CIRCLE WITH A DOT

A regular reminder to our wonderful #GazaVerified friends about mentions:

• @fabio@mastodon.social is not me, and I have grounds to believe that that account is no longer active either. I don't have accounts on the main instance, my only account is @fabio@manganiello.eu. I see that you often mention him in your posts and many of you also follow him. Keep in mind that those messages won't reach me and, if he's actually active and bothered by all the incoming requests from people he doesn't know, he may report you for spam.

• Same for Aral: his handle is @aral@mastodon.ar.al, and he hasn't used @aral@mastodon.social since 2017. If you mention his old account, he won't see your mention.

• @gaza_verified_accounts@mastodon.social and @gaza_verified_campaigns@mastodon.social are bot accounts that boost your posts and campaigns, but nobody checks their notifications. So if you mention them nobody will be actually notified.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @nlupo@amikejo.xyz that's right. PDS used by Joy's account on Bluesky:

❯ curl -s "https://plc.directory/$(
  curl -s 'https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.identity.resolveHandle?handle=joyfromghazza.bsky.social' | jq -r '.did'
)" | jq -r '.service[0].serviceEndpoint'
https://fibercap.us-west.host.bsky.network

Server info:

❯ curl -s "https://fibercap.us-west.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.server.describeServer" | jq

{
  "did": "did:web:fibercap.us-west.host.bsky.network",
  "availableUserDomains": [
    ".fibercap.us-west.host.bsky.network"
  ],
  "inviteCodeRequired": true,
  "links": {
    "privacyPolicy": "https://bsky.social/about/support/privacy-policy",
    "termsOfService": "https://bsky.social/about/support/tos"
  },
  "contact": {}
}

It's a server hosted on Bluesky's own network, further confirmed by the fact that it even advertises Bluesky's official ToS and privacy policy (something that matches what Joy said from the very beginning, that she was on a PDS sympathetic with minorities, but still part of the main network).

And a quick search for recent posts on that PDS shows that there's still activity from other users, even if Joy is no longer posting there:

❯ curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $BSKY_JWT" "https://bsky.social/xrpc/app.bsky.feed.searchPosts?q=fibercap.us-west.host.bsky.network" \
    | jq -r '.posts[].author.handle'
aragorn-estragon.bsky.social
ohlamoole.bsky.social
shigepon.net
...

So yeah...so much for the theory of "this is a PDS that Aral took online just to host his fake account".