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BREAKING!

The Antifa Turtle on #Twitter shared a Twitter API okta leak that shows there is a list of "protected accounts", all of them right wing, who are allowed to break #X Terms Of Services without consequence and includes a list of whitelisted slurs they are allowed to use.

The whistle-blowing Twitter account was suspended by mods shortly after.

#elonmusk #freespeech #whistleblower #leak @UnicornRiot @freedomofpress @OffTheHook

reshared this

in reply to DEFCON 201

I would love to see this covered by the likes of CNN/NY times, etc.

Edit: I guess this was faked. It's easy to believe, though.

This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield @renedario There needs to be a proper investigation.

The thing that makes this a giant red flag is the fact that people have claimed worse actual disinfo about Twitter, especially after Elon Musk has been in charge and they've left it up with no problems.

Why target this one and why so AGGRESSIVELY if it's not true?

๐Ÿค”

in reply to DEFCON 201

@renedario The image is posted all over Twitter. I have been promoted it in the trending topics feature repeatedly.

This one account got suspended which means it was probably reported by someone as distributing "hacked material" and then nuked by a bot.

The story is not being suppressed on Twitter at all.

in reply to Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield @renedario
This account was the source account. People started to uploaded it with issue and so many have now uploaded it the mods have given up, each one has a misinfo tag with ZERO.correction on what the misinformation is unlike other labels.
in reply to DEFCON 201

@mattsheffield @renedario
Matt, it's so horrible for Elon that this is totally in his wheelhouse as a kind of thing he would do and people don't believe he didn't do it.

I'm so sorry that I believe he did this and he did it with with great enthusiasm.

It's also unfortunate that I start suspecting people who make excuses for historically awful people.

in reply to DEFCON 201

@renedario The image was making the rounds in Discord before it came to Twitter. It is not authentic.

Okta has explicitly denied that the URL portrayed in the image is valid. Okta is a sign-on app, not a moderation tool.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/twitter-api-leak/

Furthermore, any list of whitelisted users would not be based upon their displayed name since anyone could have the same display name. This is basic structured data programming.

in reply to DEFCON 201

@mos_8502
@chrisisgr8

Im not believing a single screenshot until I see proof. anyone can fake a discord message and the top of the message showing the username is perfectly cropped out. the way the variables are named so perfectly named and so long leads me to believe its fake I mean who names a variable "wordlist-ignore-for-protected-users". But the thing that comfirms its fake is that the link they gave in the text is not registered or exists. its a fake link that does not exist at least through a whois search. all of these things lead me to believe its fake or at the very least altered

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to DEFCON 201

if it was real why would they be giving out domain names that were never registered. Why would the variable names be so conveniently worded that you can understand everything from just 3 lines of code with no comments. If it was real how come they perfectly cropped out the username at the top, theres just to many coincidences
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to DEFCON 201

Because spreading rumors to deliberately harm the reputation of the platform you post on is probably a very good reason for an account suspension, no matter if those rumors are real or fake. Actually, wouldn't it be extra stupid to try to silence an actual, real whistleblower after the rumor already went viral? That would be hard to explain afterwards.
in reply to defnull

@defnull First of all, Twitter both pre and post Elon Musk have done exactly what you said in the past real whistleblowers. Second, the problem is is that people have shared including influential people on that platform. Wildly damaging misinformation about Twitter that wasn't true at all and the worst they had received was a warning on their post.

Why Target this one and why Target it so aggressively if it's not true?

They're not just putting a warning. They're trying to erase it.

in reply to Hunterrules

@Hunterrules0_o @mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @fsf So you should totally give your land back to the indigenous Americans that they your ancestors took it from since you hate squatting so much. ๐Ÿซ 
in reply to DEFCON 201

@mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @fsf not my fault for that and not my decision. But also the natives never even believed in the concept of owning land. "The land does not belong to us. We belong to it ". So how can I squat on land they wish to not even own
in reply to Hunterrules

@Hunterrules0_o @mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @fsf Also property for digital software is seen as the exact same property as real estate. So according to the tech people out there, you using pirated and or open source software is basically squatting. Literally what Bill Gates complained about back in the day.
in reply to DEFCON 201

@mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @fsf I dont give a shit what bill gates says. Sorry but I dont like people living In houses that people are paying for without there permission
in reply to DEFCON 201

@mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @fsf the difference is that houses cost 100s of thousands of dollars. Software piracy is copying software meaning its not harming the official software. You can destroy this copy and the official software will be fine. Sqautting is living in the someone's house. You damage something its not coming back like with a digital piece of software. And last point . ITS DIGITAL. Your comparing stealing a digital piece of nonexistent software to stealing a physical HOUSE. No it is not the same thing and are completely different discussions
in reply to DEFCON 201

4chans /g/ board provides some good tech takes putting aside the politics. /g/ pretty much agrees on all the tech talking points that mastodon users agree with like ai being useless, Alot of old android rom developers can actually be found on /g/ today
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Hunterrules

@Hunterrules0_o @mos_8502 @chrisisgr8 @renedario That still doesn't excuse that. It's also been equally wrong In the past over things such as doxing the completely wrong people and spreading massive conspiracy theories that end up being false and harming literal countries.

And you still haven't answered our question about the aggressive validity of this.

in reply to DEFCON 201

DON'T USE TWITTER. YOU SUPPORT AND AMPLIFY THE RACISTS.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Civil agencies, nonpartisan officials and departments, Democratic politicians, LGBTQ people and organizations, abortion rights proponents, and so on...they all really should leave Twitter.

They are providing Elon with a cover of legitimacy and perceived neutrality. They are complicit.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to DEFCON 201

So much for the new owner of Twitter being all about free speech. Just one rich nepo baby trying to put his thumb on the scale for another rich nepo baby. Neither would have amounted to much with out their inheritance.

