@benpate this is interesting.
Is there a *Sky in Russia, like Eurosky, Gander, Blacksky or Northsky? (I should know what these are called. I think it's more than a PDS, but maybe that's the right word.)
Trot-sky would be a sick name, but I don't think the pun would translate well.
@benpate ActivityPub might work well in this case, but also badly. For example, if the Russian government blocked mastodon.social, the server-to-server data works on the same protocol and port number as the end-user interface and API.
But on the plus side, there are 40,000 other servers, so you'd still could stay connected to a big chunk of the Fediverse.
True… We are slowly centralizing.
I believe real data portability would address this. LOLA portability would even enable “hot backup” servers in cases where your primary server goes down.
And, I think Mastodon is making some progress on their signup page that will reverse this trend.
Look at me doing all this comms for Mastodon… Andy is going to owe me a beer 🍺
So what are all the possible ways they can block things, I wonder now. Not an expert. Couldn't they simply block all of #fediverse based on content-type or other aspects of #ActivityPub network communication? Deep msg inspection, etc. They want to drag their population over to that state-controlled platform I forgot the name of.
PS. I address 'points/risks of centralization' in my social experience piece and call-for-reflection on fedi's future, see..
@smallcircles @benpate I studied this last year, and @mallory worked on RFC 9505.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9505/
I think the hardware requirements for doing deep packet stuff are hard but not impossible. Don't forget, we use HTTPS.
If it were me, I'd download a list of the top 1000 fediverse servers from fedidb and block their DNS names and IP addresses. That'd probably cover 99% of user accounts.
This document describes technical mechanisms employed in network censorship that regimes around the world use for blocking or impairing Internet traffic. It aims to make designers, implementers, and users of Internet protocols aware of the properties exploited and mechanisms used for censoring end-user access to information. This document makes no suggestions on individual protocol considerations, and is purely informational, intended as a reference. This document is a product of the Privacy Enhancement and Assessment Research Group (PEARG) in the IRTF.
Ben Pate 🤘🏻
Evan Prodromou
🫧 socialcoding..