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Watching people freak out over someone making a bridge to another fedi platform...

Do people even know how the fediverse works? Interoperability?

Boggles my mind how much impact people think a shittily moderated instance will impact the broader system.

People flip over the idea of connecting to Bluesky or Threads... how many of you know about the trainwreck of Nostr and it's AP bridge? That's the worst network of them all and you still don't hear about it, which tells you everything you need to know.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I can get worrying about making moderation harder, especially if a trillion different bridges pop up and it becomes a game of wack a mole trying to defederate with those relays; but I've mainly seen people worrying about privacy and not wanting bluesky users to see their posts. Which, imo is kinda dumb since fedi is VERY open. If a company like meta wanted to, they could data harvest most of fedi. Nothing is stopping bluesky users from going to your instance's profile and reading your posts. protocols to encrypt/require authorization to get data are currently jank and seldom used. I'm guessing it's maybe a discovery issue? But that seems less of an issue with bluesky and more an issue with the fediverse growing. As well, it's not like we don't have the tools to deal with this 🤷‍♂️ instance owners who want to federate with the relay can, and those who don't can moderate it to whichever degree they like. Though Ultimately I think cross federation tools should be built into instances instead of relays, since being able to pick and choose which posts federate where would be a nice feature, and far more clean.
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Linus

@Linus I'm all for relays just because they reduce the programming load... programming one system vs every different platform having to program a separate support. Notably few platforms do this anyways for other protocols (you don't see any mastodon instances supporting the diaspora protocol for instance). Let alone relays are better for interoperability, if I boost/reshare a post from a different network on Friendica it's basically going to disconnect it from the source... even other friendica instances won't see it connected like they would from a relay (let alone the fact that this bypasses moderation tools).

I definitely think it's the usual of people imagining a threat rather than actually perceiving one. We can readily block relays if necessary, and there's just as much risk of a new relay popping up as a blocked instance moving around, so it makes no difference in blocking.

And of course people freak out about privacy all the time. It annoys me to no end how little people care to learn about their privacy while still freaking out over things that have little impact on their privacy. They're posting publicly and getting upset that strangers can see it...

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I concur. This might be a bit of a controversial take right now, since a lot of people are still riled up; but I feel the opt in/out consent issue also boils down to it being similar (or maybe technically identical, I need to look more into how the relay would work) to a new instance joining fedi. I understand people not wanting their posts on bluesky. but at the same time, the way fedi works, you don't need to get everyone's consent to spin up a new instance, that would be ridiculous. If bluesky decided to support AP or even spin up a dedicated AP instance (people would likely treat them similar to threads, moderating them to whichever degree they'd like), there likely wouldn't be a discussion about opting in or out of threads seeing your posts. It's just how fedi works X3. I also understand that there could be cultural differences between fedi and bluesky users, but once again that's a moderation issue that we have the tools to manage. If you don't want to interact with bluesky users, much like users of any other instance, you don't have to.

Also the relay being in the instance is totally just a convenience thing X3 you make a good point about the extra effort to implement and maintain an entire separate system, let alone getting them to work together. I'm gonna keep dreaming though!

This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Shiri Bailem

Thanks for this. I've been following this with interest but as someone who knows next to nothing about the technical aspects of AP, BSky and most of the other stuff I was unsure how much of the freakout was justified.
in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

@Kevin Karhan Bluesky is, once it's federated. A lot of people think the fediverse is only ActivityPub or even worse only Mastodon, so they think this is some huge thing as opposed to something that's already happened hundreds of times already
in reply to Shiri Bailem

I've yet to see credible evidence that #BlueSky would ever #decentralize and not be what it already is:

A #Twitter clone for people with #StockholmSyndrome towards #JackDorsey...

Also federation with the #Fediverse literally would require it to implement and support #activitypub

Needless to say not everyone wants to federate with them...

in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

@Kevin Karhan And that's entirely fair, the issue is people who are spewing obscenities at a developer making an AP/AT bridge. Especially since not all AT will be Bluesky before long.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

*pressing X for doubt re: AT*...

I've yet to see any functional implementation of it to this day outside of #BlueSky...

Also @jwildeboer already said everything that needs to be said re: #bridgy....
https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/111930855638166288


When your code violates the social norms of a community, you could learn that code comes *after* people. Or you could insist that just because you CAN you don’t need to care about that part at all and just use technical blah to justify your actions. Simple. #bridgy

in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

#TLDR: Fedi never asked for this and it's considered a as much as an asshole move as violating the #robotstxt and literally DDoS'ing a site with a Crawler like #ByteDance does regularly using #ByteSpider...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5sd3WEh0c
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/issues/48
http://www.robotstxt.org

in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

@Kevin Karhan @Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: this honestly doesn't violate the social norms of the community at large, just a very angry small subset who feel entitled to dictate the norms for a community that predates them and includes many many other groups who feel differently.

It's very telling to me that as usual the loudest voices are all on the least compliant platform of the fediverse...

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@jwildeboer Hey, I'm just complying with the robots.txt and I think #BlueSky is just valueRemoving to the point that I in fact block their domain and bridges on my account...

Again: It's my personal decison re: my account.

Feel free to self-host tho...

in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kkarhan Kevin, you are misinformed. Bluesky is based on AT protocol and all developer documentation clearly states that it is a federated network and in their sandbox people are already running personal servers in that federated network. They do a gradual rollout of features. It is not a "website" like X/Twitter or Facebook, etc. You can even bring your own DNS domain to make your username handle independent from their servers.
Unknown parent

Osma A

@jwildeboer
And that's precisely what's different in Bridgy Fed - it will be bidirectional and allow true follow/response relationship over the networks - because both networks enable federated read/write/follow. That is qualitatively different functionality vs bridges to networks that allow read-only. It also means that a follow request implies opt-in as core feature.

A better comparison is Matrix's bridges to XMPP, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, etc.
@shiri @kkarhan

Unknown parent

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@jwildeboer There's a reason why a lot of instance block these #report-#bots like https://tweets.icu because they are seen as #ValueRemoving and #Spammy...

Tho these are just cluttering at worst...

in reply to Osma A

@osma @jwildeboer Yes, and like these bridges, they are #ValueRemoving:

Maybe the idea of using i.e. [self-hosted] #Zulip or #XMPP is precisely not to have to deal with the #Enshittification of #WhatsApp and the inacceptable #ToS of it and it's competitiors...

If I want to use some proprietary & centralized garbage I would've made that choice, regardless if #Signal, WhatsApp, #Telegram, #Discord, #Line or whatever...

in reply to Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kkarhan
No one is forcing you to interact with networks you don't want to. For people who value people over technology, bridges enable freedom from walled gardens, and denying the use of bridges by others is freedom-limiting. Your freedom to not use bridges is not more valuable than other people's freedom to choose them.
@jwildeboer @shiri
in reply to Osma A

@osma @jwildeboer
Again: You have the choice to #SelfHost and not limit yourself to anything whatsoever...

But one should also have the freedom to not deal with such spambots to begin with.

Whether that decision should be made individually, by vote.from the users of an instance of sole.discretion of the moderators is a discussion I'll not waste my time with, so I'll move on!

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Just FYI, I've got zero interest in people bringing their whiny bullshit to my posts on the topic. So I'm just blocking strangers who bring the fight here.

I've had my fill of self-centered assholes who want everyone to bend over for their bullshit unrealistic vision of federation.

Your ideal version will never exist and your rage at finding out it doesn't can go fuck itself.