Linux-related discussion as a cybersecurity threat [LWN.net]

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 27, 2025 16:45 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (8 responses)

Reuven Lerner was banned for life for advertising something that was either open-source software training or illegal animal trafficking, hard to tell which one.

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 27, 2025 17:20 UTC (Mon) by MortenSickel (subscriber, #3238) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe the AI system that banned him was written in Python and had some feelings about it...

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 3:18 UTC (Tue) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (1 responses)

What's far more likely is that at some point facepuke had reached the state where nobody inside understands how the ban system works, to such a degree that any attempt to modify it is likely to cause more breakage than it might fix...

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 16:06 UTC (Tue) by j16sdiz (guest, #57302) [Link]

> nobody understands

those internal *knew* what happened. They even point out the 180days retention, in which point he is virtually asking for unban without proofs. At this point, knowing is not enough to revert the decision. Somebody need the power to kick off the override.

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 27, 2025 18:24 UTC (Mon) by kreijack (guest, #43513) [Link]

I don't want to justify Facebook action, however news like this seems to me a valid reason to avoid "common name" for naming something; more general I would like to avoid generic term that without a context may confuse the others.

Python and Panda are only an example. And not the worse one. But, think to also to the name of an "email reader" named "mail" or a message reader named "messages".

It complicates also the search of information with google.

I understand that this seems more simple for a not skilled user... but then these will increase the confusion.
Firefox/Thunderbird may be not the best names, but are specific enough to avoid mistakes...

Of course those consideration don't apply to the fact that linux page were banned....

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 3:41 UTC (Tue) by moxfyre (guest, #13847) [Link]

Hard not to see the wise and steady hand of AI in all this, isn't it?

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 4:27 UTC (Tue) by jlarocco (subscriber, #168049) [Link] (2 responses)

I love the irony that real people can be banned for "inauthentic behavior" while Facebook itself tries to be a major AI company.

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 12:57 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Or that bots are now better at answering captchas than real humans ...

Cheers,
Wol

"Python" and "Pandas" training is banned on there too

Posted Jan 28, 2025 13:32 UTC (Tue) by laurent.pinchart (subscriber, #71290) [Link]

It gives birth to interesting new captchas. One of my personal favourites is https://doom-captcha.vercel.app/. It took me 5 or 6 tries though :)

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 17:20 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (52 responses)

I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta is going the way of Xitter. I explain my rationale for deleting Facebook, as well as tips for using as safely as possible if you can't delete it, here.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 17:54 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (43 responses)

With Google Plus closed and Facebook banning Linux related discussions, what would be an alternative for open source developers?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 18:03 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Mastodon, particularly instances focused on free software / open source, like fosstodon.org, though any Fediverse site will do.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 18:32 UTC (Mon) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (41 responses)

Alternative for what? I've been out of the loop for a while.
Last time I looked, facebook was used for

- sharing pictures with friends & family?
- scheduling events.
- advertising your small business?
- doom scrolling through misinformation?

I deleted Facebook years ago, have a private Instagram on life support.. and have a proton drive I use to actually use to share stuff. Email, calendar, and text are the tools I use for event coordination. I'm busy enough that I can get plenty misinformed via self-reinforcing internal feedback loops that sometimes seem to delete information on each loop, even with reliable sources, and have no need for advertising.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 21:32 UTC (Mon) by Klaasjan (subscriber, #4951) [Link] (39 responses)

An alternative for WhatsApp? (in EU)

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 23:43 UTC (Mon) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (12 responses)

Doesn't Signal work?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 23:49 UTC (Mon) by Klaasjan (subscriber, #4951) [Link] (11 responses)

Signal should work, but my actual social network does not use it. In contrast, WhatsApp is pervasive where I live, both at home and at work.

Re: Getting off WhatsApp

Posted Jan 28, 2025 6:28 UTC (Tue) by Nemo_bis (guest, #88187) [Link]

Start by getting the 2-3 people you chat with the most out of WhatsApp.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 10:10 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (5 responses)

Interestingly, in the last week a group of non-technical people I work with started discussing switching to Signal. The whole "Facebook can use my data" wasn't enough after the EU put their foot down and prevented data sharing with the rest of Facebook.

