a mastodon.social user walks into a bar. the bartender says The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

(hint: click "open original page")
@mia wait a second
@mia oh that's so smart
@mae help i don't get it
@faye the post's content is generated dynamically based on the instance that's fetching it
@mae @faye this is so strange to experience… i just was wtf because it just created a compelling post that absolutely fits 😀

@mae @faye This... this should not, at all, be a thing.

This breaks the system.

For the first time ever, I'm going to block a domain, and it's going to be that one.

@mattblaze @gruber @hachyderm @Gargron

@mattblaze

My curiosity was piqued. Here's what I see. From context I imagine you're seeing something about federate.social. Apologies if this is overexplaining.

@apicultor @mae @faye @gruber

@apicultor @mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber This would not break anything if Mastodon's approach to ActivityPub were not 100% push-based.

Mastodon does not backfill posts---that is, it does not make HTTP GET requests to other servers to get federated posts, it only *receives* HTTP POST requests from them when they have new posts. If Mastodon fetched the originals as well, it could compare them and remove posts like this that don't match.

@apicultor @faye @mae this is literally just an innocent and fun script, is that dramatic a reaction really necessary here?

@robustjumprope @faye @mae Yes. Yes, it is.

This is something which should not be done.

I need to be able to trust that the content of a toot is the same as everyone else sees, and that the edit history reflects reality. Break this social contract and I am out; there is no second chance.

Thus, instant domain banhammer.

@hachyderm @Gargron

@uint8_t @apicultor @robustjumprope @faye @mae @hachyderm @Gargron its weird i dont recall signing any contract yet apparently the terms of one are being enforced on me anyway.

@uint8_t @apicultor @robustjumprope @faye @mae @hachyderm this is so silly it's similar to complaining about "traditional values" being destroyed

breaking rules is good actually, it's what moves society forwards, if you never question existing norms you stand against progress

@apicultor @robustjumprope @faye @mae okay I’m actually going to take your point at face value here.

You don’t need to have read Du contrat social by Rousseau to understand social contracts, but it helps. Your point is fundamentally invalid because there is no social contract. What contract do we have between each other?

You have no rights to see my posts, nor do I have any rights to see yours. You have no rights to federate with my instance, nor does my instance have any rights to federate with yours. There is no social contract because there are no social obligations. There are only social privileges — federation is a privilege granted by honour.

You are clearly confusing a “social contract” with the concept of “social norms”, which refers to the cultural and social mores of a group. Whether this behaviour breaks social norms is one that is debatable, but since a social norm depends on person to person, this is where you may have a point. However, social norms does not a social contract make.

If we want to consider social contract theory more closely, then the only “social contract” on the Fediverse is that between yourself and your Instance administration. But even that is not a social contract — that is a literal contract that you have agreed to with your administration.

Furthermore, a social contract in a true sense refers to the rights and obligations of a person as part of a governance group. If you do not abide by the laws of the land, for example, then you have broken the social contract between yourself and The State, and therefore end up in prison.

To really conclude, however, that you’re totally fucking wrong: a social contract is between a governing body and the governed. There is no governing body on the Fediverse. There is no social contract because rights are not federated, only privileges.

And even so, a social contract between the governed and governor is not a true contract because you are forced to abide by it and cannot escape it.

Ergo, you can log off any time, mate, and I suggest you do.

@yassie_j holy shit yas is smort
@kdj8 thanks!

@yassie_j @kdj8

...and after the kerfuffle dies down the patrons solemnly say 'one of us' and tip their glasses in unison

@apicultor @robustjumprope @faye @mae block all you want, its not going to put the genie back into the bottle, as they say

if you had that expectation, then you should reassess many many MANY things in your life; yes, there is a expectation that things should appear the same for everyone, but social contracts are not "unbreakable vows", they cannot not be broken. in fact, they may not even exist, they're expectations we place on eachother, but we never agreed on "this is how things should be", we only assumed.

gender is one of those things, and yet here i am, fucking it up, are you gonna block me as well?

even this (specific case) is a relatively harmless thing, any incentive for this to get abused can be filled in by any better feature, and the threshold for such things are high, due to the skill involved needing to make the tech to do this kind of stuff

and even then, the knowledge that one server implementation can do this will spread, and people can assume new things

@robustjumprope @faye @mae @ShadowJonathan

Now I know that specific instance is playing games, I'm not going to wait for a less-harmless manifestation of that fuckery to come along from that instance. (Indeed this may never happen, and that's OK by me.)

It's that simple.

>gender is one of those things, and yet here i am, fucking it up, are you gonna block me as well?

