Raspberry Pi Shows How Not To Mastodon
from the that's-not-how-it-works dept
In the light of the continuing mayhem on Twitter under Elon Musk, lovingly chronicled by Mike in ever-longer posts, it’s no surprise that many people are looking at alternatives. One of the main options is Mastodon. Although offering similar micro-blogging functionality to Twitter, one of its chief attractions is that it nonetheless does certain things differently.
For example, there are no formal quote tweets, which means that users are encouraged to engage with what people are saying in their posts by replying to them, not simply to make a snarky hit-and-run comment. Its federated structure, with thousands of interconnected and interoperable “instances” – that is, servers – is part of the larger “fediverse“. There is no central point of control, and the local rules and culture on different instances vary widely.
These features, combined with the issues at Twitter, have led to a noticeable growth of Mastodon – even if the exact number of users is unclear – and of the number of instances that are available. One open question is whether Mastodon will ever be used by businesses in the same way that they now routinely use Twitter.
An early pioneer in this area is Raspberry Pi, which makes a popular series of very low-cost, single-board computers. Typically they are used to run the open source operating system GNU/Linux, so Mastodon seems a good fit for the company, since it too is open source. Even better, the federated nature of Mastodon means that Raspberry Pi was able to set up its own instance – raspberry.social – and run it on one of its own products. Everything seemed to be going well, until the Raspberry Pi account on Mastodon posted the following:
We hired a policeman & it’s going really great. Meet our #Maker in Residence @TobyRobertsPi.
“I was a #Surveillance Officer for 15 years, so I built stuff to hide covert video & audio gear. I’d disguise it as something else, like a piece of street furniture or a household item.
During all those years of working with Raspberry Pi, I never thought I’d end up working here; as I’ve always been a #RaspberryPi fan, I’m fascinated to see what takes place behind the scenes.”
A post by Aurynn Shaw, who runs cloudisland.nz, an instance hosted in Aotearoa New Zealand, provides a great summary of the discussion that ensued. Here’s a sample of how the Raspberry Pi account responded in a rather Twitter-like way to people’s criticisms of the new appointment:
- “He builds lightsabers, James. Chill.”: link
- “Bye bye now”: link
- “Yes Sebastian. And if you can’t chill, you can unfollow. That’s how social media works. Just chill.”: link
- “Feel free to block or unfollow us” in response to “if only they’d not hire cops”: link
- “people can follow or unfollow us if they like” link
Shaw writes:
As the common theme from Raspberry Pi was to tell other users to unfollow them, and blocking any criticism, the Fediverse as a whole was very quick to react.
Due to the very different power dynamics of the Fediverse, it took less than two hours from the initial post and initial harmful replies before the official Raspberry Pi instance started being defederated, noted via the #fediblock hashtag. This public hashtag is a way for administrators to co-ordinate with each other in an attempt to reduce harm to their users, and hitting #fediblock is a strong indicator that an instance is being cut off from the the Fediverse until they improve their moderation abilities.
“Defederation” is another unique and important feature of Mastodon. It means that various servers running Mastodon block interaction with a particular instance that is deemed to be problematic. It is quite an extreme remedy. Normally, there is some kind of moderator on an instance that would deal with the renegade user who is causing problems elsewhere. In the present case, the problem user and the moderator are effectively the same, so defederation was the only way for other instances to deal with the situation. Shaw notes that reversing defederation and the damage to Raspberry Pi’s brand that it has caused, will be quite hard:
Now that Raspberry Pi has hit the #fediblock, recovery becomes considerable more difficult. Not only does Raspberry Pi need to withdraw their statements and issue unequivocal apologies, they must also apologise directly to the admins who defederated them, and demonstrate an ongoing commitment to change.
This commitment can be demonstrated through administrative and moderator changes, or demonstrated over a significant period of time. Both approaches will take time for trust to be regained.
As Shaw points out, the problem arises because this is a small, self-hosted instance run by a company. She offers some recommendations for other businesses that want to do the same, including this:
Brands seeking to join the Fediverse will need to invest not just in a social media manager, but competent and long-time administration for the instance that is aware of the political dynamics of the Fediverse, in order to ensure that they are able to stay on the fediverse.
As more businesses dip their toe in the waters of Mastodon, the problems Raspberry Pi has run into here can serve as a good example of how not to do it.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon or Twitter.
Filed Under: defederation, fediblock, fediverse, instances, mastodon, police, raspberry pi, surveillance
Companies: mastodon, raspberry pi, twitter
Comments on “Raspberry Pi Shows How Not To Mastodon”
That reminded me of a Masto thread about Liz Upton’s PR statements on this kerfluffle and how they seem practically designed for the British media to lap up unquestioningly.
