That could be a plausible reason for opacity if it were true, but I don’t think it’s true because blocking Tor (for example) is trivially discovered and the non-transparency only frustrates legit users. The opacity of an anti-tor policy has no effect on adversaries. Yet a vast majority of tor-hostile sites are sloppy about informing legit users.

Infosec that relies on secrecy is already out on a limb in despiration. And in this situation, the collateral damage to friendlies based on arbitrary factors creates a heightened need to inform the legit users. An AI scraper bot is not going to be coded to know where to look for such announcements because that’s actually more effort for the attacker than manual trial and error. Note as well we are talking about relatively unsophisticated adversaries considering they were too lazy to code the user-agent header to dynamically blend better in the first place. (They will fix that in the future).

Nonetheless, your point cannot be disregarded because those who take the crude approach of blocking on the basis of UA string are likely not thinking all this through. Perhaps some have consciously made the decision to not inform the legit users, but considering the widespread pattern of not informing users, it’s sloppy disregard for the most part.

I suppose they would file an insurance claim and not give a fuck. It’s no money out of the pocket of the bean counter who decides infosec costs more than it saves. OTOH, hopefully insurance companies would react by charging a higher premium to grocers who have cloud-controllable refrigeration and no proper infosec. And then maybe /that/ would turn this around.

What that database would tell you is that you should use the latest closest-to-accurate UA for your browser and OS.

If you actually mean the tool that uses the database, sure, but whatever the “closest” is requires a db as input to derive what that would be.

But you seem to want to soapbox and relish in your self-inflicted struggles here, so I’ll leave you to play with your tin foil in peace.

Although consumers should often be blamed for enshitification, this is not one of those cases. If an anti-enshitification tool would state: “this service judges you by your UA”, then I would protest accordingly so as to not be part of the problem of rewarding enshitification.

Unless you wanna make life hard on yourself for no good reason, use your real UA where possible

I’m not sure you understand the transparency problem. Codeberg is the /only/ service that I have ever encountered that honestly, transparently states that they blocked me on the basis of old chrome. All other blocks on the order of 10s or 100s per day give no reason. As a Tor user, I assume Tor is the problem. But now there are increasingly non-Tor criteria emerging. I cannot investigate every blockade. Hence why establishing a UA string db would be useful, which could then be incorporated into browsers.

Cloudflare will flag you if you’re spoofing browser identity in any obvious way.

I boycott Cloudflare. CF already blocks most of my access attempts and I am grateful for it. What disturbs me is when I discover that I am on a CF website that whitelisted Tor because such cases could lead to me accidentally patronising a Cloudflare supporter. I know there are plugins that would help me avoid those instances but if CF has another trigger to block me from their side, then it is mutually appreciated.

Unless I am using frogfind.com, which discriminates against recent UAs because it is meant to serve those with old gear.

The UA setting has become relevant to enough instances of enshitification that perhaps we really need a DB that tracks which UA gets the best treatment per website. I would like a browser that chooses the UA string that will minmize enshification. I suspect the answer may be a string that impersonates Google’s crawler would be ideal, particularly with paywalls.

In principle, yes. But FWIW, here’s a good example of doing it poorly:

https://sopuli.xyz/post/45724372

I will say I find it interesting you are calling my use of [email protected] as not being open/the problem, but isn’t the isolation (setting as private) infosec.pub more of a walled-garden and less open?

Infosec.pub is not making a value judgement that permanently discriminates against demographics of people. It’s the difference between an oppressive US corporation arbitrarily systemically singling out groups for marginalisation to save a buck for the corporate as it bullies over 30% of the world’s web territory, and a small charitable volunteer instance with limited resources doing what is necessary to protect itself from an onslaught of attacks.

I can freely share the link of the community post I made even if it is hosted through cloudfare.

Of course. You can share Facebook links too. And those who are in the excluded groups will just waste their time on an unusable link. If you are going to be a pragmatist and not give shit about politics, it’s unclear why you are in the fedi as opposed to Twitter and Facebook.

I imagine [email protected] didn’t exist when I subscribed to lemmy.worlds community or maybe there were only 3 people in it. Surely the expectation is not to keep monitoring all my communities and check if a better version of said community pops up.

Subscribing is about /reading/, not /writing/. When deciding where to post, I often search communities because it’s a changing landscape with new communities emerging daily. Moderately advanced folks would do that by visiting lemmyverse.net which happens to have a filter you can use to filter out Cloudflare instances. I personally use a script instead which queries on lemmyverse’s dataset. If I were to make a post as you did, I would search the terms: infuri shitif shittif asshol dark%pattern (each token is an SQL “like” query surrounded with wildcards). So that gives:

🏰zerobytes.monster🌩|amitheasshole “Am I the Asshole?”
🏰zerobytes.monster🌩|assholegonewild “Gone Wild; Asshole Style”
🏰zerobytes.monster🌩|mildlyinfuriating “jukmifgguggh”
🏰pawb.social🌩|AITA “Am I The Asshole?”
🏰lemmynsfw.com🌩|asshole “Asshole”
🏰lemmynsfw.com🌩|assholebehindthong “Asshole Behind Thong”
🏰lemmynsfw.com🌩|godasshole “GodAsshole”
🏰lemmynsfw.com🌩|pulsatingasshole “Pulsating Assholes”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|actually_infuriating “Actually Infuriating”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|aitah “AmITheAsshole”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|amitheasshole “Am I the Asshole”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|asshole “asshole”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|assholebehindthong “Asshole Behind Thong”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|assholedesign “AssholeDesign”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|assholegonewild “Asshole Gone Wild”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|assholegw “Asshole Gone Wild”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|bassholes “bassholes”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|darkpatterns “darkpatterns”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|enshittification “Enshittification”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|enshittify “Enshittification”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|godasshole “godasshole”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|mildlyinfuriating “Mildly Infuriating”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|mildyinfuriating “mildy infuriating”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|notinfuriating “Not Infuriating”
🏰lemmy.world🌩|qualia “Qualia: Living Ad-Free and Breaking Away from Dark Patterns, Hidden Fees, and More”
🏰lemmit.online🌩|AmItheAsshole “Am I the Asshole?”
🏰lemm.ee🌩|amitheasshole
🏰sh.itjust.works🌩|amitheasshole
🏰sh.itjust.works🌩|furiouslyinfuriating
↑ Kingdoms under the imperial Cloudflare empire ↑

