thenexusofprivacy

@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange

A newsletter about #privacy, #technology, #policy, #strategy, and #justice.

Currently at @nexusofprivacy, but looking for a new home and so checking out infosec.exchange

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

thenexusofprivacy, to random

PCLOB (the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board) has received approval to release an unclassified version of its December 2020 classified report on the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) use of XKEYSCORE, an intelligence analysis tool.

Read the report here: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/900dc3c3-dc5f-4202-b7f8-55ce574afb1d/NSA%20XKEYSCORE%20REPORT.pdf

thenexusofprivacy, (edited ) to microsoft

Business is business: Snap, Microsoft, and X endorse the anti-LGBTQ+, pro-censorship KOSA bill

https://privacy.thenexus.today/kosa-snap-x-microsoft/

Why would pro-LGBTQ+ companies like Snap and endorse ? Business is business! What's important is looking like they're trying to protect children -- even though KOSA would actually harm kids.

Politically, KOSA's anti-LGBTQ+ aspects gives Republicans (and anti-LGBTQ+ tech companies) a reason to get on board. If some of the Democrats who say they're pro-LGBTQ+ Democrats "reluctantly" decide to support it then it's got the votes to pass. On the other hand, if pro-LGBTQ+ Democrats and legislators of both parties who really do want to help kids stick to their guns, then Congress is a lot more likely to do something that actually helps kids.

With quotes from @evangreer of @fight, @melissagira, @zephoria @juliaserano, and @charliejane and links to actions like https://stopkosa.com

thenexusofprivacy, to microsoft

Microsoft endorses anti-LGBTQ online "child safety" bill KOSA night before Big Tech hearing (US Politics)

Worth noting: Microsoft owns LinkedIn, which wouldn't be particularly affected by KOSA.

There's a hearing on Wednesday, and potentially a Senate vote soon, so if you're in the US now's a good time to contact your Senators. https://stopkosa.com and EFF's page make it easy!

https://gazette.com/news/wex/microsoft-president-endorses-online-child-safety-bill-night-before-big-tech-hearing/article_cd2e8eb5-ba98-5e95-9333-5646dd6a249f.html

@bad_internet_bills

thenexusofprivacy,

@olives Very true. And it won't make kids safer. @bad_internet_bills

thenexusofprivacy, (edited ) to random

Steps towards a safer fediverse (DRAFT)

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

Feedback welcome!

There are some straightforward opportunities for short-term safety improvements, but this is only the start of what's needed to change the dynamic more completely.

jerry, to random

Somewhere, Monday is awaiting my arrival.

video/mp4

thenexusofprivacy,

@jerry remember, it's always Monday somewhere in the solar system!

thenexusofprivacy, to random

Testimony opposing Washington HB 1951, weak algorithmic discrimination legislation

https://privacy.thenexus.today/opposing-hb1951/

Washington's short legislative session is in high gear, Unfortunately, despite HB 1951's good intent of dealing wth algorithmic description, it looks like it was written by tech lobbyists. Here's my written testimony.

An excerpt:

"My position on HB 1951 is CON. While the goal of providing protections against algorithmic discrimination is vital, the bill as drafted does not actually provide meaningful protections to Washingtonians. Other witnesses at the hearing discussed several of the key problems with the bill including the lack of requirements for transparency (aka notice) or opt-out, the narrowness of the definition of "automated decision tool" (Sec. 1(3)), and the lack of a private right of action.
Coming at it from the technical perspective, I'd also like to highlight the weakness of the impact assessment requirements in Section 3."

thenexusofprivacy, to random

Inside Biden’s secret surveillance court

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/inside-bidens-secret-surveillance-court-00136175

Alfred Ng and John Sakellariadis with a deep dive into the Data Protection Review Court -- including quotes from @maxschrems of @noybeu

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

If you want all the gory details on how I migrated my Citation Needed newsletter from to self-hosted here they are:
https://citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/

Happy to try to help anyone else making this move!

thenexusofprivacy,

@molly0xfff thanks for sharing! Can I ask what you're doing for footnotes on Ghost? This has been the bane of my Ghostly existence: adding a new footnote requires renumbering, and for the footnote to be linkable it needs to be either an HTML or markdown card (so I can't just cut-and-paste the wysiwyg test).

thenexusofprivacy,

@molly0xfff thanks much! janky-but-useful is good!

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

in hindsight, snark via strikethrough may have been a tactical error on my part

Screenshot of text from a separate article: "We’ll close our coverage with the line of the day from tech blogger/Wikipedia super-editor Molly White: 'Finally, people will be able to turn their money into an anonymous peer-to peer asset outside of government control, to which they own their own keys and thus control completely, without having to involve powerful financial institutions like BlackRock.'" None of the text is struck out.

thenexusofprivacy,

@molly0xfff ~~ I had a snarky reply but apparently Glitch's Markdown support doesn't include strikethrough so I'll just say ~~ maybe so.

maegul, to bluesky
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

So for those curious about how is going, their numbers are approaching numbers now.

