Joshua Casey @JoshuaACasey@qoto.org

Just ICYMI: the Harvard Library Information Lab have a beta (you have to ask for access) tool for downloading Twitter threads in high fidelity, in case you need a permanent record of key threads for research purposes. It works *great* and is the only tool I've found that reproduces threads at high fidelity and without a lot of hassle. (The @internetarchive Wayback Machine is, of course, a good fallback.) https://social.perma.cc

PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet. As you look around for a new social media platform, I implore you, only use one that is a part of the World Wide Web. tl;dr avoid Hive and Post. If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can...
https://jwz.org/b/yj62

Twitter data breach CONFIRMED, affects tens of millions of accounts (far more than originally thought). I was suspended from Twitter hours after reporting this. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/54-million-twitter-users-stolen-data-leaked-online-more-shared-privately/

#ReasonMagazine’s guide to #Mastodon

https://reason.com/2022/11/25/mystified-by-mastodon-were-here-to-help/

@enbrown #twitter #fediverse #socialmedia #decentralization

More here: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/epdf/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4498

Four years later and to no one's surprise, we have yet to see any benefits from FOSTA. Worse, in many ways, FOSTA has consistently proven to do more harm than good:

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/10/more-evidence-that-fosta-benefited-no-one.htm

@Jason I don’t want my private communications informing my commercial activity by default. Only totalitarians make the “nothing to hide” argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

ATTENTION EVERYONE WRINGING THEIR HANDS OVER “#MASTODON ADMINS CAN READ MY DIRECT MESSAGES”: #SysAdmins have *always* been able to read your #email and DMs unless encrypted, including at the big #SocialNetworks and Internet providers. We used to have t-shirts that said, “I READ YOUR EMAIL.”

It’s just hitting now because you got used to places where the admins were kept away in their cubicles and data centers instead of greeting you at the front door.

#privacy #security #InfoSec #cybersecurity

Precedents like the German government running a Mastodon server are important beyond the obvious reasons. They reinforce the urgency of serious public funding for open code.

If we treated open code as part of the essential infrastructure of the 21st century and funded it at billions of USD/EUR as opposed to tiny grants here and there, the "fediverse" model of interconnected, self-governing communities would become the norm, not the exception.

See also (but not only): https://publiccode.eu/

If you’re setting up your own fediverse presence at your own domain, don’t make the same mistake I did and call it mastodon.my.domain. Give it a generic name like social.my.domain, activity.my.domain, fedi.my.domain or something similar. You don’t want to tie an endpoint for an open protocol to a single implementation or perpetuate the myth that #Mastodon is the #fediverse.

(Yes, you can migrate to a different subdomain later but it’s not a one-click process.)

#fediTips #instance #admin

Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:

1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours

@jeffjarvis I live in Florida and work for a university; DeSantis is every bit the Fascist Trump is. One of his big projects is muzzling university faculty through 1) the "Stop WOKE" law which was recently struck down in court, and 2) the crapification of tenure by "reviewing" tenured faculty every five years. The tenure review seems to be on hold (till next year), but it threatens to clear the State University System of the best faculty who will leave.

Please tell me someone else has done a writeup on the abysmal privacy practices of post.news

I just looked over their policies, and they are execrable. I'd love to not have to write up the main places where they fail, which is why I really hope someone else has done it.

And: Post.news is created by experienced professionals with ample funding. Absent an explanation of why these terms are so bad, it's fair to assume it's intentional.

This seems like a very big deal to me.

Official instances like the EU have just set up here are a massive boon to verification, combating disinformation, and helping insure official sources aren't dependent on private middlemen.

It's also very good to see that the "slow, lumbering" EU was one of the quickest out of the gate with something like this.

👏 👏 @EDPS_supervisor
https://social.network.europa.eu/about

I put together a basic proof of concept for using existing #Mastodon installations as SSO for #Matrix, using #Synapse. Here's what the authentication and authorization flow for that looks like!

While Mastodon doesn't support #OpenlD Connect, OIDC is just OpenlD on top of OAuth2.0. If your app allows configuring all URLS for your ldP you can use nearly any OAuth2.0 provider.

Avatars currently aren't supported via this (| added one) but can be! Working on a patch for Synapse!