Recent events have made a lot of people reconsider WhatsApp who wouldn't have before, which is impressive. It's pervasive in Europe, mainly because SMS was/is fricking expensive and doesn't work great across borders (of which we have many).

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 16:50 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

I made prediction market contracts on which of the big services that are currently end-to-end encrypted will give in:

So far Signal looks the strongest, at 14% compared to 56% for WhatsApp, which makes sense because the Signal Foundation doesn't have other businesses that a government could have easy leverage over.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 10:41 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> mainly because SMS was/is fricking expensive and doesn't work great across borders (of which we have many).

IFF you're on contract, SMS is almost invariably free in the UK now - has been for a while. MMS, on the other hand, is still pricey.

So of course, Google decided to drop messenger, replace it with some other messaging app, and default it to using WiFi not SMS. And uncapped data plans are frigging expensive ...

Mind you, I've got one of the cheapest plans you can get, and careful monitoring of upgrade offers means I now normally start each month with (I think) 50GB of data allowance - 25GB per month plus the previous month rolled over.

Cheers.
Wol

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:01 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (2 responses)

> IFF you're on contract, SMS is almost invariably free in the UK now - has been for a while. MMS, on the other hand, is still pricey.

Within the UK it may be free, and now if you're in the EU then within the EU it will be within your bundle. But when WhatsApp started you paid through the nose if you happened to be outside the country and you wanted to SMS your friends at home. This was the killer feature that made WhatsApp popular. Skype could have captured this space, but it didn't. The fact you can send images for zero extra cost is just bonus. And the fact it works even if you have only Wifi.

And even today, sending SMSes to other countries is notoriously flaky. We often communicate with customers in other countries using Signal because SMSes just vanish (the lack to receipts doesn't help).

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 13:27 UTC (Thu) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

The other big thing that WhatsApp has (and Signal, and Telegram I suppose) and SMS not, is group chats. That makes it so much easier for setting up things to do together with family or friends, or even for casual conversation. Just for that reason, SMS is not in the same league, not even close. Email could in principle work too for that kind of use case, but WhatsApp et al. do these things with so much less friction.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 14:38 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The other influence that led to WhatsApp being popular is that the EU in general had more of a bias towards pre-paid plans than the USA. This led to two interacting things that biased people towards messaging apps (BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp etc): first, you tended to pay less for your messaging if you bought data and used a separate service for messaging than if you bought SMS. Second, telcos offer pre-paid customers the opportunity to buy cheap bundles of service - 500 MB data to use up in 30 days, or 200 SMS to use in 60 days, for example - and because data is fungible between messaging, e-mail, web browsing etc, being able to push everything into a data bundle is easier than having to balance data bundles and SMS bundles separately.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 18:16 UTC (Thu) by hailfinger (subscriber, #76962) [Link] (3 responses)

I used to recommend Signal, but their target audience is people who value confidentiality over availability.

Signal does not have the ability to store received media files in the phone gallery or any other storage media easily backed up incrementally, you just have the option to back up the gigantic blob file created once per day as "backup". The ability to store media outside the Signal container has been requested repeatedly and denied repeatedly, usually with arguments along the lines of "you don't know if the sender would allow you to back up the media" and "you can export media files individually to phone storage, just not in bulk".

If you want to share pictures/videos in a way the receiver can benefit from automated off-device backups to avoid data loss, pretty much any non-Signal messenger is better. Signal-JW exists and claims to be Signal-compatible while allowing phone-managed storage of media, but that won't help your conversation partner recover their valuable family pictures.

If you're recommending a messenger to friends and family, be ready to explain why their data disappeared after a phone was stolen or damaged if the messenger doesn't support user-friendly automatic backups.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 31, 2025 8:29 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (2 responses)

> Signal does not have the ability to store received media files in the phone gallery or any other storage media easily backed up incrementally, you just have the option to back up the gigantic blob file created once per day as "backup"

When you recieve an image you can select it and ask to save to local storage (aka your phone gallery). Since most images I receive via Signal are memes anyway I don't mind this, I just need to remember to save the few photos that are interesting.

