There's no such thing as a good defederated #Mastodon fork.

We have #Gab, run by an open neo-nazi

We have #CounterSocial, a mess of a website that's years out of date and laughably insecure

We have #TruthSocial, a MAGA cesspit

All of these sites are complete echo chambers, all are absurdly censorious, and AFAIK all of them (#CoSo especially) demand money for features that are available on Mastodon for free.

@technomancy
... Those mistakes would have caused ME to shut the instance off from the web, the same way #CoSo did after they gave up.

2. Husky's additions don't make sense for Mastodon (which is what Gab still is). They offer a client for features that are only on the Pleroma and Akkoma server software, like (as @atomicpoet noted) are rather unique.

Maybe Husky bad, but at this point that just seems like speculation

@technomancy @atomicpoet I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but it appears Gab created its own fork of Tusky at some point too. No need for Husky to exist.

(Yes, as far as Mastodon clients go, Tusky is pretty popular... Mostly because it's pretty good).

Not relevant, but #Gab, like #CounterSocial, locks some features behind a paywall. And #CoSo blocks third party clients...

@scientistmel
> Me, who follows the #coso tag just to see what people are saying about it

@Teri_Kanefield
Good article. From my own #CoSo experience, and my interaction with other people using the site who have gotten kicked off, I've seen the same social side of things.

On the technical side, stuff is worse. Long story short, there are bugs aplenty that let people breach the walled garden, and one person who told Jester about it got blocked and banned for their trouble (allegedly Jester offered MONEY for such disclosures).

@EubieDrew@qoto.org @EubieDrew@spore.social I can't see the original article for some reason. But I want to see it because the content sure sounds interesting. I've been "investigating" #CoSo myself for a while

Hi. New to #Mastodon, enjoying it, but bad with tech. Can anyone answer a couple quick questions?

1. on the phone app, I might be missing something, but I don't see a way to access the Federated or Local timelines? If they aren't available, the app is of limited usefulness isn't it?

2. I come from #CoSo and spent my time following the firehose. Mastodon is much bigger and Federated moves way too fast! Is "Local" where I should live?

3. Any other must-know tips you have?

Thank you!

@btil
Sooooooo much better. The community over there is unique and an acquired taste, but long story short they're running an older version of Mastodon that hasn't seen a significant update since they forked off in 2018. The site you're on right now is newer, fresher, and able to interact with other Mastodon sites across the Internet.

I wrote a multi-post complaint about #CoSo if you'd like a link. Some stuff is subjective, but other stuff (security issues) is much less so.

Just signed up at #mastodon here from #CoSo. Is this better, worse, or about the same and why? Thank you! #mastodontips

Just signed up at #mastodon here from #CoSo. Is this better, worse, or about the same and why? Thank you! #mastodontips

#CounterSocial owner and administrator #TheJester censored reports of security issues from his site's users, and cut off all communication with the person who reported them.

There was also an apparent bug bounty, which was never paid out.

Read more about the second wave of #CoSo exploits at: https://xeiaso.net/blog/more-coso-bypasses

#censorship #th3j35t3r

#CounterSocial admin TheJester censored reports of security issues from his site's users, and cut off all communication with the person who reported them.

There was also an apparent bug bounty, which was never paid out.

Read more about the second wave of #CoSo exploits at: https://xeiaso.net/blog/more-coso-bypasses

#censorship #th3j35t3r

#CounterSocial censors security issues from its users, blocks people who report them.

The Jester promises a bug bounty to people who find bugs, but in reality he just blocks them.

https://xeiaso.net/blog/more-coso-bypasses

#CoSo #censorship #th3j35t3r

CounterSocial claims you don't get tracked on their website, but my ad blocker #uBlock disagrees.

Looking at my logs, CoSo tried to contact both Google and Cloudflare Insights for #tracking purposes.

#Mastodon has no such tracking.

#CounterSocial #CoSo #surveillance

CounterSocial claims you don't get tracked on their website, but my ad blocker #uBlock disagrees.

Looking at my logs, CoSo tried to contact both Google and Cloudflare Insights for #tracking purposes.

#Mastodon has no such tracking.

#CounterSocial #CoSo #surveillance

@ryanschultz FWIW (I peeked at your profile) there's a VR feature on #CoSo too, but it was lifted from #MozillaHubs the same way their social network was lifted from Mastodon.

Hubs looks pretty cool, although I haven't seen many implementations of it yet.
https://hubs.mozilla.com/

More goofs.

1. The dev tried writing </br> tags. There's no such thing as </br> tags.

2. There are so many unclosed elements that even View Source in Firefox triggers errors.

3. The dev makes multiple one-column tables for no reason -- not even to accomplish some quick layout hack.

4. The page includes two versions of #jQuery; the older one was released in 2011. No developer should need one jQuery, let alone two, let alone a decade-old copy of it.

#CounterSocial #CoSo #security

Then the comedy gets started. The #CounterSocial developer is clueless with #HTML and #CSS, and it shows.

To create #whitespace, the dev assigns a "height" attribute to a <div> element. Divs can't have height.

The dev tried something else without cleaning up the past mistake: Putting content (a "." character) in the div and repeating it six times! Two of them are obscured by the logo, but you can see the rest on their page.

#CoSo #UI

One of my favorite examples of bad #UI design on #CounterSocial is their "Please buy pro" page.

1. The site claims there's Zero #Tracking, but the page makes multiple calls to #Google including a few with "log" in the URL.

2. The features are shared in a massive 1600x3000 pixel image, which has no alt text and fails at accessibility.

#CoSo #UX

Can you point me to #CoSo @CeeDub70 ?

I've found a few things, but nothing that looks relevant.