Author Archives: Ali Reza Hayati

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About Ali Reza Hayati

Entrepreneur, engineer, hacker, cypherpunk.

Can fediverse admins read your DMs?

As the news about Elon Musk buying Twitter reaches more people, Mastodon (and others) face increase in user number and active members. This is good news.

And yes, fediverse admins can read your DMs. That’s not news to anyone. Every person with some knowledge of how internet and web application/services work knows that a sysadmin and those with access to databases control everything and in this example, can read your direct messages.

Even with encrypted services, a sysadmin can disable encryption or do various series of attacks to get your encryption keys/passwords. I posted something on Mastodon the other day about the irony of people using Gmail to sign up for Mastodon (or generally any other social network/online service) and then being worried about the privacy of their DMs.

I’m not saying they don’t have a right for privacy or their concern is baseless. Coming from Middle East I truly understand it. Here’s a scenario as an example: Imagine an authoritarian regime, like Russia, sets and runs thousands of Mastodon instances and operates them to aggregate data about people. People unknowingly will send private messages and all of those messages are now in hand of a regime that suppresses its opposition.

Or even if you trust an instance admin, you can still be in danger as Mastodon is a federated network and the admin of the other instance you’re talking to (through DMs) can too read your messages.

However, trusting a social network for private messaging is wrong at first place. You shouldn’t use a social network of any kind to send important messages or to communicate safely. Mastodon DMs (or any other network’s direct message) is just a post that is shown to people who are mentioned, nothing more.

The best use for DMs is to ask for a private communication method or handle, like XMPP, and then contact them there. It would be nice for Mastodon and other fediverse software to have end-to-end encrypted private messaging implemented in.

The other thing is that Mastodon, and every other fediverse software I now, are free software. Meaning people can run, study, change, and share it as they wish (under the terms of the free licenses they have) and it gives people to freely modify the software and run their own server to please their own needs for communication on the fediverse. I don’t think that can be done by normal everyday users as they probably lack skills, time, and money to do so, but it’s possible.

The other thing is that we should teach people about their privacy rights and how internet and online services work. For a long time, mega corporations mistreated people and misguided them to accept or trust services that violate their basic human right of privacy and it should be our job and obligation to teach them this.

Fediverse is currently the best social network we can have. It’s decentralized, without ads, without trackers, and designed solely for socializing and creating networks/connections. We should help develop it to be more secure and trustworthy and we should keep promoting it to have more people there. Of course, that requires us to be honest, respectful, and welcoming to new people.

Conservatism and fascism

Conservatism is just another shade of liberalism. Both parties are neoliberals vying for control via different institutional methods depending on their specific voter base. Knowing this, fascism is a piece of both of these “parties.”

As Parenti and many other Marxists will tell you, “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” Although this is a good explanation, it kinda glosses over the fact that it is more of a “failsafe” mode to switch to when there is trouble for capitalism.

You can see it when people buy into fears and irrationalities and such in capitalist society. It doesnt just come when capitalism is “dying” it comes to “keep the peace” for the capitalists, albeit when fascists mobilize it is through nationalism and religious zealotry.

Conservatives in America at least are still basically fighting back against the concept and notions of Keynesian economics, which was beat out in favor of neo-liberalism (this concept being “free markets and everything about them should basically dominate society”).

Progressives in America generally want to go back to Keynesian type economics (free healthcare, welfare, social security, etc.) and this is where that specific divide comes from concerning only the modern day parties.

Conservatives are the social fascists that see no need to lift their boot off your neck. Democrats are smart enough to realize that that you need to breath for a sec if they want to keep the boot easily and firmly secure on your neck.

A major theme in monarchies is the divine right of kings, or the mandate from heaven. The State directly using religion to justify their rule. We don’t see that very often with Fascism; the religious aspect appears to take a backseat to the nationalist aspect. However, it should be mentioned that in fascist states, the one in power is in fact the religion the regime imposes and enforces on people.

When liberal capitalist societies fail, nations turn to glory, honor, nobility, and war to legitimate the system.

