Mastodawn

abadidea Feb 13

When I said that your discord clone doesn’t need e2ee, I got a lot of comments along the lines of “ then how would I use it to organize the revolution!” The answer is: you don’t. If you have more users than can comfortably share a Signal chat and hence want to use discord or something like it, you cannot POSSIBLY be vetting all of them to a high standard of trust. Your logs ARE leaking. End-to-end encryption between more people than can fit around a dinner table is pointless.

This article confirms what I already assumed, that “open source [information sense, not code sense] intelligence gathering on social media” includes, for the US government, asking for links to join groups that may *feel* private. My own discord has literally like a thousand idlers. It would be very *lucky* if none of them were logging for potentially nefarious purposes! And I remind the active users of this occasionally.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-ice-masks-up-in-more-ways

Exclusive: ICE Masks Up in More Ways Than One

Feds could be in your group chat

Ken Klippenstein

Ratsnake Games 🔞Feb 13

@0xabad1dea i also don't think that organizing revolutions is the majority usecase for Discord

abadidea Feb 13

@ratsnakegames no but this is mastodon so no-one’s sure what other social activities exist

@0xabad1dea @ratsnakegames I don't understand. Are you saying mastodon users are particularly unaware of the existence of Tor, rheticulum, meshtastic, briar, secure scuttlebutt, signal, jitsi, ...

Reading, fishing, mountain biking, horseshoing, needlework, 3d printing, manafesto writing, martial arts, yoga, karayoki....

Than the people who frequent other places like X or whatnot?

Interesting take if so :p

Marcial 🇨🇷🇻🇪Feb 13

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea Generally, yeah, a little bit.

The Fediverse is still by-and-large a place where people REALLY into privacy, F/LOSS, and digital sovereignty come together; I remember a post from someone who tried to get into Lemmy as a Reddit replacement, and lamented the fact that every thread would consistently end up talking about Linux or politics. This is a platform where many don’t realize that their opinions and interests are highly rare IRL.

derptron Feb 13

@moshimotsu @0xabad1dea So someone shows up and is annoyed that people are talking about unfamiliar topics that go outside of their little box and so they bitch about it and you side with THEM???

While I don't know...I rather appreciate the fact that my really rare hobbies are actually shared by others here and I get to talk about them without people telling me they're stupid and boring and why don't I talk about real wives or what some douchebag streamer said.

Marcial 🇨🇷🇻🇪Feb 13

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea I don’t see any sides to take; it IS great that there’s a space for people with more niche hobbies to be find each other (I’d be hard pressed to find as many F/LOSS advocates on corporate social media!) But the topic HERE is of people trying to consider what it would take to make a F/LOSS alt to a corporate product—ideologues like ourselves will be less apt to figure out what that is for the layperson, since we AREN’T the layperson.

Marcial 🇨🇷🇻🇪Feb 13

@crazyeddie I also don’t know that denigrating someone else’s interests does any good in mainstreaming the spaces we consider the ethical alternatives to corporate social media… that’s the kind of elitism that keeps people away, leaving them to the platforms that fund genocides and steal data. Because the alternatives aren’t fun to be on.

It also exemplifies what I mean about not being the layperson, since the interests of Discord’s user base aren’t interests WE share.

derptron Feb 13

@moshimotsu @0xabad1dea So the corporate folk keep telling me. I'm rather regretting that I ever paid any mind to that bullshit at all. I would have done a MUCH better job of this shit.

Whatever though. If they're right I don't give a shit anymore.

@crazyeddie @moshimotsu @0xabad1dea FYI you are being exactly the problem that is being described to you here. it isn't unfamiliar to them, they just don't want to talk about that. it's very normal for people to join communities that don't think the same way as everyone else does, if you think that they're wrong for that then that's gatekeeping

derptron Feb 14

@eblu @moshimotsu @0xabad1dea You can fuck right off with that. Thanks.

Alexa Fontanilla Feb 13

@crazyeddie
#PostOfTheWeek (season 3):
Homeland security is increasing the use of undercover techniques to infiltrate and interact with social media users in order to collect intelligence and target individuals, documents leaked to me reveal.

The new program, called “masked engagement,” allows homeland security officers to assume false identities and interact with users—friending them, joining closed groups, and gaining access to otherwise private postings, photographs, friend lists and more.

Alexa Fontanilla Feb 13

@crazyeddie
A senior Department of Homeland Security official tells me that over 6,500 field agents and intelligence operatives can use the new tool, a significant increase explicitly linked to more intense monitoring of American citizens.

For years, homeland security has been conducting what it calls “Open Source Intelligence” (OSINT) collection, using social media to enhance general "operational awareness” and for investigating targets in a criminal, civil, or administrative context.

Bredroll Feb 13

@AlexaFontanilla2024 @crazyeddie OSINT isn't a new idea, but to get anything really juicy, someone has to "think" they are talking privately. sneaking into private chat groups is not new thing, The SignalGate idiocy just reminded everyone how bad it can be.

Much more worrying to me is the prolific harvesting of devices fingerprints via things dressed up as helpful stuff like 'find my iphone' the fact you can track your lost headphones 500 miles away if someone with an apple device walks nearby!

derptron Feb 13

@Bredroll @AlexaFontanilla2024 That's a very interesting and scary rabbit hole to hop into if you have not already. There are services you can sign up for that let you track pretty much anything any other user with a scanner has picked up and shared. Actually can be tracked by the little thingies in your tires because pretty much everything emits a MAC on some wireless protocol or other.

derptron Feb 13

@AlexaFontanilla2024 What a trip!

This is like on the front page of mastodon and you think I haven't seen it?

I guess I have a different view of mastodon or something. People I see post all sorts of stuff about these protocols and have all sorts of activities they do outside computers. They're very well informed.

I guess not everyone gets the same view of it. I didn't realize they were so THAT different though. I feel like I'm in a sea of people MORE intelligent and informed than me.

vOv

Bredroll Feb 13

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea @ratsnakegames what is this karry-ya-okey you speak of?

Kevin Granade Feb 13

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea @ratsnakegames not that they're unaware of it, but that they're claiming that general-purpose chat tools (and recently this is directed at "discord killers") MUST support e2ee as a bare minimum, which is just not necessary and gives a false sense of security for a group chat without membership vetting, which is one of the other "must have" features.

I've seen the same insistence in several places.

Kevin Granade Feb 13

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea @ratsnakegames what people think this is giving them is "my messages aren't stored in plaintext anywhere that can have access to it trivially granted", but if you don't have strong access controls in the first place, someone can just join and bam they have access granted?
And if you have strong access controls you're not actually talking about a discord killer or general purpose chat framework because the join overhead is much, much higher.

@crazyeddie @0xabad1dea @ratsnakegames r u real