Synopsis:
The too long didn't read version of this is:
- Engagement (Likes/Retweets) are your bread and butter.
The Skinny?
Figure 1: Understanding the Twitter AlgorithmI say that because there has been a recent development where Twitter has released its algorithm for how it scores engagement with regards to promoting YOUR content to others. And you know what? It turns out that Tiamat has in fact been hitting all of those goals since its inception. The full breakdown is here but essentially here's what you need to know:
It turns out likes and Retweets have a massive impact on your engagement level, way more than simple comments!
Images and videos (You know, those Resources you can add?) double your score instantly.
Linking to your content on an outside platform actually hurts your score UNLESS you have enough engagement!
What does this boil down to? If you link to your Twitch, YouTube or other platforms without a userbase to help your engagement, you're going to get shoved down to the bottom of the recommendations. But with Tiamat, you can instantly gain a base to help your score, and with some of its services like the Content Muse you can even increase engagement beyond just your normal content, making sure you stay relatively high in the way Twitter promotes you.
I'm ashamed to admit, even I didn't fully see the value of things like the Content Muse until now. But I definitely plan to use it, and make sure I expand my base of friends and supporters in the future.
Essentially what I'm saying is -- Xeno was right!
Synopsis:
The too long didn't read version of this is:
- Tiamat is still secure
- You will need to relog into Tiamat via Twitter to enable it again.
What's Happened?
On December 18th 2022, Tiamat's lead developer fell victim to a very well designed phishing scam. The scam was designed to target Discord's greater gaming community by posing as a friend who had previously been compromised. This worked by requesting a critique of a in developement game which lead to a surprisingly well put together website and a very well polished (already existing) video game. However the installer was a trojan horse.
Upon running the "installer" a series of web links were executed and immediately the developer was logged out of Discord, and Yahoo mail, and later Twitter.
How the trojan operates is by sending the Session ID (used for the service to remember who you are) of a user to a separate location, then upon receipt a person/bot will use that ID to remote access your account, change the email address and password, and invalidate the session locking you out of your account.
How to Stay Safe:
We advise a few things after the outcome of these events. Firstly separate your services by email:
- Some information will be targeted first, these will be services like social media so they can spread the scam further. However some services will be more critical to yourself, services which will have your credit/debit card attached and don't often require validation, like Amazon or Paypal. Having these on a separate email means if for any reason the email associated to a public facing services (Twitter, Telegram, Hive, etc.) becomes compromised, you don't have to worry as much about your finacial situation. Good email servies we strongly recommend using are Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo. The most affective way of keeping these services safe is to have separate email addresses that are isolated from each other, to the point that recovery of the email should be done via phone and not email.
- On a side note, you may want to investigate how long it'll take your email provider to respond to one of these situations as some take weeks, and the damage a scammer can do in that time could become unrecoverable.
Next is Mutli Factor Authentication (MFA):
- Most services these days have MFA as an option, enable it and use an app like Authy. It's important to keep your account backed up, and your phone to hand but using MFA can protect you from these sorts of phishing scams. In addition for services like Discord you can configure it that server based chages require MFA login to save a change.
Impact to Tiamat:
Tiamat hasn't been impacted at all and all your account credentials are still safely secured. When you log into Tiamat we are given access to your account and those credentials are stored safely in Tiamat's database for later use. The phishing scam gave access to the lead developer's account and that was it, they couldn't impact anyone else's account and since then that connection has been completely severed.
However in severing the connection this meant the recreation of the tiamat twitter app and reconnection to everyone's accounts. As such everyone's old authentication credentials are now invalid, in order to restore them simply relog into Tiamat and your connection will be restored.
