XMPP Service Operators - 2021-03-02

What an afternoon. I opened Blabber.im up to ~250msgs. I don't even know where to begin responding. Lol

thndrbvr, don't lol just be like "Yup, mmhmm. So how's the weather?" lol

> purplebeetroot: I still don't agree with your moderation policy, but every time I have a discussion with you and/or allie I feel like I come away a slightly better more understanding person, so thanks both of you for that :) I'm happy that we can have a conversation where we try to understand each other. :) So thank you for taking the time reading all those posts, even so most of my posts were in disagreement with yours.

allie: > kikuchiyo, it's certainly a complex problem That's why I linked the study. > https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10397 But it seems nobody has time to look into science. > what's complex about banning people that literally request the suicide of me? As you may have noticed, the complexity starts when the requested moderation is denied at a certain level so one needs to escalate the request to the next level. Deplatforming creates new platforms, which can only be deplatformed on a deeper level (think federation, software, protocols, hardware, hoster ...)

> moparisthebest> That server buddies system sounds bad > Like it favors big instances Not sure why it has to be this way. Trust is relative, it's not the same for everyone.

moparisthebest: > so back in my mis-spent youth I ran a large forum, we wrote programs to cheat on a MMO, and made private servers for that MMO Doesn't everyone and your dog know about the "Rune forum" story already? :))

ernst.on.tour: > In some areas its nice to have BBQ with cow, in other areas cow is holy. > There are a lot of person eating pork but also a lot of people that will dam it. > Who will be the only right ? > The one who is eating fish ? What if you're allergic to fish ? :) :(

> allie: > That's why I linked the study. Right, I lost interest for the reason they advertised themselves as 'nuanced' but on my perspective failed on that. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting and they do important considerations such as trying to understand what deplatforming does behond a single entity. They say deplatforming works to: - decreasing their power in onboarding new people. - decreasing the size of a given community But that we need to take in account, that it may lead to further radicalisation. That's true I believe. But they miss an analysis (maybe I missed that, I didn't read it very carefully), the overall effects of supporting facists to organise in the open. They also failed to analyse how deplatforming in combination with infiltration does bring permanent damage to such a community. How seeding distrust between the members effects the efficiency of a given group to organise. How constant attacks can lead to shrinking faith. It also misses to an analysis that's not isolated from the overall network you could describe as alt-right. They are present in many platforms and big player platform have helped them to reach an extremely large audience. They have always guided the most actives of such audience to the more "VIP" channels, to deepen the radicalisation and as a means to organise with them. They don't need deplatforming to do so. It happens always. They also seem to not make an analysis how fascists do change their language depending the audience. But that gives no insights, despite the study suggests this as evidence, on their level of radicalisation. ...and much more to say. .

> As you may have noticed, the complexity starts when the requested moderation is denied at a certain level so one needs to escalate the request to the next level. Deplatforming creates new platforms, which can only be deplatformed on a deeper level (think federation, software, protocols, hardware, hoster ...) Agree it is a complex topic and I believe many of you can learn from isolategab and the scientific studies it's going to create following the hack.

What's the effect of normalising facists organising in the open?

You think you'd know how to spell fascist if it's going to be your favorite word

yellowchopper: maybe it's a word game, fas-cis-t ?

Where are all these woke npcs coming from lately? Feels like there's an uptick in their population size on xmpp. Weren't they all going to migrate to mastodon or matrix?

yellowchopper: Maybe we can drop classism for a sec (spelling) and focus on the topic at hand.

purplebeetroot: fwiw I'm waiting on an answer from the 404.city operator (when you get one?) and depending on that I'll block s2s at least on my own instance, and I'll advocate for that in places I'm involved.

Thank God your tactics are useless in this space

Go annoy people on clubhouse

God doesn't need to get involved don't worry

You're not even witty... Just boring

Oh you're the moderator of that room right? heh

I reiterate.. you're boring af

Sure

Glad you agree

Now go away

Would be nice for Conversations to gain a /ignore feature

You're telling me

I'd love to see that

purplebeetroot, moin! I don’t have much time, but IIRC you said yesterday that it is OK I don’t want to be in the judges role and that I can defer that to people who I consider knowledgebale. That’s exactly what I’m doing by saying that you should go through the authorities (to get something removed from s.j.n) mind also that I only jumped into the discussion because s.j.n was brought up by you in the first place, otherwise I would’ve completely stayed out of it. I’m only arguing from the perspective of the sjn operator, not anything else.

> Would be nice for Conversations to gain a /ignore feature You can, it's just cumbersome: Add chat@conference.example.com/opponent to your blocklist.

I request the ban of Alex in this room and everywhere you have the power to do. Alex is the an admin of the MUC that started this long debate. In the other room Alex makes fun of the debate.

pep.: ^

Looks like I'll be the first casualty at this rate. So long and thanks for all the fish 👋 ✏

Alex: seems they're endemic

purplebeetroot: is requesting bans all you do? Seems like the real solution is to ban you and enjoy peace and quiet

pep.‎: This person purplebeetroot is an Internet troll who is engaged in provocations and wants to restrict the freedom of speech of other people.

pep., I will simply ask you to publicly name your server.

purplebeetroot, forgot to add: sorry if my original interjection derailed your request, that was not my intent. I was just anticipating a request towards me and wanted to make it clear right away, because that wouldn’t be the first instance of someone unilaterally requesting a third parties room to be delisted.

Please, let admins do whatever they want to do with _their services_ and let them apply _their policies_ (ban, block s2s, ...) but _do not tell others what they have to do_ or expect justifications. Otherwise it is an endless debate. I just hope we can consider this off-topic for a "Service Operators" MUC and move to other matter.

Service discovery is always a central point of failure I suppose. Hope it doesn't come to that. Are we going to have preapproved code of conduct policies to be able to exist? Because that's where this ultimately leads.

I do not agree. I tell admins to delete spammers.

If a server operator refuses to delete spammers I'll block that server.

