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2024-07-29 03:03:50

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

Ah, not sure if I should be boosting the original thread, but some great insights from @jdp23.

"The good news is that there are some straightforward opportunities for significant short-term safety improvements. If fediverse funders, developers, businesses, and "influencers"start prioritizing investing in safety, the fediverse can turn what's currently a big weakness into a huge strategic advantage."

https://privacy.thenexus.today/steps-towards-a-safer-fediverse/

#mastodon #fediverse #safety #community

2024-07-29 03:04:16

Stefan Bohacek

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

"And even though (as KIBI notes) "there is not necessarily a strong impetus to push for their adoption across the broader network," much of today's Mastodon functionality originated in forks."

https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-hard-fork/

2024-07-29 09:23:55

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Stefan Bohacek @Jon Such safety improvements cannot and must not come from within Mastodon.

For if they did, it would be non-standard, proprietary, undocumented, Mastodon-exclusive solutions that anything that isn't vanilla Mastodon or a soft fork would hardly be able to adopt themselves and oftentimes not willing either. Fediverse devs are turning away from allowing Mastodon to take control over the development of the Fediverse by introducing more and more non-standard, Mastodon-exclusive stuff.

Even worse: If these were Mastodon-only solutions, they might lead to two possible outcomes. One, since the rest of the Fediverse won't support them, the rest of the Fediverse would easily be able to circumvent them. Routinely even. See "quote-toot opt-in". Remember that almost everything in the Fediverse that's an alternative to Twitter and/or Facebook has quote-posts readily available and can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now.

Two, an unbridgeable rift through the Fediverse as Mastodon splits ~~everything that isn't Mastodon~~ itself off. This could be because Mastodon makes itself incompatible with everything else in the Fediverse by introducing new mandatory features that everything else doesn't support. Or it could be because new rules come with new features that demand the use of these features at instance level, and instances that don't use these features will be Fediblocked. Only that nothing that isn't vanilla Mastodon is even able to use these features.

For these reasons, such safety advancements must never be Mastodon developments.

Instead, they must come from the ActivityPub side. And there are things in development right now which, if actually implemented, will increase security in the Fediverse tremendously.

Specifically, what I mean is what @Mike Macgirvin ?️ is working on right now, the guy who invented Friendica, nomadic identity and Hubzilla, and who has created and is maintaining [ https://codeberg.org/streams/streams]the streams repository[/url] which contains the probably most advanced Fediverse server application of all.

He wants to bring not only nomadic identity to native ActivityPub, but also (streams)' extensive, fine-grained, powerful system of permissions which would then be understood not only amongst (streams) and Hubzilla, but all across the Fediverse amongst those projects that implement them.

Imagine being able to post only to the members of a specific list. Imagine these posts being unable to ever leave the list, save for copy-pasting or screenshots.

Imagine being able to choose which ones of your connections shall be allowed to see your posts. Or send you posts. Or reply to your posts. Or send you DMs. Or see your followers and followeds.

Imagine being able to define permission roles, pre-configured sets of permissions, and assign one of these to each one of your connections.

Imagine being able to set your entire account to post only to your followers by default.

Imagine being able to deny everyone the permission to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to only allow your connections to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to limit the timespan within which a post of yours can be replied to. Only if that post isn't a reply itself, but still.

Imagine being able to wall up your account, but without walling it up against everyone by only walling it up against certain people.

Sounds like utter science-fiction. But all this is available on (streams) right now.

Granted, it does not provide absolute, 100% water-tight safety against everything. Like comparable with a shielding that wouldn't even let one neutrino through in ten billion years. But as much such perfect security is desired, as impossible it is. Not unless e.g. the Black community creates an exclusive, walled-garden safe space whose aspiring members must be validated by meeting an admin or moderator in real life, eye to eye, to prove that they're actually Black. Sorry, but everything else can and will be circumvented to attack and harass them.

Also, yes, this permission system is not as easy-peasy to handle as the official Twitter mobile app. And it currently comes with a fairly cumbersome UI. That's because, as of now, it only works with (streams)' Nomad protocol and, within certain limitations, the Zot6 protocol used by Hubzilla which has a similar set of permission controls.

I mean, I'd love to see a "Black (streams)" come into existence with a bunch of instances of its own and flourish. For one, (streams) has better chances to be a (fairly) safe haven than Mastodon. Besides, this would give (streams) the publicity it so much needs, especially if Black (streams) started thriving after Black Mastodon has failed so spectacularly.

But let's face it, it's more cumbersome to use in comparison with Mastodon than Mastodon is in comparison with Twitter, also because (streams) is the descendant of a Facebook alternative rather than a Twitter clone. And if you're on a phone, it's either a PWA or a Web browser because there's no (streams) app.

Good news, however: As far as I can see, Mike's goal is to implement all this in ActivityPub with FEPs so that any pure ActivityPub project can adopt it. Friendica can adopt it, fairly easily even because Friendica is (streams)' earliest predecessor. Misskey and its forks can adopt it, and these projects are chock-full of LGBTQIA+ people. Everything can adopt it.

Unfortunately, implementing it in ActivityPub so it works nearly the same as on (streams) will be easier than pressuring Mastodon into implementing that stuff.

Lastly, there's one feature of Hubzilla and (streams) that won't make it to ActivityPub because it can't. And that's the ability to turn ActivityPub support off altogether, both for users at channel level and for admins at instance level.

One flick of a switch, and the entirety of Mastodon is blocked. All of it. As is Threads. As are the various Mastodon forks, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, the various Misskey forks, Mitra, micro.blog, Socialhome, Pixelfed, the entire Threadiverse etc. etc., and if you're on (streams), even Friendica and GoToSocial.

But if you are on ActivityPub, that wouldn't make any sense to be able to do.

CC, FYI because you've participated in the thread: @Ericka Simone @Stu @Leon Cowle

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety