mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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stux⚡

Hmm.. 🤔

TikTok can be banned, Twitter can be banned, Meta can be banned even Bluesky(major network parts via the official company) can be banned

If they want to ban the Fediverse, they'll have to ban each server within the network of tens of thousands

Somewhere in there is a point I guess :blobcatgiggle:

@stux for that to work though people need to stop concentrating in the main instance (mastodon.social)

@tsadilas True, true but still

IF that will get banned they can simply move and tada 🎩

@nicholasr @tsadilas Even with blocked domains it should be possible to go via workarounds to export and migrate stuff 😉

@tsadilas @stux that would still only affect ~20% of the users, meaning ~80% of the users would still be able to get by. All in all, a pretty good result in terms of resilience. Could be better, but still.

@oblomov @stux only 20% of the users are there? I thought much more!

@tsadilas @stux for the active users it's maybe a bit more (around 25%, by the fedidb statistics), but yes, that's order of magnitude of the ratio.It's still too big if you ask me, but surprisingly less catastrophic than generally perceived.

@tsadilas yeah, however they can fortunately move if that happens. i moved mastodon instances multiple times (mstdn[.]social → elonsucks[.]social → mastodon[.]social → mstdn.social)

@tsadilas yeah, it’s one of my favorite things about the fediverse - you can always move somewhere else if you don’t like what's happening on your server because there's no lock-in!

@stux the point is Twitter and Meta SHOULD be banned. Problem is I have to block all social media at work because of the lack of controls for filtering out porn on fedi servers.

@stux If we're going to ban TikTok on the basis of Chinese spying, we can do the same with Meta on account of American spying

@stux
Filtering ActivityPub protocol goes BRRRRRRT

@stux@mstdn.social @Enalys@mastodon.zergy.net pretty sure AP is over https and therefore looks like all other https. kinda hard to filter encrypted content, no?

@stux "Twitter can be banned, Meta can be banned"

For that to happen it would need to be from a different country. 😵

@stux

It’s like autocracy vs democracy basically… you can’t ban the people’s voice eventually…

@stux hilarious but don't tempt Trumpet man

@stux @briankrebs

Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook are American companies. They already are banned in many places outside the US. In the US they have First Amendment protections.

They, unlike TikTok, aren’t controlled by the PRC.

I’m unaware of any independent mastodon servers in the PRC.

@stux cant stop the signal, mal :D

@stux

This post makes you think of dark times in history. Secret printing presses. Pirate radio. Hope we are not headed there again, but good to be thinking about it and prepared if we are.

@mastodonmigration Right!

I was even talking about Tor a little while ago, wtf

It has gone too far already

@stux @mastodonmigration

We should always normalize Tor anyway, even if we don't all have an urgent reason to use it (yet). Use Tor regularly and recommend it to others, even for mundane use

@mastodonmigration @stux We (humanity) have done it before and we can do it again.

@stux whatever the point is, it's distributed 😉

@stux worse case scenario; iOS users would be left without getting any updates to the app…

@AlexanderMars @stux
It would still work fine in the browser, though, even on iOS.

@bruce @stux and android users could still side load it, worse case scenario would prevent iOS "apps" from updating.

The entire mental exercise of a fediverse ban, is a bit ridiculous upon reflection. Good luck to any government that tries.

@stux @briankrebs I’ll add to that. In the US, for-profit social media companies and media outlets are rushing to appease and self-censor. Fediverse servers have no pay-to-play incentives.

@stux

it would be like shutting down torrents which they still seem unable to do.

@stux si se cargan su servidor y el de Gargron le darian un buen golpe al fediverse.
Esperemos eso no ocurra.

@stux Hmm. I think they could simply ban social media apps. That wouldn't kill the fediverse completely due to web apps, but it certainly wouldn't help things.

@stux People got pretty upset when I said a lot of extremely accurate things re: bsky and the fediverse. Everything everyone on Bsky is begging for from a team that doesn't care already exists here in a way that is infinitely more robust and adaptable

@stux Sure, but I guess most fediverse instance admins aren't up to fight with the US or any other major government compared to big companies

@tikend Not in legal matters, but the US cannot force me to do anything

They'll have to go via their Dutch partners and even then....

Catch me if you can :blobcatgiggle:

@stux @tikend this is PRECISELY why the #Fediverse is much more resilient than anything from #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #Tiktok #reddit

It would be extremely hard to shut the Fediverse down on a global scale. If the #USA bans it, then users can migrate to Fediverse servers anywhere else in the world. There are currently 22,668 Fediverse servers :)

@nicholasr @stux more resilient in terms of resisting concrete censorship or pushes but not in terms of being available if being targeted

@tikend @stux it is resilient to both concrete censorship and if it is a target. For example if all the sudden there was a DDoS attack against some Fediverse servers, there are 22,667 other ones available to use, distributed all over the world. This number will be increasing in the near future.

@tikend @stux It is absolutely resilient to legal actions. Let's say 90% of servers are shutdown due to legal action. There is still 10% available and the #Fediverse persists. Some of the shutdown servers will come back in the near future after this event because it is not hard to move a Fediverse server to other infrastructure in a country where it is not legally threatened. The users can then use #VPN technology.

@nicholasr @tikend But let's get back to that 90% first 😉

Most of the servers are located outide the US, it's all pretty spread world wide so how would any gov get so far 🤔

I mean, do people outside the US really care what the US wants?

@stux @tikend I agree with you 100% 🙂

Or imagine the entire EU legally blocks or attack all Fediverse servers. The #Fediverse continues on the African and Asian continents.

The West could block it or #BRICS could block it. It will still persist. Users have the ability to move their accounts from 1 server to another fairly easily now.

@nicholasr @tikend We could even go Tor only if needed 😆

Mastodon works perfectly on the Tor network alone, with an onion handle lol

@stux I haven’t dived into the documentation to look, but does activitypub rely on any unique protocols that could be blocked or is it all 443/indistinguishable from the noise?

@stux @tikend I was thinking that the #Fediverse software can run on the #Tor network if was blocked at the network level. There are also other technologies available that can overcome technical blocks

@nicholasr @stux from functional point of view, sure. But not from a user point of view.

For most users, if their instance stops, the network no longer exists.

@tikend @stux this is also true. I hope in the future the software enables users to designate other servers as a backup for their user data. The size of most user data is not huge. Especially by today's storage and network capacity.

@stux I admire your commitment. My point is that a couple of dozens or ar most hundreds of cease and desist letters would probably halt the fediverse. In a major way

@tikend @stux Yes, famously that's how the US government stopped all the bittorrent sites..

@tikend @stux
and this is a good thing.
if a server is run by a criminal/terrorist organization, it is easier for governments to shut it down.
ordinary people may just move to a legitimate server.
it's much more difficult for governments to ban big corporations, even if criminal.

@stux the fediverse need to be less domain reliant if it want to really be resistent to blocking

@stux It could be an eternal game of whack a mole.

@pennywhether At least it would costs them a lot of resources and money

@stux Which would be hilarious wasting resources on people firing up Pleroma on their VPS which costs the user almost nothing.

@pennywhether Exactly 😉

Besides, we do it for fun all the time right

@stux yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that