bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@social.cleverlibre.org

@dusnm

It is a matter of conditioning people to become more obedient. Paint "them" (people who oppose the oppression) in the most negative light possible to ensure that such groups don't grow because what they say and do is rational, moral and legitimate. Unlike the jackboot gang we call the authorities.

@bonifartius

I am trying to work out the strengths and weaknesses of messaging platforms from fully decentralized to federated to centralized. I am only a user on Mastodon/activitypub and IRC, but I have in the past hosted usenet and currently host:

smtp (email)
XMPP
Matrix
SSB (Secure ScuttleButt)
SIP (fully decentralized)

The impressive feature of twitter and it's totalitarian centralized ilk is that a single id can have millions of followers - and know that. SSB supports unlimited secure (signed) broadcasting, but there is no mechanism for knowing how many followers there are. Of course, TV was in the same boat, and you could get an estimate by polling. BBC broadcasts on SSB.

Counting followers is essential for monetizing content via advertising and sponsors in a decentralized manner - i.e. not subject to cancellation at a whim by a global centralized platform.

Matrix seems ideal for many of the purposes people use Teams or Substack or Slack. Private conversations e2e encrypted, logging with controlled retention (HIPPA compliant), voice and video calls, voice and video conferencing, media. But performance of small personal servers drops with number of participants in a room - I don't think it can support a million followers.

XMPP has inconsistent state for multiple devices, and is terrible at group chats. I do use it a backup for matrix and for voice/video calls. Open XMPP clients supporting VOIP and IPv6 are easier to find than SIP clients. (And SIP is even worse at state for multiple devices.)

Usenet has no authentication (not worth tacking on GPG header schemes).

Email is not designed to be "instant" (as in IM), but can be coaxed into resembling that by clients such as DeltaChat.

Ok, so now I should make a feature matrix (which includes Matrix), but have I missed any open and federated/decentralized protocols? Any other features? Current feature list:

broadcast (million+ followers)
follower count
p2p voice/video
e2e encryption
authentication
federated
decentralized (or federated that can be practically fully decentralized, like SMTP)

Did I miss any?

With another episode of "The Mastodon Network" happening, I wonder if it's time to give up the sisyphean work of reminding people that it's "GNU/Mastodon".

@Jdogg247 These morons are amazing. I haven't seen one that understands how the internet works beyond "muh, bluecheck mark saves democracy"

I've discovered that kiwifarms.net over Tor always works. The Hidden Service is being heavily DoS attacked, but Clearnet over Tor does not have any penalty. Tor is clever enough to find exit nodes that can actually connect, so it always gets a good network.

@mangeurdenuage someone skipped head day

twitter users aren't real they can't hurt you
twitter users aren't real they can't hurt you
twitter users aren't real they can't hurt you

is it ok to have a cat outside to help with mice and rats, considering cats are bird killers (but rats are invasive too..)?

Amnesty

I mean .. I'll own it in 14 more years .. and then have to pay taxes on it forever to keep it .. but yea other than that it's kinda nice.

@NolesW6 @11112011 @p

what this is all making me think about is, like, a lot of what i've been thinking about is ensuring that freedom of expression 'can exist', even if it's not widespread. like, "can i do it here", which feels much different than the fact that there are now shortcuts to limiting freedom of expression just about everywhere

like, what is it actually illegal to say / express / draw / communicate?

kf was always really interesting to me because it felt like it was riding /that/ line, and afaik no (consequential) action was taken legally, just economic kangaroo court horseshit

@NolesW6 @11112011

> Censorship is bad however harmful false news that’s meant to tear apart society seems worse.

State propaganda *is* harmful false news that's meant to tear apart society. Saying "but what about fake news?" seems like a nonsequitur. Censorship is evil, full stop. The state presuming that it can decide what you think is unforgivable. The state as a preemptive arbiter of whose information is true or false is beyond the pale.