3M users, 124M posts
(as of recently, see https://bsky.app/profile/jaz.bsky.social/post/3kijxsrsfk32t)

Masto:

7.1M users, 807M posts
(https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon)

This is with masto hovering around these numbers all of 2023 and bsky hitting 2M users less than 2 mnths ago, all while behind invite codes.

There will probably be a point when bsky is “bigger” than masto and I’m guessing some will use it as a reason to dump on masto.

thenexusofprivacy,

@maegul have there been any active user numbers on bsky? Mastodon's historical retention is < 15% so there are < 1M MAU today (not counting the broadly-defederaed "bad fedi" instances). Bluesky started invite-only which makes it easier to have a higher retention rate and it's newer so it wouldn't surprise me if it's bigger than Mastodon already or at least fairly close.

To me it's not so much a reason to dump on or the , as an indication that the opportunity that Mastodon didn't take advantage of is still there. Bluesky hasn't addressed their moderation problems and so it's going to be very bumpy when they open it up, and also they haven't really started to federate and there are likely to be bumps there as well. They've got some good things as well, there's a lot the fediverse can learn from BlackSky, and it's not an either-or thing. https://privacy.thenexus.today/work-together-with-metas-fediverses-and-bluesky/ talks about some ways the fediverse and the Bluesky/ATProto world can work together.

thenexusofprivacy,

Yes @aendra is great, i assume you saw https://www.aendra.com/posts/my-top-bluesky-feature-requests-for-2024 -- the point about how "some part of me feels strongly that the "federate by default, public by default" nature of the Fediverse is a huge driver of these issues is" is completely on target. And functionality aside, I agree that Mastodon today acts like they don't want journalists around. Of course some of it's also that the more positive aspects of not wanting transphobic journalists around -- which has been an issue for newsie.social and journa.host -- and the question is how to keep that withough the exclusionary attitudes to other journalists.

@maegul @mackuba

thenexusofprivacy,

Thanks @mackuba, great data. Yes, Mastodon's MAU are logins within the last month so it's apples-to-oranges, still very interesting to see.

I'm curious what will happen when they open it up. Back in the day Google+ was amazing with a few million people in the beta, and then it wasn't so amazing, but Bluesky has better moderation functionality and a lot more diversity that G+ did when they opened it up so we shall see.

@maegul

thenexusofprivacy, to fediverse

What fediverse apps and software, support quote posts today?

Here's a great thread by @polotek about quoted posts.

https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/111699960916060256

What fediverse software platforms or apps supports quoted posts today (sometimes implemented as a link, a screenshot, or a reply)?

@thenexusofprivacy

thenexusofprivacy,

@j3di thanks!

thenexusofprivacy, to fediverse

Strategies for the free fediverses

https://privacy.thenexus.today/strategies-for-the-free-fediverses/

The fediverse is evolving into different regions

  • "Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.

  • "free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally

The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.

Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.

  • Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!

  • Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

  • Emphasize "networked communities"

  • Support concentric federations of instances and communities

  • Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)

  • Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'

  • Build a sustainable ecosystem

  • Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light

  • Reduce the dependency on Mastodon

  • Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity

  • Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses

  • Organize!

@fediverse @fediversenews

thenexusofprivacy,

The free fediverses should emphasize networked communities

https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-free-fediverses-should-emphasize-networked-communities/

Here's how @lrhodes describes the Networked Communities view:

"instances are valuable for the relations and interactions they facilitate locally AND for their ability to connect you to other parts of the network."

By contrast, @evanprodromou notes that "Big Fedi" advocates typically see instances as typically see the instance as "mostly a dumb pipe." But The Networked Communities view aligns much better with the free fediverses' values – as does the "Social Archipelago" view @noracodes sketches in The Fediverse is Already Dead. Not only that, it's good strategy!

@fediversenews

thenexusofprivacy,

The free fediverses should support concentric federations of instances

Part 4 of Strategies for the Free Fediverses

https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-free-fediverses-should-support-concentric-federations-of-instances/

Here's how @zkat describes caracoles: "you essentially ask to join concentric federations of instances ... with smaller caracoles able to vote to federate with entire other caracoles."

And @ophiocephalic's "fedifams" are a similar idea: "Communities could align into fedifams based on whatever conditions of identity, philosophy or interest are relevant to them. Instances allied into fedifams could share resources and mutually support each other in many way"

The idea's a natural match for community-focused, anti-surveillance capitalism free fediverses, fits in well with the Networked Communities model discussed in part 3, and helps address scalability of consent-based federation discussed in Part 2.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-free-fediverses-should-support-concentric-federations-of-instances/

@fediversenews @fediverse

thenexusofprivacy,

The free fediverses should make it easier to move between (and create) instances

Part 5 of Strategies for the Free Fediverse

https://privacy.thenexus.today/make-it-easier-to-move-to-instances-in-the-free-fediverses/

There's likely to be a lot of moving between instances as people and instances sort themselves out into the free fediverses and Meta's fediverses -- and today, moving accounts on the fediverse today. There are lots of straightforward ways to improve it, many of which don't even require improvements to the software. And there are also opportunities to make creating, customizing, and connecting instances easier.