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The same British media that hacked a bunch of mobile phones, including one of a dead girl that directly interfered with an ongoing murder investigation?
I’m shocked. Well, not really, but at least the News of The World got destroyed over that one…
Re: Re:
The very same Murdoch-dominated British media, even.
Something smells -- bad
This comment summed it up for me
“[email protected]
Murad @[email protected]
@stavvers for me, there’s also an entitled arrogance to the whole thing that makes it even worse, a sort of “do you people know who I am?” smell…”
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So basically, Raspberry Pi hired a guy and everyone dogpiled them out of fear of what that guy might do, and when his employer stood up to the blind, unreasoning hate, they got defederated because apparently that’s what passes for justice these days.
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He isn’t just “a guy”—he is a former police officer who, by his own admission, “built stuff to hide covert video & audio gear”. A large segment of the Fediverse is pro-FOSS, pro-privacy, anti-cop, and anti-surveillance. Anyone with sense can see how a FOSS-friendly organization like Raspberry Pi hiring a cop who specialized in violating people’s privacy would…irk that rather significant segment of the Fediverse.
If you think a relative handful of people replying to the Raspberry Pi account with criticism of its hiring (and maybe an insult or two) is a “dogpile”, you need to stop smoking all that weed.
Questioning whether a former cop with an admitted history of violating people’s privacy is a smart hire by a FOSS-friendly organization doesn’t seem like “hate” to me—it seems like a number of people wondering why that organization needed to hire him for any reason other than his expertise in violating privacy.
Defederation doesn’t stop the Raspberry Pi instance from communicating with the rest of the Fediverse—only with those instances that defederated. Everyone else is still free to interact with the Raspberry Pi instance from other, still-federated instances. Don’t like it? Go pass a law that mandates federation.
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“Defederation doesn’t stop the Raspberry Pi instance from communicating with the rest of the Fediverse—only with those instances that defederated. Everyone else is still free to interact with the Raspberry Pi instance from other, still-federated instances. Don’t like it? Go pass a law that mandates federation.”
Yeah, I don’t know all the facts here but that’s like saying if you got yourself banned from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram you can’t talk online any more. You have plenty of options, you just might not be able to reach the same type of audience if you get booted from the popular ones – and most of the time (not always, but usually), that’s your own doing.
There are Mastodon instances that allow things others don’t want to associate with – as we can see with things like Truth Social being essentially Mastodon forks. But, the federation thing is there to say people might not want to associate with you.
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Thank uou for clearly labeling your strawman.
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Your response to the events seems as out of touch as Raspberry Pi hiring a cop.
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Re: Re:
Raspberry Pi hired someone who made small surveillance devices for practical use.
And your beef is specifically that he used to be a cop? Not, “As a cop, he used these devices without a warrant”, not “he use Raspberry Pi to make small cameras you could hide”, but “he was a cop”?
I mean, you’re free to have your opinion, and all, but it makes as much sense as saying “The Harry Potter series sucks” because you don’t like J.K. Roling’s beliefs about the transgendered.
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Oh, no, see, that is perfectly rational and acceptable.
Rowling’s usefulness as an icon for sexual minorities lasted only as long as she kept celebrating Albus Bumblesore. That expired as soon as she decided that men could not call themselves women. It is every decent person’s moral obligation to hate everything she’s tangentially involved with.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m no fan of Rowling as a person or an author, but her hateful opinions about trans people are not a real reason to hate the Harry Potter franchise. Her not-that-great writing is a good reason to dislike it, though. (If you want a better take on the idea and the characters, I suggest reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.) And her anti-trans bullshit is a damn good reason to stop supporting it (or to never support it in the first place).
Re: Re: Re:2
So if I don’t agree with you that adulterated men aren’t women, I’m not a decent person?
Say hi to President DeSantis for me, unless your yelling and screaming helps the other side to win.
Re: Re: Re:3
… said nobody mentally competent, ever.
No wonder you’re following the 4chan playbook.
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I'm at a loss
I’m at a loss on what the “Fediverse” expected from this. A private company (granted, one that is widely loved and uses plenty of Open Source) hired someone that social media immediately didn’t approve of. What did the “Fediverse” expect to happen? Did they expect RP to immediately go, “Oh, we’re sorry about that! We didn’t realize that you wouldn’t approve. We’ll fire him immediately!”
As Bergman pointed out above, RP stood up for one of their employees. Something that most people on this site would cheer for normally. But in this case, it appears that everybody had a knee-jerk reaction and didn’t like being called out for their knee-jerk reaction.
