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Related discussion: there was recently some move within the community to try and topple the current maintainer. That calls was based on technical/UX disagreemen

Related discussion: there was recently some move within the community to try and topple the current maintainer. That calls was based on technical/UX disagreements (regarding the local timeline) and on the maintainer allegedly having connection to a surveillance project called Eunomia: https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/ https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/ I am not a member of the Mastodon community and i have no clue to the veracity of these statements, but i believe they're worth considering in the topic of Mastodon changing governance model.

user-the-name 5y ago
Complete and utter conspiracy theorist bullshit, basically.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Do you care to elaborate for those people like me who don't have detailed knowledge of the Eunomia project? The official project page features wording that may lead a privacy-conscious person to raise eyebrows: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825171 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825171
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    I can not see a single thing on there that would raise any eyebrows.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > determine whether information they come across online is trustworthy or not Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not? Is it a central authority, or a WoT? The former is a very dangerous tool of social control, the latter does not usually address concerns of misinformation, as the WoT forms information bubbles with their confirmation biases. > the project will allow users to vote on content trustworthiness. The number of votes appears as an indicator that may assist others in assessing trustworthiness How are these votes stored? Are they part of the ActivityPub protocol, or a third-party centralized layer, or some kind of blockchain/DHT? Do you get to see the votes of your contacts, or the overall votes? How do you prevent misinformation campaign to try and hijack the votes? If they are stored in a WoT/blockchain, what kind of measures can you take to protect the social graph? More from the website: > a unique peer-to-peer and blockchain infrastructure > EUNOMIA users can see the modifications of online information in between different users' posts, in an information cascade > This may include indicators of bot activity, such as the ratio of followers to following I don't know about you, but these sentences make me raise eyebrows.
      - q3k 5y ago
        > Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not? > How are these votes stored? From what I can tell, this is literally a research project attempting to answer these questions. Look at the results tab, then under 'Demonstrators, pilots, prototypes' to see what they have come up with so far.
        southerntofu 5y ago
        Yes, i understand that's a research project. I'm just skeptical of a publicly-funded software research project with millions of euros of funding (most researchers i know don't have access budgets like that) and with seemingly some ties to the surveillance/military apparatus. Also i did some digging, and despite a paywall and some articles without links at all, their publications raise more questions than they answer about the actual trust/governance model and privacy implications (see my other comments quoting some bits). Moreover, the sentiment/subjectivity analysis via ML leaves me dubious. I have a hard time believing AI can understand human discourse and/or help solve human problems, see also James Mickens USENIX talk "Why do keynote speakers keep suggesting we can improve security?" Finally, let me put on my paranoid hat: if i were to build a large-scale surveillance network to expose the social graph and flow of information (think XKEYSCORE) for decentralized social media, it would look a lot like EUNOMIA! On the contrary, if i were to build a reputation protocole for decentralized social media, it would be much simpler than the EUNOMIA project, and would probably be based on some kind of Web of Trust / Fog of Trust (since it's aimed at classifying/auditing public data, where the social graph is already, at least partially, exposed).
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate, instead of actually reading and comprehending what is being said. You need to work on that, first of all.
        southerntofu 5y ago
        > You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate Quite the contrary, my french culture and education has taught me to have great respect for authority and for startup nation bullshit newspeak. But since then, i have developed some form of critical thinking. > You need to work on that, first of all. I tried. In their publications section, out of 7 items, there are: 2 that don't have a link; 1 about text/image similarity analysis; 1 about sentiment analysis; 1 about situated knowledge and the "user-researcher"; 1 that's behind a paywall (the one describing the EUNOMIA project); 1 that's not even a scientific paper but an "information hygiene" guide In their "Deliverables" section we find more information. I find it strange that documents are labeled "Dissemination Level: Public", or "Type of deliverable PUBLIC" which suggests acquaintance with the surveillance/military industrial complex, as originally exposed in the critique linked in the article i was mentioning: https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/paulfree14/The(20)critical(20)EUnomia(20)FAQ/Home#Who_funded_EUnomia_and_for_what_amount_ https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/paulfree14/The(20)critical(20)E... From these documents, a few quotes which may raise eyebrows: - the [blockchain] framework offers embedded mechanisms for preserving privacy with the use of digital signatures and cryptographic hashes - each information element that it is stored in the P2P distributed file storage a specific token will be generated by the Storage Serve - The AAA Server is responsible for the authentication, authorization and accounting. Any entity that wishes to connect to the EUNOMIA infrastructure needs to communicate with this server. - The Discovery Server provides means to allow the discovery of other services and corresponding metadata, including their public keys - deleted posts will be removed from associated cascades, P2P databases and the EUNOMIA Blockchain ledger
swiley 5y ago
>currently I've been on and off Mastodon since 2016 and there is always tumblr-style drama about how Eugen is a dictator for not doing <whatever> with everyone's instance.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Yeah that's what i assumed also, which is why i didn't suggest that the maintainer is actually malevolent in my parent comment. Also, to be fair, if the European Commission is funding a large-scale surveillance program for decentralized social media, i'm glad some of that money is actually going to free-software maintainers to improve the ecosystem, and not all of it into the wrong pockets (as is usually the case).
riffic 5y ago
the "open letter" against Eugen Rochko is a load of garbage and he doesn't owe anyone an absolute thing. He created the software, he's the BDFL*, and can do whatever he wants with it now. My thought is there's nothing stopping this letter's author from developing either a fork or their own fedi/AP compliant software. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Isn't that the whole point? Seems like these people don't understand open source and they want to take over his "baby" rather than going out and making their on even though they can clone his in under a minute and change it to their liking and own sphere of influence.

