modulus

I do not think it is a very good analogy. I do not see how this would turn into a broadcast medium. Though I do agree it can feel less accessible and there is a risk of building echo chambers.

Not so concerned on that–people being able to establish their tolerances for whom they want to talk to is fine with me. But if the system goes towards allowlists, it becomes more cliquish and finding a way in is more difficult. It would tend towards centralisation just because of the popularity of certain posters/instances and how scale-free networks behave when they’re not handled another way.

It’s most likely a death sentence for one-persone instances. Which is not ideal. On the other hand, I’ve seen people managing their own instance give up on the idea when they realized how little control they have over what gets replicated on their instance and how much work is required to moderate replies and such. In short, the tooling is not quite there.

I run my instance and that’s definitely not my experience. Which is of course not to say it can’t be someone else’s. But something, in my opinion not unimportant, is lost when it becomes harder to find a way in.

I’m concerned that people are already eager to bury the fediverse and unwilling to consider what would be lost. The solutions I keep hearing in this space all seem to hinge on making the place less equal, more of a broadcast medium, and less accessible to unconnected individuals and small groups.

How does an instance get into one of these archipelagos if they use allowlists?

Same thing with reply policies. I can see the reason why people want them, but a major advantage on the fedi is the sense that there is little difference between posters. I think a lot of this would just recreate structures of power and influence, just without doing so formally–after all the nature of scale-free networks is large inequality.

It’s possible FF wouldn’t get away with something like integrating ad blocking by default, but in no reasonable universe were they required to do the PPA stuff and turn it on by default. Nor is it clear that it will lead to websites caring about FF compatibility–unfortunately many already don’t.

The usual pro-advertising take. “It’s ok that we’re going to experiment without your consent on how to manipulate you, because we only use aggregated data so it’s not personal, it’s business.”

For me the weirdest part of the interview is where he says he doesn’t want to follow anyone, that he wants the algorithm to just pick up on his interests. It’s so diametrically opposed to how I want to intentionally use social networks and how the fedi tends to work that it’s sometimes hard to remember there are people who take that view.

I can think of alternatives. For example, the server could keep the user’s private key, encrypted with a passphrase that the user must have. So key loss wouldn’t be an issue. (Yes, passphrase loss might, but there are lots of ways to keep those safely already, compared to key material which is difficult to handle.)

There is literally no instance in which expanding the scope of copyright law is a good thing. Never.

Why not? Copyright is a monopoly. Generally society benefits from having it as weak as possible.

Worth considering that this is already the law in the EU. Specifically, the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market has exceptions for text and data mining.

Article 3 has a very broad exception for scientific research: “Member States shall provide for an exception to the rights provided for in Article 5(a) and Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC, Article 2 of Directive 2001/29/EC, and Article 15(1) of this Directive for reproductions and extractions made by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions in order to carry out, for the purposes of scientific research, text and data mining of works or other subject matter to which they have lawful access.” There is no opt-out clause to this.

Article 4 has a narrower exception for text and data mining in general: “Member States shall provide for an exception or limitation to the rights provided for in Article 5(a) and Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC, Article 2 of Directive 2001/29/EC, Article 4(1)(a) and (b) of Directive 2009/24/EC and Article 15(1) of this Directive for reproductions and extractions of lawfully accessible works and other subject matter for the purposes of text and data mining.” This one’s narrower because it also provides that, “The exception or limitation provided for in paragraph 1 shall apply on condition that the use of works and other subject matter referred to in that paragraph has not been expressly reserved by their rightholders in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online.”

So, effectively, this means scientific research can data mine freely without rights’ holders being able to opt out, and other uses for data mining such as commercial applications can data mine provided there has not been an opt out through machine-readable means.

Clearly this particular suit by this particular person is iffy. However, I don’t think this framing is very good: the fact Wikimedia is headquartered elsewhere shouldn’t make it immune from being sued where an affected party lives.

Also, this part of the article seems a bit contradictory:

Just because someone doesn’t like what’s written about them doesn’t give them the right to unmask contributors. And if the plaintiff still believes he’s been wronged by these contributors, he can definitely sue them personally for libel (or whatever). What he has no right to demand is that a third party unmask users simply because it’s the easiest target to hit.

Ok, but how does he sue them personally without knowing who they are? It’s fine to say this shouldn’t be regarded as libel (I agree, it’s a factual point, should be covered by exceptio veritatis or whatever) but I think it’s a bit dishonest to say you can’t hit Wikimedia, go after the individual users; but also, Wikimedia shouldn’t be forced to reveal them.

Much better if the court would consider this information as being accurate and in the public interest.

Of course the GDPR cuts two ways here, because political information is an especially protected category, with certain exceptions (notorious information). So I’m not sure how the information on this person’s affiliation to the far right was obtained and so on.

I generally agree, though I could be convinced of recurring payment in the case of high speed APIs that need a lot of updates to keep working. Chasing an API can be a lot of work.

Of course, a solution to that is having an up-front payment and letting people update as they wish–if there’s new value in the new releases presumably they will.

Completely disagree. Using the Firefox master password feature passwords are safe even in the context of sharing a device or an extension. In addition, multi-FA isn’t necessarily a safer option.

And what’s the provided alternative? A password manager. So storing passwords somewhere else that may leak, and in fact has leaked, and is by its nature a high value target.

Each person has to consider their particular situation and threat model, but a well-secured browser that stores passwords locally can be a perfectly adequate and in fact safer alternative than a password manager.