Post ANlwDENeKywLCfofRI by thor@berserker.town
(DIR) More posts by thor@berserker.town
(DIR) Post #ANl8MQvW44pz0rqrJY by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T15:04:57Z
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the fact that federation works at all, mostly without a hitch, and is user friendly AND open source, is nothing short of a small miracle.
(DIR) Post #ANl8MRRQ9SMGbomL2m by inference@plr.inferencium.net
2022-09-20T15:06:11.296586Z
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@thor It's not that difficult, as long as its standardised. The most amazing thing about it is getting everyone to agree on those standards (which some people still dont; cough, Misskey).
(DIR) Post #ANl8skdOKN55OymgHw by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T15:08:26Z
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@inference there are plenty of examples of standardised protocols with open source implementations that never quite got things sorted out well enough to be adopted quite as widely. it's simple in theory, but difficult in practice, and yes, agreeing to follow the standards counts as part of the miracle.
(DIR) Post #ANl8sl2unTUug8j44W by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T15:08:55Z
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@inference just look at the chaos that is XMPP clients.
(DIR) Post #ANl8slWL25289OUYvw by inference@plr.inferencium.net
2022-09-20T15:12:00.448368Z
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@thor Works for me(tm)
(DIR) Post #ANlw77M7XfWPgBBawC by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:24:50Z
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@thor Federation is a blessing and a curse. There is not one single instance to corrupt that can be taken down, monitored, or coerced.But of course now you can have entire instances setup for bad actors.A good case study in internet moderation is IRC.
(DIR) Post #ANlw780B8jZ3gPvaNM by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:26:24Z
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@thor IRC started out with essentially no rules, and anyone could link a server. This worked until it got popular and people would just abuse it by connecting as a server, and then act as an administrator, spam, etc... Many servers would NOT follow rfcs, or whatever.Moderation tools became harassment tools.
(DIR) Post #ANlw78SBSbxx5H1x1k by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:28:51Z
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@thor This was remedied by "juping", or forcibly disconnecting named after a notoriously buggy box "jupiter". The next itteration of ircd came with C,N, and H lines, for connect, receive, and hub.Then as now, there was a massive debate if this constituted censorship. Something something, the last unpatched box was Eris, and you where left in a permanent split between the Eris Free Network, and A-net, anarchy net
(DIR) Post #ANlw78rLx26CLKo3G4 by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:31:07Z
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@thor According to legend, A-net lasted 3 days before its self destruct as it was nothing but spammers, netsplits, and other griefers in one massive battle before the plug was pulled. EFnet continues to this day.But the story does not stop here. EFnet had a reputation for being seedy, the bad neighborhood. a year later, Undernet was created where channels could be registered via a public bot.(EFnet was BYOB). Unlike EF, undernet had a central planning committee, and network wide rules
(DIR) Post #ANlw79PjtBbY3ytVr6 by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:33:55Z
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@thor As undernet, servers had to apply to be part of a net, there was formal organization. and a comittee. But there was still problems, as there was no nick reg, and griefing was still relatively easy.1996, came DALnet which introduced most features you are familiar with. Nickserv, Chanserv, Opserve, etc...Nicks where owned, chans could be secured by bots that acted above being regular users. Moderation tools were now more powerful.
(DIR) Post #ANlw79pcKyIxMF0BBw by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:35:52Z
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@thor All IRC nets after DAL, including Freenode, copied the DALnet style moderation tools such as services. They were robust, battle tested.They did not come about initially, but after 8 long years of the worst flame wars, hacker wars, and griefing that has existed on the internet.Represents a lot of hard lessons learned and stories worth telling.