So instead of taking a moment and realizing, “hey, maybe I’m in the wrong, and I don’t get to decide who RP hires in their business.” Or simply, “hey, I don’t like this; I’m not going to engage with RP anymore.” They used the power of the “Internet Mob” to blackball a company that isn’t acquiescing to the mob’s demands.
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The issue isn’t really the company standing up for an employee (though they really should’ve thought about the whole “we hired a cop” messaging before making that post). It’s about how the company responded to criticism in a less-than-professional way, then blamed the reaction to their posts on “dogpiling” (read: a few people criticizing the post) that was coördinated from secret Discord servers (a claim that has no backing evidence). This whole situation was largely avoidable (or could’ve at least been better contained), but Raspberry Pi did itself no favors here.
No, they didn’t. Some people might blackball Raspberry Pi over this, but it probably won’t be in significant enough numbers to affect the company in a similarly significant way.
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Thank you for clearly labeling your strawman.
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Actions have consequences.
The Fediverse went “hey, I don’t like this; I’m not going to engage with RP anymore.”. That’s what defederation is. And rebuilding that broken trust, IF that trust gets rebuilt at all, will take a long time.
But hey, you apparently don’t see the issues involving Raspberry PI hiring a cop whose specialty was building stuff that violated people’s rights…
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Trust, much like credibility, is like a spinal cord: It only takes a moment to sever, and if you ever regain function, you’ll never be the same again.
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The Fediverse is not a person and cannot have expectations.
Based on all that I have read, from many sources (including first-hand accounts), it would seem that many people involved in this would have expected the firm to either explain how this hire fits in with the broader Raspberry Pi ethos, or to ignore the questions and comments. IOW, while the first-order concerns were regarding the hire, the second-order concerns were about how their social media person responded to those first-order concerns. The #fediblock appears to have been based on the second-order concerns.
It is unclear how you determined this.
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He determined it through a knee-jerk reaction.
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Specifically, his kneejerk reaction.
Re: What the Fediverse expected
You make a good point about standing up for your employer, that’s a good thing. But what “the Fediverse expected” from any company was:
Stand up for your new employee – by being prepared for how to announce and how to respond to questions. Otherwise you’re really exposing them to a lot of awfulness. From an employer responsibility perspective, it seems their handling resulted in an awful time for the new hire, the brand manager, the co-founder executive – maybe even doxxing and death threats – partly because of a botched roll-out of the new hire.
What the Fediverse expected was respectful behavior by the moderator/brand manager of an instance. When that didn’t happen, the Fediverse resorted to the remaining option, defederation of that instance.
I’m pretty certain only one or two small, anarchist-themed instances defederated raspberry pi’s instance. The greater mastodon community completely ignored this issue, and after a few days it seems like the pile-ons are tapering off on RPi’s toots.
How defederated?
Finally was able to register an account! — Anyway, I tried posting another comment, but my core question is really: how many instances blocked Raspberry Pi’s instance? There’s no real numbers. As far as I could tell following along on Mastodon, it was maybe one or two small anarchist theme instances that posted about blocking the RP instance. The #fediblock hashtag is not strict marching orders, it’s not as if mastodon.social or other large instances immediately blocked RPI’s instance just because of this controversy. They’re still very much alive and being federated across most instances.
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Anonymous Coward
That was a question. A question is not a strawman, no matter how much you want to build it up to be. A question is just that. A question. Something that you don’t get to wave away by incorrectly labeling it.
Granted, I’ll give you that I didn’t end it with a question mark because of the weird combination of quoting and excitement I was trying to convey. So really, the most you can call me out on is “bad English” because I figured it was self-evident that I was asking a question from the “did they expect” at the beginning of that phrase.
I’m still asking that question, by the way. “What did the Internet Mob want to happen?” If this question is answered, we’ll get to the real heart of the problem. A problem that I’m guessing lies more with the Internet Mob and less with RP.
The short fact of the matter is RP hasn’t violated anybody’s trust. They hired someone that they determined to have enough experience designing hardware to fill that role. Then (it appears from reading the article) they defended the person when the Internet Mob started attacking him. Something that I think is very admirable, and I wish more companies would do. Instead of simply rolling over and saying, “well…you’re making us look bad, so out the door you go!”
If you believe they have done anything else up to this point, I would ask, “specifically what, and where’s your proof?” If that can’t be answered, I’m going to assume the rest of you need to.. how did Stephen put it…oh yeah…
Re: Please learn how replies work.
The problem with your question is that you’re referring to the few people who openly criticized RP as a “mob”. It’s a disingenuous framing of even polite criticism as “a rabidly angry group of people with pitchforks and torches calling for heads on pikes” (or whatever imagery you meant to conjure). If you had been more willing to argue in good faith by looking at both sides being unreasonable, you might’ve stood a better chance of not having your question called a strawman.