This is imposed on people in various ways but the feeling imposed is almost always the same. Making people feel noble and special and chosen, with a superhero came to rescue all and free them from their pain.

Today, what we see from conservatives are no different from old school fascists. Labeling some people as illegal, putting the blame on the opposite party (while in fact the system remains the same), populism, nationalism, imposing wars (both with military and financial power), threatening to jail and punish those who are not considered friends, discriminating against people with false excuse of fearing the reverse discrimination.

Conservatives today are seeking for the lost honor. Using everything they have, they just care about rising up from the dust. Stimulating the religious affiliations of the people, triggering them with fake news of tyranny, passing tyrannical laws where they’re in power, limiting people’s power, deceiving people and leading them to their desired path through lies, etc.

When they take the power, then the real propaganda begins. Short-term policies will give people the feeling that the situation is getting better when in long-term it just gets worse. Everything will be blamed on past mistakes, tyrannical laws will be justified by saying it’s the majority who voted for this, and every opposing voice will be shut. It’s easy to guess as it happened in history many times.

What conservatives advocate for is a mass social divide, same as fascists. In those societies there are two group of people: 1. People who seek liberty and are opposed to the system and 2. People who are directed to believe the system is (as it’s become a religion) taking back the pride for people and make them noble.

In American case, which is very important for world right now, conservatives are dividing people using Christianity, freedom (as they describe), financial status, race, sex, and family social status.

Bringing back the nostalgia of 80s showing only the good parts and completely ignoring the rest, they bang on masculinity, hard working, family relations, financial dreams, and only the rich people sight, view, and lifestyle of capitalism.

Conservatives and fascist are willing to sacrifice what they believe in to achieve their goals. They want a limited interference of government for example but we see they are willing to pass very personally interfering laws to satisfy their need to be superior and enforce their belief on others.

To make an example, some elites controlling the economy is one of many horrible results of capitalism but conservatives ignore this completely, just how fascists ignore the result of their actions. Same thing happens in Russia (a fascist state which American conservatives claim is communist) with oligarchs.

Labeling people is another similarity. Conservatives label their opposition as communists, or in Russian and Chinese case (while the system is in fact capitalist) they label their opposition as capitalist, against the opposition’s true nature. This happens to misinform people of what exactly is going on and to be able to paint their opposition in public eye as they wish.

Same goes in fascist states. Labeling opposition as enemy spies, the enemy of people, or anti-christ to trigger people’s feelings and justify their actions. Fascist states impose this feeling of “the leader is always right and its opposition is logically (their own logic of course) evil and bad.

As I said before, conservatives are social fascists but with them in power, it’s not so far from becoming a fascist state. It’s just a matter of time. Fascists and conservatives try to be seen as pro-human compassionate people but we know from history that it’s exactly the opposite.

Do not let history repeat itself in this case. It’ll destroy us all.

Continuous passing and going

Once upon a time, there was a Persian king who received a beautiful ring from a famous jeweler. The ring was a special gift for the king and it had a beautiful stone on it which the king loved. One day, the king ordered a prize to be set for a particular sentence. The sentence shall make the king happy when he’s sad and it shall make the king sad when he’s happy.

Many men came and suggested sentences to claim the reward but none was accepted by the king. Until a day that an old man was brought to king for a matter and the old man was asked about the sentence. The old man suggested one that revolutionized the king’s life. The sentence read “this too shall pass.”

Whenever the king was happy, he used to read the sentence and remember that the happiness won’t last and whenever he was sad, he remembered that the sadness won’t last forever as well.

Since I’ve adopted that in my life, passing through the problems and living in general is much easier. Now, when I face a difficulty in my life, I repeat with myself that this too shall pass and when I find myself in a happy situation, I remember to enjoy it all as this too shall pass.

Memories are sweeter too. Sad memories remind me that no pain will last and happy memories just put an smile on me and make me wait for new ones to come as every moment too shall pass. Nothing is permanent and that is a wonderful thing.

I now live in a continuous passing and going. I’m not stuck in any moment or any memory. I live the best of it I can in any moment and I try to make best for everyone. That doesn’t mean I don’t put effort or I don’t get sad or happy, of course I’m not a machine, I just learned to control my emotions and learn from life.

