@stefano

Somewhere in-between genuine compassion and schadenfreude, there's "brah, you shoulda known."

It's tiring to see people legitimise such terrible platforms by continuing to use them.

@stefano @_elena I was one of the members. Really regret it.

@stefano @_elena

They say this like they are surprised. I’m always mystified why people use Facebook or exclusively create content for YouTube. It’s like they don’t understand they can yank it. They can control it. They can delete it at any point, and you have no recourse at all.

@stefano
Feel bad for them, but to add to your point: doing work like moderation for a group like this, and even joining and posting is doing unpaid work for Meta. @_elena

@stefano @_elena

Easy to talk about boycotting the bastards, hard to do it when they're allowed to monopolize fucking everything.

I'm not saying you're wrong; just saying it's hard to do. The bastards made sure of it.

@stefano @_elena https://infosec.exchange/@musevg/114652926530164802

@stefano @_elena Time to take back control! You're Linux guys, after all, and do know better.

But, on the upside, you already found the way to Fediverse.

@stefano a group with 350 thousand members seems unfathomable. 😳

I've heard about multiple such group deletions. Honestly these groups are the only thing I miss. They remain the only game in town after FB killed all mailing lists and web forums. It's odd now seeing them going against their own prey^Husers.

@stefano Didn't Meta fairly recently (within the last year or so) classify Linux as some sort of contraband? I don't remember if they had it down as spam, malware or something else, but it was definitely one major online platform classifying discussions about Linux as something like that, and I'm quite sure it was one of Meta's.

Yes. It's your own data. Own your data. Data you own.

@_elena

@stefano @_elena I was just remembering how I trusted nyc.indymedia.org - I had some nice posts, and obits that got search listing matching NYT. Yes, and Nobel Prize winners. The took us down like bowling pins.
I am glad to hear what you are saying, because I've been eager to build it from scratch.
I wasted time asking people who were supposedly doing this, they were probably FBI and it has been years.
I am going to rebuild the IndyMedia network.
I want you to at least be a user.

@stefano @_elena
THAT IS NOT MODERATION.
IT IS FASCISM.

@stefano if only they knew someone who could have set up a server instead of using Facebook… 🙄

@stefano guessing Seguin didn't read the ~1000 pages of TS and C's of meta before creating the group? @_elena

@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe A bunch of trans groups, including transgender shitposting and several of its moderators, all got nuked too. They say it was a mistake but have gotten zero word on anything being restored.

@stefano @_elena They were warned. It happened in January 2025, something about Malicious Software. If it happened once it could happen again. https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-users-from-posting-about-linux

CC: @_elena@mastodon.social

@stefano @_elena

This is so FAFO it borders on idiocy

@stefano @_elena Everyone with any sense should delete Meta.

@stefano @_elena Brought to you through our cooperation with our fine friends at Microsoft. META, building a tomorrow you never asked for, but deserve.

@stefano @_elena
Meta suxs!

@stefano @_elena #BoycottMeta, all of it.

@stefano @_elena A really decent, performant #OpenSource forum software such as #Flarum, #PhpBB, or #Discourse, is right there. Do any of your 350k subscribers have a #RaspberryPi 5 lying around (wth an NVME drive), and have expertise? Flarum or PhpBB would run performantly on it for a huge number of concurrent users. Where is your #OpenSource spirit, to take things into your own hands?

@stefano @_elena
Did they not know that Linux is a security threat?
To Facebook...

@stefano @_elena Amen!

@stefano @_elena a Linux facebook group? Just trying to wrap my head around that. 🤯

@stefano Reminds me of my big long rant in 2022 entitled "Never Build Your House On Someone Else's Land"

https://www.erosblog.com/2022/02/07/someone-elses-land/

@stefano @_elena

All those FLOSS projects stupidly using discord as their main (too often only) communication channel, take a look at this and think about what you are doing.

@stefano @_elena

🤬 #TakeTheInternetBack

@stefano
Make a home here. pn the fediverse. Ill come.

@stefano @_elena stop using Meta!!! #StopUsingMeta!

@stefano @_elena

This is why I left facebook
I was writing there for 10 years
My thoughts about communism, climate threat windfarms, veganism, miracle meat, mass immigration, taxation and healthcare

I never made threats. I used a politically correct language. I wrote up to 10 posts a day. I was very active. I set the posts so only a select tiny group of 800 people could see them.

My content was sometimes copied, and ended up in print.

Then one day 97% of my content got censored.

So I left

@stefano @_elena Why would tech savvy people be running a group on farcebook when they could just buy some cheap web hosting and set up their own forum. It takes 5 minutes and you have 100% control, and hosting is cheap. Even better, forum systems have actual usable search functions, not the shitty FB system which is as much use as tits on a bull...