That's not the issue

The room discovery list is the point of control

> purplebeetroot, moin! I don’t have much time, but IIRC you said yesterday that it is OK I don’t want to be in the judges role and that I can defer that to people who I consider knowledgebale. Sure thing. That is absolutly ok. (Unless you believe the legal system is the only system in mastering social issues and conflicts) >That’s exactly what I’m doing by saying that you should go through the authorities (to get something removed from s.j.n) This is not ok. I disagree with the authority part. As if a king or his judges are the best person to ask. (You don't live in a kingdom, but you also live in a nation where let's say scientists live...) Your inactivity is harming me. You have been notified about that. The content in question is against (i don't really care about that aspect, but since you brought it up) the german law (where you are located). If you request me, to go on a legal battle with you, it will leverage the harm your inactivity is causing. You are aware of the following: - 1. you act against the law - 2. you do this on purpose, because it's easier for you - 3. you are partly aware of the harm your inactivity is causing - 4. you have a policy on when to get active with blacklisting rules, but you exclude it, as you state yourself, to ban hate-groups unless judge goes after you. - 5. I'm not requesting you to be the moderator if you do not have the time or skills, I'm requesting that you onboard moderators that are cabable of doing so - 6. You have a personal Antony I can get in contact with? - 7. If you deny a process to solve the conflict outside court, the penalty if they find you guilty leverages - 8. I prefer group mediation, but again if I feel forced, I'm open to push as hard as it requires to create change. I do not limit myself to mere complaining to some authorities. - 9. I'm ok in story telling. I'm ok in research. Your behaviour can cause negative consequences for the overall xmpp community and give it branding of white-cis-males that are ok with misogyny 10. I'm in for conflict mediation. But do not try to push me, unless you can accept the consequence of your behaviour. 11. I like xmpp alot, and several individuals. But I am loyal to nothing but values.

> Please, let admins do whatever they want to do with _their services_ and let them apply _their policies_ (ban, block s2s, ...) but _do not tell others what they have to do_ or expect justifications. Otherwise it is an endless debate. I just hope we can consider this off-topic for a "Service Operators" MUC and move to other matter. But I'll tell them what to do. 🙃

Martin: yeah because it is supposed that everyone fights spam. The point is when the two parties (notifier and admin) disagree.

jonas’: Just so you know, I didn't read that part when I replied. > purplebeetroot, forgot to add: sorry if my original interjection derailed your request, that was not my intent. I was just anticipating a request towards me and wanted to make it clear right away, because that wouldn’t be the first instance of someone unilaterally requesting a third parties room to be delisted.

Like I told you at the start, purple is the problem here, not the supposed NSDAP room. And here we go, purple is claiming victimhood for you not obeying her demands and extorting you with legal action! I believe I have been vindicated here, to those who may have thought i was too harsh

purplebeetroot, Are you ready to verify your identity? We can process your request if you provide evidence that you are not an Internet troll and are not engaged in persecution of a person on religious grounds or other contradictions.

Martin: > If a server operator refuses to delete spammers I'll block that server. You don't insist to enforce your expectations by the other admin. Instead, when he disagree, you take action on your services. That's my point. ✏

purplebeetroot, I do not follow the chats, but currently I see that you are persecuting someone for religious reasons using 7 fake accounts.

404.city: Are trolls marked on their passport or ID?

How do you determine? Norwegian citizenship?

404.city: there is a religious spammer in your "news" room post frequence 2/Min and sadly its a big room and easily discoverable. And that can give xmpp in general a bad name

So, turns out my upload server is fine

It's actually the indicators that are wrong

Menel: DarkJihad Jesus Pope?

Si

I knew it. 😂

The indicators are delayed, and do not operate probably ramping up to the actual speed on high bandwidth lines.

China Syndrome moment

And like 70% of the posts are from him

https://cdn.nuegia.net/3cd4613b-99ff-40fc-8330-096a61123b53/Chernobyl%20dubbed%20with%20Half-Life%20SFX-7F1ma_0vwog.mkv

> purplebeetroot, I do not follow the chats, but currently I see that you are persecuting someone for religious reasons using 7 fake accounts. lol. wtf. You claim I make this all up? While just a moment prior to that, claiming that you have no idea what's happening. You don't make sense. Try better.

Menel, I do not read messages, but the news https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9283649/Woman-31-refuses-shave-moustache-unibrow-says-helps-love-life.html of a picture of a woman with a mustache is not a sufficient basis for accusations of hatred of women.

Request ban of purplebeetroot for threatening a server operator with bad-faith legal action for not doing his/her bidding. That is not acceptable behavior in a room such as this and sets an unacceptable precedent

https://xmpp.404.city:5280/usershare/6d33720a4a94189f7b96d206ee5f6128196decf2/YEVcGT48NpXLwSlomll1GgVEQuERQz14KOIqko3i/39575126-9283649-image-a-17_1613911437385.jpg

This seems a little out there.

A the picture and a link to the news from www.dailymail.co.uk was just posted. purplebeetroot started screaming about some kind of hatred for a woman.

yellowchopper: if you see illegal contend, would you not inform the ad Min before taking legal actions? That's more polite then taking the actions without telling isn't it?

404.city: that's not how I read that muc

purplebeetroot, ok, I hope that resolves your problem -> https://search.jabber.network ✏

There are also rape fantasy's

If I may ask, in what channel is this incident taking place?

purplebeetroot: thank you very much…

» <purplebeetroot> > purplebeetroot, I do not follow the chats, but currently I see that you are persecuting someone for religious reasons using 7 fake accounts. » » lol. wtf. You claim I make this all up? » While just a moment prior to that, claiming that you have no idea what's happening. » You don't make sense. Try better. If that is true, would you mind not roping us, the participents of the operators chat in your with targeted harassment campaign. If it's not true please disregard

. ✏

jonas’: are you the person that runs searxh.jabber.network?

If so, I hope that doesn't mean that rooms other people own will get censored from your site, just because someone who is not an admin of a room just makes a lot of noise in the operators chat

is it still censorship if you remove all rooms?

i think he just took down the entire site :(

No, it's pretty easy for the admin of a muc to delist a site from there

Or the admin of a xmpp server to just filter stanzas based on origin

» <raucao> i think he just took down the entire site :( oh no, really? That was a very useful site for the XMPP community

It's censorship to perform any form of filtration, the question is whether those filters are sane and good.

That's very unfortunate

channel discovery still works in conversations

is it a seperate service?

yes

it's only a web directory

doesn't impact xmpp functionality

who runs the service conversations uses?

which service?

> oh no, really? That was a very useful site for the XMPP community I can understand him as someone here threatened to sue him.

