The application, which allows users to add a pin on a map to show where ICE agents have recently been spotted, has climbed to the to the top of the App Store charts.
Someone knowledgeable enough would be able to figure out where every upload is going, I’d wager. But that would take Someone that is knowledgeable enough, as well as willing to expose an app like that given the potential consequences.
Federated application for a map with markers and notes?
It seems for me that this would be too narrow a purpose.
Maybe a general-purpose public notification map. With some functionality allowing to separate markers by their authors and by tags. Or it can be spammed with bogus markers. By tags - well, for it to be general-purpose. By authors - because moderation can’t be left to instance admins.
And, of course, I’m personally for separation of moderation, instance ownership, identities and hosting, but my own toy attempt showed me that the logic of checking the chain of privilege delegation is kinda PITA. That is, separating identities from instances is not that hard. And communities. What’s hard is the community owner delegating rights to other identities, and in general authorized actions. It’s a task of determining which privileges does an identity currently possess, and how does it affect its own actions on the community, and in which order should those be processed … Everything is harder than it seems. Sad.
Imagine federation with text linked to other text, that’d be crazy, right?
Wait, it’s actually more complicated than that 🤔
But FR using existing federated protocols to build something like this is EXACTLY what the protocols are for. You don’t need to implement the federation yourself, you can use an existing network
We need a federated equivalent. Anything centralized can be stopped.
At the very least I hope it’s hosted by someone outside the US so it’s out of reach to the authorities.
For all we know the app might just be a honeypot itself
This is a genuine concern that we should recognize.
I’m about 99% confident it isn’t, but considering it is the kind of caution we should all be exercising these days.
It’s probably not a honeypot. But it’s also likely to be negligent enough in implementation that it might as well be.
How would we learn either way if it was or wasn’t?
Someone knowledgeable enough would be able to figure out where every upload is going, I’d wager. But that would take Someone that is knowledgeable enough, as well as willing to expose an app like that given the potential consequences.
When the feds come for you for using it
Federated application for a map with markers and notes?
It seems for me that this would be too narrow a purpose.
Maybe a general-purpose public notification map. With some functionality allowing to separate markers by their authors and by tags. Or it can be spammed with bogus markers. By tags - well, for it to be general-purpose. By authors - because moderation can’t be left to instance admins.
And, of course, I’m personally for separation of moderation, instance ownership, identities and hosting, but my own toy attempt showed me that the logic of checking the chain of privilege delegation is kinda PITA. That is, separating identities from instances is not that hard. And communities. What’s hard is the community owner delegating rights to other identities, and in general authorized actions. It’s a task of determining which privileges does an identity currently possess, and how does it affect its own actions on the community, and in which order should those be processed … Everything is harder than it seems. Sad.
So federation is fine LOL.
Why too narrow of a use case?
Imagine federation with text linked to other text, that’d be crazy, right?
Wait, it’s actually more complicated than that 🤔
But FR using existing federated protocols to build something like this is EXACTLY what the protocols are for. You don’t need to implement the federation yourself, you can use an existing network