policy that fits the author's use case. It appears I can't even search mastodon instances by the criteria of moderation policy. (But if I'm missing something obvious please correct me because I'd love to be able to do this!) There an abundant history of examples of centralized, publicly accessible forums where the quality of the discussion matches what the author desire…

I'm not fully sure what their use case is to speak to that. A good launching point to finding like minded people is this list though: https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers I joined before that link existed though, so I opted to join a really large instance, mastodon.social specifically in my case. From there, I started searching hashtags for topics I was interested in and engaging there. From my interactions, I g…

> I'm not fully sure what their use case is to speak to that.

The article spells it out-- they don't want drive-by, low-effort engagement with their posts.

> A good launching point to finding like minded people is this list though

Perhaps I'm idiosyncratic, but I don't see any value in choosing a server or community based on interest.

What I really care about is choosing a moderation policy, and viewing the content filtered through that lens. E.g., "Wholesome and non-contentious," or "thought-provoking and academic," etc.

Even then, I want to do that through a dropdown, not through a sign up on a server hard-coded to a single policy.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#172

Post by tialaramex »

lrvick wrote: post #71

I am one of the people that got a lot of shares on Mastodon for being critical of Signal. I think this article greatly misrepresents the main arguments going around the Fediverse about Signal, and the arguments for alternatives. 1. Signal holds the only set of signing keys to the only published binaries allowed on the network, compiled by them, that in turn control all signing keys. If pressured they could push a mal…

> 3. Signal forces all TCP/IP metadata to one stack, which if combined with heuristical analysis, I strongly suspect it would be possible to work out which IPs communicate with which other IPs even without aid of SGX contained metadata.

I don't think you've thought about this properly. The fact you've mistaken this (the Don't Stand Out principle) for a flaw in Signal - rather than a clear strength compared to federated systems - is a bad sign.

> 5. Signal has built their entire social graph on phone numbers

The Signal system doesn't maintain a social graph. That's another huge flaw of many alternatives, since of course an attacker would (and this has already happened) harvest the social graph from the system.

Suppose you turn up with a Federal Judge tomorrow at Signal's offices, demanding a list of the groups I'm in, friends I know, people I've communicated with. Moxie can't help you. You supply my telephone number. Moxie still can't help you. OK, you demand a list of all Signal groups. Well here's all the new-style Signal groups. They have opaque IDs, their names, membership lists and all other metadata are encrypted, with keys Signal does not have.

Now, if you do the same for Riot.im you get truckloads of interesting information about whichever user or users you were interested in, including where to look next for more information about other users they know or communicate with. Even better, the "privacy conscious" users will often, as you've recommended, not be on Riot but instead on a low population Matrix server they control, neatly isolating them so you needn't even bother gathering a "graph" at all.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#173

Post by calibas »

riffic wrote: post #2

This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other…

I've been curious about how to do this, I assume you install an ActivityPub plugin and connect it to an existing platform like Mastodon or Pleroma?

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#174

Post by indymike »

klyrs wrote: post #169
dsr_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, the Usenet servers which took massive amounts of bandwidth and disk space take tiny amounts of bandwidth and disk space (assuming you don't allow binary posts). Maybe it's time for Usenet to come back. - Truly federated - Topic focus instead of people-focus - Killfiles! - Proper threading - Standards-based servers and clients

> Killfiles! Ah yes, censorship rears its ghastly head again. Or, what a quaint approach to spam.

As I recall, killfiles couldn't keep up with the glut of spam that happened.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#175

Post by riffic »

calibas wrote: post #173
riffic wrote: post #2

This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other…

I've been curious about how to do this, I assume you install an ActivityPub plugin and connect it to an existing platform like Mastodon or Pleroma?

With the ActivityPub plugin (this one to be specific: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/), your WordPress site implements the underlying ActivityPub protocols and becomes an Actor that can be subscribed to by other ActivityPub installations.