user-the-name 5y ago

Complete and utter conspiracy theorist bullshit, basically.

southerntofu 5y ago
Do you care to elaborate for those people like me who don't have detailed knowledge of the Eunomia project? The official project page features wording that may lead a privacy-conscious person to raise eyebrows: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825171 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825171
- user-the-name 5y ago
  I can not see a single thing on there that would raise any eyebrows.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > determine whether information they come across online is trustworthy or not Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not? Is it a central authority, or a WoT? The former is a very dangerous tool of social control, the latter does not usually address concerns of misinformation, as the WoT forms information bubbles with their confirmation biases. > the project will allow users to vote on content trustworthiness. The number of votes appears as an indicator that may assist others in assessing trustworthiness How are these votes stored? Are they part of the ActivityPub protocol, or a third-party centralized layer, or some kind of blockchain/DHT? Do you get to see the votes of your contacts, or the overall votes? How do you prevent misinformation campaign to try and hijack the votes? If they are stored in a WoT/blockchain, what kind of measures can you take to protect the social graph? More from the website: > a unique peer-to-peer and blockchain infrastructure > EUNOMIA users can see the modifications of online information in between different users' posts, in an information cascade > This may include indicators of bot activity, such as the ratio of followers to following I don't know about you, but these sentences make me raise eyebrows.
    - q3k 5y ago
      > Who gets to determine what is trustworthy or not? > How are these votes stored? From what I can tell, this is literally a research project attempting to answer these questions. Look at the results tab, then under 'Demonstrators, pilots, prototypes' to see what they have come up with so far.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        Yes, i understand that's a research project. I'm just skeptical of a publicly-funded software research project with millions of euros of funding (most researchers i know don't have access budgets like that) and with seemingly some ties to the surveillance/military apparatus. Also i did some digging, and despite a paywall and some articles without links at all, their publications raise more questions than they answer about the actual trust/governance model and privacy implications (see my other comments quoting some bits). Moreover, the sentiment/subjectivity analysis via ML leaves me dubious. I have a hard time believing AI can understand human discourse and/or help solve human problems, see also James Mickens USENIX talk "Why do keynote speakers keep suggesting we can improve security?" Finally, let me put on my paranoid hat: if i were to build a large-scale surveillance network to expose the social graph and flow of information (think XKEYSCORE) for decentralized social media, it would look a lot like EUNOMIA! On the contrary, if i were to build a reputation protocole for decentralized social media, it would be much simpler than the EUNOMIA project, and would probably be based on some kind of Web of Trust / Fog of Trust (since it's aimed at classifying/auditing public data, where the social graph is already, at least partially, exposed).
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate, instead of actually reading and comprehending what is being said. You need to work on that, first of all.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        > You are knee-jerk reacting to keywords you have been taught to hate Quite the contrary, my french culture and education has taught me to have great respect for authority and for startup nation bullshit newspeak. But since then, i have developed some form of critical thinking. > You need to work on that, first of all. I tried. In their publications section, out of 7 items, there are: 2 that don't have a link; 1 about text/image similarity analysis; 1 about sentiment analysis; 1 about situated knowledge and the "user-researcher"; 1 that's behind a paywall (the one describing the EUNOMIA project); 1 that's not even a scientific paper but an "information hygiene" guide In their "Deliverables" section we find more information. I find it strange that documents are labeled "Dissemination Level: Public", or "Type of deliverable PUBLIC" which suggests acquaintance with the surveillance/military industrial complex, as originally exposed in the critique linked in the article i was mentioning: https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/paulfree14/The(20)critical(20)EUnomia(20)FAQ/Home#Who_funded_EUnomia_and_for_what_amount_ https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/paulfree14/The(20)critical(20)E... From these documents, a few quotes which may raise eyebrows: - the [blockchain] framework offers embedded mechanisms for preserving privacy with the use of digital signatures and cryptographic hashes - each information element that it is stored in the P2P distributed file storage a specific token will be generated by the Storage Serve - The AAA Server is responsible for the authentication, authorization and accounting. Any entity that wishes to connect to the EUNOMIA infrastructure needs to communicate with this server. - The Discovery Server provides means to allow the discovery of other services and corresponding metadata, including their public keys - deleted posts will be removed from associated cascades, P2P databases and the EUNOMIA Blockchain ledger

swiley 5y ago

>currently I've been on and off Mastodon since 2016 and there is always tumblr-style drama about how Eugen is a dictator for not doing <whatever> with everyone's instance.

southerntofu 5y ago
Yeah that's what i assumed also, which is why i didn't suggest that the maintainer is actually malevolent in my parent comment. Also, to be fair, if the European Commission is funding a large-scale surveillance program for decentralized social media, i'm glad some of that money is actually going to free-software maintainers to improve the ecosystem, and not all of it into the wrong pockets (as is usually the case).

riffic 5y ago

the "open letter" against Eugen Rochko is a load of garbage and he doesn't owe anyone an absolute thing. He created the software, he's the BDFL*, and can do whatever he wants with it now. My thought is there's nothing stopping this letter's author from developing either a fork or their own fedi/AP compliant software. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Isn't that the whole point? Seems like these people don't understand open source and they want to take over his "baby" rather than going out and making their on even though they can clone his in under a minute and change it to their liking and own sphere of influence.