Live data from Hacker News

Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

infosec.exchange

341–350 of 386 posts

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#341
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…

Any article tangentially related to Mastodon inevitably has a comment like yours voted to the top, even when it's off-topic and adds little to the conversation. I'm reminded of the immortal slashdot comment about another "inferior" disruptor: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame

> Why Twitter should feel threatened by this clusterfuck at all is a mystery to me.

Perhaps because Twitter has metrics on how many times the Mastodon links are posted and followed, and you don't?

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is the CEO of a major corporation. Sociopathy, is often pointed out as an advantage in that situation. You rise above others in the social ladder and punch down your competitors. And we're seeing this behavior right now as Elon Musk is utilizing his powers to try to silence his critics (Mastodon). Autism on the other hand, is a disadvantage in most leadership roles. When we consider Elon Musk's role in soci…

Armchair diagnosis is a rather foolish endeavour. That said, a person as successful as Musk is, is more likely to have BAP (broad autism phenotype, subclinical ASD) than clinical ASD. BAP means one has some degree of autistic traits, but is insufficiently disabled by them to warrant a psychiatric diagnosis Sociopathy isn’t a DSM-5 diagnosis - antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is. Diagnostic criteria for ASPD inc…

> Armchair diagnosis is a rather foolish endeavour.

Indeed. So we can stop with the Asperger's claim? But if the can of worms is open, I'm more than willing to contribute my 2-cents instead.

> I see zero evidence that is true of Musk.

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/antisocial-perso...

* exploit, manipulate or violate the rights of others

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/tesla-faces-california-l...

* lack concern, regret or remorse about other people's distress

https://www.tmz.com/2022/06/20/elon-musk-daughter-name-chang...

* behave irresponsibly and show disregard for normal social behaviour

* have difficulty sustaining long-term relationships

Check. Pretty much every girlfriend Musk has had has dumped him at this point.

* be unable to control their anger

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-head-bu...

* lack guilt, or not learn from their mistakes

Twitter

* blame others for problems in their lives

Do I even need to point this one out?

* repeatedly break the law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/securities-law/elon-musk-loses...

Do you think Elon Musk is complying with his legal obligations for a Twitter sitter right now?

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we watching musk "get" radicalized? Or has he always been that way? Because I remember way back, when journalists would write poor reviews of Tesla, he would go after them... typically accusing them of being compromised in some way, or not really being a journalist. Then there's the swatting of a tesla wistleblower. Or when a customer was "rude", he canceled their tesla pre-order. Or when that tesla employee post…

Its the right wing radicalization that the parent is talking about. That's disturbing to watch.

Disturbing, yes, but for those who have been paying attention, it's been on display for years now. This isn't new from Musk; he's just hiding it less.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#344
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…

I trust an anarchist admin with my DMs more than any corporation, billionaire, intelligence agencies, and their data miners, but you do you.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#345
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…

I just setup a new instance in less than 30 minutes. There are many ways it can be done.. Hoops are optional.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Europe do you live? I was born and raised (and still live) in the Netherlands, and our experiences are clearly very different. Of course, there exist racists in any country; I don't deny that. However, racism certainly isn't generally accepted here. This is supported by the fact that the alt-right occupies less than 20% of seats in Parliament (10% in Germany).

A lot of the interactions what immigrants like me in western europe have to go through are considered racist in america, that was my point. Ask anyone who has been an immigrant in EU and US. America is far more welcoming. Also in Spain where I live is welcoming to lgbt in general, the feminists are all what Americans would consider terf and it's mainstream, actually in power right now - women are women, no prostituti…

I am a child of immigrants. I'm sorry that our experiences differ on this point. It may be possible that the south is more conservative than the west, but be careful about falsely generalizing this to 'world standards'.

By the way, Spain is generally considered part of Southern Europe, not Western Europe. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Europe#Modern_division...

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I understood you correctly, but I don't think this is true. I have not tried it but as long as you have your data you can always setup your own instance with it. Ideally you have a server backup but if not there is a script that can convert the ordinary Mastodon export (the one you can do as a regular user in the UI of any instance) into a form suitable to import into the database of your instance.

You can't migrate your followers that way, can you? Which is (arguably) for many people more important than the content of their posts.

For everyone doing social media (semi-)professionally, followers are pretty much all that matters. That sounds like it gives server operators leverage against journalists and the like that happen to be on their server. They can move server, sure, but they lose their reach, that's ugly especially for smaller publications or individuals who can't easily hire staff to run their own instance.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#348
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose? How do you choose anything? On joinmastodon.org/servers you're presented with filter options and descriptions. You look at the descriptions and pick one you think you'll like. If you don't, you can do an account move. Plenty of people will be happy to help. Personally I'm per…

> This is a highly exaggerated risk unless you go out of your way to find a server full of racists or other people that should instantly make it clear to you it's likely you'll face blogs. Some people will insist this or that mainstream server is banned everywhere (e.g. some say that about mastodon.social), and in reality unless the server is obviously bad it often turns out to be a few inconsequentially tiny instanc…

Nobody can say it can't happen, but the reality is that the operators of the big instances so far at least have understood that there's an inherent damaging effect to defederating instances that has a sizeable proportion of genuine users that means it's generally treated as a last resort except for "purebred" abusive instances.

What happens if it should come to pass is that users will need to decide whether they like it like that, or move to a third party instance that doesn't block either one or only block the one they want blocked.

And the prospect of a user exodus (for a decision either way) is an incentive for admins to pay attention to what their users actually wants. To me that's just fine (though I'd like improvements to the user migration functionality to make this process even easier).

I could worry about this, or I can worry about Musk's whims. On Mastodon I can move elsewhere (and did; where I started was fine, but I'm now on my own instance because I like having more control). On Twitter, there's no recourse. As such I'll take those future hypotheticals over what's happening to Twitter any day.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this depends on whether you think "transwomen aren't women" is a right-wing or centrist statement. By world standards twitter was far left, by USA standards it was left, by California standards or non-USA anglosphere standards it was centrist.

> By world standards twitter was far left Whose world standards? The US left is the European right.

Places like Colombia, India, China, South Africa.

There the average person doesn't agree that transwomen are women.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as Tumblr

For those downvoting the above poster, this probably wasn't a sarcastic quip - Tumblr really does plan to federate with the rest of the fediverse. https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/21/tumblr-to-add-support-for-...

I'm guessing some might have downvoted because I mentioned paid providers. As in letting you pay them to run a Mastodon instance. While the above poster seems to have read my "and more are sure to come" as more options in general rather than more paid options. But I didn't downvote as I agree, the promise of Tumblr support is a big deal and will be a good option for a lot of people.
Post reply on HN