A company that makes Internet-connectible hardware like the Raspberry Pi hired someone whose prior work involved violating privacy on behalf of the government. People are likely to wonder whether future hardware from that company might include something designed by the ex-cop that could violate a customer’s privacy. I’d call that a big breach of trust with customers both current and potential, even if such a thing never happens.
You can think it’s overly paranoid or whatever. You can even defend the hiring if you want. But I’d bet money that this probably wouldn’t have become a huge issue if RP had been far more professional and respectful in dealing with that criticism.
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Or maybe he’s going to build things that can be used to detect and expose cop-tech.
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That the company’s initial announcement about his hire focused on him bragging about his previous employment gives me no hope that he’s there to undermine his former colleagues in law enforcement.
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Okay, but why did you fuck all those dead dogs, and why did you feel the need to spend your entire post bragging about it?
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Rhetorical question-begging is not really asking a question.
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For starters, for you to start making a credible argument.
Again, it is Raspberry Pi’s entire prerogative to commit Fediverse suicide by hiring a former cop that made concealable cameras and other related stuff, presumably with Raspberry Pis as well. As well as violating everything they stood for. And standing up for their extremely questionable hire.
And the few people in the Fediverse actually started asking questions about this former cop and why was he acting like such a dick. Which is also within their rights unless they live in a place where such things are expressly forbidden.
You, sir, have a fucking problem with actually reading the article.
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Ah you mean you were just JAQing off then.
Every time...
Every time I hear about this federation thing, and the whole supply chain of issues it seemingly can cause?
It makes me glad my platform of choice branched off, forked its code completely, and got rid of all the federation features up front.
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And that’s perfectly fine. Some instances run on whitelists rather than blacklists; some instances don’t federate at all. Hell, Truth Social is an at-least-reskinned form of Mastodon and it doesn’t federate with anyone (so far as I know).
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So, everything else is already blocked. Preemptive strike FTW i guess?
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So the fediverse is a large woke mob of generic speech platforms that censor opinions based on viewpoint. Shocking. Who could have foreseen such a thing?
And the article here is just repulsive, demanding that Raspberry Pi undergo a struggle session to be allowed back into the good graces of the Mastodon Mob. RP should tell them to go intercourse themselves.
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It’s not that people are censored, it’s that no one is listening if they were listening they’d find the message.
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No, it isn’t. It’s a network of services connected through a specific protocol—ActivityPub, to be precise—which includes a great many servers that run Mastodon (or some variant thereof), some of which are right-wing shitpits. Gab is part of the Fediverse, albeit a part that’s cut off from a broad swath of the Fediverse because no one with any goddamn sense wants to federate with Gab.
I don’t see any demands being made. Every accusation, a confession…
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Re: Re:
“You don’t see” is everything that’s wrong with you. It should be your motto.
“Need” and “must”. When I say “should”, you read that as “force”, but when actual demands are made, you can’t see them. Of course, Raspberry Pi occupies a prominent place in the computing world not unlike J.K. Rowling’s place in the publishing world, so this cancellation attempt is going to fail just like that one has.
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And Hyman does not care to understand that the same process for refederating is the same process for repairing a broken, trust-based relationship.
Shocking indeed. But it is to be expected from someone who was booted out of even the same terrorist spaces that would love his opinions on trans people.
Re: Re: Re:2
“And Hyman does not care to understand”
You can stop there and just repeat it every time he says something, honestly.
I dislike the fact that there’s a handful of bigoted morons who insist on commenting here, but it does help sharpen one’s arguments against them without having to directly look at the talking points issued from their echo chambers.
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… hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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So, Hyman is a NeoNazi. Shocking.
Also, Hyman does not understand how to actually not be a NeoNazi. Shocking.
And Hyman thinks the company should be lauded for hiring a former cop who made hidden cameras, presumably with Raspberry Pis, and presumably at the behest of the thin blue line. shocking.
I’d tell Hyman to go fuck himself, but the terrorist fuck won’t listen, despite EVERYONE who isn’t terrorist scum like him telling him to get the fuck out.
Re: Thank you for your donation you busted ass neonazi
“woke mob”
That’s another tenner to https://www.hrc.org/resources/transgender-children-and-youth-understanding-the-basics
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No. It’s not. But why does it not surprise me that you don’t support individuals each acting according to what they feel is best for themselves.
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Because for Hyman, it’s not enough that he gets to choose his own way—he also has the desire to choose for everyone else. Why else do you think he gets up in arms about trans people?
