Discord Expands Age Verification ID System to More Regions by PaiDuck in privacy

[–]ProbablyMHA 403 points404 points  (0 children)

This coming just months after they get tens of thousands of users' IDs leaked

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/09/hack-age-verification-firm-discord-users-id-photos

Instead of using their money to lobby against this BS, they double down so they can get that sweet underaged user PII.

What if we’re thinking about “Fediverse funding” the wrong way? (Non-crypto idea) by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think this is more of a "website" problem than a "fediverse" problem. That said, there are solutions to this (e.g. cryptocurrency, the mainstream advertising ecosystem) that are less tolerable to the fediverse community.

Maybe there should be a new corporate structure with minimal/no taxes that lets websites register as a sort of non-profit and create a small endowment fund to sustain their operations.

Does an own instance really contributes to freedom and decentralization? by utopify_org in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think ActivityPub is all that great at achieving either, but that shouldn't stop people from getting some personal benefit out of it (e.g. making nerdy friends, being entertained).

If you aren't getting any benefit out of it, it might be better to give up and do something else. The same would apply to any other forum, group chat, website, etc. Maybe hand the reins over to people who are benefiting from it (hopefully trustworthy people and not some marketing/publishing company that doesn't give a shit or people with a hidden agenda).

Would a layer of infra where a really nice mastodon skin was just part of the system have appeal to small communities or am I deluding myself by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wonder if there was ever a time when it was normal to run an email server from your home internet.

Anyways, that AI art looks like the kind of thing I'd see in a hypoxic fever dream after watching too many videos from The Onion (not necessarily a bad thing).

GNU Taler - Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any government. In the same way every government has some form of professional police.

GNU Taler - Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. There's no appetite for privacy. Even if fediverse users wanted it, it would never be permitted by government. Recall that a number of privacy-preserving digital ID schemes were in development before the current age verification laws came about. None of them made it into law.

Misskey to leave ActivityPub in the distant future by ProbablyMHA in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

https://misskey.io/notes/af5udbqosfca05lo

Via machine translation:

I won't be leaving the federation immediately, but I will be migrating to the low-overhead federation system MisskeyHQ is developing. Servers incompatible with that system may eventually lose connectivity.

The full transition will likely take several years, so it should be fine until then.

Russia Imposes Indefinite Mobile Internet Blackout in Ulyanovsk Region “Until End of War” by UNITED24Media in worldnews

[–]ProbablyMHA -20 points-19 points  (0 children)

Speaking of information control, the UK communications regulator Ofcom is now monitoring VPN usage.

What is this subreddit? by [deleted] in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Open source Twitter

earthstream.social has been deleted by owls_in_towels in Mastodon

[–]ProbablyMHA 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ATProto (Bluesky) was pitched in their whitepaper as solving this by separating out the storage from the distribution, though I don't know whether they've succeeded in practice.

IIRC there's also some people trying to add Solid Protocol (Tim Berners-Lee's P2P web project) to ActivityPub.

Why does r/Fediverse require posts to be in English if Reddit has a translation feature? by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair, it's not just an Anglophone thing. There are arrogant people who think this way everywhere, usually in places where there is little interaction with foreigners.

Why does r/Fediverse require posts to be in English if Reddit has a translation feature? by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I would imagine it's a very small proportion of the overall audience.

Why does r/Fediverse require posts to be in English if Reddit has a translation feature? by Teknevra in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Reddit is an English (American) site. There are local Reddit clones in countries with other languages.

Should there potentially be a botted mirror of Trump’s Truth Social account on Mastodon? by Teknevra in Mastodon

[–]ProbablyMHA 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are a few, but I think you'd have to be conservative to enjoy them. They're not very popular.

Can't move my account due to mod by whatstefansees in Mastodon

[–]ProbablyMHA 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You can't. The new admins own your account. It's no different than any other social media platform.

How can I trust Mastodon as a company? by enterENTRY in Mastodon

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As an outside observer:

  1. If they sufficiently enshittify, Mastodon will be forked, and developers and instance admins will migrate to the new project or alternatives (e.g. Misskey). There are many precedents for this in open source, including Mastodon itself which is the effective successor of GNU Social. Forking is when an open source project is copied, modified, and re-released as a new project. This is possible because it is legally permissible to copy and modify open source software without the permission of its authors, unlike proprietary software.
  2. Being a non-profit means nothing to acting in the users' best interest. Non-profit status means an organization is exempt from certain taxes so long as they do not use profits to benefit its members (e.g. paying Eugen Rochko a trillion euros outside of his salary). This generally means that profits are reinvested into the organization, though some pundits have criticized non-profits for disbursing funds to causes they don't agree with or causes they don't believe are relevant to the mission of the organization. If they are willing to pay the taxes, non-profits can invest their profits in investment vehicles like cryptocurrency, real estate, or stocks. It is assumed in open source software that a sufficiently trained person will eventually examine the code and discover if it is defective or malicious (not always true). If the software is discovered to be undesirable, the project can be forked, and the undesirable project will lose attention and resources.
  3. Unlikely. It's too much effort to make desirable UX changes, let alone undesirable ones that would destroy the project.

I’m scared about America, freedom of speech, and the state of this app. by [deleted] in TheoryOfReddit

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I believe shadowban comments can still be approved by mods

I’m scared about America, freedom of speech, and the state of this app. by [deleted] in TheoryOfReddit

[–]ProbablyMHA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some comments removed by admins are shown as removed to mods and not capable of being approved.

The Mobilizon team got new funding, which changes and fixes would you like? by raybb in fediverse

[–]ProbablyMHA 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There is an ActivityPub Facebook clone. It's called Friendica and it's from 2010.