Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay.
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@ireneista @alice I most vividly remember his little poll trying to show that the fediverse was too hostile towards AI. The interactions around that were so completely toxic and boosterish that I think of Evan as a bad-faith actor as a result.
(Another for the annals of AI and boosterism damaging trust.)
"I most vividly remember his little poll trying to show that the fediverse was too hostile towards AI."
Assuming here we're still talking about Evan
I've had quite a bit of direct contact with his; he's had me blocked on at least two instances I've known him to be on
Over the years I've simply come to think of Evan as #MrMaxiFedi
Other than being very, very full of himself, he's simply never heard of an idea that might expand the reach of the Fediverse that he didn't like and didn't subscribe to 110%
Mr Maxi-Fedi
That's our Evan...
cc @ireneista @alice
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@ricci sure 🩷 I feel like I was in a particularly good intersection¹ to be able to bring what I perceived as a gross misuse of technology on Fedi into the light.
¹ Being a sexworker and ex-tech executive, who uses specific hashtags containing my name, with a large reach and a lot of community goodwill on Fedi—who also had their name and nudes broadcast by this bot service.
@alice Yep, I appreciate your doing so, I think that when there is a mismatch between what the software enables and what users want/expect from it, it's important to bring attention to this gap
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@alice@lgbtqia.space I think you aleardy know but someone did request for it to be Opt-In on the Git Repo which unfortunately, Evan isn't taking it on board and still pulling the "Yeah... BUT, their post is public and they could.. blah-blah-blah"
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I would like to make a correction here regarding the the technical mechanism used; I want to make it clear that I'm not doing so to minimize how creepy it is or how it violated consent, which are things he needs to answer for.
The boosts that tags.pub uses are block-preserving: that is, they let the server that receives them know that the post exists, but do not contain the contents of that post - no text or images. The receiving server must contact the original server the post came from to get those, and the origin server will apply its own policies. These boosts *do* let more fediverse servers know about posts, but they don't circumvent blocks, eg. if the origin server has defederated from the recipient, or if the poster has blocked that server, etc., they won't be able to get the contents.
@ricci I understand that that's the case (that tags.pub is block-preserving), so I assume the reason I was still visible at https://tags.pub/profile/AlicePics this morning (despite both me and my instance blocking tags.pub days ago) must have been due to caching or something then?
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@ricci I understand that that's the case (that tags.pub is block-preserving), so I assume the reason I was still visible at https://tags.pub/profile/AlicePics this morning (despite both me and my instance blocking tags.pub days ago) must have been due to caching or something then?
My comment about block evasion was mostly for @toothpaste_sandwich and anyone else reading this who might not have read the full threads
Evan mentioned a bug with tags with mixed case, I assume it was something to do with case-sensitive comparison
And I agree you shouldn't have had to ask, or ask a second time
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice Some time ago, Google realized they could make super tall stacks of money recording and reselling (with minimal obfuscation) every conversation a person has, be it email, private messaging, one-sided search, etc.
The goal of every "tech visionary" since then has been to find a new unmonitored conversational niche to capitalize on.
Google currently does this with conversations recorded from people in the same general area as a phone (a public conversation, but not one the participants would reasonably expect to be shared with ten thousand advertising companies). But hey, it's cool, it lets Google serve ads for baby clothes/accessories to people who don't even know they're pregnant yet. Progress! Super creepy, but they've coerced consent by being the biggest game in town, so it's okay (legally).
Meanwhile, bottom feeders like Evan are both incapable of respecting consent -and- incapable of coming up with an original idea. He's a tech visionary though! Big time, 4real!!
What a sad little person.
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice@lgbtqia.space @AltAfterDark @alice_watson@infosec.exchange @alice@masto.thefword.club @alice_watson@mastodon.social I'm glad they (supposedly) honor #nobot, but I absolutely resent the fact I had to go to their GitHub to find out how to opt out. If I want to participate in such, I'll ask to be added! #ConsentMatters
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice At this point it's looking like a clear case of copyright infringement too
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@bitbraindev are you tring to say we came here to get away from the algorithms and don't want to see them come back? @matty @alice
@brass75 @bitbraindev @matty @alice When someone asks for the posts with a particular tag, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to expect to get the posts with that tag on them. While *an* algorithm, that’s the opposite of what people mean when they say “The Algorithm
”.The way tags work is deeply non-obvious to new users. These are exactly the people who initially rely on tools like tags to help them find new people to follow.
Creating an account for a tag and having that account boost posts with the tag is a naïve workaround, but clearly not a good one. Should have been discussed more broadly to learn of objections first.
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice@lgbtqia.space
> don't have permission to share my communitiesI left him instructions but IDNK whether the very notion of "in" direction in "opt-in" clicks there, as seen in:
https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub/issues/37#issuecomment-4867669076
@AltAfterDark @alice_watson@infosec.exchange @alice@masto.thefword.club @alice_watson@mastodon.social
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice just adding my voice here that this is bullshit and not okay.