Wait a second

where does conversations get a list of mucs from when you click discover?

same site

Can someone please explain what just happened, as i just joined

oh sry, i didn't know a client used that site in the client

there is a call to censor specific muc channels from discovery via web and conversations

Did search.jabber.network just get taken down because of something that went down in a muc that they don't even host?

raucao: > oh sry, i didn't know a client used that site in the client More clients should though

tom: > I can understand him as someone here threatened to sue him.

Just because they index public mucs

> More clients should though obviously that's debatable

Who threatened to so and why?

And in what jurisdiction?

seeing that a single person threating legal action here can take down a thing that the most popular android client uses

Yeah this is some BULL SHIT

I"m not for this cancel culture mess

Well, it's about time some of us build more

it's the weakest point for xmpp, the most centralized part ✏

So it's not so centralized

censors always target the indexes

in all of history

tom, raucao: running a public service is hard and time consuming. You can't expect a volunteer to implement or keep something running, no matter what.

> purplebeetroot, ok, I hope that resolves your problem -> https://search.jabber.network (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

jonas’: would you mind sharing the source code to your site, so we don't all have to start over from scratch?

Ge0rG: yes, that's why i said if more clients make it a dependency it just increases pressure

tom, it’s all online available

jonas’: where?

It's not online right now 403 forbidden

tom, https://github.com/horazont/muchopper

but don’t ask me to provide documentation

Thanks

Do you accept patches over email or xmpp?

I was threatened with legal action, so now I have to go ahead and review the things around it to ensure it all works out as I think it does before I can keep the listing online, sorry

tom, github

Let this be a lesson to all of us that we need multiple servers, in different jurisdictions so we can't get critical infrastructure cancel cultured and censored off the net

jonas': do you plan to take down discovery service for the conversations app as well or just the web portal?

tom: so, when will you bring up the mirror?

Alex, I plan on nothing right now, I’m at work, I’m in the middle of my lunch break and just had my day ruined

please don’t ask me stuff.

This would be an option, maybe: > Would you be interested to make s.j.n be part of joinjabber, so that members of that group help you with moderation that is overwhelming for you. > Just so you don't get me wrong: > I do not need to be involved in anyway.

I’m going to talk to purplebeetroot to sort this out amicably.

Ge0rG: I don't know yet, I have to take a look at the code, understand it and decide if i want to host it directly, modify it and host it, or start my own

purplebeetroot, why yes thanks, take that discussion into public after I specifically told you I’m on my lunch break, that’s a good way to start things off

I have a lot more free time next week

It probably won't be a mirror, I want to run my own spider not just mirror results

tom: yes, that would be good indeed.

Maybe such lists could be hosted on an immutable storage network, such as lbry or sia? That way, the info couldn't be taken down, even if the original poster wanted to, so long as someone on the network was willing to seed it.

archerships, a global censorship-resilient list is not the answer to our problems... it may have other applications but users need human-curated lists of services, not a list maintained by a bot

Both of you are welcome to start such a project

yea sorry i'm just catching up on everything that happened here

i'm concerned by nazi-friendly admins but also not a fan of censorship, and i believe community-curation is a good balance

@southerntofu Didn't the main source of discovery info just shutdown due to legal threats? It seems to me that censorship resistance is indeed part of the answer.

archerships, only because it was a single instance in a specific jurisdiction

» <archerships> Maybe such lists could be hosted on an immutable storage network, such as lbry or sia? That way, the info couldn't be taken down, even if the original poster wanted to, so long as someone on the network was willing to seed it. Or just xmpp pubsub

What if the community is full of rigid censors? I mean SJWs got the president of the US booted from Twitter and Facebook.

Is it really against German law to list rooms in a search where illegal contend may be? How do search engines solve this?

>‎Martin‎: 404.city: Are trolls marked on their passport or ID? In this case, there is reason to believe that the request is related to trolling or persecution for religious reasons. The person must introduce themselves and go through a security check that this is a real person, not a fake persone. In favor of the fact that this troll speaks multiple provocations, as in the case of a mustachioed woman. Posting news about mustachioed women is not misogyny.

A reminder that this channel is for coordination between XMPP service operators, and discussions about the XMPP network. I consider discussion about services such as s.j.n on-topic, but I don't want to see discussions about specific political issues here.

archerships, no Trump got banned because he and previous administration for years have pushed strong repression/censorship of anarchist/revolutionary/antiracist propaganda through para-legal means, and he went slightly too far with his bending of the truth so he got stomped on the nails

@Mattj do you consider how to make XMPP service discover lists censorship resistant on-topic?

archerships, I'm concerned that such discussions will de-rail into the details of censorship (not everyone agrees with your suggestion already)

so while I wouldn't say it's strictly off-topic, I think another venue would be better

still i agree with you it's worrying that some liberals cheer on trump getting censored, because in the end this censorship will mostly impact revolutionary movements, not nazis (who have strong connections with businesses, law-enforcement, etc..)

I would like to assist in the curation and mass hosting of XMPP directories.

@Mattj, well, there seems to be strong contingents in favor of censorship and freedom of speech.

k sorry stopping on that regarding trump, i'm digging into the backlog

As XMPP becomes more popular, we may begin to experience pains similar to how ActivityPub and Mastodon had, where some people decided to start making not just spam RBLs but political RBLs. Where, block lists not for spammy hosts but block lists for servers that contain people of political ideologies

404.city, your message is specifically an example of the kind of message I don't want to see from now on

Defending or attacking specific political views is not the topic of this room

southerntofu: two wrongs don't make a right

> Menel wrote: > yellowchopper: if you see illegal contend, would you not inform the ad Min before taking legal actions? That's more polite then taking the actions without telling isn't it? That is not what's happening here. That was an extortion attempt. Nobody reading it in good faith will see otherwise

tom, that's a very good analogy! a social (human-maintained blocklists) solution to a social problem is the only way..

I'm happy to ignore those hostile to freedom of speech, if you like, and limit discussion to technical aspects of creating censorship resistance.

Though, I'm not so sure XMPP will have the same problems mastodon has, as XMPP doesn't have a twitter firehose equivalent

XMPP is also more mature in it's spam fighting tools

tom, XMPP also has a much smaller community which is why such problems don't pop up so often

And user data exposation is usually isolated to mucs, not the entire network, and semi-anonymous mucs do exist

XMPP is not modeled off of twitter

It seems that one issue is that not all clients support /block functioning. So people like purplebeetroot either have to tolerate commentary they don't like or leave communities altogether.