For the same reason I don't have every image in WhatsApp backed up to the cloud, that just wastes a ridiculous amount of space.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 31, 2025 10:20 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

This becomes a user-by-user thing; I back up all images I'm sent via WhatsApp, since virtually all of them are family pictures I want to keep. It's simpler to remove the 1% of images that are memes than to manually back up the 99% that are things I want.

Signal doesn't offer the choice - it insists that everyone has to work the way you do, not the way I do.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 31, 2025 12:43 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Signal doesn't offer the choice - it insists that everyone has to work the way you do, not the way I do.

What I would personally like is the ability to explicitly archive (and subsequently delete) some subset of the overall Signal message store.

There are conversations that _must_ be kept for various reasons but I don't want to waste a couple of GB of precious handheld space on them all the time.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 10:57 UTC (Tue) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (25 responses)

I use telegram with my family.

It's not perfect but the app isn't overflowing with ads like the facebook app at least.

Plus, no size limit on shared files.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 13:02 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

I would fear giving telegram to my kids, given the groups that are readily accessible via it. And then, once you join groups, you start to get the DMs for spam/scammers/groomers/etc. Even if you don't join groups, random guessing of usernames still means you may get inappropriate DMs.

I have given one kid Session (getsession.org) - a Signal fork, making it distributed and based around a cryptographic identity. It is effectively impossible for someone to randomly message my child. And groups are much more limited (just cause of the exclusivity factor). It's also not-completely-trivial to setup a group, and if you do those are not easy to discover - so the group issue should hopefully not go out of control as quickly.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 0:06 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

I get individual spam on Telegram (mostly since using a Google Voice number for it…I wonder where the leak is…). WhatsApp is *far* more spammy and "hey, we added you to a cryptocurrency pig butchering^W^Winvestment group". I just lurk and report them until somebody wakes up and does something about it.

Flee from Meta

Posted Feb 1, 2025 22:06 UTC (Sat) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link] (1 responses)

Is this that common when you use it with known people only? I used to only use Telegram for personal use and didn't have that problem. Then I had to join groups related to crypto for $DAYJOB reasons and became flooded by scammers. I believe there is a correlation there, but maybe it's coincidence and the spam got worse just about the time I started using it for those groups?

Flee from Meta

Posted Feb 1, 2025 23:02 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I hadn't added a contact on Telegram for years prior (I had since joined a group, but the spam started before that). As for WhatsApp, I refuse to let it access my contacts, so I can't actually join any group or initiate a chat because that is locked behind a "use your contacts" workflow.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 17:45 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (15 responses)

Well, I guess I'm a dinosaur. I use mostly email to message family and friends (and it's self-hosted.) I rarely encrypt personal email because I see no point, but anything sensitive is encrypted with GnuPG.

With my daughter, I text or call.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 22:30 UTC (Tue) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (14 responses)

email is quite different. With a group chat you can just send a photo of wherever you are, so your family members are kept in the loop even while being thousands of km away.

It's also good to coordinate if you have to meet somewhere, you can share the current location in real time.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 23:36 UTC (Tue) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (1 responses)

I guess I'm a dinosaur too. How does sending a photo make it different? I could attach a photo to an Email also. I do get that if you're trying to meet up with someone at a place you don't both know, it's helpful to interact in realtime.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:58 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

You can, but it gets seen a week later and it's no longer relevant really.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 2:10 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

I can attach photos to emails.

If it's really necessary, I can share my current location via email in essentially real-time (less than one minute of latency for sure.)

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:57 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (10 responses)

email is not a realtime protocol, so no you can't ensure there is less than 1 minute delay.

Having said that, it's much easier to have something in your pocket doing that, than having to constantly copy paste your coordinates into an email client, and require the other person to compare them to their own coordinates and direct.

Seeing some kind of map that automatically gets updated is easier, I assure you.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 13:41 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (9 responses)

No, email is not real-time and you cannot ensure less than 1 minute delay, but 99.9% of the time, it's the case.

If I need anything more immediate than that, I text or call. Remember when speaking on the phone was a thing?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 13:42 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (4 responses)

"Remember when speaking on the phone was a thing?"