⚠lemmy.ml/c/aita “Am I the Asshole?”
⚠lemmy.ml/c/assholedesign “Asshole Design”
⚠lemmy.ml/c/mildlyinfuriating “Mildly Infuriating”
⚠lemmy.ca/c/amitheasshole “AITAH?”
🥧 fedinsfw.app/gaping_assholes “Gape”
🧺 thebrainbin.org/deshittification “Deshittification”
🗽☯ thelemmy.club/c/Mildlyinfuriating (39/0) “Mildlyinfuriating”
🗽☯ discuss.tchncs.de/c/amitheasshole (125/1) “Am I the Asshole? ”
🗽☯ sopuli.xyz/c/enshitification (40/2) “enshitification (not only enshittification)”
🗽☯ infosec.pub/c/assholedesign_web (92/5) “Asshole Design (web edition)”
🗽☯ slrpnk.net/c/asshole_crappy_design (49/12) “Asshole Design and Crappy Design”
🗽☯ slrpnk.net/c/enshitification (942/710) “Enshittification”
🗽☯ lemmy.cafe/c/disenshittify (147/37) “Disenshittify”

It lists the shitty Cloudflare places first because those are the least interesting and tend to scroll off the terminal screen. Then it lists non-CF nodes that are still centralised due to their sheer disproportionate size which is indicated with a “⚠”. The “🥧” means piefed and “🧺” means kbin (which the db unfortunately has no Cloudflare flags for, thus ethics is a crapshoot and needs a deeper look). Finally, it lists known open free world places using “🗽☯” to indicate freedom and balance. The paranthesis indicate (subscriber count / active users in a month) to give an idea of activity. Those who realise this decision is inherently political and who want to promote an open free world would choose one of the last 7 in the list. I will sometimes choose the /least/ active among them and then crosspost from there so subscribers in the more active groups can see that another interesting group exists – thus encouraging subscriptions that help improve the balance. Of course in the case at hand, we know infosec.pub is closed as it is under attack, so it would not be a good link to share.

Also, as an end user that is on Lemmy because I want a non techbro place to read news topics/share crap going on when appropriate

You can of course choose to be low-tech if you want, but you should know your bubble will be shaped by others on your node. The in-app search on the instance is limited in scope to content and communities based on subscriptions of others on your node.

If you want to expand your bubble help shape it, it’s useful to grok lemmyverse. I block Cloudflare nodes in my settings and I subscribe only to free world communities (“🗽☯”) to do my part in shaping the bubble for a more balanced decentralised space with minimal boot-licking.

W.r.t. “non techbro place”, I guess you mean to refer to a place that is not for tech experts. It’s worth noting that many read “techbro” as “tech millionaires”, such as the CEO of Cloudflare, Twitter, etc.

, like yesterday this type of stuff explains very clearly why Lemmy is and will continue to be a ghost town in comparison.

Lemmy is not a single town. It’s a vast collection of many towns and a good number of those towns are ghost towns. Network effect is a global problem that Lemmy /tried/ and failed to correct. The devs simply assumed that having a federation of instances would automatically counter network effect. There are several oversights and defects in the software which actually exacerbate network effect.

Lemmy certainly needs to improve but I doubt it will make much headway. It’s more likely that a different software package will emerge one day that fends off walled gardens and network effect.

The barrier to entry/understanding is up there which is not welcoming imho.

The dumb users pile onto the Cloudflare nodes. I doubt the tech is too over their heads to give a bad UX. The refined sophisticated users avoid the centralised instances and their understanding improves. The fact that there is more to learn does not create a “barrier to entry” AFAICT. You can get started and function without understanding the evils of Cloudflare and centralisation. You can make adjustments as your knowledge and wisdom improves.

Normally I would say the best link for sharing is that of the host for the community, not the host of your account. But in this case you posted in Lemmy.world, which is jailed in the exclusive walled-garden of Cloudflare™. I highly suggest not posting in Cloudflare. It’s a centralized walled garden by an oppressive US-based tech giant. Might as well use Facebook at that point.

There is one open free-world “Mildlyinfuriating” community: [email protected]. I suggest posting there first, and then share that link. If you cannot stomach the idea of less reach/engagement or cannot resist the urge to use LW, at least make your first post in the free world and crosspost into the walled gardens so the ignorant walled-gardeners at least learn about the existence of free world communities.

Now to answer your question, the infosec.pub admin is also the fedia.io admin. This post could¹ give some insight:

https://fedia.io/m/fedia/t/2188602/Fedia-io-performance-issues-and-blocking-anonymous-access

That is, anonymous access to infosec.pub could have been blocked for the same sort of reason.

¹ But you may need to create an account on fedia.io to read that… LOL.

update

Found this: https://infosec.pub/post/45546187

I erroneously assumed you would have already looked in [email protected] so I did not initially look myself.

Very happy to have learned about tildeverse.org. It gives a great refuge from a lot of the garbage. But I have to ask, if you are part of the tildeverse project why are you on lemmy.world, a centralised exclusive Cloudflare instance? I realise tildeverse does not have a lemmy node but there are many decent ones and LW is probably the most contrary to the tildeverse philosophies.