(If they're using such a client.)

Well at least the problem with psi-plus is that it handles blocking via the legacy privacy-lists method

People like purple aren't content to block people

So on a prosody server with server side blocking support, the blocking button won't work

User filtration is in my opinion one of the better solutions to this issue.

Rather than server pruning.

Remember, purple shared his first recourse: contact the server admin asking to be made a mod in order to ban the offending parties! This is not a person who would be content with blocking

Removing individuals from a service remains a server maintainer's perogative, but I do not recommend it for actions that are not spam. Room moderators have the ability to more aggressively dictate conversation focus.

Yes, users being able to block people is important. That is a lessen we have (hopefully) learned from the standard before XMPP, IRC. However RBL lists for individuals designed to be imported into clients is a rather orwellian overtake on blocking, as there's a pretty big weakpoint into who and what goes into those lists of individual jids. For example, one of my close friend's homepage was put into a blocklist by Cisco Corporation under "fake news". His site is a journalism site that mostly contains writeups about common corporate spyware and other facts inconveinent to big tech corporations

@yellowchopper, yeah, I agree. Hence, my suggestion that the list be stored on an immutable blockchain. Then pbr could make all the threats (s)he likes, and yet the info would remain.

Anyway, the number of people who are willing to defederate over concern trolling by a clearly unreasonable person has alarmed me, and I am interested in archerships' line of thought toward bolstering censorship resistance. Because censorship won't need to knock down the gates, it's within the walls

In additon, implementing more fine-grained blocking technology is still desirable, independent of whether it's a complete solution to the problem of censorship.

fwiw, i wouldn't include a completely uncurated list in my client, but i also wouldn't want one censored by someone with purplebeetroot's sensitivities. it's ovbiously a difficult problem, with difficult trade-offs, and i think not one to be solved here immediately with random "let's keep the data on a blockchain" ideas. why don't you go and build a prototype of what you think makes sense and then you can see if people like it and adopt it (or join the effort). tip: IPFS with IPNS might make much more sense for this use case. no blockchain necessary.

Another mom & pop shop that was a client of mine Google Corporation just decided one day that their site was "malicious" and put their site into "google safe browsing" list.

Which made their site inaccessible with a big scary red page saying that the mom and pop site were thiefs or something

And trying to get their private data

Any individual looking for a haven of good conversation should create the appropriate room and invite the designated participants, but if censorship of a room a user does not have the rights to is desired, the user should be using clientside tools to deafen themselves to stimuli they'd rather forget.

Which was totally untrue

I'm not a fan of "just add blockchain" thinking. The least complex solution is ideal

Google Corporation refused to delist the site from Google Safe Browsing, which apparently many other products import and use unless they signed up for a Google account and installed files onto their site

I suggest simply mass uploading lists to various surface web locations.

@raucao, blockchains were designed with censorship resistance in mind, so it's not a "random" suggestion.

Not against any ToSes, of course.

Effectively racketing their site unless they signed up and managed their site through a google console

And where authenticity is needed, a PGP sig.

We maybe be faced with a tragedy of the commons situation that doesn't have a neutral solution. Ultimately any lists will be a reflection of the current power dynamics.

archerships: the randomness is in just throwing that word around

Please, do not implement blocklist for individuals importanting in a client-facing consumer way

go build something or at least design an architecture first

With the user deciding whose sigs and mirrors to use. Same for finding these lists, we can make and upload lists of lists.

Please be considered about how your technology could be used by others with lesser moral ideals, not just yourself

Simple enough, and we can integrate the two, forming a list-ring.

if you depend on someone's sigs, and all you need is the content, you can just as easily pin CIDs on IPFS, and get updated from their signed IPNS endpoint

I doubt the programmers who work at Amazon Corporations knew they were building a heatmap for finding and stopping unionization in whole-folds

Foods

I'm not just throwing the word around. The sia network and lbry are already existing, deployed censorship resistant networks. A lot of youtubers that have been censored have moved to lbry, for example.

Or the programmers at google knew their telemetry system was going to be used to total global mass survailance and control

ok, then where's your architecture and prototype?

Well, let's try an implementation there, archerships.

Don't need anyone's approval to code. :p

I've got about an hour before work, but I'm interested in this problem.

archerships: a content addressable file store isn't what's needed to solve the chat list issue

it's a much better solution for that use case than a blockchain

The chat list is dynamic, it's not just some large video file that needs to be distributed

tom is right, this is ultimately a governance issue

there's no tokeninzed value whatsoever in a chatroom list

tom: yes that's what IPNS is for

raucao, why are you being so unreasonable? You expect me to have already have a prototype up? jonas took down his site less than an hour ago.

And who owns and can change the IPNS address?

See the problem?

whoever's signature you would follow on the chain

god, now i have to explain blockchains to people here

As the chat list updates, you just need a web of dynamically updated lists of mirrors, the mirrors themselves can be static.

can it get more offtopic?

And come with a revision or timestamp.

i'm working with this stuff regularly

it will be up to client and sever developers what lists can be fetched though

go look into IPNS and similar, please

I'm aware of IPNS and IPFS raucao

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the problem here

lol, ok

It's not a technical problem

then go discuss it elsewhere

It's a jurisdictional one

this is an xmpp operator room

thank yuou

There needs to be more that one big search engine for xmpp mucs

"big"

tom, agreed with your criticism of JID blocklists.. i much rather trust a server operator to have trust (or lack thereof) in other operators for moderation, than in 3rd parties to come up with sensible blocklists

Yes, but governance issues can be addressed by technical solutions. If threats from people like pbr can be made technically futile, then it seems to me that they're less likely to make them.

> tom wrote: > It's not a technical problem True, but it may have a technical solution. Because people are creating the problem, not solving it

Who are the mods for this list?

You can't stop individuals from censoring, this whole thing is about blocking and filtering. the idea is to get groups of individuals to point to each other and form distinct bubbles.

So you end up with rings of blockers with trust in each other.

