FortiDude

Personally I think this could be solved by having two types of instances: 1) generic boring ones where you can make your own personal profile 2) specific ones acting like special interest groups where you cannot create a profile but can only post using your already existing personal one from a "generic" instance

I have characterized it as impersonation because this is exactly what has been done in this case.

It's funny that you mention The Onion, because they are impersonating nobody since there is no legitimate news outlet named "The Onion". Their articles might mimick the writing style of legitimate ones, but they are not claiming to be CNN or Fox.

Can you impersonate someone as a joke? No. Parody is not identity theft.

When a comedian "impersonates" a politicians we all partake in a temporary delusion aided by the comic's ability to mimick the politician. Everyone knows it's fake but we laugh nonetheless. Making a hyper-realistic deep fake video of a politician saying absurd stuff is not free speech without appropriate labelling.

If the whole point of your account is to make people laugh with the imaginary pretense that your posts are coming from another person/institution then yes, the potential readers should know it's fake.

A comic strip artist that I follow constantly puts fake words into famous peoples' mouths in his newspaper sections, but even tough I know it's fake I can still partake in the momentary delusion and get a good laugh

"style of moderation"? what does that mean? I don't agree with what GP said, but on what basis could you moderate his posts? Because they aren't "true"? In that case why not say that your instances bans all "untrue" things? how simple!

unlabelled satirical identity theft is identity theft

I believe I can afford posting a little "trope" since HN's frontpage is being flooded (spammed) by Mastodon posts

I hate to break it to you, but Elon Musk and Twitter at large have more to lose from a reputational damage caused by blatant moderation misuse than an anonymous kid with an anime profile picture has

First they came for the "stupid" opinions, but I didn't care because I was sure mine weren't.

Then they came for me, and there was nobody left to defend me

You have said nothing about me since you're talking to a simple username whose life you have no idea about. But I'm not the one here sobbing, so your reply means absolutely nothing

But now your post won't be taken down by a paid employee of a corporation with actual contractual obligations and custom made moderation tools to limit collateral damage, instead a 17yo Discord friend of the admin will have complete access to your account!

I didn't literally say that and you are making things up. "Tearing down" someone has a strong and violent connotation, nothing to do with a few snarky comments.

That's your own personal baseless speculation, do you go through life randomly accusing people? Not very healthy, I would suggest being less hasty

People who write posts like yours tend to ascertain their moral superiority by psychoanalyzing people on the internet based on a few badly interpreted words

Yes, in a pub, which social media is the digital equivalent of. If you can't handle some mean banter (in this case even surrounded by a majority of praise) I suggest you make your profile private and only follow people you have a personal connection with

Allowing people to join Facetime calls through a browser is not "opening up" the platform. Until they have an API I can write a custom client for it's just a different kind o closure

My only assumption is that most people will choose an instance based on its reputation and that reputable instances will be far fewer than amateurish and unreliable ones. This is a very generous assumption and if we suppose people will choose even more randomly then the situation can only get bleaker.

On the other hand you hand waved everything I said without specifically refuting any points, so what does that make your reply?

So let's say a lot of people think in that way and avoid instances managed by nameless accounts. Where does that leave us?

Well, maybe people will flock to the few instances ran by transparent, accountable and competent people. Maybe some apolitical non-profit? Maybe a group of passionate engineers with spare change?

In any case those instances would become pretty massive and the costs would skyrocket and......

well, we're at square one: few instances will have total control over your data, they will either inject ads or require payment to keep the servers running and nothing will have changed

What Musk says publicly is basically useless. All the truly important information about him has been the result of deep investigations through papers and documents and third party accounts.

So yeah, Musk gets investigated very often so we know things that he would rather keep hidden. Now what about your Mastodon admin with an anime profile picture?

A Mastodon instance owner can read everything you've ever posted, log everything even if you deleted it, doxx your IP and your private messages, delete or modify everything about your account on a whim and block you even if you make an account elsewhere. Plus they can keep very quiet about it since they have zero accountability.

So yeah, you can go to another instance, but better keep some kind of backup because you could be gone without notice

We know many things about Musk because he's a well known public figure which has attracted the attention of plenty of investigative journalists.

But what do you know about the owners of the Mastodon instance you registered your account with? Are they accountable? Are they sensible? Are they competent? Do they even have a real identity?

It would actually be funny if this were a realistic lettuce made of plastic

I also don't need to follow toxic people on Twitter, so I really don't know why I would use a badly programmed and infinitely smaller social network

It doesn't seem sensible to invest yourself so much into Mastodon without having thorougly explored it.

I too was fascinated with the fediverse, until I used it for more than a month and realized the people posting there were just as toxic and annoying as Twitters, not to mention the plenty of instances where the petty owners have made everything even worse

lobste.rs/s is a missed oppurtunity

hot take:

big tech layoffs are actually very good because they release into the wild a slew of competent workers with great credentials who will hopefully get hired by a company which does something useful for humanity instead of selling ads

Why is it so difficult for trading companies to simply keep the money in the reserve and never touch it unless your client wants to liquidate his share?

I know, having that huge pile of cash and not doing anything with it can lead to huuuuuge temptations, but that's what I'm paying the company to do. If I wanted to invest my funds into something I would move my money to a separate investment account that the institution can play with as they please (with some client-defined risk restrictions) and give me a percentage of profits

Do you think a streaming website which barely has actual categories to browse from, routinely autocompletes unlicensed shows in the search bar as if they were available and doesn't have a database to search which show is available in which country will actually provide those details to the public?

lol

Count me in! In my mind my smartwatch doesn't need more computing power or complexity than your average microcontroller, so as long as it lasts I'm keeping mine in good use

Every nation has its own. Nations that want to make their citizens safer when surfing the web could open up a standard API to make such automated queries