So in the past month since I finished RetroChallenge, lots of things have happened on the Fediverse. So I’ll give you the brief rundown in a bullet point format:
- Elon Musk bought Twitter for real, sparking the latest outrage event online. The internet outrage mob put Kiwi Farms in the back of their head as the latest target of their hate became their homeland being bought up by the man who would do terrible things like unban Donald Trump and other right-wing e-celebs. Twitter was originally being loaded with FUD from angry middle managers being fired and forced to get real jobs, and panic articles about how the site was totally going down guys, but the site is still up today and working fine.
- Because Elon Musk unbanned Orange Hitler (who is still using his own Mastodon + Soapbox instance that’s unfederated, he likes it more anyhow), even though he’s not even posting on Twitter his account literally existing is enough to make people leave. So the Fediverse had lots of new instances and users pop up.
- These accounts varied, from washed up celebrities to journalists, but all had one thing in common; they brought the Twitter mindset with them. I’m talking blocks, wanting attention, and whatnot.
- Some of these accounts were greeted with a warm welcome to the fediverse, from racial slurs to posting the famous YWNBAW copypasta (or quotes from it, like being buried by your parents with your real name).
- Journalists got an even warmer welcome, with screenshots from the livestream/video in which a fired journalist killed his coworkers on air and other edgy memes.
- As a result, many instance owners have found themselves bombarded with reports from these new Twitter refugees. Instance blocking is also on the uprise. Thanks to this, a tool located at https://fba.ryona.agency was posted. Instantly those wanting to be unblocked saw themselves in deeper trouble, as the woke brigade saw the now-dead link to the Kiwi Farms Git and assumed that the writer was the notorious internet hacker known as Kiwi Farms himself.
- Nevermind the fact that the license of the tool is probably more offensive being licensed under I kid you not, a license that requires you to say “that” one hard-r word, and the fact that the tool originally came from a nonce instance user.
- At least one instance owner wrote a groveling apology demanding to be unblocked.
I think you get the point though; Twitter users have been fleeing from Twitter and bringing their Twitter mindset there, only to find out that the fediverse is like leaving your gated community and going to a neighborhood where everyone hates people like you, since you come off as a rich yuppie with daddy’s money.
But the most important thing is that remember how in previous posts I mentioned that there was a rift between the free zone and the Iron Curtain? Well put it this way; it’s much deeper now.
The drama about fba.ryona.agency has already hit deep levels. People are absolutely livid that such a tool exists, and are even angrier when they find out that the hacker known as Kiwi Farms developed it. I bet you they’re angrier at the fact it exists though.
What’s also happening is there are now rifts developing based on what fediverse software you run.
During October I managed to prove a point about stock Pleroma; it’ll run on anything. Sure Soapbox might not since it needs node.js, and the same goes with some of the other fedi software stacks (that aren’t say PHP), but Pleroma will run on an old machine literally found in museums at this point.
However here’s the thing; there are a lot of instances that are so political that they have very strong opinions about what fediverse software you use. For example, using Soapbox gets you blocked in many instances and in even more extreme cases running Pleroma does. While this seemed to be easing up, the new breed of Twitter refugees take a very simple view to things. Anyone who uses Pleroma is a Neo-Nazi. They don’t know about Misskey or enough allies run it that it’s not a problem, Friendica’s developer IIRC has signaled support to the left wing crowd (instead of trying to make it resist Mastodon caused DDoSes easier) and nobody uses it anyhow, and GNU Social is dead.
Oh and there’s a fork called Akkoma and while it’s very similar to Pleroma, enough allies use it that it’s not a problem. Sure it has its own jankness including removing Pleroma chats, (which Rebased didn’t remove despite removing the dead Shoutbox feature) and it has an even smaller group of developers/people giving support than Rebased or Pleroma, but you see it’s made by the good guys or rather has them using it moreso. So it gets a free pass.
This leads me into what the core of this post is about. I’ve been made aware of numerous blocklists and numerous ones copy and paste from each other, but I have perhaps seen the most blatantly broad one to date. This is literally a blatantly broad blocklist that targets only two kinds of instances; Pleroma instances and Soapbox instances.
Included in the list amongst the thousand or so instances…is the SPARC instance. I have barely been using this instance that much preferring to post elsewhere, but it’s telling at just how much is scraped from some website elsewhere.
The only thing keeping more users being caught in the crossfire is the part I mentioned about Akkoma, as using Akkoma is just like putting lamb blood on your door.
But here’s the thing. Over 1000+ servers are blocked. And to make things worse, a lot of instance owners literally just huff each others paint and copy instance blocklists from each other. I’m not kidding. None of them even validate the claims, they just import a new csv file and boom you’re blocked. Time to go on Porkbun and buy a new domain.
Now you might be wondering why they’re blanket blocking all the instances running this one software and it comes down to one thing. The Mastodon Network™ isn’t the fediverse. It’s a federation of allies who all speak the same language, have the same beliefs, and say the right things, all at the same time. They’re on the same page, and you are not. The same goes with how they copy blocklists from each other without validating the claims.
So where do I see this going from here? Put it this way, the e-mail problem is already creeping up to the fediverse as well. That groveling blogpost from the instance admin is proof of this. But there are plenty of “breaking” things instance owners might do. User agents might be faked so that controlling instances think that others are running Mastodon too and not Pleroma as an example.
But here’s the thing; as more instances block it’s going to be less and less easy to drag people onto the federation. Someone is going to join an instance that blocks you, or aggressively blocks smaller instances to keep the “Nazis” out. You won’t be able to talk to them, and if they move to your instance or a different instance they might be blocked as well. This is all by design of course; you’re either with them or against them.
Nevermind the fact that Mastodon is a bloated, resource hog instance software lacking features. You either use it or you’re a bigot. Man if only Microsoft just called Linux users Nazis back in the day.
But there’s a reason I’m making this point; this mindset is going to cripple the fediverse, or at least shove people towards the free side. There will be no more fence sitting, you will either be on the free speech side or on the censor happy side. And you will be happy.
Anyhow, I’ll end this with a reminder to hide your “whole known network” timeline to avoid as many ISP complaints and blocks, because these people will use it against you as evidence you’re not really an ally.
To do this, go to AdminFE and under instance will be a setting to disable it.
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