A controversial developer circumvented one of Mastodon's primary tools for blocking bad actors, all so that his servers could connect to Threads.

Authorized Fetch (also referred to as Secure Mode in Mastodon) was recently circumvented by a stupidly easy solution: just sign your fetch requests with some other domain name.

  • pelespirit
    80·
    10 months ago

    The article doesn’t say, did they fix it?

    • poVoq
      173·
      10 months ago

      Why would they fix it?

      Fixing this in general is not so easy as ActivityPub wasn’t designed to prevent such things and AFAIK without some fundamental changes like proposed in Spritely or implemented in the Zot protocol it can’t really prevent this from happening.

      • pelespirit
        82·
        10 months ago

        Why would you want threads and/or alt right people to be able to get around blocks?

          • pelespirit
            33·
            10 months ago

            Why would they fix it?

            Isn’t that what I’m asking if they fixed, am I not understanding, or are you fucking with me?

            • linearchaosEnglish
              20·
              10 months ago

              They are assuming that the developers are in on it, you’re assuming the developers are not in on it.

              Realistically, big breaking changes are a source of serious pain for open networks like these. They’re not going to be compelled to fix it until it’s an active problem when there are a lot bigger problems sitting around that are easier to fix.

              • pelespirit
                20·
                10 months ago

                Thank you for explaining it, I think you’re right. Not sure why they wouldn’t explain it to me, I can’t read minds and that’s an interesting conversation.

                They’re not going to be compelled to fix it until it’s an active problem when there are a lot bigger problems sitting around that are easier to fix.

                Which is even more reason for all the big instances to not federate, but it’s their choice. All these smaller instance, weekend hobbyists are going to feel the pain. At least meta says they’re going to integrate slowly. We’ll see.

                • linearchaosEnglish
                  10·
                  10 months ago

                  Don’t worry, it’ll sort itself out when it becomes truly painful.

            • poVoq
              68·
              10 months ago

              Who is they? From the way you wrote it the only “they” would be the “alt right developers” from the headline.