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Because like rapists, transphobes get off on forcing themselves on others.
So Twitter and USENET had a baby.
Be careful what you ask for
RPi: Feel free to block or unfollow us
Mastodon: blocks and unfollows
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Notice how the garbage up above admits that what tney lie is “viewpoint-based censorship” is in reality the freedom to not listen to scum.
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Except it goes way beyond that to viewpoint-discrimination.
Every attempt at internet censorship ultimately fails the way this one is. Whatever was gained by the censorship eventually gives way to it becoming more profitable to tell the truth.
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You fucks only ever complain about that when it comes from one “side”. The moment anyone else points out how conservatives do it just as much (if not more than) liberals/progressives is precisely when you assholes start whining about rights and liberties, then resort to calling it “moderation” because it’s about preserving “decorum” or some other disingenuous hypocritical bullshit.
Shit, you motherfuckers never drop into the comments of stories about real censorship—stories like corporations using copyright takedowns to silence speech they don’t like. When it’s a story about content moderation on a social media service, y’all shit up the comments for days with your whining; when it’s a story about Nintendo using copyright to censor a video about a 20-year-old game pitch that never went anywhere, you morally righteous anti-censors are nowhere to be found. If you wanted the rest of us to take you shitheads even remotely seriously, talking about actual censorship on articles about actual censorship would be a good fucking start.
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Like how you were booted out of “conservative” spaces for, I dunno, being a harassing, abusive fuck?
I can say those conservative spaces also engaged in viewpoint discrimination, too!
They discriminated against YOURS.
White supremacists kicking one of their own out because of viewpoint discrimination, what a world we live in.
Bye-bye, Raspberry Pi...
Glyn,
Thanks for this article; a lot is built on Raspberry Pi including what are called “Pi-holes” (I didn’t name it), a small ‘Linux network-level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application which acts as a DNS sinkhole and optionally a DHCP server,’ (according to Wikipedia, which in this case sounds entirely correct to me). While that can run on other boards AFAIK, users feeling some concern about a (former) police spy working for Raspberry Pi feels more than reasonable.
So let’s ditch Raspberry Pi, since there are alternative SBCs! Certainly there are direct Raspberry Pi clones, but many are not. And I propose going a step further: those of use who are electronics tinkerers (whether hobbyists or on a professional level) should design more.
Raspberry Pi may have a proprietary processor build from TSMC, but the ARM CPUs are obviously more widely available than just in Raspberry Pi flavor. We should all endeavor to roll our own and provide options for others to do the same. In the process we’ll all learn a lot!
So RP hired an ex-cop who tinkered with electronics and made some concealed cameras in his line of work?
And there was an outrage because… why exactly?
Is there any proof that those devices he built were used without a proper warrant or that he was the one using them?
Did he actually ever violate anyone’s right to privacy?
Finally, did the admins of those instances which unfederated RP do so after doing a poll asking other users on their instance whether they agree, or they just did what every other nobody who tastes a bit of power does in such situations which is abuse said power for a personal vendetta?
So many vocal minorities nowadays demand tolerance from the majority, yet when the tolerance is expected from them, they show how intolerant and intolerable they themselves actually are.
If trans people want to call God “Our heavenly parent in the heaven” and men without an uterus and ovaries “women” that is their prerogative, but I do not need to accept that, and me not accepting that shouldn’t automatically mean I am a horrible and hateful person
I am just different, and if I am not mistaken that is the right they are fighting for (to be different) yet they want to take that right away from me. If majority’s perception of trans people is bad, it’s their own fault because they are increasingly behaving like Borg in their attempt to assimilate everyone and force them to have the same thoughts on the subject.
And before you try to insult me by calling me a transphobe let me point out that the word phobia is associated with an irrational uncontrollable fear, which implies reaction based purely on instinct.
I can assure you that my reaction to trans propaganda is a product of my own thought process and analysis of facts so please stop twisting the words to suit your agenda and don’t think others cannot understand what you are actually saying. 1984 called and wants its doublespeak back.
Thanks for sharing such an informative and Fantastic post,I bookmarked this page and will get through all your posts.Keep sharing such nice posts
It's just going to happen.....
It’s an interesting angle, but at the end of the day we might as well expect “irrational” instance owners to defederate from time to time. You’re going to have some zealots out there who decide it’s the thing to do no matter what attribute they learn about a person. Today it’s some guy with a past in law enforcement who happens to have a sense of levity no less, tomorrow it could be because they learn some instance is affiliated with a person who likes to each peaches. Defederation will result in a “blinking of the stars” but never enough to blacken an entire section of the galaxy.