DEFCON 201 reshared this.

in reply to Cirdan Lunae

@cirdanlunae
That's the part that makes this so questionable.

We don't know if the actual leak is real or not. There needs to be an investigation. Normally when misinformation is posed about Twitter, they simply add a misinformation warning.

The fact that they're trying to blurt this off of the entire platform Auto flagging it when people post it speaks volumes.

They don't even do that for political stuff of any spectrum when it's false.

in reply to pyrrhlin

@Pyrrhlin
I value truth; more than anything else

But I cant imagine in 1943 a bunch of American Journalists standing around the war pool going "I dunno this rumor about Hitler sounds fake" and spending nine times more time doing it than helping the allies

Yet consistently this is what happens

in reply to pyrrhlin

@Pyrrhlin Using YCombinator and The Hacker News As an actual reliable Tech news source is like claiming that PragerU is a real University.
in reply to DEFCON 201

The person who posted this got banned for exposing Twitter's secrets.
in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem
That alone is not evidence that it is true.

True or not this is ragebait. If true it's actionable, probably, not that I have any idea how.

But look it's late 2024; being righteously outraged over stuff like this is pure emotional indulgence. There's nothing to be shocked or surprised by here.

We need to be more strategic. Ragebait benefits the extremists. Passing this list on to people who can act on it, then ignoring it, is better then winding yourself up for each turd that floats past on the screen.

in reply to tom jennings

@tomjennings
The Internet has been exploding with news about this all day.

Are you going to tell me that it's a conspiracy and that Elon is the innocent victim here?

in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem @tomjennings yes its fake ragebait https://techhub.social/@Hunterrules0_o/112844100237198213


@mos_8502
@chrisisgr8

Im not believing a single screenshot until I see proof. anyone can fake a discord message and the top of the message showing the username is perfectly cropped out. the way the variables are named so perfectly named and so long leads me to believe its fake I mean who names a variable "wordlist-ignore-for-protected-users". But the thing that comfirms its fake is that the link they gave in the text is not registered or exists. its a fake link that does not exist at least through a whois search. all of these things lead me to believe its fake or at the very least altered


in reply to Hunterrules

@Hunterrules0_o @tofugolem @tomjennings
Has not been officially confirmed that. Stop acting like you're an authority on this when you're not.
in reply to DEFCON 201

oh my god the link they gave In the code was never even registered at the time of the link. Its fake. even some of the account names in the code are misspelled
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem
@tomjennings Things that confirm your biases are exactly the things you should be skeptical of and double check you have good justification for believing it. That's not the same as dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

In this case personally I don't know if there are better sources, there may already be and this is very legit I just haven't looked. I wouldn't take this screenshot as definitive on its own though.

in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus @tofugolem @tomjennings
We are not saying if the post is true or not. The bigger news here is not only does Twitter have a history of doing fuckery with their coding like this, which is why even if it's fake. It's so believable, but the fact that Twitter is actively targeting an aggressively going after this piece of information instead of simply putting a warning is very telling.
in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus @tomjennings
I'm not on Twitter, so I can't verify, but the user who posted this did get banned. It's not just over screenshot.
in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem The user being banned doesn't add any veracity. They'd likely be banned on facebook for posting the same thing. Not because it's real, but because it's an image with a bunch of slurs in it.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus @tofugolem The problem with that logic is that there are a ton of account who use way more slurs than this and have also actively doxped people and yet Twitter doesn't do anything about those accounts both on the left and the right.

This is why it's so alarming because it comes off as they're trying to hide something.

in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus
Look, normally I appreciate being called out for having insufficient evidence, but you're really just fishing now, and it's obvious.

What's your stake in this?

in reply to Tofu Golem

@ellesaurus
I find this argument odd. The people in that screenshot weren't being banned. Everyone knows that people are no longer being banned for saying racist things on Twitter.

And yet we're supposed to believe that Twitter banned him for posting something racist when they didn't ban any of the people in the screenshot who were saying racist things?

That's what the whole complaint is about.

in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem It's basic skepticism. A single, unnamed, random source of a screenshot of alleged code is not sufficient evidence.

My "stake in this" is being more intellectually honest than the people we deride for not being more skeptical of the shit they share.

And yes, we already know Twitter biases large right-wing accounts. So someone small spreading something full of slurs and using that to attack the site is something I'd expect to get banned, even if fabricated.

in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus @tofugolem Again, that's what makes this so weird because especially under Elon Musk control slander and misinformation post at best get simple misinformation warnings attached to them with clarifications of how it's misinformation.

Them outright instabanning and insta deleting posts on their platform. Trying to share this is extremely unusual and unheard of on the current platform.

That's why it made news. If it wasn't deleted people would have just shrugged.

in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus
Again, you are positing that this person got banned for paying a screenshot of racist stuff, while the people in the screenshot didn't get banned.

So even if you're right, all your did was prove the same point made by the original post.

Normally, I enjoy this topic. I like when people call me out on this exact thing.

But I still want to know what is motivating you to make these strangely circular arguments.

in reply to Tofu Golem

@tofugolem
I wasn't claiming this *is* why the account was banned, I was giving an example of an unrelated reason it *could* be.

Let's simplify it.

I don't need to prove to you why the account was suspended. It could have been any number of reasons.

If you want to say, "this user got banned because the claims are true" you need to demonstrate that. That is not something self-evident and it does not logically follow. It could be. But that's another claim that we aren't justified in believing.

in reply to Elle ๐Ÿ’—

@ellesaurus @tofugolem I think the fact that every time someone tries to share it even with the stuff redacted they either get their account banned. The post gets attempted to be deleted or Our favorite they actually do the misinformation warning bump, but unlike all the others do not provide an explanation on why it's misinformation.

