Emelia 👸🏻

Tech Princess 👸🏻 Feminist Politicker 💁🏻‍♀️ Fashionable Woman 💋 Tooling Witch 🛠
🚀 Founder of https://unobvious.technology
Pro-Unions 💪🏻 Trans & Queer 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

I currently work on Moderation and Trust & Safety tooling for the Fediverse.

Contributor to Mastodon & Pixelfed.
You've probably used code I’ve written.

Advisor to IFTAS (https://about.iftas.org)

Support My Work: https://support.thisismissem.social/
Website: https://brandedcode.com
GitHub: https://github.com/thisismissem
Pronouns & Location: She/her — Berlin, Germany

Public Key

npub1ecsgxp65xkwms3wx2fzk3p6qynneuqg7u682axx5utsfz7efdlds45u4wq

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvugyrqa2rt8dcghr9y3tgsaqzfeu7qy0wdr4wnr2w9cy30v5klkcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsn3jwf9

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1ecsgxp65xkwms3wx2fzk3p6qynneuqg7u682axx5utsfz7efdlds45u4wq

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Last Notes

2024-06-16 15:58:48

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I wonder if that server knows of allow-mode, which may suit better?

2024-06-08 03:45:27

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yeah, but I don't think it's ever explicitly said in the spec anywhere?
I feel like maybe it probably should, since instance domains underpin SO MUCH (e.g., domain blocks, discovery indexing, downstream services, etc)

2024-06-08 03:09:54

Is there any #ActivityPub software that allows instances to be at different pathnames, instead of different hostname / port combinations?
Like:
https://social.example/foo => one instance
https://social.example/bar => a totally different instance
As far as I know no, but I'm looking at the spec, and I'm not sure there's anything in there about this?

2024-06-05 00:04:07

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Nothing in a technological plane will protect you from a bad server admin/mod — C2S won't, ActivityPods won't, even Bluesky PDS's won't.
If your content is on some else's servers, you're at their mercy ultimately, that's always been the case and always will be the case.

2024-06-04 23:54:23

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It's like picking a server based on a cool domain name isn't likely a good idea — it'd be like picking a car because it looked sleek: you're ignoring all the other things that impact your experience

2024-06-04 23:51:04

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But moderation at server level isn't your enemy, if it is, you're on the wrong server for you.
Like, some servers will moderate with an iron fist, or some other turn of phrase, but moderation & trust and safety is a balancing act.
Moderate too hard, and majority of people lose trust in you, because your decision negatively impact their experience.

2024-06-04 23:46:51

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On the fediverse we have more choice. Sometimes that means we're directly exposed to moderation activities, much like the forum days.
If there's instances on the fediverse with whom you disagree with the moderation practices of, then don't recommend those instances, maybe don't federate with them(?) — it's okay
We do need better tools and information about how a server moderates that can help people make a choice about where to call their home on the internet

2024-06-04 23:43:53

There's so much fear in the fediverse about bad admins/mods, and honestly it's no different to the days where we had forums with bad admins/mods.
The problem is that largely for the past decade people have been in walled gardens either never thinking of moderation, or actively needing to work against moderation to exist.
And you didn't have a choice, because you were locked into that provider & their moderation policies.

2024-05-18 22:25:01

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yeah, I've seen that too & I'm not sure if it's a bug on the source mastodon server or on ActivityPub.academy server

2024-05-18 04:49:36

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i wonder if it'd make sense to produce log messages for each instance, actor, activity type, directionality and other properties over time & make that graphable?
What percentage of activities processed or sent in the last day were Delete's, what type of activities does Server Y send me?
(Maybe this also ties into @npub1pk7…y877's question earlier today)

2024-05-16 13:48:15

So I mentioned last night that my open-source work on the fediverse (mastodon, pixelfed, etc) was funded for 10-13 hours per month, in my head I had a figure of €1000/month that I was using as the donation income I receive.
I just checked and it's actually closer to €700/month.
Your support for my work is greatly appreciated & helps enable work that quietly affects about a million people.
https://support.thisismissem.social

2024-05-15 16:54:15

Folks using the Mastodon API will probably like this! Advertising deprecations in API responses: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/30308
#MastoDev #Mastodon #MastoAPI

2024-05-14 19:03:49

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hmmm, okay — I think for my purposes, the Flag activity's categories is likely going to be something different.
e.g., so we can federate both the Illegal / Spam / whatever + rule violations as to what the local rule was
Because currently all Flag activities don't carry information that can help with triaging them.

2024-05-14 18:26:15

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hmm, so individual Notes aren't going to indicate their Group / Category?
I'm just trying to see if there's something I can borrow when it comes to categories for Flag activities

2024-05-14 17:41:01

@npub1uq5…z8a5 hey, how does NodeBB federate things like categories with posts?

