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.

@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.

@benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic Back in the 2010 era, some DC animal rights activists discovered that selective use of "vegan purity testing" was a simple and effective way to drive out suspected undercover cops.

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

well yeah

and new gang recruits are asked to shoot someone in the head as they watch for much the same reason

neither of which tell us much about the topic here

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox No, they cannot get shut down by a government they're not operating under. If there's a threat, move legal operations & hosting out of the jurisdiction and obfuscate physical location of servers behind VPNs. Don't fucking comply.

@dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

that's not really true

for many countries you have to follow the laws of *both* your home country and the country where your server resides

of course that's not true for all countries

but if let's say you're a citizen of the germany and your server is hosted in another country, germany just goes after you, it doesn't care

"obfuscate physical location of servers behind VPNs"

no. that's no protection

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox None of that contradicts what I said. You don't run it as a citizen or resident of the hostile jurisdiction. You pass ownership to an entity in a safe location, and you put the fronting IP in a safe location. Physical servers can be somewhere else, but shouldn't be somewhere under the hostile jurisdiction unless you're confident there's no trail to them.

@dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

if you're already in a safe jurisdiction, yes, get your servers out of a bad jurisdiction, absolutely

but if you're in an unsafe jurisdiction, it doesn't matter where your servers are. if they want to target you, they'll target you, and no amount of obfuscation will protect you from that

of course if you're a small fish doing small fish things, you'll probably be fine for a long time

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox You just make it so it's no longer you running it. It's been passed off to an entity legally incorporated someplace else, and your involvement is as a volunteer or contractor working with a foreign entity for which you have no authority to implement the type of "age verification" your government wants them to impose.

@dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

so let's say i'm in the uk. you expect me to set up in let's say canada

under someone else's name? what? you have those kinds of connections?

nevermind the added cost

also the effort will trigger more interest in you than if you never tried it. when they find out you're just trying to avoid age verification they'll laugh

you think govts aren't used to this kind of intrigue from dealing with crypto/ gambling/ silkroad/ pedophile rings/ etc?

@benroyce @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron it is to utter idea, I don’t want to have amd I know a lot of people who doesn’t want to have credit cards and are completely ok with Debit Cards. 1. There are people who do not want to be formally in debt, 2. There are people who do not want to be formally in higher loan to salary ratio. (Yes when I was asking for mortgage, I got rid of CC, because it was literally increasing my debt to salary ratio even when it is not used, by its credit limits) and as last thing asking gamers (and yes gaming is addictive) when there are games with concept of in game payments for credit card is just wrong. It shall be regulated the same way as online gambling is.

@LukefromDC @benroyce @mark @nitrml @meowki @iju @ariarhythmic In case of mastodon you don’t need to possess ID, there are several KYC services, who verifies your customer and issue proof he is eg age verified. And you never posses any ID, CC etc. I would say this will be smaller burden (perhaps even cheaper) that setting whole payment infrastructure.

@janantos @iju @ariarhythmic @mellifluousbox @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering @Gargron

It's entirely possible to own a credit card and not use it

The point is to solve the problem of age verification without asking anyone's age, and using cc solves that problem

But you also want to solve the problem of addictive personalities who wind up stuck on gambling?

What

You ask far too much

Nothing can function in this world on this level of concern

Scope your concerns to reasonable goals please

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

You're talking about decentralized identity

You can see vestiges of that in the project's history

So it looks like they abandoned that

Perhaps because it's not up to snuff yet?

But I don't know, I'm not up to speed

@dalias
Thank you for standing up for what is right. It is terrible seeing the excuses.

@benroyce @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

@vervain @dalias @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox

it's about what works or not

there isn't excuses, there's dealing with reality

if someone wants to be pure and not deal with reality, ok

but the rest of us are trying to deal with the bullshit

and for that, i suppose we're a vast evil

same old toxic idealism, not achieving shit, but sure good at whining

@pablomuyo @Mastodon @mellifluousbox what do you mean? Libretranslate works well on my instance for translating posts

@Mastodon do not, I repeat DO NOT attempt to implement age verification. You’ll kill the platform. See: Discord.

Decentralised, federated networks are one of the few bastions from which we can fight this. Don’t throw that away.

@benroyce fuck you, average mastodon dot social user

@benroyce @vervain @ariarhythmic @Mastodon @mellifluousbox You're trying to deal with defeat before it even happens. Governments DGAF about your Mastodon instance. But they're happy to have you complying in advance.