73ms
@73ms@sopuli.xyz
Mastodon: @73ms@infosec.exchange
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 4 days ago:
That’s true, you may or may not agree with the motivation but it was certainly because Mastodon is trying to find ways to not repeat the destructive patterns of other social media.
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 4 days ago:
My understanding is that search on the microblogging side of the fedi is intended to be “broken” (from the view of someone expecting a Twitter-style search); hashtags are for opting-in to global discoverability whilst without them your posts are intended to be stumbled upon and/or passed around rather than sought out.
Well it’s a bit more complicated. A really significant reason search isn’t that comprehensive even on a big instance like mastodon.social is that Mastodon prioritizes privacy and has made it optional to be included in the search results with mastodon.social also opting to make it disabled by default when they added it.
A second problem is that if you’re on a smaller instance you may not be seeing enough posts because they don’t propagate there. This also affects hashtags. There’s projects like Holos Discover fediverse search engine and Fediscovery that are addressing this prolem but they won’t change the fact that many users simply have it disabled when it comes to indexing their posts.
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 4 days ago:
That’s why it took so long after they got convinced to do it but not really why it took so long overall.
- Comment on LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy 1 week ago:
Have they tried doing this for Satoshi Nakamoto yet?
- Comment on This is a federated test post from a nodeBB forum. 1 week ago:
as long as it’s a reply to another post I’ve never seen that happen when mentioning the community. What the linked post says is certainly true, the federation between some platforms like Lemmy or WP and Mastodon doesn’t always seem to be as solid as it is between Mastodon instances or even other platforms that regularly interact with Mastodon.
- Comment on This is a federated test post from a nodeBB forum. 1 week ago:
You might have to tag the community for it to show up.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
The features are theoretical in the sense that there is no real guarantee they’d be possible after BSky corp changes their behavior and that they are in use only in the least significant way possible, for tiny and irrelevant numbers of users. But of course this is just restating the obvious again. For a network truly to be shielded against this sort of thing it should be decentralized already before.
See this for how constellation makes no difference: mastodon.social/…/116126736087551797
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I don’t really see anything wrong with making an app for the purpose. Bit of a different target audience and probably easier setup. Also raises awareness via news coverage and by getting people to talk about it.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
This is exactly the dynamic the article was describing: concerns about power concentration get answered with lists of theoretical protocol features instead of engaging with how the network actually operates. Listing technical escape hatches doesn’t address who controls the dominant infrastructure in practice.
The overwhelming majority of users rely on hosted PDSes, the main relay, and the default appview. Whoever controls those layers controls visibility, discovery, moderation signals, and reach. That’s where practical power sits. Doesn’t matter whether migration is technically possible under ideal conditions because if you’ll need it they won’t be ideal.
Acquisitions and policy changes can happen quickly. Tools that exist “yesterday” are irrelevant if users don’t act before control consolidates, and history shows that most don’t. Claiming decentralization can wait until the last possible moment ignores how network effects and defaults entrench power long before any formal lock-in occurs.
It’s also worth noting that the original article isn’t even arguing “the fediverse is better,” yet the response immediately reframes the debate as a comparison. Even if we entertain that framing, the situations aren’t symmetrical. Yes, a fediverse instance can block migrations or misbehave but no single party in the fediverse comes close to the infrastructural dominance Bluesky Corp currently holds across relays, appviews, and user gravity. An individual Mastodon instance misbehaving affects its users. Bluesky Corp fully controls the experience of over 99% of the users on the protocol and so holds the power to shape the experience of the entire network.
The issue isn’t whether both systems have theoretical weaknesses. It’s where systemic leverage concentrates in practice. And ATProto’s architecture, particularly the cost and complexity of running the more demanding components that need to have a global view of the network, structurally favors concentration at those layers.
- Comment on Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?" 2 weeks ago:
Did this say whether the reasoning models get this right more than the others? Was curious about that but missed it if it was mentioned.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think you’re even talking about the points the article makes… You probably wouldn’t want them selling your data either but this is more about avoiding the kind of fate Twitter had.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
They captured some hype but nowadays you often see people complain that the userbase isn’t diverse and that all they talk about is US politics, there’s lots of dormant accounts and the active user statistics have been looking pretty bleak since early 2025.
Assuming they don’t actually have 100M in funding already secured (which i doubt) I think there’s some doubt over how long they’ll actually be able to continue operating this way.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
Blacksky does not fundamentally change the situation. They’ve got a yearly budget in excess of $100,000 and roughly 0.01% of the users. Bluesky can make all those users completely disappear from the other 99.99% with the press of a button and in the case of Link they did exactly that.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
This is yet another version of the ridiculous “we’re decentralized in theory” argument which the article does address. In practice it is chained because they are in complete control of the real-world use of it.