You mean last century? The late 1900s? :)

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:03 UTC (Wed) by laurent.pinchart (subscriber, #71290) [Link] (3 responses)

In the late 1900's it was even possible to meet somewhere in the real world without having to carry any electronic device on your way from home to the destination. I know stories of people who managed to find themselves in the same pre-agreed location at the same pre-agreed time without having to communicate with each other on the way. Crazy, right?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 16:01 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

And do you know how many times my mum called the police because someone of us had missed the bus?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 2:29 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

How many times?

My mom didn't start worrying until I was 2-3 hours late and hadn't called...

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 17:01 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

The joys of having to wait by a known, pre-arranged phone-box, for those cases where you /did/ you have to communicate along the way.

"Are they going to ring when they said or not?"

"Arg, someone else is using the phone box!"

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:35 UTC (Wed) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link] (1 responses)

Call is fine for immediate needs, text (SMS) is not, as QoS prioritizes calls over text.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 12:54 UTC (Thu) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

On the other hand texts are more likely to reach the person due to the lack of a requirement for both people to be available at exactly the same time.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:59 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

> If I need anything more immediate than that, I text or call. Remember when speaking on the phone was a thing?

Ah yes "I'm at coordinates four one three mark two!", that will work out nicely to find someone else in an unfamiliar place.

You could just say "I'm not in close contact with people who live very far away, and I never meet friends, so I don't have the use case" and that would be perfectly acceptable. But this is getting really ridiculous.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:27 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I can count the number of times I've arranged to meet people in a completely unfamiliar place that is impossible to describe using landmarks, intersection names, etc. on the fingers of zero hands.

I have no idea how I managed to meet friends during the period of 1976-1995 or so... it all magically worked, though.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 10:57 UTC (Wed) by chris_se (subscriber, #99706) [Link] (4 responses)

> I use telegram with my family.

Just a side note: from a data privacy perspective, most other apps available nowadays are better than Telegram. Telegram is **not** end-to-end encrypted by default. You can activate that in specific circumstances, but you have to do so for each individual conversation, and it's quite complicated.

Now in your specific use case, that might not be an issue, and you might be willing to sacrifice that for other features the app has, so please don't read my reply as a criticism.

But I wanted to make this clear, because Telegram is advertised as a secure messenger, when it is in fact by far the least secure of the mainstream messaging apps (if you ignore regular unencrypted SMS). If you care about data privacy and security, moving from WhatsApp to Telegram is actually a step down, not up.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:57 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (3 responses)

Telegram is easily available on computers. I know it's not e2ee, same goes for emails and every single proprietary application (even if they claim they are… unless they're open source it's just meaningless words).

I'm fully aware of it.

> moving from WhatsApp to Telegram is actually a step down, not up.

Very debatable. One has a closed source client and one has an open source client. One claims to be e2ee (but nobody knows), while one lets you see the code and make sure yourself.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:21 UTC (Wed) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link] (2 responses)

Signal is available on computers too

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Posted Jan 29, 2025 22:34 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

It is available, but not "apt instal" available, having it on the pinephone or such devices is a major complication, while telegram just works.

Also the fact that very institutional USA players promote signal heavily makes me suspect it's not as safe as advertised. But that's just my paranoia. Not that telegram is safe at all.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:17 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Yes, ironically Telegram _clients_ are more open and free software than Signal is. You can write your own Telegram client (and many have, thus you have native clients on different mobile Linux OSs) while Signal actively disallows third party clients. And you can install Telegram fork from F-Droid, etc.

Sure, Signal is e2e, but if exaggerating it's e2e in a bit similar sense than Whatsapp is. It has a long history of including proprietary binary blobs and being only available in proprietary stores (I mean places from where you also get automatic updates). Even though on the other hand there is work on reproducible builds, their actions drive people to actively install it from places like Google Play instead of something that community could more easily verify.

I do prefer Signal at the moment for its functionality and theoretically well proven security, but I've started to use Matrix more as well.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 7:15 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Mastodon is an implementation of microblogging on top of a protocol called ActivityPub. ActivityPub nodes make the Fediverse.

