• @[email protected]
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    122 months ago

    ARE WE LEARNING HOW “SOCIAL MEDIA” WORKS YET HUMANITY?

    Seriously. How many more fucking times do we need to go around this goddamn merry go round until we just start calling each other on the phone and meeting face to face again. You know, where the only enshittification is the one you bring with you. It’s fucking boring me now, how many of these stupid ass things I didn’t join because I’ve already, apparently, gotten the memo and how, inevitably, something like this happens, and everyone acts surprised and disappointed , as though inevitability was a concept they felt they’d been given a sabbatical from or something.

    This. Shit. Ain’t. Free. There is an inherent cost, an “effort” required to communicate with others. You pay it with money, time or privacy. The overwhelming choice lately has been “privacy”, but it’s obviously something that not everyone is comfortable with, because we didn’t have the term “enshittification” before we started this flavor of our collective idiocy.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      ARE WE LEARNING HOW “SOCIAL MEDIA” WORKS YET HUMANITY?

      Apparently not, because people keep feeling surprised and offended when the Networking Effect happens.

      Seriously. How many more fucking times do we need to go around this goddamn merry go round until we just start calling each other on the phone and meeting face to face again

      Idk, when are we going to get low-cost public transit and VoIP that’s not like talking over two tin cans connected with string?

  • @[email protected]
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    402 months ago

    Something like this unavoidable.

    Example, ted cruz the car mechanic in marfa Texas has just has much right to use blusky as professional shit bag senator ted cruz. But hiw do tell the real one from the racid sack of weasels.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      It’s easy: cryptographic signatures. If you want to prove your identify, post a public key on something that you need to prove identity for (personal website or something) and sign your posts with the same key. That way everyone can tell the that the same key listed on the website is used for SM posts. Clients can check this automatically and flag anything on your “official” account that’s signed with a different key.

      This is much better than a checkmark system, because accounts get hacked and whatnot. It’s really easy to check a cryptographic signature, and it’s really hard to fake. If the website gets hacked, the signature won’t match previous posts.

      The main concern here is losing the key. If someone steals your key, generate a new one, and sign it with the old key and the new one. Boom, now everyone can tell you control both keys, while the attacker only controls the old one.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        That’s only easy for nerds, and it doesn’t help if the private key is on a device that gets compromised.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Regular people wouldn’t need identity verification, and the keys can be something the user never sees, just like with Signal. The UX can be pretty good here.

      • @[email protected]
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        02 months ago

        But how would a user see that this poat was made with the right crypto key. Maybe some check mark on the Post or some sign.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Ideally, they wouldn’t see anything if everything is good. If there’s an anomaly, flag it with a warning.

          But yeah, you could put a checkmark on it, but then it actually means something more than “this person spent money.” Ideally, the checkmark would only show if it’s a publicly verifiable key outside the platform.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 months ago

            Yeah that’s a better system then. We need something that shows the user then post or user is verified. How it works doesn’t matrer to them. Amd the key system would be betterment

    • @[email protected]
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      112 months ago

      People use usernames like they always have, and rely on reputation to distinguish themselves from the fakes? Senator ted ceuz makes an account called ‘senatortedcruz’ or if thats taken ‘therealsenatortedcruz’, and the mechanic makes one called ‘tedcruzcars’ or whatever. I dont see how your example is even relevant, because under a checkmark verification system both the mechanic ted cruz, and the senator ted cruz would be valid and deserving of a check mark, so there has to be some other way of distinguishing them anyway.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 months ago

          What is? How does a checkmark help distinguish between two people that have the same name? The checkmark just shows that the person is who they say they are.

  • VodkaSolution
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    12 months ago

    you don’t kill a cow for a scratch on her leg (I hope the saying is understandable for everybody since it doesn’t come from English).
    I’m on mastodon and bluesky: the first is even less populated than here and a big part of the interesting content comes from bot reposting popular accounts from x or reddit, while the second is far from being THE solution but it’s nowadays a -not wildly populated- compromise. I don’t condone (while I understand) the Turkish bans and I’m not interested in a verification system: if I’d like one, I’d use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS.
    I hope bluesky will correct its approach for what they can (the “good old” twitterin the golden era was banned in Turkey)

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      I believe the equivalent saying would be “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”.

