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Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

arstechnica.com

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Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#121

Post by xahrepap »

asabjorn wrote: post #106

As much as I love open source, Gab should have never been open source. It seems very unwise to make a highly targeted free speech social media platform available for easy backend code analysis. No wonder they were hacked. https://git.rip/gab/gab-social

I don’t believe that Open Source == Less Secure. See also: Linux, Ngix, Postgres... Many many open source projects are secure. They’re not perfect but an argument could be made that they’re more secure BECAUSE they’re open.

Software with crosshairs on its back practicing garbage security practices will be pwnd the same regardless of it’s open-ness.

Honestly. With a lot of the tools out there these days. I question if it’s even faster to hunt security bugs by reading the source rather than just attempting common exploits via tooling.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#122

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81
Bostonian wrote: post #2

At Ars Technica, few of the commenters are concerned about the erosion of privacy and freedom of speech of Gab users.

First they came for the fascists, and I was happy. Then it ended, because slippery slope is a fallacy.

When they come for you, they'll call you a fascist. Like they did with Steven Pinker.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#123

Post by [deleted] »

PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote: post #86
cambalache wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the American mainstream left became bananas. The Democratic and Republican parties would still be right-wing/conservative all across the world except in America, but the woke/sjw/faang crowd is socially hard-left also all across the world (not in economics or international politics, they are very conservative there,even hawkish). So, for example, me, a very leftist third world person has now more in common wi…

Maybe you can refresh my memory, was it the "American mainstream left" that just sieged the Capitol in a murderous attempt to overthrow democracy?

[deleted]

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#124

Post by naniwaduni »

GVIrish wrote: post #92
leesalminen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation". It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.

> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. > Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended. It's not that most Americans don't care about free speech. It's that most Americans understand that constitutional free speech means the government can't infringe on your speech, except in limited circumstances…

Before taking "constitutional" free speech for a concept, we have to understand that free speech is a prescriptive social norm.

It happens to have a constitutional instantiation. That instantiation happens to be expressed as a restriction on the government's chartered power; this is an artifact of the process by which it was drafted, i.e. as part of a collection of proposed restraints on the powers federal government.

No reasonable person should confuse the very limited constitutional guarantee given to free speech with the norm itself.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#125

Post by Ancapistani »

anigbrowl wrote: post #102
throwaway33432 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freedom of association isn't really a thing anymore; if one were to promote that maxim, a large portion of the civil rights laws, anti-discrimination laws, etc. just become unenforceable. see stuff akin to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

The idea of public accommodation is ultimately based on the notion that commercial appeals (such as a store window and an open door) constitute an 'invitation to treat' (do business) and that these should not be withheld from anyone on the basis of their unalterable personal characteristics.

> these should not be withheld from anyone on the basis of their unalterable personal characteristics

Where does this boundary lie?

Is political party unalterable? Ideology? Religion?

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#126

Post by anigbrowl »

0xy wrote: post #47
uniqueid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gab is a site that caters to hate groups. I guess the targets of their hatred take it personally. That seems rational to me.

Using this logic, Facebook is a site that caters to hate groups, mass murders and sexual predators. Your standard seems to be that one drop poisons the well, given that all social media is guilty of this accusation.

Yes, this is a frequent and somewhat well-founded critique of FB, which has been accused on multiple occasions of knowingly/negligently facilitating violations of human rights at scale, despite repeated warnings about the risks. Facebook PR has tended to oscillate between happy-sounding blurb about upholding free speech, building communities etc., and zapping large numbers of problematic accounts and groups after the company has been embarrassed, though without any semblance of external accountability.

It's certainly not FB's raison d'etre but it has been an ongoing problem that the firm has been reluctant to confront.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#127

Post by enko123 »

covermydonkey wrote: post #57
leesalminen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation". It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.

As a South African all of this is fascinating. Especially the shift of where the "center" is. It seemed every American not on the left is called "far right" from where I am sitting. Half a dozen of my friends have moved to the States and a few have scolded me for my understanding saying that plenty of centrists are labeled far right. I'm beginning to glaze over the label now. It doesn't hold any sway for me because i…

Left has the reins of power, so they don't need to pretend they care about tolerance, freedom, or the rule of law anymore.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#128

Post by busrf »

asabjorn wrote: post #116
_e21c wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they had to release their source code in order to comply with the AGPL, because they forked off mastodon right? I’m not sure if they decided to go with mastodon as the basis for their codebase in the beginning or if that was a later decision.

Thats a good point. And because of this they are limited in their mitigation strategies.

I just looked it up and the history is that they did it so that users could access the site using fediverse clients, because their own clients were getting pulled from app stores.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr...

ofc there is that whole discussion about whether open sourcing actually affects application security, having your security model assume that attackers already have access to the source code, etc. Not to mention it looks like they did make quite extensive modifications on top of the mastodon code. Some of the code that people have discovered lying around in the gab codebase is really embarrassing.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#129

Post by spideymans »

asabjorn wrote: post #106

As much as I love open source, Gab should have never been open source. It seems very unwise to make a highly targeted free speech social media platform available for easy backend code analysis. No wonder they were hacked. https://git.rip/gab/gab-social

If you’re depending on the confidentiality of your source code to keep your system secure, then your system was never secure in the first place.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#130

Post by stickfigure »

lenkite wrote: post #114
baix777 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Break into Congress and kill the swamp creatures". This is a quote from Parler, and this is known as incitement, which is often illegal. The first amendment does not apply to child porn for obvious reasons, but it also doesn't apply to threats of violence, which isn't so obvious to everyone. To make this obvious, this is not a free speech issue.

I can cherry-pick several thousand twitter messages (probably more) that make this quote seem like a soft, fluffy teddy bear. But no one here accuses twitter of being a terrorist platform. Your last line is absolutely correct: To make this obvious, this is not a free speech issue.

> I can cherry-pick several thousand twitter messages

I've heard this claim asserted before. I am unconvinced. Can you show me some examples?

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