Gordon Mohr ꧁👀꧂

@gojomo
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digital ephemeralizer of economics, governance, culture; alumnus of archive.org; originator of 🧲 magnet link; advisor to ElectricCoinCo (Ⓩcash); "Genius!" – NYT 'Spelling Bee’
Twitter🐤 https://twitter.com/gojomo
ENS♦︎ gojomo.eth

@securedrop @theintercept TheIntercept is back to advertising a SecureDrop instance!

I've seen no commentary or explanation about the extended outage or restoration, & the new address differs from the old.

again, more details at a Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1681711106858061824

is the mysteriously-long @securedrop outage at @theintercept a de facto 'warrant canary' implying that they've lost control of their SecureDrop instance?

my Twitter thread of speculation, based on the public penumbras of an extended outage that seems otherwise hard-to-explain: https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/1673477235473526785

Gordon Mohr | gojomo.eth ꧁👁️👁️꧂ on Twitter

“ok, dammit, *I'll* put my paranoid hat on, & connect the dots of my QT'd thread. from the publicly-viewable transitions, I fear that earlier this year, @theintercept lost confidence in the security of, if not outright physical possession of, their @securedrop hardware. …”

Twitter
ignore, testing - now is the time for all quick foxes to come to the aid of their lazy dogs


and, a priority wraply function would finally upgrade broadposting to remedy, not worsen, the old adage:

"a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on."

original-author wraplies could guarantee context/corrections reach *everywhere* any initial misimpressions reach.

what good-faith actor wouldn't want that?


I think of this theoretical functionality as a "priority wrapping reply", or "wraply" - which can prepend, append, or replace the original post with necessary context like "just a joke" or "oops, I erred" or "see here for important followup".

it'd be relatively easy for a platform like Twitter to offer wraplies to at least the original author, as one defense vs bad-faith forwards, & maybe others by audience opt-in. (it's not unlike recent 'birdwatch'/community-notes, but far more general.) …+


in particular, Twitter has sprinkled low-effort incremental error-&-emotion *amplifiers* & *context-shearers* all over – likes, RTs, QTs – with few matching *attenuators* or *context-restorers*.

especially: when there's a chance your post is being RT/QT'd all over, & being misunderstood, the author deserves the ability to push a clarification not just everywhere their original post still appearing, but even everyone who'd interacted-with (read/liked/replied-to) the original version. …+

at <https://mas.to/@paulg/109541278664979840>, @paulg writes <screencap>.

counterpoint: QTs at core just a link + wisp of transclusion – hypertext features that elsewhere massively improve context & civiility.

that on Twitter QTs often (but far from always) coarsen discussion is mainly a symptom of Twitter's half-hearted implementation, & degenerate optimization of quality-oblivious 'engagement' over all else. …+

Paul Graham (@[email protected])

One of the best features of Mastodon is the lack of quote-tweeting. I'd forgotten how great that was. And unfortunately for Twitter, it's a feature that they'll never be able to copy.

mas.to
@puellavulnerata @maradydd saw your mentions a while back of a 'neo-Usenet' concept you'd batted around. I'm haunted by similar ideas, mostly to obsolete Twitter – though a suitably generative system could replace Reddit et al as well. Would love to compare notes, at any level of roughness, if ever interested...
I am not an account number! I am a free instance!
FidoNet, the dial-up BBS federation
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