I mean, a website where you make requests to download many files are pretty ripe for a bate and switch scenario. That said, I’m looking for more cybersecuroty savvy folks than myself to chime in with the all-clear after doing some actual checks and analysis.

My bigger question is how secure is it? Looks like low trust score new Russian website, what’s the chance of malware or other attacks?

It is a “problem” if your goal is full ownership and control over your user interactions and data footprint. ATProtocol in principle achieves this, you can delete or move your account and all your user interactions will be deleted or follow you (meaning edit permissions, full access to all the posts/comments, follows, updoots, etc.). The cost of this is a very high data load for the host, though I’m still not clear on exactly why it is so much more data intensive, is it the size of lookup instructions between hosts in addition to the actual markdown?

[Edit: I see the problem, even with a self-hosted instance of 1, when you comment on posts in other instances that data is no longer held on your server, so you don’t own it and can’t control it directly, is that right?]

So as I understand it the big “advantage” of ATProtocol is the account portability via DID, however this is at the sacrifice of actually hosting an ATProtocol being extremely data heavy.

This has made me very curious about self-hosting ActivityPub (meaning an instance of 1 user), it would seem like focusing development on a client that makes it as close to as easy to self-host an instance as it is to join one would solve the issue of accountability portability, as you literally own all the data and rights when you self host. The Major challenge I see there is security, where experienced admins for larger instances should have some level of cybersecuroty expertise while the average use may have little to none. But then focusing group effort on auto-updating the client and the default settings of the client to maximize security would solve that issue it would seem?

So what am I missing? Other than hosting costs, what else is deferring a self-hosted-first development approach for the Fediverse?

Is it actually that AP development fundamentally believe moderation should be handled at the admin/instance level, and self-hosting makes moderation more difficult and less directly authority based?

Publicly shared blacklists and whitelists would seem the natural fit for a self-hosted-first network, akin to adblock and horizontal.

Actually there is a legal definition, a Public Benefit Corporation has statutes in its articles of incorporation which legally commit the company to pursue a set purpose which supersedes the fiduciary responsibility of the corporation to shareholders. This is important because it provides some degree of legal protection from activist shareholders suing the company for making spending or policy decisions which don’t directly maximize shareholder value. The body of law around this issue is still relatively murky, but some defense is better than none at all.

For example, shareholders could attempt to sue BlueSky into increasing advertising placement or data sales functionality intothe core platform to increase company revenues, but if that is at odds with their stated public benefit purpose the legal team for BluSky would have grounds to attempt to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the shareholders purchase the shares under the explicit understanding that these functions would be subordinated to the public benefit goals of the platform.

I managed to find and follow a Twitter mirror account, but no posts have populated

haven’t come across them, it figures I wasn’t the first to think of it. So far from the other comment I have found the .makeup instance, which seems to be doing what I’ve been thinking but is a bit odd in its interaction with my home instance

hmmm… if the search on one of these (Instagram) resolves a username but my client (m.bin on kbin.earth via Interstellar app) can’t locate it does that mean my instance has blocked kilogram.makeup?

aha! of course I wouldnt be the first one to think of it.

"In 1789, rumours spread like a virus across France: gangs of bandits were attacking villages, destroying crops and terrorizing peasants, mobilized by nobles trying to suppress political unrest. None of it was true. But the resulting panic and upheaval, called the Great Fear, helped to fuel the French Revolution — and provoked a debate that still divides historians.

Did a deliberate effort to advance revolution drive the rumours? Or did they emerge spontaneously, driven by genuine terror? Now, scientists have used the methods of epidemiology to solve the mystery. Drawing on historical records and models developed to trace epidemics, researchers conclude that the fearmongering had rational, not emotional, roots1. “We managed to identify the logic behind the dissemination of the Great Fear,” says Antoine Parent, an economist at University Paris 8 and a co-author of the study, published today in Nature."

These are illegal Chinese imports which directly compete with Big Tobacco’s established brands (Blu, NJOY, etc.) Only Juul out of these has American Tobacco industry ties with 35% owned by Altria aka Philip Morris. I wish they had tested Blu and NJOY.

Anyway, Big Tobacco would benefit if customs and ATF ramped up enforcement against these Chinese imports.

Ah, but here’s the twist, most of them are already officially “illegal” but are still sold mail order and in corner stores none the less. It is an enforcement problem, not a regulation one.

Also of note, the big tobacco manufactured brands like NJOY and BLU actually have pretty substantial testing done on them. I met one of the analytical chemists who does the testing. What is there tolerance level for metals? I dont know, but probably better than the Chinese import all-in-ones. Based on this data though, seems like D Pods are the best pick all around if you have to pick one, so big brand D Pods are probably best overall, but then they dont have the flavors the kids all clamor over due to actually following regulation.

No one talking about how this could completely annihilate open source .apk development? First off the lead dev has to get identity verified to get a key, which will reduce the number of devs willing to push through friction to start a project. Then when the key is issued and it is posted to the repository, what keeps anyone from grabbing it and using it for another repo? We’ll they have an official app registration of some kind, ok, what about version control? Does every new version have to be registered before it can be loaded and tested? Same for forks?

This is about to be a terrible mess, Google is assassinating FOSS with this.

ouch

Elf Bar is manufactured by Shenzhen iMiracle Technology part of Heaven Gifts family of companies.

Esco Bar, the worst of them is made by Shenzhen Innokin Technology Co. Ltd.

Flum is manufactured by Flumigo Technology Limited, self held company.

Juul Labs spun of from Pax, 35% of it is owned by Altria aka Philip Morris who make NJOY.

All different parent companies and hardware manufacturing plants as far as I can tell.

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Yep, it is bad bad: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/disposable-e-cigarettes-more-toxic-traditional-cigarettes

The juice itself is… of moderate known negative impact. The nicotine itself isn’t actually very bad for you. Some of the flavoring though is pretty questionable. Compared to combustion it is likely still quite a bit less negative for your health in most cases.

The exception is the hardware, it seems quite likely there is mass lead and other heavy metal poisoning happening due to poor quality metal and ceramic components in vape hardware. I work in a related industry, and this conversation is being had internally by the big players who are afraid of potential class action lawsuits coming down the pipeline while pure export companies from China and elsewhere sell bulk wholesale of low quality hardware. Vapor composition certifications are coming soon, but the damage may well be done for a generation.

Yeah or “Feed”, if anything needs regulation it’s this tech.

Think Clockwork Orange scenario. Hard not to think words when you are shown those things in images, and especially if you’re drugged.