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Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

infosec.exchange

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Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#41

Post by paulgb »

Geee wrote: post #29
paulgb wrote: post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Quoted post unavailable.

They are using that for cover, but the block goes far beyond that content. I have an account on a smallish, niche community Mastodon instance which is closed to sign-ups. I can’t tweet or DM a message containing a link to my account there.

My guess is that Elon has wanted to squash Mastodon for a while, and the ElonJet episode gave him an excuse.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#42

Post by nemo44x »

ajb wrote: post #24

Every news outlet, and perhaps journalist associations such as the NUJ, should set up their own mastodon instance now and advertise that that's how to avoid Musk's blocks. There's no need for them to take this lying down.

And they’ll just be reporting news to each other leaving a massive vacuum on Twitter for others to quickly fill.

Most people don’t really care about this story. They’re just users looking for news, opinions, trending topics, etc. if you don’t follow these types of accounts then you haven’t noticed much change on Twitter.

Honestly if anything I’ve noticed Twitter is probably a bit more fun and interesting now.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#43

Post by waihtis »

Hakkin wrote: post #38
waihtis wrote: post #28

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not going to fact-check this article for obvious reasons, but is this article referring to actual CSAM or drawn artwork? The author seems to be heavily implying the former but I suspect it's actually the latter.

both is the safe guess here

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#44

Post by creatonez »

Geee wrote: post #29
paulgb wrote: post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Quoted post unavailable.

> Airplanes are public data, so this is a gray area.

US law has never had 'doxxing' of public figures in any sort of legal gray area, though. IIRC German citizens get a bit more protection, though.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#45

Post by notahacker »

Geee wrote: post #29
paulgb wrote: post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean, either you're a free speech absolutist or you favour blocking user-generated links to a competitive website to evade other bans you've put on one of the many ADSB tracking websites that can be used to establish the in-flight location of your private jet.

There's no grey area.

The only reason for using Mastodon redirects was to further troll Elon. Other redirect services exist, as does content on Mastodon which doesn't refer to Elonjet. And the "extortion" demand for a Tesla is about as serious as Elon's promises involving horses...

Funny to see all the people who argued that public health, incitement to racial hatred and coordinated trolling of people not called Elon Musk were not valid grounds for a social media company to intervene now rushing to argue that the real fire in a crowded theatre is Elon's butthurt...

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#46

Post by LinuxBender »

They mention base64 encoding messages to evade filters. There were actually other base{n} methods [1] created specifically for Twitter to be more space optimized though not as readily available to operating systems. I guess this is less useful if they are really expanding the text limit to 4k soon but figured I would add it in the event they add a parser for base64.

This assumes most people would be able to:

    npm install base2048
I think it might be interesting if Mastodon added a function to automatically detect and decode base2048 for browsers in javascript since JS is required to view a Mastodon site anyway. Bots would then have to adopt this logic, rendering most bots useless until they adapt and evolve. But I am not a developer and maybe this is just not possible.

[1] - https://github.com/qntm/base2048

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#47

Post by vidarh »

jojobas wrote: post #21

> Twitter's anti-Mastodon filtering is clown shoes amateur hour. I'd think it will be effective for 90%+ of people trying to link to where they're leaving. This evasion manual will not be seen or understood by an average user.

From what I've seen, it seems to have had the opposite effect. People have gotten creative and far more have spoken about it.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#48

Post by kahnclusions »

Geee wrote: post #29
paulgb wrote: post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Quoted post unavailable.

I don’t see how it can be doxxing when it’s publicly available information that anyone can look up at any time.

Naming and shaming the usage of private jets is a useful public service if you ask me.

Blocking an entire competitor service just because of a single account?

Elon is just a hypocrite.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#50

Post by lukeschlather »

codeflo wrote: post #39

I'm exactly in the target demographic that desperately wants a a return to the old, decentralized, protocol-based internet. We need working alternatives to Twitter to prevent a single mentally unstable billionaire from having this kind of power. But everything about Mastodon seems badly designed and engineered. The focus on "servers" seems technologically anachronistic, but worse, fragments the community and creates…

> you're basically required to trust your online identity and private message secrecy to an anonymous activist admin with a kitty avatar

I have some friends operating a Mastodon server, with a team of volunteer operators, and I'm pretty sure I've met all of them in person. I've only used Twitter a handful of times and don't really like the medium, but it's really not that hard to run a server. And I don't think there's any fundamental reason this doesn't scale. Every single community center runs a website, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine local, trusted Mastodon-type servers operated by all sorts of organizations. You may already be a member of an organization that has the capability and drive in your area, if you just can find the other people who want it.

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