That's Why we reported this in the first place? It's seems like there's a Streisand effect going on right here and it's very concerning.

in reply to DEFCON 201

This is a hoax. That Elon and fascism are both bad doesn't make that hostname exist. Why would the API list usernames instead of account IDs? What data format is this? Why does the smoking gun happen to be perfectly readable for non-techy people, and fit in a single screenshot?
in reply to DEFCON 201

@dangillmor it is time for the more decent people that Twitter is not the place to be...

-You just don't want your public messages between the dirt of others.-

@defcon201 @UnicornRiot @freedomofpress @OffTheHook

in reply to DEFCON 201

I'm sure Laura Loomer will be demanding to be added to that list.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Elon is a dick but i love what he has done at Space X and Tesla, wake up the industry and steer humanity in the right direction, social competence - zero, we call those folks Fachidioten in Germany.
in reply to DEFCON 201

BREAKING! completely unverified screenshot from rando twitter account shows provocatively named lists of provocative words!

(Elon is a fashy POS who obviously plays favorites for his fashy pals, but I see zero evidence that is anything other than extremely bad hoax)

in reply to DEFCON 201

Iโ€™m not asserting thereโ€™s truth to any of this, but those asserting that Okta doesnโ€™t allow for the definition of user scopes and contexts are just ignorant of what Okta can be configured to do. Letโ€™s not respond to one potentially false assertion with blatantly incorrect information.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Hoping there's a list of them we can view from a github or other other source. Would be good to know ALL those accounts.
in reply to DEFCON 201

We have been very lucky that so far, our fascists are completely incompetent.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Content warning: strong language

in reply to DEFCON 201

This seems quite fake, why would okta have a list like this? It's not involved in moderating Twitter afaik.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Content warning: Re: Apparent X "leaks", doubt

in reply to DEFCON 201

If this isn't a reason to move away from X, I don't know what is.
in reply to DEFCON 201

the site is run by a fascist, this is the opposite of breaking news. It's like acting surprised that people who supported hitler were nazis.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Most likely fake, I'm not tech savvy enough to disprove it, but that is a really short list for an entire site, you'd expect at least some Chinese/Indian/French users and Kewords, yet nothing suggests this screenshot shows 1 of many lists.

Also, why Twitter handles and not account IDs?

in reply to DEFCON 201

gosh. It turns out xitter is all the things musk claimed twitter was bit didn't prove?
in reply to DEFCON 201

Hey just gonna say this is almost certainly fake. I work with Okta logs constantly as part of my job and Okta usually returns API responses as JSON objects and not arrays.

The formatting of this response isn't consistent

also why is Okta involved at all for this? Wouldn't this be internal twitter APIs?

I'd love to be proven wrong but until there is more evidence I'm saying it's fake

in reply to DEFCON 201

This looks like complete nonsense. The list of slurs looks like someone adding the 5 first that came to mind, then copy pasting a bunch from a preexisting alphabetically sorted list, from A to D and then ending with three more ("illegal" being doubled). This does not look like someone actually sat down and took the time to protect right-wing accounts from Twitter's ToS but like a half-assed fake.
in reply to DEFCON 201

This is very possibly fake. A screenshot like this can't be the proof of an API leak. Last thing we need is misinformation when we are dealing with fascists like Musk.

And wouldn't a kind of protection be made internally in X, somewhere we can't reach from outside with Twitter API?

in reply to DEFCON 201

lmao. classic. code proof that it wasn't about freedom of speech, but about elevating reactionaries. Not that we needed the proof because it's patently obvious to most outsiders.
in reply to DEFCON 201

See https://hachyderm.io/@petrillic/112844483301730807
in reply to DEFCON 201

but is twitter effectively using okta ? that would be an important fact to find out before we can credit the information presented here.
in reply to DEFCON 201

If true, then this goes a long way to what I've been seeing in my for you page, on my personal account... far too many right-wing posts!
in reply to DEFCON 201

I am shocked, shocked!
Well, not that shocked.๐Ÿ˜‰
in reply to DEFCON 201

i know the Okta API and this looks not as an Okta API url. It doesn't work that way.

@kleinertod

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi @kleinertod

Even though it's currently being investigated, would you like to go through exact details on what is exactly not lining up or matching up.

in reply to DEFCON 201

@kleinertod Oktas API doesn't have subdomains.
So if Twitter would have an Okta tenant their API url would be twitter.okta.com. (for example)
There are no subtenants or such, which this could suggest.

Also, as pointed out in another comment, Okta is not used for things like that. If Twitter would use Okta it would be mainly for Access Management (basically for the login), not settings/options within Twitter. It would be very unusual.

in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi @kleinertod You're also not supposed to push an entire patch into something that's connected to the BIOS. That's nothing but zeros because something like that would brick the entire internet for 6 hours.

Surely no professional grade company that World governments and corporations trust would ever do such a thing.

Right?

in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi @kleinertod We do agree about some of the technical errors. Although if you also add up to the fact that Twitter not only lost a crap ton of engineers also lost all their quality engineers is running on a shoestring and Elon musk's const insane high-end demands with limited development time...and the huge amount of spaghetti code that is Twitter...yeah.
in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi @kleinertod In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if this was real. Just say if Elon Musk or someone high up told the team to do this they didn't know how to do this so they initially went to Okta Because they're inexperience to try to do it in the short time. They were told only to hit a brick wall. Did it work? Canceled it and they're update they didn't push gets leaked out. Not saying that's what happened, it's just possible.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Let's say you really have to want to believe this to be true in order to make anything out of it.

