jerry

jerry, 10 months ago to random

I just read another news article about why mastodon didn’t make it and is dying. It’s very sad to hear and probably explains why I have to keep adding more server capacity to handle all the people quitting mastodon.

jerry, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

It's probably obvious to most of you, but a big difference between the commercial social media platforms and the fediverse is that as those commercial platform grow, they get additional revenue from ads, from selling personal information, and otherwise monetizing their users. While that is turning out to not actually pay the bills for them, in the fediverse, just about every instance is run by volunteers and funded by donations or out of the volunteers' pockets. It's a labor of love and a hope for a better future. When traffic grows, we need to expand our capacity.

That is why I am asking, if you are able, please consider donating to the instance you on to help keep the fediverse ecosystem going. Typically the /about web page will have details on how to donate.

Note: I am well aware that many of you are not in a financial position to donate - and that is OK. We are here to serve you as well. Donations are completely optional.

jerry, 11 months ago to random

Y’all: I have been wrestling with kbin on the fedia.io instance, but I want to take a step back and give some perspective. Kbin is new, it’s growing crazy fast, and it really wasn’t in a place to support the migration from Reddit. Despite that, @ernest has been working his tail off knocking down issues and helpings instance admins.

Reddit certainly seems to be tripling down on their position and I think kbin is shaping up to be a worthy alternative. If you like kbin (on whatever instance you use it on) and want to see it grow, may I ask that you throw some money Ernest’s way? (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin)

I want to publicly thank Ernest for kbin and for his contributions to our growing fediverse community.

/back to whatever you were doing.

jerry, 7 months ago to random

I would like to take a moment to orient people to a brand new and highly innovative feature that was recently introduced in mastodon and many other fedi-apps. This feature enables you to not have to see posts from or interact with people whose posts you don’t like, don’t agree with, or are otherwise offended by.

I like to call it the “block button”.

Does someone on the fedi support the “other side” in the Israel/Hamas conflict? Instead of asking your moderators to figure out which side is objectively right in a no win situation, BLOCK! It’s amazing!

Did someone just say that they are frustrated that they got Covid after having gotten all the vaccines? That’s not disinformation, it’s an opinion and you can block them!

Does someone seem a little too happy that one of Biden’s staff got in trouble or that a democrat is getting charged? BLOCK! It’s amazing!

Did someone use the word Nazi in a way that offends you? Yep, you guessed it! BLOCK!

I have no idea what the median age of people on the fediverse are, but it’s disappointing that moderators are effectively having to act as camp counselors for 13 year olds who are having a disagreement. Yes, the substance of these disagreements tend to be much more consequential, but the pettiness is about the same or perhaps worse.

If someone is harassing you or otherwise violating your instances rules, please do report them, but try to apply some perspective.

jerry, 10 months ago to random

I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but here we are.

If you get into a disagreement with someone here or for whatever reason the person you’re messaging with asks you to disengage, just stop. I’ve been around since the dawn of online arguments and I’ve never seen a person realize the error of their ways because someone was trolling and/or being an asshole to them in the replies.

If someone asks you to stop, stop. If they block you, take a cue from Elsa and Let It Go. Don’t find alternate ways to continue engaging. I’m sure it the parting shot feels good, or you think you have the perfect reply to help them see the reality of a situation, but it isn’t so.

Please, just stop and think: AITA in this situation?

jerry, 3 months ago to random

Hello everyone. I know that these are tough times for many people. If you derive value from the fediverse and have the means to do so, please consider donating to support your instance. Most instances rely on donations to pay the bills (infosec.exchange and friends cost over $3000/month to host).

Instructions on how to donate are generally available on your instance's "about" page (for example: https://infosec.exchange/about)

Also, I firmly believe that access to the fediverse should not be tied to one's ability to pay, and I think it's even more important for those in difficult situations to maintain the social connections that the fediverse provides, so (at least in my view) donations are welcome, but not required in any way.

And for those people who already donate, my hats off to you. You make the fediverse possible. :blobheartcat:​

jerry, 8 months ago to random

I’ve been on the fediverse for 8 years and today was my first run in with CSAM on another (otherwise legit) instance. A reminder to instance admins in the USA: you have a duty to report CSAM that lands on your instance to maintain any sort of criminal and civil indemnification. I hope whoever is responsible for that is brought to justice and the minor involved is helped.

Remember friends, strict liability laws are not to be trifled with.

jerry, 1 year ago to random

jerry, 11 months ago to random

Apparently Meta has been contacting some instance admins about their plans for the fediverse. I am not sure whether to be happy or sad, but they didn’t contact me.

