Probably to avoid linking to kid diddler instances.
Steam loves to minimize moderation so you’re probably correct
Given that half the games are anime waifu sims these days, I can only imagine what horrors you'd unleash letting people link to their profiles on anime waifu mastodon instances.
Actually no, I don't have to imagine it since I've seen the horrors with my own eyes.
Having gone to Tokyo's Akihabara and gone to the depths of anime waifu hell...
That's disgusting!
Where?
I mean have you seen gamers?
They should use fediseer to accept the top 100 most reputable mastodons
I don't think their devs are having a hard time figuring out how to support different instance names...
Then why don't they accept any instance? Fediseer has an api where they can see the most reputable instances and limit to only allowing those reputable instances.
Because of what everyone else here is saying. If you're a company like Valve, you don't want to open a portal to undesirable content that isn't moderated. They chose the biggest instances with the most users because those are generally going to be the safest ones.
They probably just wanted a handful so they can slap it in a regex and be done with it.
I doubt that's the case since you can freely link to external sites elsewhere?
The limitations are annoying but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Absolutely! It's representation!
I love this in principle.
I just wish Mastodon instances were viewable without JavaScript. Opening the door to many types of browser exploit and fingerprinting shouldn't be required just for reading.
I love the paranoia of you nerds. It's valid but idk how you spare the effort.
idk how you spare the effort.
When you've been building networked systems for longer than JavaScript has existed, it no longer takes effort to spot design choices that put users at risk. When you've watched endless vulnerabilities be exploited over the years, it's not paranoia, but a real-world problem that impacts real people. At that point, the flaws are impossible to responsibly ignore.
Spreading awareness and showing people how to build safer systems does sometimes get tiring, but I think it's important.
It's simple, when you understand how shaky the foundation of all digital infrastructure is it's impossible to not be paranoid.
The Polyfill incident is bad (that seems to be how the hackers got into the internet archive), and the OpenSSH one could have been really nasty, if it wasn't caught both early, and by chance (a performance engineer at a major software company noticed).
I'd say this comic is more relevant:
I actually gave up recently for my mental health of all things. Turns out accepting being tracked in just about everything I do but also getting all the benefits of living in the future, without the effort spent on mitigation, is a huge relief. Does Google know my daily routine? Yes. Did they when I had the tin foil hat on? Probably also yes.
I find the negatives detract from the benefits too much, usually. Like having your arm cut off and then receiving lovemaking: I am no longer in the mood.
Have you been watching Bad Monkey? Because that’s literally about half the plot.
Same it’s much nicer to enjoy the tech/tools. I still ad block on all devices tho
It's not paranoid to complain about the unnecessity of javascript when all you want to do is read a public text post on a social media platform. I have javascript disabled on some browsers, and it's annoying to have to whitelist a site that really shouldn't need it.
Mastodon has RSS built-in. Just add ".rss" to the URL to get the RSS feed.
It also does have an API which can be used by apps, including alternate frontends which don't use JS.
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