As said before, that's not how this or an Identity service like Okta works.
To the trained eye this screenshot is the equivalent of an ordinary car flying in the air. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi Yes, but again a trained eye and good tech people would not have put out a patch to a product that their company runs that is embedded into the BIOS of the operating system. A packet of info that's nothing but all zeros. It would be considered Hollywood levels of stupid and yet it happened. That's why you can't take things for granted until you have official sources.
in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi Basically there's a bunch of people who are armchairing this being like. Oh no trust the process, but we've already have examples, Facebook and crowd check being two of them of how the process can fuck up. And we're seeing Twitter do the exact same thing again. We don't think this is real but it's not a good look. That's why it's news. Basically saying wow they've really lost the plot. No wonder why most people left.
in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi Like? Here's an example we're going to bring up in our feature post of how bad it is over there right now. It's the most ridiculous thing and yet somehow it's true. People of all different political spectrums who have been banned by Twitter have found a loophole where if when you report to contest your ban-
in reply to das4ndi

@das4ndi - That the reason why you are banned and this is the particularity is because woke left this communist Mass flagged your account. Even though that isn't true. They immediately unban your account. It's stuff like that that makes poops like these believable. That's why we shared the news. It's the. Here's the continuing show going on over here. Literally trying to make us look at the forest when we're pointing out there's trees in it. ๐Ÿ˜…
in reply to DEFCON 201

@das4ndi And the crazy part about the unbanning thing is that people tried varyance of it. Like people have tried saying that racist right wingers mass flag their account or that US libertarians mass flag their account and it doesn't work. It's only saying and you literally have to also use the term woke when you complain they unban your account. It's like automated clockwork like a bots doing it. It's beyond parody.
in reply to DEFCON 201

can you not see any of the replies? There's been rather a lot showing this is false already.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to ๐•ธ๐”ž๐”ฉ๐”ฆ๐”ซ

@malin This is like when the IDF says, have you seen the footage? We're obviously not massacring people and then we type in stuff and just see nothing of videos of Israeli soldiers, killing Israelis and Palestinians.

People have offered theories so far, not facts. That's why we shared this because our focus is on how bad twitter's response has been. It's so unusual and shows how bad the platform is now.

in reply to DEFCON 201

The subdomain does not exist.

If you can open a shell prompt, execute:

> nslookup protected-users.twitter.okta.com

If you can't open a shell prompt, then I don't know why you're telling people how the internet works.

in reply to ๐•ธ๐”ž๐”ฉ๐”ฆ๐”ซ

@malin And at what point did we say that this post was real? We didn't. We just said exactly what happened online. Someone posted this piece of information and they got banned for it. There also hasn't been official word from either Twitter Oktr So that is what we're waiting for because that would be real journalism. We're not going to listen to armchair computer stuff even if we agree with it.
in reply to ๐•ธ๐”ž๐”ฉ๐”ฆ๐”ซ

@malin Also, we didn't tell people how the internet works. That's been everyone trying to debunk this. That's not an official Source. All we are simply saying is that someone posted this piece of information and then uncharacteristically Twitter started to mass ban anyone of this and then put out really questionable content warnings. You are the one inferring everything else. So if you don't know how to read, please don't tell others how the English language works. ๐Ÿ˜
in reply to DEFCON 201

Look, I'm not a fan of... much, but you gotta be more savvy about these things before posting a hoax.
in reply to DEFCON 201

So here's some evidence:

1. This is a fairly small number of accounts. I would expect a lot more, but no, those lists are complete at the number of items shown.
2. Okta is not used for this kind of thing. It's a secure sign-in service, not where you'd keep this.
3. It uses usernames instead of IDs or e-mail addresses. You can change your username on Twitter; it's probably not how things are filtered on the back end.

1/2

in reply to Utility Nerd

4. There are words on the ignore-list that don't need to be there, like "illegal", and words that would normally be added that aren't (which I won't get into).
5. The regex is not using any regex.

I can't prove it, but I feel like the evidence is fairly strong. If there are lists like this - which I don't know if there are or not - this isn't them.

2/2

in reply to Utility Nerd

@UtilityNerd That's fine and totally understandable though if you was repeat us here. We do have counterproofs Of what you've listed. Nothing against you. We're trying to highlight the exact problem here where Twitter and Okta could make official direct PR statements that would mostly clarify this in the fact that they haven't and are acting this way shows how much of a cessess pool this has become.
in reply to Utility Nerd

@UtilityNerd We would also like to repeat that we remembered for many many years that cloud strike was seen as a very integral professional company and if you would have brought up the idea that they would send a really insanely bad patch that would brick the entire internet for 6 hours cuz they didn't know q&A you would have been laughed out of the programmers meeting.

But here we are.

in reply to DEFCON 201

Dude, they're not named "cloud strike". Seriously. Professionalism. You are not helping this look legitimate.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Before you share a "leak" with a list of API + names (?) as a "fact": Did anyone independent checked it? Could be sth for a fact check by @Bellingcat

I see a lot of technical doubts here in the comments (fake, hoax, prank). No one has yet proven that the so-called leak is authentic. So you should not post it as a "fact"!

@UnicornRiot @freedomofpress @OffTheHook

#misinformation #disinformation

in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC @Bellingcat
When in our post did we ever say that this is fact? ๐Ÿซ 

We simply shared that something really suspicious happened on Twitter and the details about what happened.

That's all.

in reply to DEFCON 201

1. Your wording induces it: "there *is* a list" instead of "would be" etc.
If it would have been clear, you hadn't so many fact checkers telling you that it's a fake.

2. To fight the increasing #disinformation in the internet, it helps to clearly mark something as #fake, #hoax or #prank. This can promote media literacy!

3. No, it was not suspicious, people told you the background in comments. Maybe just take seriously those fact-checkers.

@UnicornRiot @freedomofpress @OffTheHook

in reply to DEFCON 201

@futurebird almost certainly FUD, Okta doesnโ€™t make any sense in this context and even that screenshot is internally inconsistent
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird could you go into details of what's exactly inconsistent. Also please stop using the word FUD you could say that it's misinformation because FUD is used by Crypto Bros and nobody likes them.
in reply to DEFCON 201

among other issues: it has misspellings of known usernames and reveals no additional users that would be expected of such a leak; the cert is invalid; the payload includes word lists in an SSO endpoint which makes no sense at a technical level. Plus a slur list would surely be much longer, this is clearly trying to fit a screenshot.