> pintosesk wrote: > You can't stop individuals from censoring, this whole thing is about blocking and filtering. the idea is to get groups of individuals to point to each other and form distinct bubbles. No. This is a failure state

yellowchopper, yes i'm willing to defederate with people/servers who encourage/maintain nazi propaganda, and i encourage others to do the same. this is not just an online stance though there is a long tradition of kicking nazis in the face so they may have a sudden realization they're in the wrong

Explain, yellowchopper.

A new user needs to be able to find his bubble. A fragmented network will prevent this. You will get stuck in the bubble you are introduced to

well put

Any solution to this will more or less be the same as a solution to the whole problem

this is the crux of the matter

» <archerships> Yes, but governance issues can be addressed by technical solutions. If threats from people like pbr can be made technically futile, then it seems to me that they're less likely to make them. No archerships, the issue is not that I can't access https://search.jabber.network right now resulting in a 404. The issue is that there's only one person running a search engine. Supposed that s.j.n was backed by IPFS right now. Sure, I could access the website my going back and looking at a previous dag hash, but that doesn't mean that list is going to get updated and curated by the same person anymore

> ‎MattJ‎: Defending or attacking specific political views is not the topic of this room I think there is a trolling problem here. You seem to have not yet encountered attacks of 300 troll's per day per chat. For six months. They cannot be silenced.These trolls talked among themselves in order to forge a certain public opinion. Okay, I will be silent.

And if availability was the ONLY issue to be solved, I could just download the list ounce and store it locally

But

Again

It won't get updated

tom, yea Google Safe Browsing is the precise example of how 3rd party blocklists can go wrong (i'm suprised we haven't had such bad experience with PiHole-style DNS blocking yet)

Well, I can't say I'm a source of pure information because my attention span limits my ability to catalogue all existing blocklists.

Alex, the tragedy of the commons is many people i know abandoned Jabber/XMPP ecosystem over the years because the few rooms they found to chat in they felt very unwelcome in (mostly women felt unwelcome)

So just out of capacity manual sharing is going to fail.

Good morning

archerships, blockchain is bullshit. peertube offers a youtube alternative with a fair balance between censorship-resilience and moderation, you should really check it out as more and more people move onto there

I am starting with a fresh/new ejabberd installation and I get a lot of `odbc connection failed` error messages from the debian default installation. There is no odbc configuration in the ejabberd.yml, so I wonder if I did something wrong here

> southerntofu wrote: > yellowchopper, yes i'm willing to defederate with people/servers who encourage/maintain nazi propaganda, and i encourage others to do the same. this is not just an online stance though there is a long tradition of kicking nazis in the face so they may have a sudden realization they're in the wrong You and others like you are the problem. This is not a civil position. Violence is not a refutation. Nobody will feel sorry for you if the big bad nazis end up being the ones to kick you in the face, because you can't be the victim when you start the violence

southerntofu: about threatening to sue indexers for not de-listing, that works both ways too. Adblockplus was threatened with legal action by functionalclam for blocking their site, which they claimed bypassed their DRM under the DMCA and got their adblocklist modified by github

I'm more concerned with the user having the option to access a piece of software that respects their freedom of choice than I am about getting that software or specific lists in people's hands.

southerntofu, I don't think xmpp is meant to solve issues of comfort, it just facilitaties communication. anything we build on top of that is governance and a seperate discussion

Another reason you shouldn't use github, github tampers with your git repos

Unsticking people from bubbles is not possible is we assume the people do not want to make effort to leave them.

> Unsticking people from bubbles is not possible if we assume the people do not want to make effort to leave them.

https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/a4d380ad1a3b33a0fab679a1a8c5a791321622b3

» gorhill replied Aug 11, 2017 » » There are forces out there working to turn user agents into private interests agents -- i.e. to turn browsers into proprietary devices. This is a manifestation of this. »

archerships, yellowchopper: there is no technical solution to human problems.. in the end implementing "perfect censorship-resilient neutrality" is direct support to the nazis because they have considerable resources to spread their ideology (they employ considerable amounts of people for propaganda), while most admins/users are sympathetic to opposite worldviews.. a technical neutrality in this case means siding with the people who have the most resources and the most bigoted view

southerntofu I'm not sure I buy your premise

I think focus should be directed into expanding user choice by their own ability and with the ability to adjust the hubs by which they access content.

So that users are given the option to self-host.

southerntofu: you are wrong, and here's why: That goes both ways. It's just whatever power system is currently in charge. Back in the 60s and 70s in the united states there was a organization called the HUAC

House of Unamerican Acts

Speaking of governance, who are the mods of this group?

yellowchopper, i'm ok with being kicked in the face by a nazi if that's the price. but claiming antifascist violence (a few punches in the face) is the same as nazi violence (actual murders in the current days, genocides previoulsy) is weird

@pintosesk, agre.

matt and ralph

The server or system through which we create these lists, or lists of lists, should be kept close to the clients, or even the XMPP JID.

They existed to find anyone of even slightly liberal ideogy and cancel culture them

> southerntofu wrote: > archerships, yellowchopper: there is no technical solution to human problems.. in the end implementing "perfect censorship-resilient neutrality" is direct support to the nazis because they have considerable resources to spread their ideology (they employ considerable amounts of people for propaganda), while most admins/users are sympathetic to opposite worldviews.. a technical neutrality in this case means siding with the people who have the most resources and the most bigoted view I'm not a communist. I don't refuse to do the right thing because some nazi out there might find convenience in it. Again, people like you are the problem

So that you can pop into nayone's bubble.

Anyone*

southerntofu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee

tom, i did not see any legal threats in here. i just finished the backlog (50 messages to go) and pbr simply explained the legal situation, did not threaten to escalate to courts

The goal is accessibility. True censorship resistance is a matter of it being easy to bypass censorship in one spot, and then easy to transfer that bypass to others.

> I prefer group mediation, but again if I feel forced, I'm open to push as hard as it requires to create change. I do not limit myself to mere complaining to some authorities > I'm in for conflict mediation. But do not try to push me, unless you can accept the consequence of your behaviour. southerntofu: correct, this doesn't even sound like legal action only to me. it sounds like if i met this person IRL, and they said this to me before, i'd be prepared to defend myself against violence. tolerating that level of aggressiveness is not something i want to be part of in a public room.

Government changes, people in charge change, systems change.

Alex, "comfort" and "survival" are more or less the same thing when it comes to nazism/patriarchy

I thus suggest being able to offer blocklists between XMPP users.

