Authorized Fetch (also referred to as Secure Mode in Mastodon) was recently circumvented by a stupidly easy solution: just sign your fetch requests with some other domain name.

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[–] rglullis@communick.news 113 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Repeat after me: anything I write on the internet should be treated as public information. If I want to keep any conversation private, I will not post it in a public website.

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Seriously. Bobthenazi could just go to an aligned server and make an account Bobthenotzi and boom -- perfectly able to follow whoever he wants.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

One more reason to argue that we should drop the idea of "aligned" servers and that we are moving to a future where it is better to charge (small) amounts from everyone instead of depending on (large) donations from a few.

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ideally, a distributed fediverse wouldn't need much in terms of donations because it's a bunch of small instances instead of a few huge ones.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not the point. The point that instances that are open for everyone will be open for bad actors as well.

If the mere act of signing up to an instance requires a small payment, you are automatically preventing the absolute majority of spammers, "spray and pray" scammers and channer trolls.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To add a bit of important nuance to this idea (particularly how this argument comes up with regards to threads). This does not apply to legal rights over your content. That is to say, of course you should treat any information you put out there as out of your control with regards to access but if somebody tries to claim legal rights over your content they are probably breaking the law.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Right. Publicly available does not mean in public domain. But the issue here is not of copyright, but merely of gated access.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Totally. I'm just trying to bring it up whenever I see folks having this discussion because some people don't seem to make the distinction. Worries me that some are so willing to cede that big social will illegally hoover up our data and there's nothing we can do about it.