Due to popular demand, here is a list of the fedi-services that are part of the infosec.* family:
1 - https://infosec.exchange - Glitch-soc fork of Mastodon (this instance does not block threads.net)
2 - https://relay.infosec.exchange - Activitypub relay
3 - https://video.infosec.exchange - Peertube instance (like youtube)
4 - https://infosec.press - WriteFreely blog*
5 - https://pixel.infosec.exchange - Pixelfed instance (like instagram)
6 - https://matrix.infosec.exchange - Synapse (with sliding sync) homeserver*
7 - https://infosec.place - Akkoma instance (like mastodon)
8 - https://infosec.town - iceshrimp instance (like mastodon)
9 - https://infosec.pub - Lemmy instance (like reddit)
10 - https://fedia.io - General interest mbin instance (also like reddit)
11 - https://fedia.social - General interst Iceshrimp instance
12 - https://elk.infosec.exchange - Elk web interface for Mastodon
13 - https://books.infosec.exchange - Bookworym instance (like goodreads)
14 - https://meetups.infosec.exchange (mobilizon)
15 - https://infosec.space - Glitch-soc fork of Mastodon (this instance does
block threads.net)

*indicates the instance authenticates against Infosec.exchange

Sometimes this whole infosec thing collapses for the simplest reasons... Like millions US military emails going to .ml instead of .mil.

or the problem begin ignored for a decade.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66226873

@jerry Is there some easy to find link to all of your instances in the Fediverse? I failed to bookmark the Lemmy instance and now I can't find it.

OOPS. I found it. But cross linking may be a good idea anyway.

https://infosec.pub/

Is there a federation mode (in Mastodon or another platform) that is, essentially, "this server is blocked by default, but individual users on my server can follow individual users on that server, and that content will be fetched/can be boosted, etc".

Basically "blocked by default but overridable on a case by case basis".

Still can’t get over the fact that an editor of the Financial Times said that we need to do away with #capitalism in order to deal with the #climate. If that’s not a sign of mainstream economics/finance finally waking up to the reality of the situation we’re in, I don’t now what is.

edit to add link (thanks Boud): https://archive.ph/2023.06.29-113742/https://www.ft.com/content/86d71297-3f34-48f3-8f3f-28b7e8be03c6

When an app asks for permissions, the OS should not only let you answer yes or no. Every category should havev a "yes, but feed the app fake data" option.

Want my contacts for no reason? Have these generated fake ones! Wanna listen to my microphone? Here's random ambiance sounds! Location? I'm on a tiny 5x5m island!

Hell yeah! Put it all in your databases mfers!

Actively punishing services wins over boycotts any day. Didn't want that junk in the database? Don't ask for it!

Interesting read about Meta/Instagram's "Threads" app, aka Fediverse Instance, is banned in the EU because of pernicious privacy invasion.

Many people are opposed to federating with Meta because they fear co-option of ActivityPub by corporations but I think this reveals that Meta will struggle if they embrace true federation. How can an ad based app would compete with ad free apps to view the same content?

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/threads-no-eu-launch/

#today I deceded to let my FB account die, after countless vain attempts to change the password, following what looked like a hack. At FB, the lights are on but nobody's home. They wouldn't accept TWO bona fide utility bills as proof that I'm me, and to hell with gambling on escalating that to providing my passport or driving licence. FB is a single point of failure for so many people who rely on it. It really doesn't take much to lose your account there. I should have known better.

I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but here we are.

If you get into a disagreement with someone here or for whatever reason the person you’re messaging with asks you to disengage, just stop. I’ve been around since the dawn of online arguments and I’ve never seen a person realize the error of their ways because someone was trolling and/or being an asshole to them in the replies.

If someone asks you to stop, stop. If they block you, take a cue from Elsa and Let It Go. Don’t find alternate ways to continue engaging. I’m sure it the parting shot feels good, or you think you have the perfect reply to help them see the reality of a situation, but it isn’t so.

Please, just stop and think: AITA in this situation?

Trump's Florida indictment should be required reading. It does a good job of juxtaposing two things:

1) The former president stored hundreds of highly sensitive classified documents in bathrooms, closets and other places that weren't exactly secured. The documents included boring stuff like defense and weapons capabilities of the US and allies; potential vulnerabilities of the US to attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. Worse still, in the wrong hands these documents can expose and endanger human sources.

