I don’t understand the frustration.
It’s legal to scrape websites and this is doing it in a way that activity pub is designed to support. You can’t be mad another instance is reading your data, that’s what the fediverse is.
I think people will end up finding bridgy annoying frankly, but it seems like a useful tool that takes federated content and lets websites build things that used to be only available by adding Facebook pixel and Twitter links to your site.
The other thing, that I see even more people upset about, is that the bridge requires you to Opt-Out, rather than Opt-In for being included.
It’s totally fine if you want to be included, especially if you have friends on BlueSky. But, it’s just a shitty practice that is all too prevalent in new tech. AI companies are doing the same thing - if you’re an artist, you’re supposed to magically know all of these new, obscure AI startups and somehow find how to opt-out of being included in their training data set. It’s ridiculous.
Same concept here, I would have had no idea this was a thing, if not for people speaking up about it. Some people make a conscious choice to join Fediverse communities because they want nothing to do with big tech and want more control of their data and privacy and who has access to it. Why is such a big deal to respect that?
The bridge is nothing more than another Activitypub instance. You can block it in the same ways that you can block existing Mastodon or Lemmy instances. If users want to opt in to federate with it, they should also have to opt in manually to federate with every single Lemmy instance.
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Saying that the bridge is nothing more than another ActivityPub instance is very disingenuous.
While it may be built upon the ActivityPub protocol, but its main purpose is to act as a bridge to non-federated platforms, which is unique to that instance. When signing up for a fediverse instance, it should be known to the user that their data will be shared within the fediverse network. But, no permission is given to share on any platforms outside the fediverse network, using non-ActivityPub protocols.
So, no, opt-in should not be necessary for all instances, but in the case of the bridge, it is, because it’s enabling a feature that users haven’t explicitly agreed too and isn’t a core part of the ActivityPub protocol. And since the bridge is being made open-source, should users also be expected to track down any other instances that pick up and use it and manually block and opt-out of those?
This asks zero sense as there’s n disclosure on hardly any instance. Also, there’s several non ActivityPub protocols and bridges that have long since been used and peoples content shared
The situation is not truly comparable, tbh.
Artists very much retain legal rights to the art they create. Hence the current lawsuits against various AI companies. Meanwhile it depends on jurisdiction whether a comment/thought you write on a public-facing website can be considered your legal production for a civil lawsuit. It’d be trivial if it were a closed site with a very selective admission process with some easily evaluated barrier (say, only people who study at university XYZ are allowing on the otherwise private forum of that university), but public-facing it’s more ambiguous.
You can still try to sue someone who taking that content, but it’s not as clearcut that someone violates your rights as with artists and their art. Meaning that there’s less basis for someone wanting this to always have to be explicitly opt-in and get explicit permission. At least right now. This might very well all change as a result of AI lawsuits.
Tbh, I wasn’t talking about the legalities of AI or copyright law. I was using that as an example of why opt-out is a shitty business practice that makes people frustrated and upset. Because people commenting on this post and defending the bridge don’t seem to understand that.
I think there’s a huge difference in scraping your content to churn out a for-profit “AI” and federating your public posts on a federated network.
Ok, then please tell me, in terms of giving one’s consent, exactly how the two are different?
Because I fail to see how opting out in either case is any way a different process than the other.
The developers are putting the onus on the end user that is affected, and relying on them having knowledge that their product exists. Then it is the users’s responsibility to figure out the process to remove themselves from the user group and trusting the developer/admins to actually take any action to do so.
This is the only argument I am trying to make - opt out is bad. Please stop using it when developing technologies that affect user’s data and/or privacy.
in terms of giving one’s consent, exactly how the two are different?
Because in the second case, the user is choosing to post on a network where any other server can request their posts. A bridge is just an instance that understands more than one protocol. There’s no difference in it and any other server requesting your posts. That’s how the network works.
Thank you for confirming my point, because you are still just referring differences in the technology itself. I asked how opting out is different in either case, and the fact is they are not.
The fact that the Bridgy developer is making it a possibility is what matters, and that they consciously chose to make it opt-out. It’s apparent that they already spent time and effort into implementing a system that allows you to add a hashtag to your profile to signal that you want to opt out. Why not just make it the other way around, and make it for opting in? Surely all the people who would want to be able to bridge wouldn’t mind that? It doesn’t matter if you think this is something innocuous or insignificant, because to others, it isn’t. And if you think that’s because of a misunderstanding in the user with the technology, then the developer needs to do better in explaining that and gaining users trust. You don’t build trust in users by using practices like opt-out, which is again, the only argument I am trying to make.
