The Nexus of Privacy
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4·3 years ago@drwho Not necessarily. In the short term, the huge split in the Republican party means that the NDAA’s already not a slam-dunk, so throwing gasoline on the fire with FISA activism could potentially have an impact. It also adds to pressure on Speaker Johnson, who’s under a lot of fire from Republicans for how badly he’s handled this mess.
And even if they do the short-term reauth (which I agree is more likely than not), it’s still very much an open question as to what happens next – it could be anything from GSRA or PLEWSA (with significant reforms) to a straightforward longer-term reauth with minimal reforms as a “compromise” to the odious FFRA (which *broadens* the scope). So pressure now is also a preparation for the next battle.
1·3 years ago@daveley Great question. A rew reasons:
- mastodon.social’s so big that the Local and Federated timelines aren’t very useful.
- smaller instances (even if they’re not special-interest focused) are more likely to have a good community.
- many other instances have “silenced” mastodon.social (because of its long history of moderation issues – or just because of the volume), so people on other instances are less likely to connect with you.
All that being said, I wasn’t trying to say that mastodon.social was terrible - it’s the advice that’s horrible. It’s just that for most people it’s not the best place to start.
@sibrosan The server rules on your server explicitly prohibit transphobia.
So why do you see enforcing the rules by not federating with another server that’s got a long history of transphobia as “bias”?
@sibrosan Like I say, opinions differ.
Why do you think so many trans and queer people – who are very likely to be directly impacted by transgressions of the rules – come to a different conclusion and advocate preemptively blocking?
See the “We’re here, we’re queer” section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/#were-here-were-queer for more on that perspective.
@sibrosan Or, if an instance that’s about to launch has a long history of discrimination, hate, violance, abuse, and contributions to genocide, you can announce your intention to defederate from them even before they launch.
Like I said in the post, opinions differ!
@Chimaera We can’t stop Meta from doing what they want with the millions of Insta accounts, and we can’t stop instances who want to work with Meta from working with Meta. We can however have a Meta-free region of the fediverse, and it’s very likely to be better in a lot of ways than the Meta-friendly region.
@Chimaera there are a hundreds of instances that don’t want to federate with Meta, so it won’t be just a single walled-off server. It’s hard to know about second and third hand interactions, it depends to some extent on how the implementation is and how the software evolves. One possibility is a schism where the anti-Meta servers defederate from the Meta-friendly servers and there are sone “neutral ground” servers where everybody can interact. We shall see!
And @Kwakigra you are far from the only one who feels that way!
Thanks @darnell , glad you like the analysis! I also think it’s an opportunity as well as a threat, and I agree that right now it looks like most large instances won’t block, and most of all I agree that we’ll have to wait and see what happens!
@fancysandwiches when Darnell and I discussed this before he pointed to some things they’ve said that certainly might imply that – although also might not (which is back to the wait and see). It’s certainly true that somebody like Oprah would have an IT department capable of running it and would see the advantages of being able to do that. But we don’t really know,
all they’ve said is “decentralized”.
“Should the Fediverse welcome its new surveillance-capitalism overlords? Opinions differ!” ⬆️
has links to perspectives from @vantablack @Seirdy @fancysandwiches @alice @viennawriter @oblomov @mcp @fosstodon @darnell @PoliticaConC @tchambers @deadsuperhero @ianbetteridge @dangillmor @smallpatatas @gcrkrause and more … like I say, opinions differ, but no matter where you are on it, I appreciate the time everybody’s put into articulating their positions.Thanks also @cendawanita @jo @edendestroyer @ophiocephalic @oliphant @admin1 and @damon for the feedback and discussions!
BTW in the last section when I’m discussing Mastodon’s moderation issues, one of the things I mention is the lack of an ability to control who can reply to tweets … so apologies in advance if this generates a bunch of notifications! I left the acknowedgments out of the main post to try to limit the damage, we’ll see how well it works.
https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/110594384248698967
@ozoned cool, thanks very much! It’s now at the start of the “don’t tell people it’s easy” section – https://privacy.thenexus.today/kbin-lemmy-fediverse-learnings-from-mastodon/#its-not-easy
@CasscadingSymmetry Very good points thanks! I revised that section to include them. An excerpt:
"For many people, very much including me, the Fediverse isn’t easy. It gets easier over time as you figure things out and get used to the quirks, but I’ve been on Mastodon since 2017 and I still find it very complex – and sometimes confusing, too …
As the examples I gave above in the discussion of reality making it more complex highlight, Kbin and Lemmy have similar quirks. That’s okay! I mean, it’s not ideal, but it is what it is; the developers are doing what they can to improve things, guides are betting better quickly, hopefully it’ll get easier over time – and it’s not like you need an advanced degree in computer sicence to figure it out. But it’s not easy! So please don’t misset expectations and alienate people by telling them that it is!"
https://privacy.thenexus.today/kbin-lemmy-fediverse-learnings-from-mastodon/#its-not-easy
@ozoned exactly! I’m working on a revision, can I add this as a quote to the “Don’t tell peole it’s easy” section? You say it better than I did!
@DahGangalang https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-12-11-2-pager-human-rights-concerns-on-18-bills-in-house-cmt-kids-safety-hearing/ just came out today – they’re new enough that I haven’t seen any detailed analysis.
https://www.theverge.com/news/829492/house-energy-commerce-kids-online-safety-package is a high-level view of the package as a whole. (One of them got dropped, I think the RESET Act_