Other CMS plugins may be worth looking into, or it may be worth looking into having your favorite CMS implement these protocols directly.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#176

Post by coderaptor »

sdenton4 wrote: post #162
rbanffy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like NNTP, but spam was becoming a huge problem in the Usenet and its nature makes it harder to assert the identity of a poster.

I mean, if people want to give out helpful information about gland enlargement alongside links to where supplements can be purchased for the astonishingly low price of $12 a pill, who are we to try to stop them? Provide an unfiltered free speech platform and the stronger ideas will win, right?

Just provide more effective tools allowing users to tune their own feeds.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#177

Post by vinniejames »

andrewzah wrote: post #52
hombre_fatal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's the same. Message boards are all silos that don't mingle with each other in any way. You're saying the only part where Mastodon diverges is this thing that makes it markedly unlike message boards. I don't see the connection at all, not even to Proboards/Ezboard which had one global account across many boards. I'd summarize Mastodon as a confusing version of Twitter that most technical people don'…

I really don't get why the concept of mastodon is so confusing. It's basically twitter/microblogging* with multiple hosts, and you can see posts from other hosts. So instead of just @andrewzah, my handle becomes @andrewzah@ . You could visualize twitter as @andrewzah@twitter.com, but it's redundant as twitter is the only host. This is basically how email works, no? The only other difference is federation, so you have…

It's like Twitter and email met on Tinder and had a baby Mastodon

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#178

Post by andrewzah »

bluesign wrote: post #160
rglullis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local timelines are at best an attempt to help with content discovery and really too overrated. If the instance is too big, it feels like reading from the firehose and if the instance is too small it is better to just browse the directory and find the profiles that seem interesting to you. To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a co…

yeah I replied in sibling thread, mostly topic based instances and federation is the problem. (when identity is bound to host) When I first saw Mastodon and topic based servers, I was thinking "photography" hosts will federate between each other, "developers" between each other etc. If you are a photography liking developer, you will have 2 accounts, one in "photographers in SF" instance, another one "developers in S…

I do agree that because mastodon became focused around specific niches per host, it made things much more complicated for new users. Do I join mastodon.social? Do I join bsd.network? Do I join writing.exchange? Etc.

What I realized was I should have been asking: Do I care about the federated timeline? Do I care if my host blocks other hosts at random? Do I care if my host allows certain things (I.e. pornography with or without a NSFW tag, or at all). Do I know who the host is and can I trust them with my private messages and to not randomly ban me?

I personally like seeing the federated timeline as I have discovered some accounts through it. But my host absolutely needs to do some filtering because some hosts will allow -anything-. I never really found much use for the local timeline.

So for me, hosting was clearly the best option. I do try to get my friends to consider joining the fediverse, and I offer hosting to them to solve this issue.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#179

Post by andrewzah »

rglullis wrote: post #126
bluesign wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about pleroma, I will definitely check. But when you self host your Mastodon, aren't you losing the benefit of local. What is the point of local if I will be alone there?

Local timelines are at best an attempt to help with content discovery and really too overrated. If the instance is too big, it feels like reading from the firehose and if the instance is too small it is better to just browse the directory and find the profiles that seem interesting to you. To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a co…

"To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership"

Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests.

E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for a local timeline. I guess the only issue is that these organizations aren't permanent. So people would have to migrate, which isn't a thing for twitter or facebook. I know mastodon has a feature for this specifically but I think people would still find it too confusing if people's handles kept on changing.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#180

Post by throwaway894345 »

INTPenis wrote: post #13

I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a…

Can I browse another server from mastodon? it seems I can only choose from my feed (people i follow), the local feed (my server), or the global feed. This is a really rough experience because my server is one of the big generic servers so there is no specific discussion and indeed it’s mostly people and bots screaming into the void, and of course the global feed is the same except the volume of posts is much larger and now half of the feed is in a foreign language.
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