Matt BlazeI will admit I still don't understand what's so offensive about my pointing out the unsafe, confusing semantics of the Mastodon PM mechanism, or why this topic seems to provoke so much anger.
Basically, I have learned nothing from your yelling.
Anyway, while I don't understand why this pisses some people off so much, or why they take my critique of the Mastodon PM semantics so personally, it's now very clear that it does piss some people off quite a bit.
But I'm not going to let that stop me. I'm an expert on security and privacy. And my job is, in large part, to act as a public intellectual. Warning people of dangerous designs that could cause them harm is what I do. If doing so makes me an asshole, so be it.
It's sometimes difficult to remember that communications platforms, including social media platforms like this one, attract a very wide variety of users with a wide range of circumstances. The same systems we might use only for trivial chitchat are likely also being used by political dissidents, labor organizers, and others for whom mistakes can have very serious consequences.
Making social media platforms reliably usable is important, even if it might not seem so to us personally.
Steve Bellovin@mattblaze Yes. Not only is it important to obey the principle of least astonishment, it's important to realize that security lapses are not due to user error, they're due to a system that was designed improperly for normal people. What matters is not so much the absolute security properties (or the lack thereof), it's what users *think* will happen.
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)@SteveBellovin the only good thing about Mastodon's PM behavior is that it creates the opportunity to introduce many people to the "principle of least astonishmen"t who haven't previously heard the term. Winning!!!!!
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