FUD meaning โ€œFear, Uncertainty, and Doubtโ€ predates crypto bros by literal decades so Iโ€™m not going to cede that term to those shitheads.
@futurebird

in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird well unfortunately the word fag predates the gay slur, but it's still now seen as a gaysler. Just like the way how a swastika used to be a good luck. Might want to just get with the times.
in reply to DEFCON 201

that is a ridiculous comparison that minimizes the harm caused by real slurs. Is there some other definition I'm missing or are you just not a fan of that crowd using it? I see many uses of it in my feed going back just a few months, from all sorts of people, no crypto bros. So if you're associating it with a particular crowd maybe you need to consider your networks?

@futurebird

in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird Again, sometimes the term comes out that used to be wildly popular with no problems and then a ton of people ruin that same term. Not your fault that our fault it just happens. We just don't want you to get in trouble with modern day people, so we're recommending to educate yourself of what the term means now in society and that's probably a good idea to not use it because it's not being used in the way you intend it to be used.
in reply to DEFCON 201

can you explain what it means that's different than the meaning I used?
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec It's nothing that there's necessarily a different term. It's the context with the term is. Meaning that because it's been some time when people hear fud they don't think of what it means they instantly think. Oh God you're into cryptocurrency and immediately run away. That's what we're trying to help you realize and trying to argue out of it makes you look even worse. It's okay. Everyone does cringe once in awhile especially by accident.
in reply to DEFCON 201

sorry but I think you're projecting your own bubble onto the larger world. It's a widely used term especially in computing. Like I said, if you associate it with crypto bros then that's because your network has a lot of crypto bros.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec We will put it this way. Some of our members have been around since the '60s and most of our members have been around since the '80s and '90s. And we've been doing social media on this platform since 2017 and we also have been on social media since the internet went public in 1995.

We have heard others use PEBKAC.

You're the first who we've seen say FUD in a non-blockchain usage. ๐Ÿ™ƒ

Now imagine everyone else. ๐Ÿ˜‰

in reply to DEFCON 201

it's been used as an acronym since the 70s, the base expression much longer than that. I'm sorry you didn't learn about it sooner but I promise you it's not exclusive to crypto by any means. I can find people on your own fedi server using it who don't appear to be blockchain folks.
in reply to Alec Perkins

also going to point out that my mentions are full of absolute, utter garbage now, which is new for me here and suggests your network extends to some real trash servers, could use some cleaning!
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec Ask the hackers at hostux, we didn't design or build this instance. ๐Ÿ˜
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird We also want to know that not just the fetty verse but the internet in general is also not a good litmus test to. What is something that's desirable or not. I mean, heck, there was a while that even though 4chan is literally a microscopic Adam in the entire ocean of the internet, they had enough clout that they managed to shape a lot of it negatively over the course of decades.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird finally, the main problem here is that we're doing that weird thing where we're now nitpicking so much that we're going completely off topic. And we will reiterate. Again, we do not know, nor do we personally believe that 100% of everything in what we shared was true. News flash wasn't if this was real, the news flash was how twittered handled it. In fact, we still plan on doing a follow-up going through how badly they handled it.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird Now should we have put allegedly in the leak? Yes, but we thought our user base was apparently smarter on the fediverse version it actually was. They breaking news was not only the fact that this was posted a minute and a half ago, but a couple of seconds before we posted it is when that account and many other unrelated accounts got instaban for it. Did you get is a red flag if you've been following how Twitter currently operates.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird The second thing is we've already explained Why the assumptions that this is not true could also be not true which again extracts from the reason why we shared the post of the first place which is to show how bad Twitter is handling information like this really showing how far the platform has fallen.
in reply to DEFCON 201

okay well maybe this is a case of context collapse on my part, but the post I was responding to very clearly presented this screenshot as "breaking" definitive evidence of malfeasance by Twitter, which it is not at all.

@futurebird

in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird The breaking part was literally as was intended and when we posted this news it literally happened a minute and a half before we post it. Four was completely new to everybody. Now to be fair we probably should have put the word allegedly in there. But again we thought people had more brains than they'd do which again shows how much everything has fallen. If the focus point was about it being true or false, we would not have included the last sentence.
in reply to DEFCON 201

I know you're not journalists but maybe take a minute to evaluate claims instead of just amplifying them without a critical thought? People impulsively sharing nonsense and just shrugging when they turn out to be false is _why_ "everything has fallen".
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec We did evaluate what happened because what happened was is. Someone posted a piece of information and then Twitter acted extremely unusual about it. Has has been shown with all other posts. You can open up a shell command. You can look at how it's written and determine if this is real or not. That was not the intent of the original post. Our problem was we thought people were more literate than we thought they were and we expected better from the Fediverse because they claim they are.
in reply to DEFCON 201

I have no doubt Twitter has such preferential treatment of accounts, that's pretty apparent just from observation. But far more likely than using Okta for that is they also have automatic triggers on "Twitter API leak" and the like, to shut down spread of real leaks.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec And again, What made the news is how poorly they designed to Twitter to react to this. Especially in compared to how they've reacted to similar things in the past. That's why this was breaking news and why we shared it. We don't understand why no one gets this even though we have said this repeatedly since the post. ๐Ÿคฆ๐Ÿพโ€โ™€๏ธ
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec Also again at the time nobody knew if it was real or not. Heck, the information was so new that it almost disappeared because as soon as people started to attempt to investigate it instantly got banned which then raised huge giant red flags for everybody. Hence why we wrote breaking news. This is developing. We don't have all the details. Here's the exact information. We're going to do follow-ups probably later.
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec And again, we don't think what was posted was entirely true. We wouldn't be surprised if there's an actual similar internal thing that is way worse than this, but that's not the relevant point. The relevant point that we came to the conclusion too while watching all of this is how truly bad Twitter is now. Like we all know it's bad but this is how ungodly bad it is. Dad, they could barely moderate before Elon Musk. This is just sad. ๐Ÿ˜†
in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird We were actually going to later on offer that hey, there's a bunch of people that think this is false, but there's also not a lot of evidence either way and some other developments following up this story before I Use Arch BTW know-it-alls started jumping down our throats for no reason. Even after we've clarified that we don't think the post is entirely real or feasible either. But welcome to how human brains work.
in reply to โ„ข๏ธยฅ

@tomey @alec @futurebird If you could actually read we didn't. Use that word as an example of a word used to meaning something that now has a completely different undesirable meaning now. We also offered up that swastikas used to universally be seen as just a Buddhist religious concept and now thanks to Nazi Germany.we can't have nice things.