What is in power and in vogue now, may not be the same and benefit you in the coming future

southerntofu: He misspelled attorney as Antony, but it's easy to get that he asked Jonas whether he has a lawyer…

It's important to build technological systems with that in mind

tom, i'm aware of anti-progressive censorship (which is to this day far more common than anti-nazi censorship, all across the globe)

So that's a clear threat of legal actions.

A well maintained bubble that keeps a majority of users out and unable to even do that is not possible to remedy without an outside source, at which point the user may well be amenable to making an account on a different server, or self-hosting.

Never forget martin luther king was under targeted survailance by the NSA and FBI because at the time, they were considered 'threats to national security'

> southerntofu wrote: > yellowchopper, i'm ok with being kicked in the face by a nazi if that's the price. but claiming antifascist violence (a few punches in the face) is the same as nazi violence (actual murders in the current days, genocides previoulsy) is weird Let's forget about the congressional baseball shooting and other inconvenient facts

They were considered terrorists

That someone who offers that service for free in his spare time clearly doesn't want to spent money, time and sanity on…

Now they are stable elementary school education

Such toxic people do great harm.

yellowchopper, i don't care if you're a communist or what kind of communist.. do you feel okay with inviting nazis to your birthday party? do you feel okay when all your women/jewish/tsigan friends leave the room because of that? if so then i guess we have a strong disagreement

> southerntofu wrote: > tom, i'm aware of anti-progressive censorship (which is to this day far more common than anti-nazi censorship, all across the globe) When the big lie fails, play victim. You need to stop. This game doesnt end well

In XMPP, the system of blocking participants in group chats is not well developed. Blocked trolls simply re-create accounts and log in again with different nicknames. This is problem.

raucao, i don't condone that type of aggressiveness in public rooms either, but i have to admit pbr's aggressiveness is just a tiny drop of water in the ocean compared to actual violence advocated/committed by neonazis across the planet, so the tradeoff is fine with me

> southerntofu wrote: > yellowchopper, i don't care if you're a communist or what kind of communist.. do you feel okay with inviting nazis to your birthday party? do you feel okay when all your women/jewish/tsigan friends leave the room because of that? if so then i guess we have a strong disagreement Private rooms exist my friend. Theres a technical solution to a human problem for you 😄

None of this political theatre is going to affect the ability and considerations of users to spread information among each other.

And that's a fundamental *human* tool.

Martin, i have received legal threats in the past and i can assure you pbr's message doesn't look anything like a legal threat, merely a legal exposé

404.city: it's mainly an issue with open registration servers. We had the same people back in the day with open relay SMTP servers, then one day when EMAIL was popular enough we decided as a network we were going to block any servers acting as open relays on the public internet

I suspect that XMPP may one day face a similar situation

tom, yes CoIntelPro political repression had many comrades murdered over the years (Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, etc..) so rest assured i'm definitely not advocating for state surveillance/censorshi ;-)

Personally, I don't mind open relay or registration systems, so long as the user is the one doing the filtration.

And especially as the world grows past survailance capitalism bussiness model, free services not run by nonprofits and volunteers may also dissapear

And so long as the server is willing to transport the load.

> raucao, i don't condone that type of aggressiveness in public rooms either, but i have to admit pbr's aggressiveness is just a tiny drop of water in the ocean compared to actual violence advocated/committed by neonazis across the planet, so the tradeoff is fine with me what are you even talking about? you don't condone it, but you condone it, because... why?

are you saying jonas is a nazi?

southerntofu: big corporations are just as powerful, if not more powerful than states nowadays.

yellowchopper, i'm not aware of baseball but i can tell you the nazi violence i see with my eyes around me is levelsahead of any kind of anti-nazi self-defense, nazis have actual guns and use them regularly to do school shootings (all school shooters to my knowledge are active nazis/misogynists), mosque attacks, killing random people of color by throwing them into the river.. it's another whole new level

"corporations are so big you don't even know who your working for. That's terror. Terror built into the system"

yellowchopper, just like with police repression.. police repression against Jan6 fascist demo was actively prevented by higher-ups in the hierarchy protecting the nazi insurrection. while every smaller black lives matter demo has been severely gased and beaten down by every police available

It's just as important if not more important to just outsource surveillance and censorship to corporations, just because they aren't governments on paper

> southerntofu wrote: > Martin, i have received legal threats in the past and i can assure you pbr's message doesn't look anything like a legal threat, merely a legal exposé Like I said, a good-faith reader will see it was an attempt to intimidate and extort. You are not reading in good faith. You are nakedly regurgitating communist talking points in defense of an indefensibly toxic personality. All you've done is reveal to everyone your word is not to be taken with any amount of seriousness

*not outsource

southerntofu: so basically, anyone merely claiming that they saw a nazi somewhere can now be aggressively threatening non-nazis in venues you attend, and you're completely fine with that, because... actual nazis once had death camps?

Ok, I looked away for a while, and I already don't like the look of this discussion

Please folks, keep on topic and/or take it to another venue

yes, can we just agree to not threaten people, please?

raucao, no i'm not saying jonas is a nazi sorry.. we're talking about actual nazis in some MUC servers

MattJ, they can't it's been censored lol ✏

Human beings don't need to communicate amongst one another, but most humans do. This includes unfavorable ones. Taking away their ability for them to do this is at your discretion if you offer the platform. I only need a place where I can communicate freely, I'm not going to care about the correctness of a censored bubble, nor should you about my incorrect communications, if I have any.

That is my opinion. Enforce at will, people will gravitate towards their designated zones, we just need a client or implementation capable of traveling between them, even if someone forks and neuters it.

pintosesk, i also don't like speech control, but i understand the value of some admins banning me from their servers for my political opinions, just like some people could kick me away from their homes.. or doesn't that make sense to you?

We just need one instance of user ability, and perhaps a more powerful clientside content filter.

southerntofu: not really until you become a problem

Preemptive banning is dumb

It does, because I don't fundamentally agree with the need to centralize any information I can download.

MattJ, Me too don't like, this is a chat for interaction between operators. This I think is discussed here offtopic topics

Including chat history, user contacts, etc.

This room is a failure. No consensus can be reached with dishonest ideologues who will lie to your face and insist you do as they demand or you're a nazi

tom: > There needs to be more that one big search engine for xmpp mucs s.j.n is not a search engine, but a searchable list

tom, agreed

licaon_kter: what's the difference?

so, where should we move this conversations to?

