Hey, Evan, this shit isn't okay.
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@FinchHaven @winst0nsmith @alice this "claim a hashtag" kinda gives off NFT vibes. I should shut up otherwise I give some people ideas
@bitbraindev @FinchHaven @winst0nsmith @alice Back soon. I'm going to claim #(redacted)FuckYourselfWithARustySpork
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@ricci I think it's expected behavior that my posts should be visible from instances we're federated with, but that new "services" that do something different or unexpected should *always* be *explicitly* opt-in.
The difference is that Evan's "service" created new accounts for all of these hashtags and used them to boost the posts in what came across as a very creepy, entitled, and nonconsensual way.
I don't want a bot called AlicePics on some other server, happily spending its life boosting only naked photos of me. That's creepy.
@alice Yep, thanks! I know you've spent too much time already dealing with this, so I appreciate your willingness to answer!
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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.)
@ireneista @alice I should add that supporting the violation of consent required to scrape creative labor into AI training sets is already a huge red flag for how someone will approach consent in other ethical questions around social media networks. I do not trust Evan as a result of either incident, let alone tge two taken together.
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As far as I can tell, anything with #capitalists at the helm doesn't understand consent. And capitalism and sexual assault share a lot in common.
'Keep asking until they say yes.'
Or
'Do it anyways, and apologise if caught...and keep doing it'
Or
'Ignore criticism and keep doing it cause they cant stop you'If you are not explicitly asking, you did not ask.
If you are not explicitly confirming, you did not confirm.
Humans who are not being explicit hide.
Humans who hide from explicit consent do so because they know what they hide is not consented.
Nothing about this is especially difficult to reason out.
Unless you are avoiding it.
The avoidance flags itself, so accept that when it does.
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@bitbraindev totally.
And this "I found it online, so it's fair game" mentality is something I fight against constantly with porn accounts who steal from sexworkers and repost it with the disclaimer "DM me to take your photos down".
It's like "no, asshole, you DM *me* if you want to use my work".
@alice @bitbraindev @matty EXACTLY THAT!
Just like one has to #license content for commercial use (and stock with #licensing terms).
- So unless it's EXPLICITLY licensed permissively to include that, it's a no-go!I too don't get to just throw a commercial (= anything but me and family/friends at home) screening event wothout negotiating licensing BEFOREHAND.
- And those #Hashtag - #Boosting #Bots ain't genuine human appreciation, but just waste. -
@bitbraindev strong agree.
I had a Twitter account, and used to be a YouTuber, and I have way smaller reach here, but folx here are *way* more engaged in an absolutely wonderful way that I never experienced in other places.
I'd trade volume and reach for authenticity and community any day
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@alice @bitbraindev @matty EXACTLY THAT!
Just like one has to #license content for commercial use (and stock with #licensing terms).
- So unless it's EXPLICITLY licensed permissively to include that, it's a no-go!I too don't get to just throw a commercial (= anything but me and family/friends at home) screening event wothout negotiating licensing BEFOREHAND.
- And those #Hashtag - #Boosting #Bots ain't genuine human appreciation, but just waste.@alice @bitbraindev @matty What annoys me more is that this isn't a.new problem and that @Mastodon developers are aware of the problem but choose to refse to even fake to care¹ so that users and admins can at least if not stay ahead, at least slow.down the #Enshittification of the #Fediverse.
- Blocklists are sadly needed and the fact that #Mastodon, unlike every network-centric application I know - doesn't support #BlocklistFeeds is inexcuseable!
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@ireneista @alice I should add that supporting the violation of consent required to scrape creative labor into AI training sets is already a huge red flag for how someone will approach consent in other ethical questions around social media networks. I do not trust Evan as a result of either incident, let alone tge two taken together.
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@bitbraindev strong agree.
I had a Twitter account, and used to be a YouTuber, and I have way smaller reach here, but folx here are *way* more engaged in an absolutely wonderful way that I never experienced in other places.
I'd trade volume and reach for authenticity and community any day
@alice @bitbraindev @matty
Yeah, a large chunk of the seemingly lower reach is the much lower number of bots here, which make up the vast majority of "engagement" on the corporate networks: we don't have a financial incentive, so we block those to preserve the integrity of the network itself. -
@alice @bitbraindev @matty What annoys me more is that this isn't a.new problem and that @Mastodon developers are aware of the problem but choose to refse to even fake to care¹ so that users and admins can at least if not stay ahead, at least slow.down the #Enshittification of the #Fediverse.
- Blocklists are sadly needed and the fact that #Mastodon, unlike every network-centric application I know - doesn't support #BlocklistFeeds is inexcuseable!
@alice @bitbraindev @matty @Mastodon as for said Hashtag - #SpamBoost - #Bots: I have listed their domains² already…
So once @MastodonEngineering decides to take on this issue, it could be as easy as adding Adservers to #pfBlockerNG…
- Manually importing is slow, cumbersome, error-prone and not scalable. Plus Mastodon doesn't properly ignore comments³…²: https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/main/activitypub.bots.domains.block.list.tsv
³: https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/main/activitypub.bots.block.list.tsv -
@ireneista Where I chimed in earlier: https://wandering.shop/@xgranade/116218901305439808
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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 I would argue fedi isn't hostile enough towards AI but...
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@alice Yep, thanks! I know you've spent too much time already dealing with this, so I appreciate your willingness to answer!
@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.
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@toothpaste_sandwich several people DMd me to say that he had been working to get Threads into Fedi, and his projects list those socials for contacts.
I can understand the justification for (though I strongly disagree with) having accounts on X, Threads, BlueSky, or Facebook—they're huge, and a lot of people are still (unfortunately) there.
But I considered Threads move to "participate" in Fedi a hostile act by a company known for violating privacy and for removing protections against hate speech from their platform.
@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.
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@alice I see, thank you for taking the time to respond. I can see how this would circumvent the blocks you had set up, yes. And I agree that having to personally ask him to add exceptions for those hashtags is not particularly workable.
What makes you say he is "in bed with" those companies, though? That seems strange for someone working on the ActivityPub protocol.
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.
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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