(DIR) Post #ANlw7ANIJlF92gl4gS by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:36:42Z
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@GI_Jack ah, DALnet. not too commonly used in Europe, but yes
(DIR) Post #ANlw7AsqQSTqcXWGrQ by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:41:40Z
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@GI_Jack didn't know DALnet made those. i associate those tools with Undernet
(DIR) Post #ANlw7BU4C4FqTyvzsW by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:42:40Z
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@GI_Jack to me, Undernet is when IRC started to change and FreeNet was a successor of Undernet
(DIR) Post #ANlw7Bssho6ViwXoYa by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:45:29Z
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@GI_Jack oh; the days when you had to run identd to be a legit IRC user, and when setting up a reverse DNS record on your dedicated server to have your domain appear made you a bit cool.
(DIR) Post #ANlw7CP8lruNKzdZq4 by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:45:55Z
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@thor yeah, those days
(DIR) Post #ANlw7CwSlyYz0LEBmK by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:49:43Z
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@GI_Jack it was a bit naive we thought we could keep the trolls out simply by making people comply with protocols we thought the solution to everything was software. try telling that to today's Internet trolls, spammers and what not.the problem was always humans.
(DIR) Post #ANlw7DQwwcwwWtUXIW by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:53:03Z
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@thor That's a big disagree. Perhaps at the network level, but most of us that ran channels communities knew it was the people.We had no problem +b'ing your ass for the slightest problem. I don't like you was good enough. Run your mouth, etc...And when you DID the trolling, you fully expected to be kb'd. That was part of it.Today's internet troll culture comes from 4chan, which comes mostly from all the people kicked off somethingawful for being shit.
(DIR) Post #ANlw7EUX0nPPoIAuWG by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:51:52Z
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@GI_Jack we're at the point now where we've realised computers are largely useless at preventing such things.i'm trying to keep spammers out of my systems but the only reliable method is turning out to be manual verification of accounts. the captchas are no good against click farms.
(DIR) Post #ANlw7EsHaUPKzxHsXY by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:55:05Z
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@thor I was co-admin on a small network that had its own modified IRCd and services. If you looked even slightly problematic, bam, you got akilled. No one wasted any time thinking if your "free speech" was violated.Trolls where people who could evade bans. They often did. You'd often have a war for a few hours while you figured out a plan to dispatch them perminantly
(DIR) Post #ANlw7GSThOxFuVEIb2 by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:56:53Z
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@thor I remember at one point we just threw a akill for *.prodigy.mx for an entire week because of a bunch of rowdy mexicans violating one rule or another. No fucks given. Just block an entire ISP, and fuck 'em all. We'd do that kinda often.Free Speech meant you could run your own network with your own rules. That was it. All servers had long list of posted rules in the MOTD.
(DIR) Post #ANlwDDPNx2jaBlcXVQ by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:56:25Z
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@GI_Jack i think it's very common for geeks to think that the machine can fix all things. so i don't think i was alone in habitually assuming that sort of thing. so that would be the "we" i'm talking about. you can't disagree that many of us were naive. we existed.
(DIR) Post #ANlwDDuw3jyHlcNjgO by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-20T23:57:54Z
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@thor Except that is not what we actually believed. Mabey that was your experience, but not mine. It was a more human one about people, and moderation tools built to protect communities.
(DIR) Post #ANlwDENeKywLCfofRI by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-20T23:59:34Z
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@GI_Jack i knew little about how people worked at the time, so that wasn't my experience. i was probably a bit younger than you, based on what you're saying. i would've been a kid when much of this was going on. so would anyone else my age.
(DIR) Post #ANlwDElOufwGOKvdSa by thor@berserker.town
2022-09-21T00:01:35Z
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@GI_Jack as i remember; most of the IRCops and chanops were older than me, and i sorta looked up to them
(DIR) Post #ANlwDF99UMwBa02bTs by GI_Jack@mastodon.social
2022-09-21T00:05:03Z
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@thor Not by much. I was a chanop as a preteen. I was on an IRC network, that hacked unreal IRCD added SSL support and a fuckton of moderation tools, the oldest dev was 16.I was a co-admin of a server at age 14.A lot of the people running it were young. I don't think there were that many adults.