How many groups does this have to happen to before people start to get the message?

@Mer__edith well I'd rather ask why would one want AI in a messaging app ! Thanks for signal !

@Mer__edith
Personally I like Signal, and for me it works well, but when I have tried to get friends to use it, several have reported that they never get notifications of new messages. They are generally using older phones. Those friends all switched back to WhatsApp.

@Mer__edith I absolutely love Signal and I would switch in a heartbeat if I could manage to get my friends and family on it (and believe me, I tried). 😥

@Mer__edith WhatsApp is not pushing (yet) their creepto coin so there is that

@Mer__edith thank you. No AI!!! It's already too much

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number

@Mer__edith

don't be evil

@Mer__edith
Not AI, PI. Pseudo Intelligence. Not that I want either but actual AI is not a thing. It'll turn up at some point though, so we need to build the distinction now.

@Mer__edith Thank you so much. I am trying to switch to signal ever since they started with this AI bulls**t.

It is important that we dont depend on closed source, propriatary software to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones, as well as use it for important communication.

@Mer__edith Thank you so much Meredith.

Each time I hear you taking a stand for privacy and against surveillance and AI gimmicks I am increasingly happier with my monthly donation to Signal

@Mer__edith misleadimg article.
It should say "chatbot did not know, so it just made up a number which just happens to be a working one"

@Mer__edith I would love to know who is asking for this, and why they're doing that.

I especially want to know if any of these people are actually users, rather than grifters.

I don't think I've ever spoken to a human who said "oh, I wish there was more llm in the application I use to chat with people".

@Mer__edith who has failed here?

The programmer who wrote that app?

The board that decided they need the feature?

The system prompter who commanded the AI?

The user who used the application?

#chainOfFailures #security

@Mer__edith
Not a mistake. A mistake requires intent (to do something else), and intent requires knowing wtf you are doing, not stringing together words with a sufficient probability of looking like a sentence.

@Mer__edith This is what we get when the CEO and the company care more about their users than their shareholders and profit. And, for that, thank you!

@Mer__edith Please, please keep it that way! Thank all the team for Signal.

@Mer__edith I know this is only semi-related to your post but can we pause and appreciate the moment where that guy on Bluesky tried to explain to the PRESIDENT OF THE SIGNAL FOUNDATION what Signal’s future plans and business strategy are? Because it was such a chef’s kiss moment for me that I want to tape the screenshot to my wall.

@Mer__edith
Dear tech companies,
Please stop putting AI in everything, unless you replace your CEO with AI.

Imagine all the money you could save if you replaced the CEO with AI! It's not as if the AI would make worse decisions than your current CEO.

@Mer__edith
There are innovators, and there are people that don't mind playing with fire, it's fairly difficult not to end up in the second category when you do AI

@Mer__edith This just reminded me that I’ve been meaning to up my monthly contribution to Signal. Love what y’all do (or, er, don’t do).

@Mer__edith

You're wrong! Signal is going to start integrating LLMs next Thursday at 11am. As a man, I know this. #AskAMan

@Mer__edith The last two years of Gen AI reminds me of a debate I had with developers about bug severity. Dev Mgr would only rank level 0 if the app broke and wouldn't run. I found a calculation that provided erroneous results in the final report of our business analytics app. Dev Mgr would not call people in on the weekend.
"But our customer is going to make bad decisions based on false data we made and go out of business! That's worse than no answer"

@Mer__edith "Signal requires that the user provide a telephone number for verification [...] eliminating the need for user names or passwords and facilitating contact discovery".
"This mandatory connection to a telephone number (a feature Signal shares with WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, and others) has been criticized as a "major issue" for privacy-conscious users who are not comfortable with giving out their private number."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

@Mer__edith THANK YOU

@Mer__edith

🙂🖖

@Mer__edith 🙏

@Mer__edith As now a quite long time Signal user - I have never used AI and either disabled it or left places using it or ignoring stuff it provides - who thinks it a good idea bar those wanting to spy on us and steal data by connecting dots that otherwise they'd miss

@Mer__edith but i saw some rando confidently mansplain that it was definitely happening

(not sure anything funnier has happened since)

"In March, a Norwegian man filed a complaint after he asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT for information about himself and was confidently told that he was in jail for murdering two of his children, which was false."

That sounds like an opening for a #BlackMirror episode.
#OpenAI, #ChatGPT. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number

@sam I think there might be something wrong with it?

Alt...

A screenshot of the blog post, with text in code boxes visible, but otherwise there is no text, just a couple of icons.