      I couldn’t give a single shit about these twitter alternatives, because the whole concept is stupid.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        the whole concept is stupid.

        +1

        Being that algorithmic just makes any Twitter-like design too easy to abuse.

        Again, Lemmy (and Reddit) is far from perfect, but fundamentally, grouping posts and feeds by niche is way better. It incentivizes little communities that are concerned about their own health, while users have zero control over that shouting into the Twitter maw.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          yea lemmy/reddit definitely seems like more of a sweet spot. with twitter/mastodon or anything that has a “say something” text box right in your face on every page, you are going to end up with a lot of noise, because most people just dont have interesting things to say most of the time

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      I don’t understand - do you think mastodon (or the fediverse in general) is sparsely populated? That’s not my impression at all!

      • VodkaSolution
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        02 months ago

        That’s exactly what I meant: very few people, only on main niches, and some political and lifestyle ideas are common to 90% of the userbase (ie: anti-Trump, pro-Palestine, pro-Foss, etc).
        I’m not complaining, just reporting what I see

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          It seems that you don’t curate your followers much and/or don’t follow many people. The timeline is what you make it to be by following a variety of people as there isn’t an algoritm to curate it for you. There’s plenty of interesting content circling around and it’s wholly up to you wether it makes it to your timeline or not.

          • VodkaSolution
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            12 months ago

            I get it, but I don’t want to curate my followers, I’m not a news media, I just follow users I totally like, I usually look for content I don’t see in my timeline, do a lot of surfing, but in the end it’s not that big as today

  • @[email protected]
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    92 months ago

    I don’t see anything controversial in the article. Did I miss something? Just looks like a way to make sure the public figures and companies you are communicating with are who they say they are.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      It already has domain verification which is better IMO. Its more reliable and safer as you have to own the domain to use it.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      I think the existing domain-based verification system is a better way of doing that. Something like Mastodon’s verified links might be a nice addition. This more centralized system is… not what I hoped for.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 months ago

        I didn’t sound like a centralized system from the article. More like they want a third party like Verisign or something.

        Something will have to be done as these platforms become more popular to cut down on fraud and disinformation. You don’t want people impersonating other people or organizations, or companies. Even if Bluesky starts federating to other platforms, just knowing that they have a blue sky blue check would be an improvement if you could display that check on other clients like mastodon posts.

        ICANN has already made a mess of domain names so I don’t know if relying on the domain is enough. People are using non-Roman characters to trick people into thinking a website domain is the real thing. Others are buying up all these random domains so you get things like medicare.net and medicare.org and medicare.com etc etc.

        I dunno what the answer is. Just rambling out loud in frustration.

        • Billiam
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          42 months ago

          I didn’t sound like a centralized system from the article. More like they want a third party like Verisign or something.

          It’s going to be both. Bluesky will verify users, but they’re also going to have other authorized verification entities.

          From what I’ve seen, there will be two distinct types of blue check- users verified by Bluesky will have one mark, and users verified by a trusted authority will have a different mark.

          Now who will those third-party verifiers be, and how will they be selected, hasn’t been announced yet.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        What are you talking about? This is a web of trust model, literally a decentralized model. Not everyone on social media needs to have technical skills to verify via DNS records, verified links etc. If you want a community that gatekeeps for for computer engineers only, you already have Mastodon.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      22 months ago

      Verification wise there is already domain. But ultimately, it is too soon for the twitter exodus to get the blue check. All in all, this type of outrage is doomed to repeat with that type of central entity.

  • @[email protected]
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    622 months ago

    idk man I haven’t seen anyone complaining about it on Bluesky

    This is a net positive, nice to have a social media where verification checks are…actually used for verifying the person behind an account

    • Airportline
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      112 months ago

      Most of the complaints I’ve seen were about Bluesky’s lack of a formal verification system.

      They could never figure out how the current system of checking the username.

    • SSTF
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      112 months ago

      Based on how verification was revoked for some users on Twitter based on their content rather than question of their identity, I’m cautious about this system turning into the status symbol it became on Twitter rather than the verification it claimed to be.