I wish I had that ring, but even without it, when I find myself impatient, I remember that these moments too shall pass. When I find myself too excited or too depressed, I remember that these moments too shall pass. In fact, any moment, any up and down too shall pass.

I imagine myself in the unstoppable train of life which is passing moment and going through no matter it’s snowing or raining or if it’s sunny and clear. No matter of where we’re going, up or down, I know the train may sometimes go slower and sometimes faster, but it won’t stop until it reaches its destination.

This is written with a smile on my lips while listening to my favorite music tracks knowing this happy moment too shall pass in my continuous passing and going.

Human rights and the system

In 1942, there were a 110,000 Japanese American citizens in good standing, law-abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had, “right this way” – into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took ’em away. And rights aren’t rights if someone can take ’em away. They’re privileges, that’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter and shorter.

George Carlin

An extension of the class system, societies draw clear lines between people with rights and people without them: Migrants versus citizens, educated versus uneducated, homeless versus homed, convicts versus non-convicts, men versus women, heterosexual vs homosexual, white versus non-white.

Governments create rights so they can meter them out to certain segments of the population, pitting everyone against each other in a vicious competition for civil liberties and economic advantage. So long as everyone has to fight for their place in the world, they’ll have no time or energy to fight the system that creates and enforces these gross inequalities.

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My favorite social network

Few days ago I found honk, my favorite social network. Taking a look at it, it’s just perfect, the way I want all social networks to be.

It’s federated with ActivityPub protocol, has no likes, no faves, no polls, no stars, no claps, no counts. There’s no attention mining in it and it just works to connect people’s postings and thoughts and create a community.

It’s theme and look/feeling may be not desirable and beautiful but since it’s free software, you surely can change its user interface. I’m pretty positive that the original developers will accept contributions to the user interface and/or user experience of it.

The honk mission is to work well with minimal setup and support costs. It’s to spend more time using the software and less time operating it. It currently works well as intended. It’s multi-user, supports many features, and is my favorite social network now. It’s exactly how I wanted social networks to be since years ago.

The developers have a sense of humor too, you know by reading their documentation and intro/README texts, but I hope the whole project is not a joke and they are like-minded people.

Give Amazon and Facebook more power? Human idiocy has no limit whatsoever!

A Bloomberg opinion suggested we give Amazon and Facebook a seat at the United Nations as commercial superpowers so we can force them to behave as we wish to benefit people!

What about no?

First of all, when did UN gain enough power to force anything on any country? What makes you think that an organization that fails to impose any power on its members can do anything about a company based in United States? And why do you think Amazon and Facebook will listen to UN instead of American government? And why the hell would someone think that the U.S. government would let any country enforce its desired behavior on its corporations?

What in earth would make an author write such dumb article to suggest we give some superpowers even more power and yet hope they behave better than before. It’s like giving Mussolini more power and hope he and his ally Adolf behave nicely. Ask six million Jews about it, they have some to say.

They are more powerful than most governments. As the article goes, Walmart Inc. employs roughly the population of Botswana; Microsoft Corp.’s market cap is greater than Brazil’s GDP; FedEx Corp. has five times more planes than Air India Ltd.

So why would someone suggest such idiotic thing? Imagine a UN defense council headed by China, Russia, the U.S., and Zuck and Bezos. Like, not even joking, haven’t they all shat on developing countries enough as separate entities?

We already have a corporation who have a seat at the UN. The Holy See (i.e. the Catholic Church) has an observer seat at the UN. And hear me out: it’s not the country of Vatican City that has a seat, it’s the Catholic Church as itself, which is just like a massive private entity, not a country. And what did world or UN did about all the rape and child abuse and human rights violation by pedophiles resided in it?

Let’s not forget that Bloomberg news is owned by, well, Bloomberg. The twentieth richest person in the world. So no wonder why would a rich person suggest something like this on his controlled media platform.

Human idiocy has no limit whatsoever and such articles prove this. It’s so sad that these ideas have a place in large media network and platforms. As much as I’d like to say these ideas won’t take place in reality, history and experience taught me that nothing is impossible.