Wow. Reaching much? Come on. 😕

@apicultor @ShadowJonathan @mae @faye You tagged Gargron in your post earlier and you think Jo is reaching??

This isn’t a major security vulnerability or something worth bringing the creator of any fediverse software into. If you want to block the instance, fine, but I don’t see the point in continuing to reply and argue about it.
@apicultor I'm curious... What would "a less-harmless manifestation" look like? And what harm would it be doing? If I can understand what's the potential for harm then I may agree with you, but at it stands now, I don't really see the problem.
@robustjumprope @apicultor @mae @faye @Gargron @hachyderm LULZ. I have bad news about The Internet, bro.

@falxcerebri @robustjumprope @mae @faye Given I once ran a node on FIDOnet and was using email in 1992, I don't think you are in a position to say a single thing to me about the evolution of the internet.

It started going to shit long ago; idiots breaking things for others is nothing new.

@robustjumprope
Can be compared to a bot - people who do not like automatic postings by bots will also dislike dynamically generated content, be it a user or a bot.

@faye @apicultor @mae

@apicultor @mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber
Why would you do that? o_O
Apicultor 🐝 (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Yes. Yes, it is. This is something which should not be done. I need to be able to trust that the content of a toot is the same as everyone else sees, and that the edit history reflects reality. Break this social contract and I am out; there is no second chance. Thus, instant domain banhammer. @hachyderm @[email protected]

Hachyderm.io

@apicultor @mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber @hachyderm @Gargron i too just cover my eyes when a car is heading at me full speed

(i also report security advisories to the internet police, as i am unable to distinguish criminals from researchers)

@apicultor @mae @faye what the hell

you're literally blocking a server because someone actually did something cool? i can see why hachyderm gets a bad reputation.

fedi drama is ridiculous at times
@apicultor and this pompousness and outrage from the person who put in bio “I break shit for fun. Sometimes I even fix it afterwards!@mae @faye

@mawhrin @mae @faye Yes, I break shit on my workbench, shit nobody else depends on.

Get bent.

@apicultor

OP demonstrated obscure behaviour of the Mastodon system that could be exploited, does so in a completely transparent way, and you want to ban their entire domain for that?

I am deeply worried by the idea that someone as incapable of critical thought as you works in rail safety.

@apicultor Seems you haven't done it so far. And cheers from the bar!
@mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber @hachyderm @Gargron
@StefanMuenz @mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber @hachyderm @Gargron I am not an admin of my instance. I domain-banned for my own account.

@apicultor @StefanMuenz @mae @faye @mattblaze @gruber @Gargron

Also there isn't really a way for someone on an external server (like Vivaldi) to see what a different server (like Hachyderm) does or not moderate (limit, suspend) - you'd see whatever your server is federating with.

@mae @faye I got such a fright. I'm the only user on my instance!
@mae @faye
Ooh! That is clever!
@mae @faye That is fascinating!! 🙌 Thanks for sharing!
@mae @faye I was so confused as to why I'd seen so much memery about disabled.social today 😭
@mae @faye I thought the original poster had something against toot.cafe (the server I'm on) in particular.
@matt @mae @faye haha, same here, I was thinking omg what did we do wrong? But its just a funny little Thing, thats fine.
@svenja @matt @mae @faye Yep, love it as an example of what must be addressed. You're welcome at the bar of $instance at any time.
@matt @mae @faye I wonder if this could be prevented somehow? I can easily see folks making posts that look innocent to me, but are actually harassment directed at, say, a black or queer or disabled runn server. Maybe I even boost the post!
@fastfinge @faye @mae @matt I’m really curious how this works out, it’s either innocuous or a huge bug.
@reconbot @faye @mae @matt I mean, if I can't trust that I'm getting the same post on my server that you're getting on yours, even though it has the same actor and ID and so-on, I'm gonna say huge bug. Because now we're not interacting with the same thing, even though we think we are.
@fastfinge @faye @mae @matt at least we can tell when a post gets edited, similar situation 😅
@reconbot @faye @mae @matt Right, and when a post gets edited, we all see the same edit. How long until nazi trolls use this to trick high profile people into boosting their stuff? Maybe something that looks fine to all users of mastodon.social, but is hate-speech on every other instance?
@fastfinge @faye @mae @matt I get it, I imagine this cool Little project is gonna start a huge storm of activity to mitigate this issue with the protocol.
@fastfinge @faye @mae @matt I also wonder how hard it would be to detect us. I’m wondering if this is the first time someone’s discovered it
@mae @faye I must've triggered this when feeding images to llava3.