Today we're sharing the first in a series of three posts from our leadership team, starting with @mellifluousbox discussing our mission, and priorities for 2026.

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic The PR only adds an option to ask age, not to use a 3ed party AI verificstion "service" or read an ID. By itsrlf that's a nothingburger but I would still turn it off legal or otherwise on any server I ran.

Note that birthdays are dangerous in the hands of an atacker, so never enter your real one for any account anywhere. Let the account go if challenged

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

what do you think about my post above asking for a credit card?

it achieves the same effect, and no one is getting a credit card without id. no server is getting your id and the security hassle with that, and you're not revealing your id anymore than it already has been

the big benefit: with your cc already attached to your profile, donating to your server becomes a breeze. and more people should be doing that

@benroyce @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

No, I would attack the government and steer people to servers out of their reach. An admin hassled one too many times by cops might even need to move their own account to one if the cops go after their hosting

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic Some do not have or want credit cards and will simply use other servers.

There is no way any regime can shut down access to every non-agr verification compliant server. Limits on federation woulf just split the fediverse into two networks which would inevitanly be bridged back together.

FL cannot even stop Pornhub: they just block conmections from FL IP addresses and gladly take Tor and VPN traffic

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

i yearly enjoy the services that sometimes say happy birthday to me...

on the fake birthday i've been entering since forever

🤭

@LukefromDC @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

again that's all fine and good

but if you're asking a server to shut down with thousands of accounts when people can just enter a fake birthday it's far too dramatic

effective resistance is not about purity

@ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox There will ALWAYS be noncompliant servers run by people who never travel to the US , the EU, the UK, or Austrailai. Also ones run by crews who know how to obfuscate ownerahip and get offshore hosting.

That's where you will also find me-on noncompliant servers

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

you mean tor and VPN providers that spy on the people who use it because anyone using that it is flagging their activity as sensitive?

tor was started at the us naval research laboratory for dissidents in countries unfriendly to the usa

you think they don't have enough exit nodes to see what is going on?

and mastodon needs support

i'd almost (i said almost) support the idea of mandatory ccs on sign up with or without id laws

@benroyce @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron Some servers are much smaller and can provide their users wirh migration tips.

This is what blackblogs.org did when running a US based anarchist wordpress hosting server got too dangerous: they shut doen, and steered people like myself to noblogs.org and other non-US alternatives, plus guides to moving content over. I didn't lose any content at all

@LukefromDC @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

great

would you characterize yourself as the average mastodon user? or more broadly, the average social media user?

most people want to sign onto a server, browse, and post

that's it

you can't go after them for that, people don't have the bandwidth or time for the hassles

and we can't become a tiny whisper of a cryptic fringe to adhere to some unnecessary purity test

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic .onion access bypasses exit nodes enrirely. If Tor gets compromised dozens of nations find their intelligence services lose covert communication except by direct radio or sattelite. If civilian traffic is blocked or driven off, spy traffic then instantly stands out.

Too many armies need Tor to kill it

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

.onion doesn't use exit nodes but it uses rendezvous nodes

and nobody wants to kill tor, the intelligence services love it

the foolishness is people who think something built by the us govt is perfectly anonymous

it *is* anonymous. to most every other entity

@benroyce @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

That means they will find servers that fit their needs, just as folks in my position find servers that fit our needs. Mastodon is NOT like Twitter or FB wirh a single server farm and one set of rules for all.

@LukefromDC @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

zero argument

and if you make the services you talk about user friendly enough that the average social media user can point and click and zero hassle, even better

until then, some servers are stuck in unfriendly districts

and that's not their fault

the govt is at fault

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic Perfect security would require our own hardware down to our own fabs making our own silicon. Then we'd have to bridge a new protocol we own over clearnet on the model of the US Government's own SIPRNET classified comms network.

It's easy enough to tell who I am by my writing style. Things like Tor let my bypass censors more than hide who I am.

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

understood

but we're now very far away from your average normie who just wants to see cat pictures

and that's where this topic truly lies

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic Indeed so. Totally different needs and it goes both ways. An activist video server for instance could not handle doing 10x its bandwidth in cat videos, a server optimized for easy use to poat cat videos might not be safe going forward for posting videos of police brutality.

As different as a cruise ship and a destroyer, a Cessna and a Spitfire.

@LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic

100%

and that's why we can't do purity tests on resistance

purity tests destroy effective resistance

effective resistance that isn't pure is not a betrayal

we resist how we can, in the ways we can

this isn't an argument against your words, i'm just harking back to the argument up higher

@ariarhythmic @benroyce @starlily Great, fascism will make good Mastodon instances have the same status as BitTorrent trackers and pirate streaming websites!

Well, the tracker I used to contribute for is still up even today, thus we may think disobedience is fine, they will not go for small instances. On the other hand, it's a false correlation: one thing is Crunchyroll, Netflix and other companies choosing not to go against small groups because they may die out of just from not getting enough donations, other thing is fascist governments. They are already going against individuals, people fear ICE, as an example.

@benroyce @LukefromDC @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic LOL, yes. I am so used to fake birthdays that I have to make an extra effort to enter the correct one if needed.

I oopsied my birthday for an online plane ticket booking after 9/11. No issue. Got to fly as booked.