Well s.j.n runs their own spider

southerntofu, you choose

And accepts tstring text queries

I see no negative value from people exercising functional ability. I cannot stop them, so I won't feel as if I ought to unless I have a reliable tool to do so. Social mechanisms are a poor tool.

Technology is a reliable toolset.

How is s.j.n not a search engine?

I would recommend you check what other mucs are up on j.s.n, but it's down ;_;

What is the muc in question that started all this drama?

I was curious about the origin as well.

tom, i'm not even sure.. my personal bad experiences with reactionary propagandists was on sécurité-vie-privée@chat.jabberfr.org but apparently this was about some 404.city MUC?

So, think about that, southerntofu. If you can physically do something or technologically do something on your server or systems, and I get angry about your choice, what can I practically, non-socially do about it? Barge into your house and reconfigure your computer?

pintosesk, off-topic

> tom wrote: > What is the muc in question that started all this drama? We only have purple's side of the story. And, seeing how purple behaved, I dont think it's reliable.

Ah, sorry.

yellowchopper, off-topic

Alright, Matt, lemme check the topic field and reorient myself.

Ah. It's being used as a room title.

» pintosesk> So, think about that, southerntofu. If you can physically do something or technologically do something on your server or systems, and I get angry about your choice, what can I practically, non-socially do about it? Barge into your house and reconfigure your computer? HACK THE PLANET!!!!

So, we're kicking this back to operational communications between XMPP server owners?

This MUC exists to help people running XMPP services coordinate with each other, discussions about specific political issues should go elsewhere

As Mattj doesn't seem to like the political side of the censorship debate here, where would y'all recommend we take it? Is there another MUC for free speech issues you would recommend?

> What is the muc in question that started all this drama? xmpp:news@chat.404.city?join

MattJ: I'm talking about events that transpired in this very room. And will again in all likelihood, because nothing has been done to show they are not permitted

If you want to create a MUC for operators of a particular belief, go and do that somewhere

yellowchopper, yes, and I apologise I was not here to moderate the discussions sooner

I'll host such a muc

Purple's behavior in here has been beyond unacceptable and the political conflict is the result of politically aligned people acting in solidarity with purple

The problem is that there are multiple beliefs in this MUC, and they are incompatible. Discussions about rights/wrongs will not end, if we make that the topic

and in that case the MUC will lose its intended purpose

I propose a light solution: ban purple for derailing this room and going to far as to threaten a server operator with bad-faith legal action. Then we consider it a closed case

pintosesk, i'm not gonna force you to do something on your server (or vice-versa) but i do want to empower admins to federate or not with other servers depending on their respective policies.. this is what's happening in the fediverse and is creating a very friendly/welcoming place for all sorts of people

I'm not happy with the way that was conducted, but I'm drawing a line here, I'm not going to ban people in retrospect

How about this, purple isn't harassing right now

The situation has ended

Otherwise most occupants would have to be banned by now :)

Good, situation has ended, conversation and drama can end here too

tom, agreed :)

If it happens again by the same person in the same manner not to long from now, then discuss actions but otherwise lets not do anything too hasty when it comes to banning

Agreed, I'm not keen on taking things that far. Hence my polite requests.

i believe there's room in the joinjabber collective for a working group on allow/block-lists for federation, if that's of interest to folks

The joinjabber collective?

Kollective

Feel free to link alternative discussion venues

That might be why civility is so fragile in this room. I think threatening people to get one's way is a hard line and that merely not being in chat doesnt undo or end it

>i do want to empower admins to federate or not with other servers depending on their respective policies Typical trolling method. Divide and and quarrels

I think it's just that the spark was already set and the chat's temp is returning to normal temp as we speak

But the burnout time is not instant

404.city, please stop trying to rally us all under a common flag, we obviously have nothing in common and we agreed this discussion would end here

I like the diversity of opinions and stances here. I think it's a sign of health from a network perspective

Also it doesnt look like this room has any capacity to resolve conflict, but instead ignites it along political lines. Good faith is a losing strategy against political solidarity. All that will ever happen here is people will defederate and self-congratulate about it. The partition is inevitable. The only reason to be here is to eat popcorn and watch the entertainment

Says the person with a pepe avatar

:D

don't take the bait

southerntofu, I think you're talking offtopic. This is not a political chat, there technical questions.

404.city, sorry, but the same applies to you

Last I checked pepe was apolitical

last i checked pepe was alt-right neo-nazi symbolism but well.. 404.city technical is political, or do you believe an atomic bomb is a politically-neutral tool?

i'll stop here as we obviously will not agree on anything

Everything is nazism to you

We're done with the off-topic, folks

But anyway, MattJ wants this room to be about server administration (automate fight against spammers and whatnot) and not moderation, which I can certainly understand, since it is not exactly the same topic the same topic

-the same topic

southerntofu: please stop

I'm (temporarily) removing voice from anyone who continues with off-topic discussions

I have better things to do than try to keep this channel civil

(I'm the one who suggested that purple comes here since they mistakenly thought the 404.city was coming in one of my mucs, but I should have directed them to the contact info instead, apologies)

Has anyone attempted so far running an XMPP server with federation from an OpenNIC TLD? Such as .fur, .geek, .oss, .pirate

And certificate authorities that sign for non IANA tlds

Since a certified tls cert is required nowadays

Does let's encrypt do this? That'd be epic

I recently reconfigured my recursive resolver for OpenNIC's root-hints and dnssec and I am quite happy with what I feel is a much better organizational structure for the root of dns than IANA

What's the fun part there? The odd TLD?

steven unfortunately letsencrypt does not. The issue was brought up on their form back in 2014-2017 but they refused

Licaon_Kter: well for one the OpenNIC TLDs are much more internet community centric

Some of them don't even charge

And browser their sites is a throwback to pre-eternal september internet

LetsEncrypt is bounded by the CA/Browser Forum requirements.