@fediversenews

thenexusofprivacy,

The free fediverses should work together with people and instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky whose goals and values align with the free fediverse

https://privacy.thenexus.today/work-together-with-metas-fediverses-and-bluesky/

Part 6 of Strategies for the free fediverses

Many of the Meta advocates I've talked to share the free fediverses' long-term goal of building a sustainable alternative to surveillance capitalism -- and the same is true for people on Bluesky. So there are likely to be situations where some of the people and instances in Meta's fediverses and Bluesky wind up as situational allies to the free fediverses.

A few areas where collaboration could be very useful:

  • A key principle of organizing is meeting people where they are.

  • Moderation on decentralized networks is a shared challenge.

  • Bringing concepts similar to Bluesky's custom feeds to the fediverses, and more generally focusing on human-focused and liberatory (as opposed to oppressive) uses of algorithms in decentralized social networks designed from the margins.

  • Meta's fediverses, Bluesky, and the free fediverses are all vulnerable to disinformation.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/work-together-with-metas-fediverses-and-bluesky/

@fediversenews

thenexusofprivacy,

FYI @FediTips @kissane @tokyo_0 @underlap @FediGarden @jseggers @evanprodromou @renchap
I mentioned you and linked to your posts in ⬆️

thenexusofprivacy,

A lot of people are indeed talking about things more generally in terms of the or . In this series though I'm talking primarily about how today's fediverse should evolve so decided to stick with the term fediverse.

@hamishcampbell

thenexusofprivacy,

Thanks for the lengthy response @tallship I'm using the plural of "fediverses" to emphasize the evolution to regions. The split between instances that federate with Meta (Meta's fediverss) and ones that don't but instead reject surveillance capitalism (the free fediverses) isn't the only one.

As to what Meta's up to, here's my thoughts. https://privacy.thenexus.today/embrace-extend-and-exploit/

@fediversenews

thenexusofprivacy,

Instances in the free fediverses should consider "transitive defederation" from instances that federate with Meta

https://privacy.thenexus.today/consider-transitively-defederatiion/

Part 7 of Strategies for the free fediverses

Transitive defederation -- defederating from instances that federate with Threads as well as defederating from Threads -- isn't likely to be an all-or-nothing thing in the free fediverses. Tradeoffs are different for different people and instances. This is one of the strengths of the fediverse, so however much transitive defederation there winds up being, I see it as overall as a positive thing -- although also messy and complicated.

So the recommendation here is for instances to consider : discuss, and decide what to do. I've also got some thoughts on how to have the discussion -- and the strategic aspects.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/consider-transitively-defederatiion/

@fediversenews @fediverse

thenexusofprivacy, (edited ) to fediverse

Mastodon and today's fediverse are unsafe by design and unsafe by default – and instance blocking is a blunt but powerful safety tool

Part 1 of "Golden opportunities for the fediverse – and whatever comes next"

https://privacy.thenexus.today/unsafe-by-design-and-unsafe-by-default/

Over the course of this multi-part series, I'll discuss Mastodon and the fediverse's long-standing problems with abuse and harassment; the strengths and weaknesses of current tools like instance blocking and blocklists; the approaches emerging tools like and take, along with potential problems; paths to improving the situation; and how the fediverse as a whole can seize the moment and build on the progress that's being made; . At the end I'll collect it all into a single post, with a revised introduction.

This first installment has three sections:

  • Today's fediverse is unsafe by design and unsafe by default

  • Instance-level federation choices are a blunt but powerful safety tool

  • Instance-level federation decisions reflect norms, policies, and interpretations

thenexusofprivacy,

Compare and contrast: Fediseer, FIRES, and The Bad Space

https://privacy.thenexus.today/fediseer-fires-and-the-bad-space/

Part 4 of "Golden opportunities for the fediverse – and whatever comes next"

The Bad Space is only one of the projects exploring different ways of moving beyond the fediverse's current reliance on instance-level blocking and blocklists. It's especially interesting to compare and contrast The Bad Space with two somewhat-similar projects:

  • Fediseer is another instance catalog, including endorsements as well as negative judgments about instances.
  • FIRES (an acronym for Fediverse Intelligence Recommendations & Replication Endpoint Server) is infrastructure for moderation advisories and recommendations.

(I originally shared this post here but forgot to included it in this thread. Oops! So I'm cut-and-pasting and sharing again. There's some interesting dialog in the comments in the original post.)

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