@foxwitch in general, our strategy is to observe situations and see how things actually play out. but we observe in a smart way. at the very least i expect that gab users will show up acting like they run this shit. over time, the situation may evolve to something completely different. who knows. most likely they remain banned forever.
@foxwitch and also, to an extent just observation yes. but i'm expecting full on shitshow, and so i'm just defederating them. if it turns out to not be so bad, it can always be revisited later.
anyway, pleroma.site mods banned gab.com and develop.gab.com about an hour ago. this shouldn't be surprising to anyone, considering our federation policies.
i am, however, considering opening a secondary instance that leverages the same infrastructure for an unfiltered experience. our TOS would still apply, however, meaning if you're an actual nazi, you're gonna be banned.
sure, but if you are writing a client destined for app stores, this introduces a new variable into that relationship. all i am saying is, please be mindful of that variable. if you still believe it is right, despite the introduction of this new variable, then obviously, do what you think is right.
i don't disagree with that (though please do fully understand the risks that including voluntary censorship will introduce before committing to that), but my point is that Gab's plan is something far more insidious.
like, yeah, the apps being piggybacked on to evade app store exclusion of gab applications is certainly an area of concern for app authors
but the whole ecosystem will feel the fallout if we do not push back against Gab's attempts to hijack the ActivityPub ecosystem as a shield for their own operations
this shielding attempt will continue regardless of whether or not gab is blocked by a majority of fediverse instances (i have no doubt it will be, if only because hating Torba is something that almost all fediverse admins can agree on)
we need to fight back against their attempts to hijack the good will the AP development community have built around AP
actually, there is a way around that. the rest of us fediverse server implementers can explicitly say "fuck gab, we're not going to work with them."
and to be clear, i do not care if Pleroma successfully federates with Gab or not. i'm quite certain i'm not alone in that opinion amongst other Pleroma maintainers. i'm not going to go out of my way to break federation with gab, but i'm not going to go out of my way to fix federation with gab either.
we do, however, care if Pleroma successfully federates with basically everyone else.
the conversation we *should* be having is around Gab's attempt to hijack the ActivityPub ecosystem as a shield for their own operations. apps will have to consider taking steps to protect their own relationships with their publishers (Google and Apple), which may or may not include blocking gab.
personally, i believe software should ideally remain neutral (per the same principles behind net neutrality), but pragmatically speaking, this may not be practical in the case of fediverse apps to adhere to, given the requirements of their publishers.
at no time (except during the very early days when BE was an alpha-quality product) has Pleroma ever treated direct messages as being publicly accessible.
the code explicitly performs an authorization check before disclosing any object.
if you have found an actual security problem, please report it to the bug tracker and mark it as a security issue -- it will be assigned to our security group and resolved correctly.
there are more urgent things i need to do today than deal with this, so again, if there really is a leak, please report it responsibly to our security group.