Thank you for fighting this. I'll be keeping an eye out to see if there is anything I can do to support the fight.
This is also nonsense from a technical perspective: It's working around a perceived limitation of how federation is implemented. Why are you doing that instead of working on a proposal to fix that limitation?
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@alice @toothpaste_sandwich I think it should be added that Alice is not the only person who views the infection of the Fedi by Threads to be a hostile act. I blocked that weaselly little fuck previously just for that - being a Zuckerberg cuck working to co-opt the Fedi. He’s now scraping and stealing people’s posts for unauthorized uses. The fucker should be banned.
@lawyersgunsnmoney @alice I see. Yes, I have also always seen Threads as a Threat to the Fediverse. (Ha see what I did there.)
I was not aware of Evan's involvement with them. That is worrisome. I suppose I just assumed anyone working on the Fediverse was going to be a conscientious person... (And I do realise how that is always a poor assumption in any scenario.)
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Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay. You and your bots don't have permission to share my communities outside of Fedi (or at all).
Again, I didn't even know you were doing this, because you *didn't ask*—you just assumed you had the right.
I know I blocked you and defederated all your projects already, so maybe one of your friends or bots can let you know you should delete these (and any other @alice, @AltAfterDark, @alice_watson@infosec.exchange, @alice@masto.thefword.club, and @alice_watson@mastodon.social posts).
@alice@lgbtqia.space @AltAfterDark @alice_watson @alice@masto.thefword.club @alice_watson@mastodon.social
Great look for someone giving a workshop aye ?
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@ireneista @alice I most vividly remember his little poll trying to show that the fediverse was too hostile towards AI. The interactions around that were so completely toxic and boosterish that I think of Evan as a bad-faith actor as a result.
(Another for the annals of AI and boosterism damaging trust.)
@xgranade @ireneista @alice if it smells like "push polling" then it probably is...
Edit: more context: https://bayes.club/@wronglang/116853627591651418
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@alice@lgbtqia.space @AltAfterDark @alice_watson @alice@masto.thefword.club @alice_watson@mastodon.social
Great look for someone giving a workshop aye ?
@heckinteagan *sigh*
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@brass75 @bitbraindev @matty @alice When someone asks for the posts with a particular tag, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to expect to get the posts with that tag on them. While *an* algorithm, that’s the opposite of what people mean when they say “The Algorithm
”.The way tags work is deeply non-obvious to new users. These are exactly the people who initially rely on tools like tags to help them find new people to follow.
Creating an account for a tag and having that account boost posts with the tag is a naïve workaround, but clearly not a good one. Should have been discussed more broadly to learn of objections first.
@brass75 @bitbraindev @matty @alice For example, if he had started with the fifty most popular tags across each of the ten most populous servers, that would have shown people what it does with posts which are already practically guaranteed to propagate. Limited utility, but also very limited potential negative impact. Selecting what tags get included in something like that is what people mean when they talk about The Algorithm
, though: somebody else deciding what gets promoted and what doesn’t.Doing it for all tags is arguably the least Algorithm
way. Treat everything equally. But people use tags in ways he didn’t expect or understand, thence harm. -
@alice@lgbtqia.space
And Evan is the Research Director at Social Web Foundation, with tags.pub operated by Social Web Foundation.
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2026/06/28/unsubscribing-tags-pub-from-open-registration-relays/
Tells us a lot about what Social Web Foundation is
@Orca @alice It is like when you get stuff delivered that you didn't order but have to pay for it (automatically) and you have to send it back in time on your own cost to get out of that shitty deal. In social media, in software general - if you use any form of computing - this stuff is sent to you daily and in great numbers and you are fully occupied to block those deliveries.
Opt-IN must become law world-wide with expensive consequenses when one doesn't follow it. -
@bitbraindev @FinchHaven @winst0nsmith @alice Back soon. I'm going to claim #(redacted)FuckYourselfWithARustySpork
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@alice @evan I feel like I'm not completely understanding the issue here. These bots boost all posts tagged with a certain hashtag, right? One bot per hashtag. And that's all they do, right?
I assume the point of them is to make it so instances that the original post maybe isn't federating with, now also receive the post, right? But if that's the case, what's the issue? Are there instances you don't want to be able to see your post?
The point of a hashtag is to get more people to see your post, right? I ask this out of genuine curiosity, I hope I don't come across as "just asking questions" while downplaying your concern. That is not my intention.
@toothpaste_sandwich @alice @evan@cosocial.ca no
The point of a hashtag is to organize and label things.
If we are writing our musings on 20th century aviation with a tag nobody used. Because we just want to go back to our musings and keep everything handy so people can mute it. We do not want a bunch of machines ingesting all our thoughts and broadcasting them to the world.
The fact those accounts have the name of the hashtag makes it half a step removed from impersonation. People using their aliases as a tag for art for example now see their name plastered everywhere ***as an account***
This is a violation of privacy and that man can take his bots and go to hell with them.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
