So check it out: Mastodon decided to implement follower-only posts for their users. All good. They did it in a way where they were still broadcasting those posts (described as ā€œprivateā€) in a format that other servers could easily wind up erroneously showing them to random people. Thatā€™s not ideal.

Probably the clearest explanation of the root of the problem is this:

Something you may not know about Mastodonā€™s privacy settings is that they are recommendations, not demands. This means that it is up to each individual server whether or not it chooses to enforce them. For example, you may mark your post with unlisted, which indicates that servers shouldnā€™t display the post on their global timelines, but servers which donā€™t implement the unlisted privacy setting still can (and do).

Servers donā€™t necessarily disregard Mastodonā€™s privacy settings for malicious reasons. Mastodonā€™s privacy settings arenā€™t a part of the original OStatus protocol, and servers which donā€™t run a recent version of the Mastodon software simply arenā€™t configured to recognize them. This means that unlisted, private, or even direct posts may end up in places you didnā€™t expect on one of these serversā€”like in the public timeline, or a userā€™s reblogs.

That is super relevant for ā€œprivateā€ posts by Mastodon. They fall into the same category as how youā€™ve been voting on Lemmy posts and comments: This stuff seems private, because itā€™s being hidden in your UI, but itā€™s actually being broadcasted out to random untrusted servers behind the scenes, and some server software is going to expose it. Itā€™s simply going to happen. You need to be aware of that. Even if itā€™s not shown in your UI, it is available.

Anyway, Pixelfed had a bug in its handling of those types of posts, which meant that in some circumstances it would show them to everyone. Somebody wrote on her blog about how her partner has been posting sensitive information as ā€œprivate,ā€ and Pixelfed was exposing it, and how itā€™s a massive problem. For some reason, Dansup (Pixelfed author) taking it seriously and fixing the problem and pushing out a new version within a few days only made this person more upset, because in her (IMO incorrect) opinion, the way Dansup had done it was wrong.

I think the blog-writer is just mistaken about some of the technical issues involved. It sounds like sheā€™s planning on telling her partner that itā€™s still okay to be posting her private stuff on Mastodon, marked ā€œprivate,ā€ now that Pixelfed and only Pixelfed has fixed the issue. I think thatā€™s a huge mistake for reasons that should be obvious. It sounds like sheā€™s very upset that Dansup made it explicit that he was fixing this issue, thinking that even exposing it in commit comments (which as we know get way more readership than blog posts) would mean people knew about it, and the less people that knew about it, the safer her partnerā€™s information would be since she is continuing to do this apparently. You will not be surprised to discover that I think that type of thinking is also a mistake.

Thatā€™s not even what I want to talk about, though. I have done security-related work professionally before, so maybe I look at this stuff from a different perspective than this lady does. What I want to talk about is this type of comments on Lemmy, when this situation got posted here under the title ā€œPixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instancesā€:

Non-malicious servers arenā€™t supposed to do what Pixelfed did.

Pixelfed got caught with its pants down

rtfm and do NOT give a rest to bad behaving software

dansup remains either incompetent for implementing badly something easy or toxic for federating ignoring what the federation requires

i completely blame pixelfed here: it breaks trust in transit and thatā€™s unacceptable because it makes the system untrustworthy

periodic reminder to not touch dansup software and to move away from pixelfed and loops

dansup is not competent and quite problematic and itā€™s not even over

developers with less funding (even 0) contributed way more to fedi, theyā€™re just less vocal

dansup is all bark no bite, stop falling for it

dansup showed quite some incompetence in handling security, delivering features, communicating clearly and honestly and treating properly third party devs

I sort of started out in the ensuing conversation just explaining the issues involved, because they are subtle, but there are people who are still sending me messages a day later insisting that Dansup is a big piece of shit and he broke the internet on purpose. Theyā€™re also consistently upset, among other reasons, that heā€™s getting paid because people like the stuff he made and gave away, and chose to back his Kickstarter. Very upset. I keep hearing about it.

This is not the first time, or even the first time with Dansup. From time to time, I see this with some kind of person on the Fediverse whoā€™s doing something. Usually someone whoā€™s giving away their time to do something for everyone else. Then thereā€™s some giant outcry that they are ā€œproblematicā€ or awful on purpose in some way. With Dansup at least, every time Iā€™ve looked at it, itā€™s mostly been trumped-up nonsense. The worst it ever is, in actuality, is ā€œhe got mad and posted an angry status HOW DARE HE.ā€ Usually it is based more or less on nothing.

Dansup isnā€™t just a person making free software, who sometimes posts angry unreasonable statuses or gets embroiled in drama for some reason because he is human and has human emotions. Heā€™s the worst. He is toxic and unhinged. He is keeping his Loops code secret and breaking his promises. He makes money. He broke privacy for everyone (no donā€™t tell me any details about the protocol or why he didnā€™t he broke it for everyone) (and donā€™t tell me he fixed it in a few days and pushed out a new version that just makes it worse because he put it in the notes and itā€™ll be hard for people to upgrade anyway so it doesnā€™t count)

And so on.

Some particular moderator isnā€™t just a person who sometimes makes poor moderation decisions and then doubles down on them. No, he is:

a racist and a zionist and will do whatever he can to delete pro-Palestinian posts, or posts that criticize Israel.

a vile, racist, zionist piece of shit, and anyone who defends or supports him is sitting at the table with him and accepts those labels for themselves.

And so on. The exact same pattern happened with a different lemmy.world mod who was extensively harassed for months for various made-up bullshit, all the way up until the time where he (related or not) decided to stop modding altogether.

Itā€™s weird. Why are people so vindictive and personal, and why do they double down so enthusiastically about taking it to this personal place where this person involved is being bad on purpose and needs to be attacked for being horrible, instead of just being a normal person with a variety of normal human failings as we all have? Why are people so un-amenable to someone trying to say ā€œactually itā€™s not that simpleā€, to the point that a day later my inbox is still getting peppered with insistences that Dansup is the worst on this private-posts issue, and Iā€™m completely wrong and incompetent for thinking otherwise and all the references Iā€™ve been digging up and sending to try to illustrate the point are just more proof that Iā€™m horrible?

Guys: Chill out.

I would just recommend, if you are one of these people that likes to double down on all this stuff and get all amped-up about how some particular fediverse person is ā€œproblematicā€ or ā€œtoxicā€ or various other vague insinuations, or you feel the need to bring up all kinds of past drama any time anything at all happens with the person, that you not.

I am probably guilty of this sometimes. I definitely like to give people hell sometimes, if in my opinion they are doing something thatā€™s causing a problem. But the extent to which the fediverse seems to like to do this stuff just seems really extreme to me, and a lot of times what itā€™s based on is just weird petty bullying nonsense.

Just take it it with a grain of salt, too, if you see it, is also what Iā€™m saying. Whether it comes from me or whoever. A lot of times, the issue doesnā€™t look like such a huge deal once you strip away the histrionics and the assumption that everyoneā€™s being malicious on purpose. Doubly so if the emotion and the innuendo is running way ahead of what the actual facts are.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    4 days ago

    Itā€™s not meant to be a messenger, itā€™s not meant for privacy. Everything being public and transparent is part of the core design of the Fediverse. The idea of private groups/posts on the Fediverse seems counterintuitive to me.

    Just want to counter this: Privacy is in fact a part of ActivityPub. Stuff is only meant to be public if it is sent to the Public collection, otherwise it should only be delivered to the intended recipients, much like email. This is part of the core protocol, not any extension.