Notices by Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net), page 68
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Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 13:24:13 UTC 
Bob Mottram
Another bad article about Mastodon from the tech media. Not as bad as the Mashable one which was really just "I don't like the name!" (insert crying baby gif), but still pretty bad.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/apps/a25956/mastodon-twitter-open-web
The main problem here is the idea that some benevolent admin - perhaps a Zuckerberg-like figure - will guide the socnets to the promised land in which there will be One True Domain, zero griefing or impersonations and all will be beautificent...
(record scratch)
That silo model has been around for 10+ years now, and we know how it worked out. The sad reality is that admins themselves can be what the author calls "ne'er-do-wells" and they cannot solve all social ills. People are always going to have to work out their differences themselves - difficult though that may be at times. There is no white knight on a nyan cat who is going to ride to the rescue of the huddled masses of internet proles.
So this is another failure to grok what federation is about and the history of failed meganode moderation attempts. If has been suggested that such comprehension failures might be deliberate, and there could be some mileage in that depending upon where the revenue streams for some of these tech journos originate. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 11:59:59 UTC
Bob Mottram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4xhxVt2bw4 -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 11:24:36 UTC
Bob Mottram
De-commodification https://social.freedombone.net/url/14349 -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 11:07:41 UTC
Bob Mottram
@pati @milan
:-( -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 10:24:20 UTC
Bob Mottram
@fl0wn if I were implementing it I'd move all web logs to a ramdisk. In my case when it's enabled I have separate log files for each domain, separated into access and errors. access is probably the most sensitive one though, so as a quick modification just moving that to a ramdisk will probably give users better privacy. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 10:20:09 UTC
Bob Mottram
@lambadalambda as an idea content warnings are ok so long as you implement them via hashtags, like NSFW. The user could then choose in their settings what they want to be warned about. #warningthiscontentmaycontaincontent -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 10:15:41 UTC
Bob Mottram
@fl0wn on !Freedombone I use a ramdisk for the tmp directory and they're pretty easy to create within /etc/fstab. By default I just log to /dev/null and have something in the control panel to turn logging on if I need to debug something. If I forget to turn it off again it does that automatically after a few days. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 09:57:43 UTC
Bob Mottram
@fl0wn another strategy would be to write logs to a ramdisk if you have enough ram, or to write them to a tomb and then throw away the key every however often. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 09:38:30 UTC
Bob Mottram
@frankiesaxx it all comes back to the problem of having too many users on one server. Users should be able to block whoever they want, but having the admin do that without agreement of the users is problematic. As the number of users on an instance increases the probability of affinity between the admin and any random user approaches 0.5 -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 09:17:42 UTC
Bob Mottram
So the mastodon.social privacy policy is ok, but if I were the maintainer I'd avoid recording any IP addresses. One thing to consider is that when you're a meganode both state and non-state organisations will become interested in your logs and will try to obtain them either explicitly, with goons showing up and making threats, or also less explicitly with implants and exfiltration or NSLs and gagging orders. If you don't record IPs then in the worst case there's not much that third parties can get.
Another factor to consider is that the demographic of fediverse folks probably includes a higher proportion of non-normative views and lifestyles than you might find in the silos. These non-normative people are precisely the groups which the really bad guys always seek to target. So as maintainer you should be concerned with your user's interests and practice metadata minimization which can limit any potential damage. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 08:49:18 UTC
Bob Mottram
@andybalaam I've put a few users onto Ubuntu so at some point I'll no doubt be explaining why the user interface has suddenly changed. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 08:04:33 UTC
Bob Mottram
@u2764 @sixohsix value is etherial, subjective, historically contingent. The spectre in the system. -
futureBoyfriend (deadsuperhero@social.nasqueron.org)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 07:00:01 UTC 
futureBoyfriend
@PoliticalVoyeur @LinuxSocist You can still enjoy Linux as an end user, you don't necessarily need to be purely devloper-minded or even sysadmin-minded to use it on a daily basis.
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Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 06:57:44 UTC
Bob Mottram
@sim @maiyannah @mangeurdenuage regardless of protocol, there's usually server logs. In Eben Moglen' "Freedom in the cloud" talk he describes how who keeps the logs is a determinant of political power in the network. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 06:50:37 UTC
Bob Mottram
@maiyannah #mastosplained -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 06:47:27 UTC
Bob Mottram
@maiyannah @mangeurdenuage @sim on !Freedom one logging is turned off by default for both performance and privacy reasons. However, this doesn't stop other gnusocial servers from collecting your IP address, and if they're evil selling it to advertisers or states. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 06:28:44 UTC
Bob Mottram
@sonya @sim that no doubt could be done if it's wanted. Export/import follow list. -
Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 06:23:54 UTC
Bob Mottram
@sim I guess they're turning to the dark side. Trouble is if you do that you haven't solved any problems. You've merely moved some users from one advertising hell to another. The advertising model has major down sides which we all know about. -
Sim (sim@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2017 05:03:13 UTC 
Sim
"However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses."
So this is data-mining, yes? This is mastodon social.
All Bobinas P4G content and data are available under the