2024-05-11 19:33:50

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arguably there's a possibility of a bug there where valid? will return true because items is an array, but options could resolve to an empty array (i.e., no "name" or "content" property on the item because it's a string & not an object

2024-05-11 19:31:45

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then you might get some weirdness, because for that I think you'd be sending an IRI to another object, where Mastodon expects poll options to be inline: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/app/lib/activitypub/parser/poll_parser.rb

2024-05-11 16:10:34

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yes, they've been working on it.

2024-05-11 15:41:58

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wouldn't it be super cool to build on top of say NodeBB and make this federated?

2024-05-11 13:41:21

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probably can't right now, and don't even know if I'll be able to make it (been having health issues), but I'll try to remember.
Aside, having .ics files available for events would be really helpful

2024-05-11 02:01:48

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might see if I can pop by

2024-05-04 19:29:18

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no, because that'd compromise on people's right to choose not to be quoted.

2024-05-04 19:05:34

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there's work in progress or starting on both of these. Remember, threads has a dozen if not hundred engineers available to it, Mastodon has 1.5-2 core staff engineers, and a litany of volunteers.

2024-04-29 15:18:45

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Like, Renaud's proposal has nothing to do with Threads or Meta saying "hey, we've moderation tools we could maybe open up if you want them"
In fact, his proposal is still at the stage it was last year (much like FIRES), because we had to wait for funding.
And it certainly isn't favouring Meta, just enabling anyone who wants to build more advanced, possibly automated tools, for enhancing moderation teams.
It's a direct reaction to those demanding spam tooling.

2024-04-29 15:13:57

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”Meta's plans to offer automated moderation tools to fediverse admins“
You know these are opt-in tools being proposed, where Threads/Meta is willing to leverage it's engineering org to provide tooling to help the fediverse in some way, right?
You don't have to use said tools, you can just ignore them.
(Source: https://flipboard.video/w/2q29uCjnHjot1CHu1CZBim)

2024-04-29 15:10:10

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(Cont)
The part-time CTO? Surely him, because he's not busy with long term tech debt, writing FEPs & grant applications, and trying to coordinate releases & work priorities.
Like seriously, who do you think is doing the work here to build better admin tools?
I've not been able to do much for Mastodon, because my donations have remained below €1000/mo. I simply can't afford to contribute much.

2024-04-29 15:08:16

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“Will Mastodon's upcoming release 4.3 provide more tools for admins [...] ?“
Who do you expect to be writing these tools? The one full-time developer on the codebase who maintains backports of security bugs to 3 different versions of Mastodon, whilst y'all scream "quote posts now!!"?
The Managing Director of the project? He's busy having to wrangle US law to get a non-profit because y'all wouldn't fund the project without getting that tax kickback.
(Cont)

2024-04-29 14:57:23

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"Rochko's decision last year to change the signup process to default new users to mastodon.social highlights one aspect of the conflict of interest here“
But you don't even want those who are signing up to the flagship instance by downloading the official app, let's be honest here.
That or you expect them to install & operate fediverse software whilst not knowing anything about the fediverse?

2024-04-29 14:46:53

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The whole small vs big instances argument is also exhausting, you're somehow wanting consent with federation and every interaction, but expect your instance to be slurping up data from other instances such that your small instance isn't "quiet".
Where's that consent model again?
(And there's ongoing work by a and others around replies collections & the management of them, as to ensure you can request full reply trees)
#mastodon

2024-04-29 14:42:03

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”The recent confirmation that release 4.3 still won't make it easy for new instances to start with a blocklist that protects people from the nazis and TERFs that are active on the fediverse is a good example“
Yeah, because I closed the pull request for that a) because the code was an absolute mess, b) because one-time imports of moderation data are really terrible & only at all useful for DNI lists.
That's why I'm working on FIRES with NLNet funding.
#mastodon

2024-04-29 14:37:12

”But Mastodon also has [...] a lot on its plate including integration with Threads“
It's lines like this that makes me completely unable to take those calling for a hard fork of Mastodon seriously.
All Mastodon do for Threads is the same they for any fediverse developer having issues federating with them. (And there's certainly limits to that)
Along with perhaps writing more FEPs to standardize behaviour, which benefits *everyone*
#mastodon

2024-04-24 01:17:55

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small note: Threads is now available in the EU, it's just federation of those EU profiles isn't yet available iirc. They did delay the roll out to the EU though.

2024-04-19 19:43:58

Okay, so, remember how I had some big news? Well, I didn't get to announce it yesterday as I was unwell (I've been unwell most of the month and could really do with extra financial support right now!)
The big news is that my FIRES project has been granted funding by NLNet ([@NGIZero](https://mastodon.xyz/@NGIZero))
What is FIRES? It's a project I've been slowly working since September last year, and provides a server for maintaining and distributing moderation advisories and recommendations.

2024-04-17 17:34:33

Kinda feels like Mastodon should support that <...> syntax for URLs to say "hey, don't add a preview for this URL"