People are even worried about Google’s control over Android recently and Google has much less power over AOSP than Bluesky Corp. has over ATproto.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
It obviously matters whether the data and control is mostly in one company’s hands, not just whether it is in “many repositories”.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
Not much substance to your comment either… do you agree with it?
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
You’re right that the issue isn’t just trusting a third party in general, that’s how it is for most users on Lemmy or Mastodon too.
The difference isn’t whether you personally run a server. It’s whether the network depends on a single company.
Bluesky operating basically all of the infrastructure on that network means:
- they decide moderation policy and what content gets boosted or hidden for everyone
- they alone can change the rules for access and in general (ads, pay to be seen etc.)
- they can de-prioritize or cut off third-party infrastructure
- if the company fails, pivots or is pressured legally (I’m sure the current US government could never do such a thing), the network can effectively collapse
Here on Lemmy there is no single company that has all that power. If your admin goes bad there are real options to move to and the network will still exist even if they shut their service down. You also have much more leverage over here because you have those options and no operator is drawing in tens or hundreds of millions from investors who get to make the decisions.
- Comment on Loops is a new short form platform created by Pixelfed creator Daniel Supernault. 2 weeks ago:
yeah I’m not sure Upscrolled is going to be an improvement over Tik Tok in the long run in any way. Not open source or federated, probably will be even easier for Trump-supporting billionaires to buy it than TT for example.
- Comment on Loops is a new short form platform created by Pixelfed creator Daniel Supernault. 2 weeks ago:
You could also implement features that reduce the addictivity as the EU might be demanding of Tik Tok in the future. When it’s a federated open source platform with no profit motive that’s going to be something much more easy to get in.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
He publicly distanced himself but Bluesky’s ownership is very opaque and they do dishonest PR very well so I would not be at all surprised if Dorsey is still a major owner.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
lol, how is it not a massive echo chamber when that has been the constant complaint in countless articles that keep getting made fun of instead of being taken seriously on Bluesky.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 2 weeks ago:
I’ve run into people like that on Bluesky much more than on the fediverse. They do of course exist on both.
- Comment on Judge scolds Mark Zuckerberg's team for wearing Meta glasses to social media trial 2 weeks ago:
Again, there was nothing about them looking at something in particular or anything suggesting the intent to film. As I said it is very easy to know if the camera is activated.
- Comment on Judge scolds Mark Zuckerberg's team for wearing Meta glasses to social media trial 2 weeks ago:
and do the released facts say someone was pointing a camera at the jury and the scolding happened as a result of that?
- Comment on Judge scolds Mark Zuckerberg's team for wearing Meta glasses to social media trial 2 weeks ago:
I don’t know if it was intentional marketing but it does have that effect and was kinda pointless. I assume people have camera phones in the courtroom with them too but possessing a device that can record doesn’t mean you intend to do it and I doubt Meta has tampered with their glasses so if they were to do that it would be noticeable thanks to the recording LED…
- Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem 2 weeks ago:
Sounds like the worst thing you could do, better to limit these kinds of defederation wars instead of escalating them even further.
- Comment on Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans 2 weeks ago:
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You’re literally not addressing any of my points and just accusing me of things I didn’t even do. I could be arguing with an LLM and get responses that make more sense so I’m done, thanks.
- Comment on Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans 2 weeks ago:
I provided a counterpoint and now you’ve moved your goalposts to just ramps. The fact is that there is no reason to believe the roads Waymos utilize are generally safer than roads on average. But that doesn’t really even matter because the studies that have been done about this do account for different types of environments anyway and point to Waymos having fewer accidents.
- Comment on Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans 2 weeks ago:
It is obviously false that fatal accidents would be “zero” on the roads Waymos are limited to, it’s ridiculous to even suggest such a thing. What is true that such accidents are even more rare there though. It’s another good reason for why it makes no sense to solely focus on fatal accidents as they are unlikely to be involved in them anyway due to these limits. That’s in addition to the fact that the statistical analysis is simply impossible with current vehicle miles.
Now, I’m not saying we know for certain Waymo is much safer than a human as the current statistics imply, that is going to require more rigorous studies. I would say what we’ve got is good enough to say that nothing points to them being particularly unsafe.
- Comment on Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans 2 weeks ago:
Well Waymo isn’t assigning blame, it’s a third party assessment based on the information released about those accidents. The strongest point remains that fatal accidents are rare enough that there simply isn’t enough data to claim any statistical significance for these events. The overall accident rate for which data is sufficient remains significantly lower than the US average.