pleroma.debian.social

pleroma.debian.social

jlines | @jlines@pleroma.debian.social

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jlines jlines
@highvoltage @withaveeay I have too many contacts who use WhatsApp a lot to avoid it completely, but I use it on a second phone, which only contains Whatsapp users for reasons explained in https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2025/07/04/who-owns-your-contacts/
On that link I offer small UK charities donations towards trying out Snikket as a major issue is the nobody has heard of any alternatives, and 'if everyone uses it then it must be OK'

john john@social.paladyn.org
Artificial Intelligence is like Artificial Coffee, useful if the Real version is unobtainable.

jlines jlines
@openrightsgroup Targeted Advertising is also a flawed concept. Suppose I want to buy a sofa/fridge/car/mattress... and research my purchase on the Internet, pick one which seems to match my needs and buy it. I now have what I want, and actually less in the market to buy one than a random untargetted person who might happen not to have the product.

Brought to you by Real Intelligence - as opposed to Artificial Intelligence - used by those without the real thing

jlines jlines
@jim If there is a measurable decrease in suicide, anti-social behavior, self harm or any of the other ills which are blamed on unrestricted access to the internet then these can be balanced against the harms of fraud or misuse of personal data required (or claimed by data collectors to be require) by the legislation. 2/2 See also https://blog.wp.paladyn.org/2024/11/14/the-proof-of-identity-problem/

jlines jlines

@jim I sympathize with the people hoping the Online Safety Act will solve a variety of Internet related social problems. Safety legislation often involves finding a balance between personal freedom and public good. For example the Road Safety Acts result in reduction in Road Accidents 1/2

jlines jlines
@jim Additionally it is hard to unravel the difference between state surveillance - which ideally should have a level of oversight, and transparency - and that carried out by private companies, where the use of the data they have collected may be subject to change, and hard to discover.

jlines jlines
@jim The problem is that technological capability is amoral, and does not distinguish between, for example, a woman wishing to be educated in Afghanistan, a freedom fighter planning to blow up a religious building, a member of an oppressed minority want to draw attention by damaging some public symbol of oppression, or a group planning to reduce financial inequality by redistributing goods or cash.

Dgar dgar@aus.social
Five people in black clothing standing in a snow-covered forest. 75% OF A FINNISH PARK RANGER'S JOB IS RESCUING METAL BANDS THAT GET LOST SHOOTING ALBUM COVERS

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply vm markwyner@mas.to

This is bound to bring some joy to your day. Everything about it is delightful.

(And the engineering is amazing.)

jlines jlines
@vkc @kasperd For some time I have felt that some form of federated ActivityPub based security system would be beneficial. This would be aimed at being produced and consumed primarily by computers, but should be readable by humans for verification. Things like fail2ban from a computer attack level, sharing spam sources and sharing info on objectionable content origins. Web of trust and similar content policies would apply.

jlines jlines
@nixCraft I would like to see more organisations/companies setting up their own Fediverse (I use pleroma for my personal Fedi - as does Debian - server diversity is good). This deals with a lot of the issues of identity confusion, once people start to see more accounts like @news@bbc.co.uk (does not exist, but hard to fake, and fewer @thisIsTheBBCNewsHonest@mastadon.social (also does not exist).
https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2021/01/12/it-is-good-to-be-a-tree/

jlines jlines
@JamesBaker Beyond this, once a digital means of proving your identity goes out of your control who is to prevent it being re-used. I wrote https://blog.wp.paladyn.org/2024/11/14/the-proof-of-identity-problem/ about this, and I believe it is a hard, but important problem.

jlines jlines
Who owns 'your' contacts

I am seeing TV advertising for WhatsApp, emphasising how private the message data is, which is probably true, but misleading, as the issue is that people have to share their contact metadata.

https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2025/07/04/who-owns-your-contacts/ suggests #XMPP, possibly @snikket_im

@xmpp

jlines jlines
@johncarlosbaez @mansr Time for a new list of highly cited researchers caught engaging in bad practice - or would that just encourage them ?

jlines jlines

@mikebroberts For me the issue is that Slack/Discord and the like act, in ecological terms, like an invasive species, such as Ground Elder "It can pose an ecological threat owing to its invasive nature, with potential to crowd out native species." Once they have a foothold they are hard to dislodge.

jlines jlines

@bkuhn I spent far more time than I should have done reading Groklaw - It was fascinating to be able to follow a complex case in such detail.

jlines jlines

@OpenTech_AUC I suggest investigating #XMPP, but in particular snikket as the Instant Messenger/chat equivalent to WhatsApp. It is fully open source, and built out of standard components. You can run up your own server quickly and federate with all the other XMPP servers. Note that WhatsApp is basically an XMPP server (eJabberd) which does not federate. For a University College running your own XMPP server(s) lets you undertsand IM by doing

jlines jlines
@amy certainly agree on your points, and also concerned at the way that SMTP is becoming/has become defederated in practice. I believe an effort to educate the law makers would be more productive than asking Meta to be nice. I wish the tech giants who do not have a stake in the Instant Messaging and Social Media spaces would see that there can be value to them in promoting the open standards. Ideally the foundations would have financial support from more than 1 company.

jlines jlines
@fencepost @GossiTheDog It is a very poor UI decision to hide information from a user for the sake of convenience which would allow them to make security decisions. This is not restricted to Instant Messengers.

jlines jlines
@fencepost @GossiTheDog I think the inherent 'flatness' of Signal, and other non-federated IM systems is a weakness in that it fails to make use of the information you get for free from the tree structured nature of the DNS. If the other members of the group had all been on the republican.org, or whitehouse.gov server (or a mixture), then the presence of a jeffrey.goldberg@theatlantic.com would/should have been glaring obvious.

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