I am seeing a rift emerging in the fediverse that is a bit reminiscent of my own CISA episode back in November of 2022. At the time, the people who objected fell into two overlapping camps:

ACABs that couldn’t see past CISA’s placement in the DHS and simply object to the concept of any law enforcement affiliated person being on the fedi (NB: there are a LOT of them here and they’re all over the fediverse)

Instance admins that wanted to protect their constituents from the surveillance that comes along with DHS.

While the context is materially different, the Meta situation seems to come down on similar lines: conceptual rejection of Meta because of who Meta is; and a concern for the privacy of one’s fedi-data.

Regarding the former point, I think it is fundamental to the fediverse for people and instances to be able to pick who they want to participate with, almost for whatever reason. If there are people who really dislike bald guys, I’m one to block. The latter reason is more problematic. As with the DHS situation, Meta creating an account or an instance is really not an effective way to conduct a surveillance operation (either to send people to jail or to show them ads) - not on an infrastructure that has oodles of open APIs that make it far easier to collect data using direct connections vs creating an instance.

Said another way, the lack of a branded Meta or CISA account or instance is not an indication that such data extraction isn’t happening. We generally wouldn’t know if it were.

I’ve heard the “embrace/extend/extinguish” accusation about every 6 months in the 7+ years I’ve been here. The company that bought Pawoo was going to take over the fediverse. Medium was going to be installing paywalls and feeding ads across the fediverse. Vivaldi and Mozilla were going to bring so much trash into our timelines that we should just preemptively block them.

If I, or any instance admin, finds that Meta or any other company is surreptitiously collecting data from our instances, we will take action. I will highlight that suspending instances and accounts won’t be very effective here - we would have to implement firewall level blocks, assuming we can identify where they are coming from. And I doubt it will be coming from a branded instance. Sadly, even this is trivial to work around if they connect to a relay or set up an account on an instance that doesn’t isn’t blocked. The major concern, of course, is that your fedi data is linked to a record they maintain about you in their own databases, and then use your content to help tailor ads as you visit other parts of the internet.

If we identify that an instance is behaving badly, of course they are going to get suspended, just as happens today. But be aware that this only prevents YOU from seeing THEIR content. If Meta does set up an instance and start spamming out ads, that is exactly what will happen.

In the mean time, if you want to block Meta owned domains and instances who aren’t blocking Meta owned domains and instances who are not blocking instances who are not blocking meta owned domains, that’s ok.

For me, I am going to wait until I know more to make a decision.

jerry, 6 months ago to random

To those people celebrating a year on the fediverse, I’m glad you’re here and I’m honored to be part of this community we’ve built together.

It’s someone saying “I’m glad you’re here”

jerry, 7 months ago to random

October marks one year since the mass exodus from Twitter made my life exciting. For those that joined and stayed, I’m glad you’re here :blobheartcat:​

jerry, 6 months ago to random

About a year ago, we were experience peak migrations from Twitter to mastodon. For those that stuck with it, I’m glad you’re still here. It’s been quite a year.

jerry, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Pardon the intrusion. Many thanks to those people who donate to support the fediverse instance(s) you use. Nearly all fediverse instances are free to join and use, but they are not free to run. Most instance operators donate tremendous personal time and money because we believe in a better, more privacy conscious social media and we love the growing community that exists here.

These are tough financial times for many. I believe it is important for people going through rough times to have an access to this social outlet. If you are in a position to do so, please consider setting up a monthly donation to support your instance. You can usually find information on how to do so on the About page of your instance. For example, https://infosec.exchange/about. In my experience, most donors contribute between $5 and $20 per month, with some less and some more.

The fediverse doesn’t sell your data or monetize your social activities, which is how nearly all other commercial social networks pay their bills. We generally are dependent on donations from ourselves and from the people using the instance.

For Infosec.exchange, the bills are about $3000US per month, between server rentals, storage providers, and content delivery services. (If you’re curious, that’s $2k to Hetzner for servers, $300 to Wasabi and Backblaze for storage and backups, and $400-$700 for Bunny and Fastly - and this includes all the various mastodon, peertube, pixelfed, lemmy, bookwyrm, firefish, and other servers). I am fortunate that our donations usually come close to covering the bills. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. That’s not the case for many instances, though.

Again, donating is voluntary and not required and there is zero problems with those who can’t afford it. At the same time, donations keep this thing called the fediverse alive, and without them, we won’t go far.

