[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Been the victim of fraud. Unfortunately - yes.
When I was younger and Chip 'n' PIN was becoming popular, many smaller shops had a Paypoint machine that would print the entire card number and CCV on the receipt. I was so paranoid about fraud, especially given that there was sufficient information printed on the receipt that anyone could do an Amazon order with those details. I used to get a black permanent marker and scribble the details out before putting the receipt in the bin.

Imagine my horror when a decade later, I learn that I have been the victim of fraud, and a type of fraud it was entirely impossible for me to prevent. In the UK fraudsters watch for new companies popping up on Companies House and then use the details to go on a shopping spree. The way it works is like this:

They see my name, address and date of birth on the website. They are looking for a name that matches their surname and first initial. So for me that could be Alexander Jones for example. They go to a retail park and pop into Argos. They order several thousand pounds of stuff. When they go to pay, the person at the counter helpfully asks "Do you have an Argos credit card? If you apply for one today, we'll transfer the balance of today's purchases to the card" and armed with my address, date of birth and name, and a card that already has the same surname and first initial as me - they are accepted for an Argos credit card. Post nothing for the goods they just bought and leave the store. They go next door to JJB sports, and then whole process repeats. "Do you have a JJB sports card? If you get one today...."

They visited 6 stores in an hour and repeated this process at all of them. And a week later I start receiving credit cards.....

It's a surprisingly common scam (or it was), brought on entirely by the shops bring pushed to get people to sign up for credit cards.....

I had to be on a register for several years, so if anyone tried to open an account or take out credit in my name, I would get a phone call to check if it was actually me.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I find the other demands going around even scarier to be honest.
"I don't want to federate with meta, but I also don't want to federate with anyone else who does federate with meta"

It's so terrifying that there are whole instances that are now attempting to dictate who the rest of the fediverse is allowed to federate with. And frankly I think it's a downward spiral if that is allowed. Because if they do it once, they will do it again and again.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

I'm in the camp of welcoming meta to the fediverse, BUT - not bending over backwards.

If they start making changes that affect federation for them, then that is their problem. Treat meta as a platform, no different to mastodon.
Remember that the fediverse consists of more than just Mastodon.
If meta makes a change and suddenly pixelfed can't federate properly with meta anymore, it'll be a shame, but it does not mean that pixelfed should make changes and add workarounds so that it is able to speak to meta again.

Meta might think they have the power to do this, but they only have that power if we behave like they do.
If instead we take an attitude of, it's fine for you to be here, while you are being a good citizen, but if you start making demands - you are on your own.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I don't want to take away that choice. I personally don't have a problem with meta joining the fediverse, and in fact today I downloaded the app and created my account. I'm excited by the possibilities of being able to speak to my friends from my Mastodon account.

My point was more for the people who think that suddenly 1.2bn users are going to be showing up in this kbin instance.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

I mean I find it quite ironic really that The fediverse has been screaming about how threads/meta will destroy the fediverse, but in reality - it is the fediverse destroying itself from the inside with this nonsense take.

And really - who wants to be part of that, it's actually batshit when you take a step back and think about what is being said:

"I don't want anything to do with X and I don't want anything to do with anyone else who has anything to do with X either"

OK, right now it's meta. But let's talk about lemmy, there are people on the fediverse who think the creators of lemmy are problematic - so what happens when we get "I don't want to associate with lemmy.world but also I don't want to associate with anyone else who does associate with lemmy.world"

Some instances defeded mastodon.social for problematic moderation, but they did not defed other instances that do still federate with mastodon.social.

It seems like an extreme reaction, and if the fediverse does die, it will be the fediverse itself that implodes rather than being destroyed from any company on the outside.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

I mean.... I use my real name.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

Huh.... because they are all describing a particularly shitty work environment, there is a good bet that there are other employees who feel that way. It might indeed not be the protests that kill Reddit - but Reddit itself that kills Reddit.....

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reddit: You broke the actual law. So we will ban you for 3 days.

What?!

(Note I am not suggesting you really did break the law, just that Reddit are claiming you did something - that would be actually breaking the real law)

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

Next step - should be a server that simply coordinates video transcoding, and users can run an application on their computer which will do the transcoding when it's idle and deliver the transcoded video back to the server. Like the rest of the Fediverse, make the community actually part of the community. I'm sure many of us would be happy to donate spare CPU time.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Right... But....
ActivityPub is not a protected encrypted protocol. Everything anyone says on any service using ActivityPub can already be intercepted and harvested by anyone, even blocked instances. The defederating is software based. But for example if someone wanted they could simply do https://mastodon.social/tags/fediverse.rss and there were go, instant access to data from the Fediverse. You can query any Mastodon server for any hashtag you like. That's just one of many endpoints that will spit out Fediverse content.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Doesn't make much difference with Reddit - I have seen plenty of people say that they have tried submitting GDPR requests and never received anything.

[-] asjmcguire@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm personally happy to take a wait and see approach - because the whole point is that WE have the power. Meta HAVE to play by the rules, because if they don't they get defederated, and it's going to be very difficult for them to convince people to federate with them again after that. If lots of instances start defederating them, then their users are going to start complaining to them that they don't understand why they can talk to some people, but not other people. We have the power here folks.

EDIT: To add - the Fediverse is supposed to be an inclusive place.....

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asjmcguire

joined 1 year ago