There are several other microblogging servers out there. But there are also other things:

Picture sharing: Pixelfed
Video sharing: PeerTube
Scheduling events: Mobilizon

Doom scrolling for misinformation: Try to set up your own server, and look for nodes that are to be banned. There is indeed at least one alternative fediverse out there if that's your kick.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 17:54 UTC (Mon) by JanSoundhouse (subscriber, #112627) [Link]

Welcome to free speech™ aka trump speech. How lovely that there are no fact checkers anymore. Let the corporate regulate the freedom of speech.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 18:30 UTC (Mon) by leigh (subscriber, #175596) [Link] (6 responses)

There isn't an alternative, at least in my area, to Marketplace. There are also some niche communities I'm part of that don't participate in any other social media platforms.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 19:51 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

Those niche communities are what kept me on Facebook the longest, until I finally decided I didn't want to contribute to the further enrichment of an oligarch. Losing access to those niche communities is a cost, but it's one I decided to pay.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 20:38 UTC (Mon) by laurent.pinchart (subscriber, #71290) [Link] (4 responses)

Did that end up strengthening the incentive to join/create real life communities ?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 22:23 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, actually! I only left Facebook recently (about 25 days ago), but at about the same time, I joined a local social group that meets in Real Life (tm). It's far more rewarding.

Flee from Meta

Posted Feb 1, 2025 22:21 UTC (Sat) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link]

How do you find those nowadays?

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 27, 2025 23:01 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not always possible, unfortunately. Some interests (e.g. exotic snake breeding) are a bit too niche for local meetups.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 0:58 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Yes, I understand. Which is why I spent a fair bit of time in my post describing how to use Facebook as safely as possible.

Linux distro Facebook Groups

Posted Jan 27, 2025 19:07 UTC (Mon) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link] (1 responses)

I believe a large number of Linux distros have Facebook presences. I'm pretty sure Fedora has one... but not being on Facebook myself, I'm not into that. If so, I wonder how Linux distro groups are going to talk about Linux related stuff without using banning terms?

Freex distro Facebook Groups

Posted Jan 27, 2025 22:49 UTC (Mon) by mussell (subscriber, #170320) [Link]

I believe a large number of Linux distros have Facebook presences.

I initially interpreted "Facebook presences" as contributing to distros like what they do with CentOS. In fact, Facebook/Meta is a major contributor to Linux and open source, with 344 changesets and 15114 lines changed in the 6.13 kernel alone. I guess this means not only is Facebook one of the largest developers of so-called malware in the world, but it also infects every server they own. I feel bad for all of their sysadmins since they now need to move everything over to *BSD since that (presumably) is not banned.

To get around the word filter, you could start calling Linux Freex as Linus originally wanted.

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 27, 2025 21:49 UTC (Mon) by NUXI (subscriber, #70138) [Link] (6 responses)

You'd think after 23 years people would stop falling for this joke

https://gwern.net/doc/cs/security/2001-12-02-treginaldgib...

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 28, 2025 2:28 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (5 responses)

I may be embarrassing myself here, but I am very troubled these days.

Maybe I missed something. Is this actually a joke, or is the writer serious? Please let me know, because right now, I'm in a funk over how incredibly stupid some of the people around me have become. So stupid, in fact, that we are precariously close to a fascist dictatorship in my country.

If it was a joke, please tell me what I missed. Maybe the "Lunix" thing?

I don't know, but it seems to me most of the nastiest computer criminals use Windows , or learn to abuse Android.

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 28, 2025 3:57 UTC (Tue) by Heretic_Blacksheep (guest, #169992) [Link] (4 responses)

It's a series of tropes and cliches that mainstream society, aided and abetted by Hollywood (War Games, Hackers, The Matrix, others, but especially War Games) and legal theater (like Kevin Mitnick's sentencing* which was a travesty of justice), have for the hacking community at large. It was more obvious back in the day when it was written this was a tongue-in-cheek characterization of a code and hardware savvy computer enthusiast. Too many people take Hollywood & TV fiction as realistic. Don't get me started on how effed up CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, etc are on both criminal justice and forensic sciences and furthering these tropes. The post is meant to poke fun at the "OMG, my kid is a criminal!!!!111" panic that tends to grip luddites that fear what they don't understand or don't like different points of view on technical or legal topics like with Aaron Schwartz and the JSTOR archive incident^. Many people consider computer science as arcane magic. When people don't understand a topic or subject it's too easy to twist that into fear and panic through lies and mischaracterization.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_convi...
^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 28, 2025 7:59 UTC (Tue) by vasvir (subscriber, #92389) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks

I was also missing the context here like ccchips I wasn't sure if I had to laugh or start shivering...