I sincerely appreciate being a part of this community and hope you have a great October.

jerry, 9 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

Due to popular demand, here is a list of the fedi-services that are part of the infosec.* family:
1 - https://infosec.exchange - Glitch-soc fork of Mastodon (this instance does not block threads.net)
2 - https://relay.infosec.exchange - Activitypub relay
3 - https://video.infosec.exchange - Peertube instance (like youtube)
4 - https://infosec.press - WriteFreely blog*
5 - https://pixel.infosec.exchange - Pixelfed instance (like instagram)
6 - https://matrix.infosec.exchange - Synapse (with sliding sync) homeserver*
7 - https://infosec.place - Akkoma instance (like mastodon)
8 - https://infosec.town - iceshrimp instance (like mastodon)
9 - https://infosec.pub - Lemmy instance (like reddit)
10 - https://fedia.io - General interest mbin instance (also like reddit)
11 - https://fedia.social - General interst Iceshrimp instance
12 - https://elk.infosec.exchange - Elk web interface for Mastodon
13 - https://books.infosec.exchange - Bookworym instance (like goodreads)
14 - https://meetups.infosec.exchange (mobilizon)
15 - https://infosec.space - Glitch-soc fork of Mastodon (this instance does
block threads.net)

*indicates the instance authenticates against Infosec.exchange

jerry, 8 months ago to random

There’s a lot of consternation in the fediverse lately about instances blocking each other, admins fighting, blocklists, and the like. If you’re on an instance that blocks other communities you want to participate in, politely ask your moderators/administrators to reconsider. If they disagree, I recommend moving to a different instance rather than a prolonged argument. Some administrators prefer erring on the side of over blocking and protecting their user base than being permissive and expose their userbase to riff raff or, in some instances, just to avoid the appearance of being too permissive to other instances.

Life is short. Find an instance that works for you.

(Edit: and the converse is true - if your instance is overly permissive and you are regularly being harassed or otherwise bothered and your moderators aren’t responding as you expect, find another instance that is better aligned to your needs. Life is still too short. Find an instance that works for you)

jerry, 7 months ago to random

Dear people of the fediverse: someone expressing an opinion about a controversial topic that you happen to disagree with does not constitute spreading disinformation. Thank you for attending my TED talk.

jerry, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

The comments and abuse reports about people sympathetic to the Palestinians or to the Israelis is getting out of hand. I understand this is an incredibly charged and difficult situation for everyone. Seek first to understand before being an asshole to your fellow humans from behind the relative safety of your computer monitor, please.

jerry, 11 months ago to random

Don’t forget to push your changes to production on your way out the door this afternoon before the long weekend.

Elmo summoning fire

jerry, 8 months ago to random

Apparently unlike the leader of another social media network, I have never turned off satellites to thwart the military operations of one of my country’s allies in their attempt to defend themselves against an aggressor.

jerry, 6 months ago to random

Today marks one year for many people on the fediverse after Twitter fell apart. I’m glad you’re here, and I hope this place os valuable to you.

jerry, 5 months ago to random

It's that time of the month where I ask for people who are able to donate to support their fediverse instance (assuming your instance accepts donations).

Fediverse services usually provided for free, however they are not free to operate. As I've said many times before, I feel strongly that this service be available to all, regardless of ability to pay or donate.

So here I am asking for your support or continued support to keep this awesome thing going. You can usually find how to donate/support your instance by going to your instance's about page (ex., https://infosec.exchange/about).

My thanks to everyone who supports your instance. I appreciate you.

I hope everyone has a great holiday season.

jerry, 5 months ago to random

Looks like mastodon.social has a spam attack happening. Stay calm and report them please.

jerry, 5 months ago to random

You better not shout, you better not cry

video/mp4

jerry, 11 months ago to random

I have this cat laying with me. He doesn’t care about my problems at work. He doesn’t care about Meta and the fediverse. He doesn’t care that Fedia.io’s database is a :dumpster_fire:​

He, for some reason, just wants to lay right here. Purring softly. Twitching now and then as he dreams. Apparently feeling safe.

He’s 17. I give him insulin injections twice a day and he has a shaved spot on his back with a glucose meter glued to his skin. Yet he still trusts me.

When I adopted him 17 years ago, he was a wreck. He peed on my couches, pooped on my bed. But he grew out of that.

He and I play games, even still today. i will act scared to see him and back away, and he will start chasing me.

He knows how to ask me for what he wants. I feel like I understand him sometimes.

I’m really am super lucky he put on a show when I was looking for a rescue to adopt all those years ago. He’s been an awesome cat.

jerry, 5 months ago to random

To those leaving due to my “heavy handed”, “ethically questionable,” and “morally bankrupt” decision to let people decide whether to interact with Threads: I am sorry it didn’t work out.

To people on instances who will soon block me/us because I did not block Threads, thanks for being there, I wish you all well.

💕