Reading comprehension would do wonders for you. ๐Ÿ˜

in reply to Alec Perkins

@alec @futurebird here's a great fun thing! Also of that, have you noticed that people who recreationally or medically use cannabis don't refer to smoking marijuana as tokeing or toke? Crypto bro screwed that up with the term tokenomics and also using that phrase in every horrible scam they've been in so the Cannabis Community has dropped it overall. This is what we're talking about.
in reply to DEFCON 201

> please stop using the word FUD you could say that it's misinformation because FUD is used by Crypto Bros and nobody likes them.

how old are you

in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird Our previous posts have demonstrated how old we are and will put it this way. We are older than they debuted for the worldwide internet to the public. The real question is why haven't you changed any of your slang to match the current times?

News flash. FUD used to mean something now it's actually cringe.

Kind of like how black people used to actually prefer in the '60s and '70s to refer themselves as the N word. They don't anymore. Probably stop using it. ๐Ÿ˜‰

in reply to DEFCON 201

It's a perfectly cromulent term, "well now this gross group of people use a term so I can't use it" that's like a way of letting others control you. I want to believe you're more resilient than that. cyber samurai need to be strong.
in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird The fact that you consider your computing hobby as being samurai when we have real Heroes out there like Aaron Schwartz is absolutely pathetic. Please stop being more cringe than you already are, although you are also using a crypto Pro term past its cringe point so we don't know what to do with you. ๐Ÿ˜‰
in reply to DEFCON 201

it's not a crypto term dude it's a hacker term from the 90s. the samurai thing was a joke calling back to wordplay like from the hacker manifesto from the 80s. I was trying to appeal to you using hacker jargon from your era. I'm sorry it wasn't clearer.
in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird Again, the term samurai is cringe. It's why they used it in the gentrified cyberpunk 2027 game. We are very familiar with hacker terms. Nothing was more hilarious in the '90s when they tried to call malicious hackers "crackers". Which was incredibly cringe and also kind of showed how truly White the community was during that time. That's what we're talking about with fud.
in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird The other thing also about the term fud is that before it was introducing the crypto Community. It was introduced to them by financial communities. The term if we remember correctly starts at least in the '80s. If not going back further into the '60s for big industrial financers talking about the stock market. Again undesirable people unfortunately taking a word or a phrase in ruining it. Kind of like how Musk did with the letter X.
in reply to DEFCON 201

well it was a computer term that leaked into tech people jargon from people upset at IBM sales practices so you're right it's not really hacker term like I said. But it's been a common term for decades now, the dislike because the crypto community picked it up seems like a you thing.

Incidentally re crypto, I still have my defcon CD with the song "Bitcoin Baron" on it. https://defcon.org/html/defcon-21/dc-21-soundtrack.html

in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird You act like we are entirely against crypto and Blockchain when...well, look at us.

We're just telling you the reality of things, especially with a post FSB world where that's how people were first introduced crypto along with Line Goes Up.

So if you keep getting funny, looks from people when you use that term. Unironically that's why.

*The more you know Star*

in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird But again, if you want to use that word, that's fine. We're just letting you know that that phrase when people hear that they immediately think of crypto grows and run away. So if you use that term around people, surprised if people have bad reactions. Again, it's the reason why Buddhist temples voluntarily don't really show the swastika anymore even though they originated it. They very aware of how people unfortunately see it now.
in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @alec @futurebird actually, we're going to go search this right now, but there's a hilarious YouTube video about this subject done by a bunch of German comedians:

https://youtube.com/shorts/q8Qtp6e5rvE

Our apologies, we don't have enough time to find an Invidious instance. Do what the URL with what you will.

in reply to DEFCON 201

Aaron Schwartz was both a criminal and criminally retarded

all he had to do was rate limit his script, but boy genius couldn't even put that much effort into his scraper

also would have helped if he didn't put an unauthorized device on the network and hide it in a closet. if he just downloaded the papers from an authorized device like half the lawsuit would have been thrown out

in reply to DEFCON 201

People used to refer to themselves as the n word now they don't


Are you living under a rock lol?

in reply to The Great Ape :transFlag: arc

@thegreatape @sun @futurebird @alec Again, Black people in the '70s particularly wanted to be referred to "negros" as their formal term. It's why 70 media is full of that word.

Modern day Watch what happens when a non-black person refers to a black person as negro.

Funny enough, the F-Gay slur went from object, to slur to empowerment and back again.

English is weird.

Yeah. Times change.

in reply to Angry Sun

@sun @thegreatape @alec @futurebird Yes this. We had to clarify, thanks. And we also want to mention that we're using these as showing how words change over time. We're not saying that your use of the word fud is the same volatile as that word. We're just going off tangent talking about how language changes. Kind of like CloudStrike use to mean "trust". ๐Ÿคฃ
in reply to Angry Sun

oh lol I was really confused. I don't throw it around anymore but I listen to a lot of rap and it's very commonly used in a reclaimed manner, as the kids say
in reply to The Great Ape :transFlag: arc

@thegreatape @sun @futurebird @alec Not only does that word have a weird existence in society where a lot of the people who are of that refer to themselves as that, but don't allow anyone else to use that term for themselves. But there is still constant debate within the community of using that word or not for ourselves by ourselves.