Stand against hatred

As we go through the war imposed on Ukraine from Russia’s authoritarian regime, we see more and more idiotic hatred against people of Russia.

Everyday I see more news about sanctions on Russian people and sports teams. Paralympics, football, tennis, motor sports, and lot other fields are now closed on Russian sport people.

I also heard news about an Italian university teaching of Fyodor Dostoevsky because he’s Russian. What is happening is just dumb.

Russian people are not responsible for what their government does and I feel that in my bones as I too experience sanctions because of actions of my government. People of Ukraine don’t need Russian people out of tennis courts or football pitch. Ukrainian people also like to read Dostoevsky.

I’m pretty sure nobody in Ukraine will be pleased to hear some innocent Russian person who tried hard to be able to participate in a competition was banned from it because of what that person had no influence on. What Vladimir Putin does is what exactly a dictator does and people are not to blame for. Some are converting their support for Ukraine to hate towards Russia.

I hope the war ends very soon and we see peace everywhere in Europe, Middle East, and all around the world. And I hope we get rid of this stupid hatred we see today and do something else, like actually supporting victims of war with aids and goods.

Death: To solve all the problems!

You want all your problems to be solved? Die! Just think about it. You won’t have any concern or need or trouble. You won’t overthink about anything; in fact, you won’t think at all. There’s no injury you’ll suffer of after death and there’s no pain. Death is a wonderful answer that will guarantee your freedom of all pain and suffering and anything unpleasant.

But we don’t want to die, do we? We only live once and we want to live it good. We fight the troubles to be able to enjoy the life. The reason we fight the troubles is that the life itself is so much precious that it is worth the fight. We have a lot of amazing things in our life that we don’t want to miss and we continuously put our effort to make it better.

As much as death is effective to solve all of our problems, we don’t take it as an answer. A good answer to our problems will erase the unpleasant stuff from life without touching the pleasant ones, or it acts with least impact on the good ones. A good answer won’t wipe everything, it’ll just clears the mess while it keeps everything else.

If someone suggests death to you to solve, say, your pain in your broken leg, you’d call that person crazy, right?

Sometimes we think about solutions to some problems that may seem rational and effective but they’re destructive and possibly worst thing to do. We make some decisions or give advice that we think are awesome but they’re rather idiotic.

The consequences of our decisions are much more important than the short-term effects on problems we want to solve. Dealing with a problem for a little bit longer may seem uncomfortable but it can be much much better than a destructive solution that solves the problem but also wipes everything else.

I think about this when I want to make a decision, even small ones, and I hope I make much better decisions from now on.

Auto-update is a bad idea

So if you know me a little, you probably know that I’m all in for computer user freedom and having people fully in charge and control of their computing. I’m a free software advocate and I’m very careful about my own computers and digital devices.

One thing that I believe is a bad idea implemented in most of our operating systems or digital devices is auto-update. Automatic updates allow users to keep their software programs updated without having to check for and install available updates manually. The software automatically checks for available updates, and if found, the updates are downloaded and installed without user intervention.

So the user has no idea what is being downloaded, when it is being installed, how does the update work, what will be the effect of the new update. In a perfect world where everyone is good and all programs respect users’ interest, auto-update is a pretty awesome idea but sadly we don’t live in such world.

Automatic updates are bad for privacy and some security aspects. Turning on auto-update on a system puts you in danger of trusting the device manufacturer to behave good. Anything could be contained in the update and the possible harm may not be reversed.

The update could contain a back door and the door can open the way for anyone to sabotage your computing. Universal backdoor is the way to go if you wish to be colonized and dependent and get your device shut down when it suits the vendor.[1]

If you’re using free software, you can study your program and monitor its changes but you’re still vulnerable as a program being free (as in freedom) won’t technically disallow insecurities being implemented on your device but you still have more chance on reversing the changes and/or monitor what is happening to your device.

I understand if many people don’t have enough time or knowledge to keep all their devices up-to-date or verify every update manually but handling updates manually often has more benefits than turning on auto-updates.