I said the two things are different, you said how does that make asking for consent for the two things different, and my response was that for one of them it already works that way without your consent. That is a clear difference. Yes, I’m talking about the technology to explain the difference, because it’s a concrete fact. Your argument that a bridge should be opt-in requires an abstract boundary that some instances are are allowed to federate on an opt-out basis and others are not.
You don’t build trust in users by using practices like opt-out, which is again, the only argument I am trying to make.
The instance you’re on uses opt-out practices. You didn’t consent to your post federating to kbin.social and yet here we are. If you don’t trust the bridge, fine, block it. Every tool on the fediverse that you already use to deal with its inherently opt-out nature is available for you to use with this bridge.
Ok, let me explain my POV from a different perspective:
By signing up for an account, whether it be on a Lemmy or Mastodon or any other ActivityPub implementation, I have consented to functionality in which my posts are distributed to other instances within the Fediverse. It’s widely advertised and clearly explained that is how things function. I can readily find which implementations are part of the fediverse. And yes, within that system, I can use blocking/unblocking of users, communities, and instances, as a form of moderation that I can manage. But as a common user, I don’t have the option of easily block all instances that use a common ActivityPub implementation, which is why bridges require special consideration. I can’t, in a user friendly way, specify that I don’t want to ever be connected in any way to a bridge instance or any of its incarnations and limit my consent to ActivityPub implementations of my choosing, because that’s something not possible to do do with any other type of instance either. Bridge instances are not comparable to other implementations like Lemmy or KBin, et al, solely because their function is to translate data to other protocols and move that data to other decentralized networks outside and separate from the fediverse, which operate under different rules and policies. As such, they should not be treated like other instances when federating. Or maybe, they shouldn’t even be an instance at all. Making it an instance that can federate may be the easiest way to implement the bridge functionality across multiple ActivityPub implementations, but in doing so, makes it overly obscure to end users.
Without historical knowledge, or going all the way to the ActivityPub docs is there any mention of bridges or even what they do or what they bridge to/from, unless you read through their documentation as well. So, to the common user, we have no knowledge that being able to directly communicate with platforms like BlueSky or Nostr is possible, or is being actively developed, and foreknowledge of this would likely inform some user’s choice in joining the fediverse. Unless this functionality is made common knowledge to the user when they sign up for an instance, or when an instance decides to federate with a bridge, then it should be opt-in, because it’s enabling functionality that users currently are unaware of and may not want. Common users are not notified when their instance federates with other instances, so unless they actively check, they have no idea of changes to the federation of their instance. Right now, there is a very concrete boundary, in that without a bridge, it’s not possible to directly interact with non-federated, separate platforms like BlueSky or Nostr.
This is why people are having an adverse reaction to this whole ordeal, specifically people whom are actively avoiding said platforms. And as I said in my previous post, because the Bridgy developer consciously chose to enact an opt-out policy, specific to their project and outside the norms of other instances, it has been perceived that this is something different that they are trying to force on to people without their consent and behind their backs.
Just because opt-out is the norm for other use cases, doesn’t mean it should be used for all new functionality that is introduced to the fediverse. Besides, there are numerous features across ActivityPub implementations that are opt-in. And telling users that are concerned, just block it if you don’t want it, is frankly a lazy solution, that pushes blame and does nothing to alleviate user concerns or gain trust. Such attitudes drive people away from the fediverse, rather than attract.
I have done my due diligence and read a whole lot of documentation over the past couple of days to better understand ActivityPub and protocol bridges. So my comments are not meant to be taken as I am trying to come off as an expert, because I am far from it. I am just trying to get people to see the other side of the story and at least consider where people are coming from and why exactly they are arguing for opt-in, even if the other side feels like it’s an unfounded overreaction.
Bluesky just had to go and make their own federation protocol when ActivityPub was standardized years ago for federation.
Remember even large corporations standardising on truly open protocols can be reversed after whatever the situation leading up to it is resolved.
I just remember Jabber/XMPP federation which included Google. Once Google decided they got big enough, they abandoned it. Of course nothing happened to the protocol itself, it is well and alive both on Fortune 500 and selected as official choice for presence protocol on internet2.edu
It’s not even a fight. Bluesky lost a long long time ago when they launched an incompatible protocol with less features and worse UX and have done absolutely nothing to address this other than add curated feeds which barely work in the first place. Bluesky is so far behind that calling it a fight is just silly.