2) In addition to the 150 full-time, part-time and temporary employees at Mar-a-Lago, between January 2021 and August 2022, the Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew *tens of thousands of guests*.

"Oh, I was just looking for the bathroom...."

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf

I don't mind having 3 different USB cables with different connectors, but I wish the EU would standardize the power tools' batteries. They occupy so much more room, are heavier, and require charging.

Ok - https://matrix.infosec.exchange is alive! It requires an account on the mastodon instance at infosec.exchange. If there's a demand, I'll open general registrations

Please put a content warning on phone screenshots with less than 20% battery life, that really stresses me out. 😉

The counterargument in the ChatGPT lawyer debacle is that the AI's summarization of the precedent, being based on a statistical summary of the relevant legal debates, is a better Hayekian distillation of the common law tradition than any ordinary exercise in legal pedantry carried out by humans combing Westlaw. The hallucinated citations are a purer form of the caselaw than any merely existing cases in our sordid sublunar realm could possibly aspire to being.

Marvel/DC comic fans:

Musk is out there comparing George Soros to Magneto. What Supervillain best fits Musk? Galactus is my first thought but he is too powerful. Doc Octopus? The Joker?

I admit comic book memory is limited.

The onslaught of cryptospam continues. You can turn off DMs from people you don't follow in preferences -> notifications (if you're on a Mastodon-based instance). This should mitigate the current tactic of DMing a bunch of people.

and if you get one of these: don't click the link. best case it's a scam, more likely it attempts to exploit your system in some way.

I am sure this is not new but my mother was caught in a social engineering scam to take over her Facebook account.... which they then use to try to take over other Facebook accounts.

The basic mechanics are simple. They contact someone via messenger and claim that that Facebook is asking them to have 2 friends confirm their identity. Please provide them the code that was sent to your phone.

Of course, the code is actually the 2FA for a password reset request. Someone helpfully responds with the code and voila, they now pwn their Facebook account.

The constant-threats-to-defederate thing is going to kill this place, seriously.

Defederating an instance is an extreme measure and it should only be taken in extreme circumstances.

Finding out I might stop getting posts from people I explicitly follow because they happen to be on an instance being defederated by mine all because a bunch of admins I don't know got in a spat over a user I don't follow is just about the most annoying value proposition imaginable.

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/110317006852580015

As one WaPo commenter put it: "I am sick and tired of articles that seem to absolve the Republicans of their own idiocy and then blame the Democrats for not protecting us from the harm caused by Republicans." https://presswatchers.org/2023/04/republicans-threaten-to-tank-economy-media-blames-biden/

I suspect Mastodon.social has made a big mistake (as in big is part of the problem) by making themselves the default server with open sign ups. They might as well have hung a "trolls enter here" welcome sign out. Moderating well at scale is hard and requires a lot of human effort, it's going to be an instance full of newbies who will be encountering trolls while not understanding how the fediverse works and who have a client mentality (let me speak to the manager!). They're also going to end up being walled off from a lot of the smaller, more conscientious instances who want to protect their members so won't even get to see what the fediverse can be.

I suspect the fediverse really would be better served by slow growth on it's own prosocial path than trying to compete with platforms run by antisocial billionaires. We're not competing for customers, those number metrics aren't important, it needs to be quality over quantity and thinking of fediversians as citizens not clients. I know that's a hard mindset for some people, especially people who have had to work in corporate environments, to let go of but it's essential to let it go to be truly able to build prosocial things (not all competition is bad, of course, but the corporate kind is). It's always important to think about whether we're being treated like a citizen/person or a client/product (whether it's by our governments, a healthcare professional, and in terms of technological tools). Do you belong or are you being used while you're profitable? And is someone trying to confuse you about which is which so you can't tell? (The latter means you're actively being conned.)

*I, of course, hope I am wrong and it all works out wonderfully. However, my instance having to silence mastodon.social because of trolls and bad actors and increased reports of crypto spamming, has made me think about how big instances require a very big, well trained/sensitive moderation team (aka professional moderation, there's not magical technological solution for this problem and AI isn't a magic fix either, these kinds of tech solutions are usually harmful as well). People are a slow medium, we can't solve our social problems with some form of magical automation.

*edited to add that mastodon.social does seem to be being responsive and getting a handle on the flood of crypto spammers that making themselves the point of entry has caused. It's good to see other servers silencing then unsilencing them as problems get resolved.