      • Natanael
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        62 months ago

        Domains only help you verify organizations and individuals you recognize directly.

        This verification system also allows 3rd parties (it’s NOT just bluesky themselves!) to issue attestations that s given account belongs to who they say they are, which would help people like independent journalists, etc.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Idk. Celebrities and Politicians usually have other vetted channels such as their own website or a website of their ogranization representing them. It should be basic journalistic work to see if their social media links link to the account in question or not.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            I’m not seeing the advantage of everyone having to do the same vetting process repeatedly.

      • @[email protected]
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        102 months ago

        I feel like domain usernames are still inherently susceptible to phishing, you can get a typo or similar character to try and trick someone that your username is an official one

      • NekuSoul
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        262 months ago

        The problem with domains is that regular people would need to know what a domain is and what verified ownership says about the account in question.

        Even then, reading domains is quite difficult, even for people who know about the topic: Humans are Bad at URLs and Fonts Don’t Matter

          • NekuSoul
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            2 months ago

            Personally I use KeePassXC + Syncthing, but Bitwarden/Vaultwarden is also a great.

            What’s somewhat amusing, for lack of a better word, is that even that advice doesn’t fully resolve the issue, as Troy himself recently was the victim of a phising attack, where one part of the issue was that even legitimate sites changes their sign-in domains frequently enough that you kind of become numb to when the auto-fill stops working and just “correct” the issue without the necessary due diligence.

      • @[email protected]
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        If they are, and there isn’t anything to display it, how are we to know what’s been vetted and what’s slipped through the cracks? Especially on a new account?

        • @[email protected]
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          It’s the username so already quite visible.

          For example someone at say, NPR, could use a name like @bob.npr.org which is only possible by verifying ownership of the npr.org domain name, so there is no need to vet anything.

          • @[email protected]
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            62 months ago

            That’s great for an organization like NPR which may have the resources to tie its own domain name into Bluesky. For some freelance reporter or otherwise verifiable person, I’m not sure it’s quite so practical.

      • Nick
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        132 months ago

        I saw some small talk about it, and it really just boiled down to domain verification is great for more tech savvy folks, but trying to get larger accounts (think politicians, celebrities, etc) is a lot harder. Having a visual check, using tools within the app or site, is a lot easier.

        And personally I like the idea of verification checks as long as it remains a simple means to do just that: verify the owner of the account. Morons like Musk and his ilk always thought it was a clout thing, and for a small minority that was probably the case, but by and large before he ruined it, it was great.

  • @[email protected]
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    Any system built on anonymous accounts is going to have the exact same problems. Lemmy is not “less bad” than Reddit because it’s decentralized. Blue checks isn’t the problem with twitter, and neither is Elong

    • @[email protected]
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      Not sure where you’re going with that, but it’s a perverse incentive, just like the engagement algorithm.

      Elon is a problem because he can literally force himself into everyone’s feeds, but also because he always posts polarizing/enraging things these days.

      Healthy social media design/UI is all about incentivizing good, healthy communities and posts. Lemmy is not perfect, but simply not designing for engagement/profit because Lemmy is “self hosted” instead of commercial is massive.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 months ago

    I don’t see how even the way Twitter does it is any worse than not having such system at all.

  • @[email protected]
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    62 months ago

    Yeah I deleted my Bluesky. All public companies eventually turn to shit because of the shareholders unending greed.

  • @[email protected]
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    542 months ago

    Bluesky is the new X. After canceling the accounts of Turkish protesters this is the next step for the big money behind Bluesky. That’s why I deleted my account a few days ago.

  • ikt
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    12 months ago

    How does bluesky make money?

    • Billiam
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      12 months ago

      Right now, venture capital investments - same as all tech starts out.

      How it’ll monetize to become self-sufficient remains to be seen.

  • @[email protected]
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    242 months ago

    Preaching to the choir

    But anyway anyone who thinks bluesky is actually decentralised will learn sooner rather than later that that’s not the case

  • @[email protected]
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    12 months ago

    Lots of “how dare they solve a real problem with the only method yet invented” in these replies. Gtfo losers, clutch your pearls harder. If you don’t like Bluesky don’t use it. Don’t be a whiny little bitch about it.