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Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

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Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#21

Post by sva_ »

dewey wrote: post #15
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #9

Why are they even using TLS? Onion services bring their own security.

That was a bigger discussion when Facebook did it back in the days and there's really no clear reason for and against it. In the end it mostly boils down to "regular people were educated that https is needed, so it's better to just keep doing that instead of explaining Tor to them". Which is a fair point I think. https://blog.torproject.org/facebook-hidden-services-and-htt...

If there is no reason for it, then that is a reason against it. Regular people probably don't use Tor.

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#23

Post by pests »

rmwaite wrote: post #18
stathibus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it seems like they left it to rot instead of shutting it down. But again it is irrelevant to the business so who cares?

My understanding is the onion service was launched to provide access for people in places where Twitter is blocked. How is this "irrelevant to the business"?

"Profit over everything."

I think it was laudable that Twitter ran one in the first place. Sad to see it languish.

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#24

Post by dfadsadsf »

rmwaite wrote: post #18
stathibus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it seems like they left it to rot instead of shutting it down. But again it is irrelevant to the business so who cares?

My understanding is the onion service was launched to provide access for people in places where Twitter is blocked. How is this "irrelevant to the business"?

What's benefit of onion service vs run of the mill VPN? I assume if you can access onion, you should also be able to access VPN

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#26

Post by depereo »

stathibus wrote: post #14
avs733 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they properly remove it or does no one there even know it was/is happening. They didn’t shut it down, the seem to have left the lights on with nobody home. Bigger picture - given the role news making and sharing in real time has always played in Twitter, it seems logical that services which may not provide obvious returns but which build a platform that journalists find useful would help do that.

I agree, it seems like they left it to rot instead of shutting it down. But again it is irrelevant to the business so who cares?

If it's a safety mechanism that people relied on, leaving it to rot and getting people in the habit of clicking through on an expired or invalid certificate warning is irresponsible.

A degraded service can be worse than an offline one.

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#27

Post by sassy_quat »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

This is the sort of thing that if it even exists at a large company is a pet project of one enthusiast, and obviously that enthusiast was laid off. I doubt a single person at Twitter today cares if their onion service works.

[dead]

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#28

Post by Atreiden »

stathibus wrote: post #11

Twitter should not care about having an onion service. Great example of a distraction that the Musk downsizing properly removed.

Why not? For an international communication service with a "historical" significance on freedom of speech, is this not a natural extension of the platform? Something like this does not cost very much money to operate. "distraction" implies that it does not align with the rest of the company's objectives, and that it costs an inordinate amount of time or resources. A service like this can be administered by a single person as a tertiary function of their role, is it really any significance to their bottom line?

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#29

Post by anonym29 »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #24
rmwaite wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is the onion service was launched to provide access for people in places where Twitter is blocked. How is this "irrelevant to the business"?

What's benefit of onion service vs run of the mill VPN? I assume if you can access onion, you should also be able to access VPN

I'm not someone who's ever used the onion service, but as someone who accesses the site regularly over VPN, I can testify that it's a huge PITA. Tons of very aggressive captcha-type challenges (various tasks, never simple text recognition, but not Google ReCaptcha), often 5, 7, or 10 to be allowed to proceed.

Re: Twitter's onion service is serving an invalid TLS certificate since 3/6/2023

#30

Post by bastawhiz »

stathibus wrote: post #11

Twitter should not care about having an onion service. Great example of a distraction that the Musk downsizing properly removed.

Serving a valid tls cert takes virtually no effort. It's far more likely that Musk's downsizing killed off infra that was doing this job correctly and inexpensively for many years.

If Musk actually cared about free speech like he says he does, onion services would be a priority. But obviously that's just hot air. You can't have it both ways.

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