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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • This here is the Volt family.

    Marty volt is small and so he can jump across a small stream. Put up a small net and it’s impossible for him

    Victor, though. He’s got some strong legs. He can jump the net and the stream.

    In fact, he’s so strong he can jump over a small river but not if you put a small wall across the way. Then, even with a running jump, he’ll be blocked.

    And finally there’s Kal, ahem, Clark Volt. He’s super strong. So strong it could be an ocean and with a little jaunt before leaping he’d jump it.

    The stronger the volt, the further they can go and the bigger the obstacle you need to make it impossible for them to make it.

    So high enough voltage can literally leap through air (that’s the arcing you see in power plants shorting or lightning) or even wood itself. Even rubber, with a high enough voltage, will be conductive since the sheer force of the current will find a path for the charge.

    That’s also why we have lighting rods, it’s easier to redirect the current to a safe spot made to handle it than to try and make high skyscrapers out of a material that can resist the insane charges of lightning and still be strong enough and light enough to build with.




  • That’s a fair point. But there are people who live in situations where such activity has legal/societal implications.

    Think some countries that put people to death for blasphemy or people in the states who associate being transgender with being literal child molesters.

    Sure keep your account private but that isn’t always feasible even if you try. We see people get doxxed even from innocuous breadcrumbs of statements made over time.

    Or don’t favorite/upvote and yet it’s easy to inadvertently do so which can be an issue.

    That’s why I’m for a way to handle it, if possible, that minimizes the bad actors. And if not possible then it needs to be really really clear.

    Like “upvote” is followed by something that succinctly notes “Favorite saved and ready to share across the fediverse”


  • Yeah. Because each instance would have a record of that but there’s nothing to stop a bad actor from doing that on one instance and federating that out.

    Of course a bad actor can set up their own instance and just create thousands of fake bot accounts and do the same.

    Edit: The more I think about it @VerifiablyMrWonka the only way to do it would be to have some kind of activitypub transaction that is flagged as an instances reputation.

    E.g. it’s the same as using the per instance account but it allows you to say “here’s how kbin.social” calculated the reputation/weight of this item.

    And then each instance can opt to include that or not as they see fit. Maybe they federate with all instances but only show the weight/reputation “favorites”/“reduce” from those that they trust to maintain that info. Lemmy.world, sure, but the new instances such as haxor.1488.de.feder.at yeah… that’s probably a no so by default all of those don’t show/include in that instances feed.


  • I see that ActivityPub makes it hard to do it and if it can’t be done then it should be visible (so people can know and act accordingly)

    The only “alternative” approach I can see would be to have a per instance account that is given the activity (say upvote/downvote)

    So… let’s say I’m on kbin.social and upvote this comment.

    Kbin.social knowing me (since it’s my account) logs the upvote but does so as if single_instance_system_account@kbin.social did the upvote.

    That is then what is replicated across the fediverse.

    I assume that breaks the “intent” of the protocol and could be an issue but does let other instances decide to filter out that activity (if they decide to do so) by having some attribute or flag that denotes that this “account” is the fediverse instance account (e.g. not a user).

    Boosts, however, should be shared since it’s like a retweet/shout out and are meant to be shared.

    Of course that means I can no longer see my own upvote/downvote activity.

    If that was also wanted then you could add a table that basically logs that but isn’t federated. E.g. a local instance reference that can be used for that instance to show the activity.

    This way there’s less chance of an issue of somebody knowing a users account seeing activity like this:

    • A man, say in Iran, upvoted something about the prophet that somebody else found disrespectful

    • A christian teen upvoted something about atheism.

    • A woman reading about how to leave a domestic abuse situation.

    • Somebody curious about transgender reassignment

    Either there needs to be a way to minimize the risks of such activity being seen/shared across the fediverse or it needs to be very very clear that even if you don’t see it that what you do is shouted across the fediverse and that others can and will be able to see it.