It's a mess. We blame slavery and colonialism.

in reply to DEFCON 201

This is obviously bait, your brain isn't working if you think this is real.
in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC @EvelynDraken We have and they haven't explained anything. They just offered theories on how it could be true. We're offering counter theories on how it could be fake and pointing out that the real issue is not the post but how Twitter involve have been responding to it, hence why we shared the post in the first place.
in reply to DEFCON 201

Twitter is known to give some users special treatment, but that's a wider categotry than just a handful of people, and it's known that those flags are in a database, not stored in config files.

Then, why would they be defining the words exempt from moderation? The automatic moderation facility itself is going to know which words are moderatable, and it's known that this is the level at which special treatment is done (i.e. an exempt from automated moderation flag).

Then, the material in the screenshot, despite being formatted to look vaguely technical, as if from a config file, doesn't match any obvious format. Also worth remembering that Twitter uses user IDs internally, not usernames, since those are subject to change.

Okta themselves have confirmed this was never a valid URL: https://x.com/benedictgarman/status/1816477603705872783

And here's an article citing multiple people: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/twitter-api-leak/

I can't say there's no shame in falling for something this blatant, but doubling down like this is much worse.

in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken
We're not doubling down on it. We were sincerely asking for actual evidence investigations like we did for VX on the validity of this post.

The reason why this made news was not because of the post contents but how Twitter uncharistically acted against this post.

in reply to DEFCON 201

Twitter acted in the exact way I'd expect for this sort of thing. It's disinformation, easily proven as disinformation, and it's disinformation which harms their reputation.

It's rather convenient for them, in fact, since it's already known/suspected that Twitter favours certain types of account to a greater or lesser extent, and it's known that exemption from automatic moderation forms part of that.

So, this allows them to use disinformation which claims to present a very straightforward smoking gun to discredit discussion about the actual issue.

Whether that was the original objective or not, I have no idea.

in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Did you read the part where we said that not only is it rare for Twitter to instaband information as soon as it's posted similar to Facebook that would particularly stuck out is that when they label things as misinformation, no matter how dumb it is, they always cite the sources within the label of why it's misinformation and what the real information is and the absence of it here is incredibly bizarre.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Yes, it very much does because if you read everyone's response to this that's why people are freaking out. Again, we continue to use Twitter unfortunately due to outreach so we know that it's been operated. Heck, we remember when Twitter announced how their moderation system will actually work post musk. So the fact that they've horribly deviated from it is a problem.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Which is hilarious because that's literally how you find books in a system. There's usually a pattern that happens and when something doesn't follow that pattern, whether it's just a random aberration that doesn't cause any problems or it's a severe bug error. You still investigate and test it. The fact that Twitter did something so incredibly not like them. And you're as a professional engineer telling people to ignore it sounds a lot like CloudStrike. ๐Ÿ˜…
in reply to DEFCON 201

Comparing me to CrowdStrike is crossing the line, as far as I'm concerned; that's all.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Again all they've had to do because many companies who know what they're doing. Hell even cloud strike has done. This would be to simply within 24 hours. Make a PR bring Oktr To double confirm it and just be like "Hey big piece of information misinformation it's not true. Here's our source code. Here it is. This is a false flag." Even if people didn't believe it at least it would be official. The fact that they haven't done this shows how poorly run everything is especially now.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken And again, this has a bad precedent because Facebook literally acted this way on its own platform when leaks were coming out at the time. Nobody knew if they were real or not. About Russia directly meddling with Facebook to get what they wanted. Facebook also instaband people and did bad modding decisions which Streisand them into the Supreme Court. This is why it's news. Not the original message.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken
We're going to clarify this in future posts but the news wasn't there was an alleged leak and we don't know if it's real or not.

The news was is that when misinformations normally put on Twitter, the most that it gets especially under Elon Musk is a content warning with then a descriptor on what exactly was the misinformation with links to the actual information.

in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken
Not only was this initially mass deleted on independent accounts that were not connected that shared this piece of information false or not, But the newest ones probably cuz the content mods have given up just label it as a misinformation content warning with none of the usual explanations that they've done for posts that are even more real, severe and critical than this.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken This caused an entire Streisand effect which is what the actual news we were sharing. Hence the last section of at the time when this was posted that person was banned. Then other accounts share this exact information or instaband and because of the sheer volume of sharing now they've uncharacteristically slapped a warning in such a way that makes everything look extremely suspicious.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Now if you ask us of our opinion, the fact that they're reacting this way to news, especially if it's fake, might hint at the idea that they have a similar system implemented and they're Mass freaking out hoping that the real info doesn't get out. Very similar to how Facebook did with the Russian influence accusations until the cat was out of the bag and they were dragged into Congress for it.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken It also does not help that musk has unfortunately, tasked his engineers to do similar childish things such as that was posted in the past, which similar to Donald Trump and Joe Biden is why it's so dangerous because even if you make up something about them, they're so awful that it sounds like something they would actually do.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken In conclusion, Twitter's handling of this situation, whether the information was right or wrong. Not only highlights how much the website has somehow gotten worse since Elon bought it but also shows how much The social media site has truly fallen since it's purchase and all of the edits and shades that Elon has forced his team to make. This is why we reshared it.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken You also to be honest did a direct piece of misinformation yourself where you Okta came out and said that it was fake. Clicked on the link. It was an investigated journalist who claimed a Representative told them that it was fake. However, what would be more approving is if the organization themselves came out with a press release clarifying that this is fake, which is what most companies would do. Aka this didn't improve anything.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Also, to be honest that daily dots article is really poorly put together. It's to the point where This could be mistaken for a New York Times article. Fact that they only quote quotes directly from Twitter. They have not contacted any of the companies or parties involved and also that they show two sides of evidence and then come to one conclusion based on nothing is also a huge issue.
in reply to DEFCON 201