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:56 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, we *do* live in a reality where I sometimes have to double check news headlines whether it's The Onion or not. It's surprisingly difficult to tell sometimes.

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Feb 2, 2025 0:00 UTC (Sun) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link]

I'm old enough to remember when satire & parody took cues from reality, rather than the other way around:-/

I guess Facebook fell for this old joke

Posted Jan 28, 2025 17:38 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

Thank you. At least I know what was intended now. Sadly, though, this doesn't leave me feeling much better. I believe my country is on the way to being like Germany in World War II, and the abusive behavior toward Free Software looks like another symptom of it.

Closed discussion platforms

Posted Jan 28, 2025 3:57 UTC (Tue) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link] (1 responses)

Bah, what could go wrong when group discussions happen only on closed proprietary platforms operated by opiniated people ? There was a time where people were using NNTP, SMTP, IRC etc. Nowadays it seems super important to have accounts to tens of random platforms which all try to become the world's biggest and marginalize those who aren't there, yet most people fall for them.

Closed discussion platforms

Posted Jan 29, 2025 11:05 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Apparently Facebook operates in at least two parallel universes.

In one they censor random keywords because their AI algorithms are just plain broken. (So what else is new?)

In the other, they take the wheels off entirely and switch to "community notes".

Malice or incompetence?

Posted Jan 28, 2025 19:13 UTC (Tue) by chexo4 (subscriber, #169500) [Link] (1 responses)

Honestly given the concerning way Donald Trump seems to have both Meta, Twitter/X, and TikTok in his pocket now, this could actually be outright malice rather than simple incompetence.

Time will tell I suppose.

Malice or incompetence?

Posted Jan 28, 2025 19:30 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

It's absolutely malice. The parallels from ~80-90 years ago in Europe are there for all to see.

Turnabout is fair play

Posted Jan 29, 2025 6:26 UTC (Wed) by draco (subscriber, #1792) [Link] (2 responses)

Since Linux is malware, maybe kernel.org et al should block FB to do them a favor. When the developers can't get their jobs done (or security fixes), maybe they'll change their tune.

Turnabout is fair play

Posted Jan 29, 2025 12:13 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

The corp networks that employees/engineers sit on generally have different exits to the Internet than the main infrastructure networks that serve production service (Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) - and they are not necessarily Facebook IP allocations, they may come from ISP PA IP space.

Also, they have a different email domain (used to be fb.com, maybe they also use meta.com now - don't know).

Exit IPs from big tech corp networks

Posted Jan 29, 2025 13:02 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

It's also worth noting that big tech already pays for "consumer" connections (VPNs via companies like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton v p n etc as well as local ISP consumer connections) for the specific purpose of getting round IP-based restrictions. This ensures that when you get a report that says a resource you're linking to is abusive, you can look from at least three different places - corporate office network, infrastructure network, and consumer network - to see if the reported resource is disguising itself when you check from the company's own networks (which is itself a breach of policy, and would result in the resource being blocked).

This could be reused to get round IP blocks on kernel.org quite easily.

It looks like Facebook has admitted their mistake.

Posted Jan 29, 2025 22:46 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

In the interest of time (which I haven't got enough of lately,) I'm posting this as raw text. I don't remember HTML very well these days. Too busy with personal family issues. Sorry for the inconvenience....

Essentially, it looks like an AI thing.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-u...

Malware scanner error

Posted Jan 30, 2025 7:02 UTC (Thu) by osandov (subscriber, #97963) [Link] (1 responses)

I (Meta employee) can share this:

Our automated systems blocked distrowatch.com for hosting a link to a file detected by third party security vendors as malware. This was an error and has since been addressed. Discussions of Linux are allowed on our services.

It's not only distrowatch.com

Posted Jan 30, 2025 16:22 UTC (Thu) by mnestor (guest, #175686) [Link]

Please also take a look at https://www.facebook.com/9to5linux because you've been banning 9to5Linux's posts for a year now because of your inaccurate "cybersecurity threats".