Or at least pre-2008 internet

https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/do-you-support-opennic-top-level-domains/4473

There's a search engine i found, grep.geek

https://cdn.nuegia.net/aa01cbf3-a8c6-4c29-8935-f24a309c95bb/screenshot_016.png

It's pretty good

Very accessible and clean

There are a few new CA projects i've heard of so far, one by opennic themselves

here is their cert... I think, but it's expired https://cdn.nuegia.net/ff7cb131-4143-4288-819a-e6c483fdcd07/opennic_root_ca.crt

Their wiki is a bit fragmented

I'd like to host an XMPP server on a OpenNIC tld since i personally sleep better having the root of dns be managed by an OpenNIC NIC then the current shitstorm of the IANA, especially after all the drama with the .org TLD

I am concerned about potential federation problems though

tom, you will probably encounter dialback issues

Perhaps this is something we as the XMPP operator community should address new while it's an early issue to pave a way of less resistance for others in the future

it is kind of the same problems as a .onion-only XMPP service

I wouldn't say that it's the same as that

It's just a matter of a resolver configuration

And OpenNIC isn't a seperate internet

tom, it is *easier* than federating with a.onion, technically, but operator-side it is kind of the same

(i.e. making it possible for each server to reach the other using the designated name)

but instead of having to connect to Tor, you have to add some DNS resolver configuration

For one, a lot of the OpenNIC NICs have cybersquatting against their terms of service

http://nic.fur/?tpl=tos

» FurNIC may delete registered domains, and address allocations if they conflict this Terms of Service, be expired, not configured three months after registration, domains are "Parked" for more than six months or FurNIC is forced so by legal actions.

More info on opennic for those that don't already know https://www.opennic.org/

I make and maintain IP routers

I'm going to be preconfiguring them with recursive resolvers using OpenNIC as the root of dns to help spread adoption

Perhaps even submit a pull request to unbound to change this by default

I wonder how they'd react to such a patch

(Unbound resolver has the IANA root hint and dnssec root key compiled in and used by default if no root hint is specified)

My opinion: thinking that two authorities may coexist in a central authority system is utopia. Then a third authority? What else? Next step: TLD collision war? Control is all, so everything is locked. Worthless.

Ok, I know this is a different topic, but it would be hypocritical of me to overlook this as also beginning to go off-topic... it's too soon :)

Agreed.

Federation of XMPP over "alternative" networks is an interesting topic and challenge

From an implementation perspective, there aren't many barriers, assuming there is a trust mechanism involved (i.e. that comes for free with .onion and (I think) i2p stuff)

Just providing DNS with no means to obtain trusted certificates though, is problematic (if you care about secure federation)

If we used a system like convergence for x509 authenticity this wouldn't even be a problem to solve, however something is still needed in the interum

I am aware of at least two opennic friendly certificate athorities

Opennic themselves are creating one as we speak

I've sent a few email out asking questions waiting for a response

Great, then things will hopefully get easier :)

There's also stuff on the opennic wiki

It may come down to some of us operators changin their dns settings and/or installing a cacrt into the system trust instead of just blinding using the Mozilla bundle

> Ge0rG> LetsEncrypt is bounded by the CA/Browser Forum requirements. Now that they're the most used (right?) CA, I'm sure it's their choice to make, it's a different dynamic.

pep.: I'm sure that they'll immediately use their too-big-to-fail position to pursue *our* political agenda.

Not what I'm saying. Just saying it's a choice, they're not "bound" to it :)

That's like saying that you are not bound by law - it's a choice if you go around murdering people or not.

Kinda, we have the many corruption cases of political figures to prove this :)

But I'm disgressing

the LE folks are already looking into .onion domain support. so opennic isn't entirely unrealistic i guess

in the long term

pep.: maybe you can make that argument on https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/issues/1309

hah

I'll have my popcorn emoji ready.

I'm not saying I'm supportive of the CA mafia btw, I'm just saying using that as an excuse is hypocrit

(the CA/Browser forum thingy)

pep.: well, you could also put on your tinfoil hat and say that LE won't change their stance because Mozilla and Chrome are LE Platinum sponsors.

Does that really require tinfoil

But maybe the mundane truth is that they needed an objective set of criteria of what to do and what to forbid, and that set of criteria needed to be approved by the browser vendors, and as it happens the CABF baseline requirements were just in the sweet spot for the task at hand

And if somebody wants to change the status quo, they need to either modify the CABF-BR or provide an equally suitable set of rules, convince the browser vendors to accept that set of rules, and convince LE to switch their implementation to follow that set of rules

And that would be a significant effort for every party

but of course it is a choice to make.

they just happen to choose "keep things as is" over "do a multi-year process to slighty improve the situation for a marginalized sub-group"

Right so we agree it's a choice

It's just either to keep the status quo than try to change things :)

And we disgress again?

As long as we don't disgrace.

Still slightly annoyed with your use of "objectivity" but I'll leave it at this.

The one place I used that word was to describe a need, I didn't even apply that attribute to any existing entity.

"Something objective set of rules [..] And it just happens the CABF baseline requirements were just in the sweet spot for the task at hand".

pep.: well yes, that's a rought quote of what I wrote.

I'd even go so far as to claim that the CABF-BR _is_ an objective set of rules, because it makes very clear definitions of what it allows and what it disallows, so it is easy to agree on whether some implementation fulfills or fails it.

Isn't that rather "explicit" than "objective"

so maybe instead of "objective" I could have said "unambiguous", but I would consider the meanings to be close enough, and I actually tend for the former because it has a slighty wider meaning.

That word is just so overloaded with meaning I'd refrain from using it entirely

"objective - based only on facts and not influenced by personal feelings or beliefs"

We're gonna disgress even more if you bring in the word "fact"

Well yes, I'm sure that choices were made when writing the CABF-BR.

But the whole debate of the last half-an-hour was pointless, because none of us is going to do anything impactful about it.

That wasn't a goal of mine here

IMVHO, framing it as a "choice" for LE won't help you make any improvements. It is a much better and useful framing to say that LE is going to adhere to the CABF-BR and to join the committee that updates CABF-BR to make the required changes.

s/say/accept/

It's the pretending that's annoying to me. If I wanted to be practical about this case I'd try to get rid of the CA mafia altogether

`rm -rf /etc/ssl/certs/` and you are done

But if you don't want to be practical about it, we should stop now.

Otherwise, you could try to find out why and how point C of https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/public/2016-September/008473.html was motivated.

And bring up a change to that.

anyone running a Jackal server? seems like they recently had a bigger release: https://github.com/ortuman/jackal/releases/tag/v0.50.0