They've quoted a number of people who're overqualified to state the blindingly obvious, that this makes no sense in terms in basic technical terms, nor in the context of what's known about Twitter's moderation.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken And again, everyone also thought that cloud strike was professional and knew what they were doing. But now newer leaks have shown that they didn't. And we've already explained how with spaghetti code and the horrible conditions that the current engineers are in. Why they probably may have even attempted this and it failed. We're not saying that this is real. We don't know when it probably isn't.
in reply to DEFCON 201

It's not real mate, and their reaction has nothing to do with anything, I'd like my shovel back if it's all the same to you!
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken First of all, we're not your mate. Second of all, we don't know what shovel you're talking about unless it's the shovel that's digging Twitter, its own grave. And third of all you simply saying no doesn't mean anything. We've been asking for proof instead. All that's been given is speculation. And we're literally telling you by Twitter's own public admission of how their moderation's supposed to work and they didn't do any of that for this particular thing. It's bad.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken put an as example if all of a sudden there was a thing where they somehow made mastodons repo closed Source and then everyone's complaining about that. They're doing changes while it's under closed Source and the Mastodon Fedi People were like oh no, they're not doing anything unusual but none of the people haven't said anything and you can't see the code once you find that odd? Literally the same situation. And again bad companies have also just done what Twitter's done.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken Again, the news is not if this leak is real. If it was or wasn't it would have been on the news but would have disappeared after an hour. It's Twitter's weird ass response that very much mimics a response from a rival company of theirs that got into similar hot water that turned on everyone's alarm bells.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken And again, what we're having right now is what's called armchair professionalism. Meaning that the people quoting on this are independent security engineers. They are not official spokespeople from Twitter from Otka And they are not third parties directly auditing their system. If they did that, this whole thing would have evaporated but they haven't yet which is also incredibly weird.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken We think the most interesting thing is the claim that Okta would somehow never be used this way, but we have two things that we could potentially argue against us until official statements have been said.

One is that no one thought that cloudstrike would be so unprofessional that I could brick the entire internet for 6 hours.

in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken And two that it is very well known that Twitter like many other social media websites due to its nature is so many lines of code and so much spaghetti code that similar to the Halo engine. It's just bad patches on top of bad patches. Outfit have to do weird arbitrary things to fix something because you can't fix it directly. Thanks to the organic spaghetti code of it.
in reply to Evelyn ๐Ÿ‰

@EvelynDraken So it would not surprise us if that that's how they ended up working on it. Especially if you put in perspective if Elon must demanded a list to exist. Gave you a very lack of time. You're under stress from your job and there's also not only less engineers but less quality engineers that they would do something like this. Official statements need to be made which hasn't happened yet. That's part of the problem.
in reply to DEFCON 201

must be pretty embarrassing to be a 'hacker' and fall for this lmao
in reply to alyssa h milano

@esvrld Nope. We just reported what exactly happened, especially with how suspiciously Twitter actually handled the situation.

That's all.

We said nothing about the validity of the original leak.

It's really fascinating to watch people project their own perceptions onto things.

in reply to DEFCON 201

There's no corroboration of this "leak" and none of it makes sense. At this point, it seems like pretty blatant misinfo, and at the risk of badjacketing this STINKS of a false flag. VXUG indicates that the screenshotted Discord message came from their Discord and was leaked by someone before anyone could do any vetting on it: https://files.catbox.moe/60azcq.png
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Penance Arkana

@PenanceArkana Again, we're really happy someone's doing an actual investigation of this that's independent.

The reason why this is so alarming again is that people have spread worse disinformation about Twitter on Twitter and they simply get slapped with warnings.

The fact that the mods on the platform are trying to eat this information from orbit is highly suspicious.

That's why it made news.

in reply to DEFCON 201

Likely fake. vx-underground on Twitter confirmed the screenshot was taken from their Discord, but the claim was still being investigated and the veracity of the original source was uncertain. Commenters noticed the HTTPS is broken, the URL format is not correct for Okta's API, and the slurs are too Australian-centric.
in reply to Cure Neckbeard

@cureneckbeard It still need to be a proper investigation done which is what VX underground is currently working the last we checked.
Unknown parent

DEFCON 201
@pernia @0 @alec @futurebird @sun If you're a white person, go up and refer to a white person as a "negro" and see how they'll react. In fact, there has been a constant ongoing debate in the African-American Community about The usage of that word in the community, even though most black people would not want to hear non-black people use that word. We should know our co-founder and a bunch of our members are also black.
Unknown parent

DEFCON 201
@pernia @0@gh0st.live @alec @futurebird @sun Also, it's brother. Do you wear a bra?
Unknown parent

DEFCON 201
@pernia @0@gh0st.live @alec @futurebird @sun Again, we're not your bother. We are a group of computer hackers in New Jersey who like to engage in technological discourse and funny memes. This is not a fraternity.
in reply to DEFCON 201

So because people apparently can't read and do research themselves, we want to clarify in order to limit the amount of dumbasses replying that we have no time for that. We have no idea the validity of the leak nor do we think this is completely real.

This was literally breaking news and it was also really unusual how Twitter responded to it.

Have a good day.

And stop replying with your fedoras you dorks. ๐Ÿซ 

in reply to DEFCON 201

https://mstdn.io/@weldon/112853831630945851
in reply to DEFCON 201

something I boosted is apparently untrue. Unboosting.
See:
https://mastodon.social/@skry/112848301696122757
in reply to Deborah Hartmann Preuss, pcc ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ

@deborahh We know, we shared This because Not only was it literally breaking news at the time, but the bigger story was how badly the Twitter mods and moderation system reacted to it causing a giant Streisand effect. None of this is ending well on this a reminder of how bad the site truly is.
โ‡ง