By flagging benign links to Mastodon servers as “potentially harmful,” Twitter is making it harder to tell when a threat is real.
A few nights ago, Elon Musk cleaned house at Twitter by banishing several journalists for vague, hand-wavy reasons relating to the current location of his jet. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds, but along with those bans came a new restriction: Twitter will no longer let users post links to an increasing number of Mastodon servers and flags them as “potentially harmful.”
It’s Elon’s party, and he can artificially suppress criticism and competition if he wants to, but using the systems and language intended to protect people from scams and malware is a betrayal of trust and will make it harder to warn people about real threats.
Linking to my own Mastodon account is now not allowed on Twitter’s website.Training the Populace
An oft-cited (and quite cynical) quip in the security world is that the biggest vulnerability in any computer system is between the keyboard and the chair.