Bluesky lost? I’m all for corporate social media losing, but I think Bluesky has a bigger chance than Mastodon to become as big as Twitter at its peak, because of the money behind it. At least for the short/medium term. Long term, when Bluesky inevitably also falls due to enshittification or what not, Mastodon might win, unless it has splintered into a bunch of defederated clusters of drama at that point.
Personally I’ll never join another corporate social media platform ever again. But I’m in a miniscule minority.
Yeah I was about to say, I could see an argument for Mastodon having lost (it’s momentum, which is the only thing it truly has going for it), but Bluesky? ~every podcaster I follow now advertises they’re on bluesky instead of twitter, and most youtubers link to their bluesky, too. At least in the US it seems to have gotten decently popular tbh.
OTOH, we have the BBC and Flipboard being all-in on Mastodon, granted. Which is going to be fun when people get around to defederating them considering how it went for Threads.
an incompatible protocol with less features and worse UX
And yet, they have the one thing that matters: the users.
Are these users in the room with us? Because having 5m users for a centralized social network is laughable.
Bluesky so far had zero impact on pop culture especially outside of the US. It’s just trolling, bullying and though vomit that got exported from Twitter.
Hi, yes, I’m here. The user. Of both, in fact.
Both Bluesky and Mastodon have their quirks and their different cultures. The feature sets of their protocols may also be different, but they sure aren’t relevant to the experience at all, because federation is not a user-facing feature for the vast majority of the social media experience.
Stop cheerleading for social networks. Social networks are not your friends, including Mastodon or the rest of the “fediverse”.
Social networks are absolutely our friends.
Like it or not but it’s a part of our society that is here to stay. To imagine a world where we suddenly abandon social networks is just delusional.
Also this might be an unpopular opinion but social networks are net good for the society despite the problems they’ve cause they’ve helped us solve many more.
I can be friends with a social network if I know my admin and I’m in a small instance. That’s the power of federation.
When Twitter was bought by Musk I rushed to create myself a Mastodon. My hope was that most of the interesting, thoughtful people I followed on Twitter would eventually end up on Mastodon as Musk slowly ruined the platform. I kept my Twitter up just to keep tabs on them and grab their Mastodon handles as they shared them.
In the end, around half of them created Mastodon accounts that I follow to this day. All of them are inactive now.
At the same time I noticed more and more of them creating BS accounts. I think around 80% of them ended up in it. They’re still quite active in BS to this day.
I open Mastodon and BS once daily. Former rarely has new posts, latter always has.
I really wanted all of them on Mastodon. I don’t trust a corpo like BS. But the particular type of crowd I followed on Twitter (progressive essayists/humanities people, game journalists, artists, non-dev hobbyists, etc) seems to have mostly gone to BS, stayed on Twitter, gone to Cohost or back to Tumblr, or abandoned social media. I did find some interesting people active on Mastodon, mostly accesibility advocates, a couple of devs of games I loved and a few non brainrotten IT people. But the level of activity from my spheres of interest seems much higher on BS right now sadly.
I feel like its completely the opposite. Bluesky is just whining and screaming into the void while Mastodon feels like real stuff is actually happening. There are actually working feeds and a news section.
Bluesky has no hashtags or discovery mechanism other than the broken feeds that nobody knows how they work while on mastodon you can literally subscribe to hashtags like you’d subscribe to a community on lemmy. It’s not even remotely close.
Mastodon only got bad rap because it started of decentralized and people are just too dumb for that apparently.
I am from Mastodon / ActivityPub bubble. Can someone explain me the benefits of Bluesky / AT protocol?
From their website:
Account portability is the major reason why we chose to build a separate protocol. We consider portability to be crucial because it protects users from sudden bans, server shutdowns, and policy disagreements. Our solution for portability requires both signed data repositories and DIDs, neither of which are easy to retrofit into ActivityPub. The migration tools for ActivityPub are comparatively limited; they require the original server to provide a redirect and cannot migrate the user’s previous data.
Other smaller differences include: a different viewpoint about how schemas should be handled, a preference for domain usernames over AP’s double-@ email usernames, and the goal of having large scale search and discovery (rather than the hashtag style of discovery that ActivityPub favors).
https://atproto.com/guides/faq#why-not-use-activitypub
Sounds fair to me, although I am also not using either Mastodon or Bluesky.
Yes these are certainly words
ELI5:
In the Fediverse your account and identity is linked to a domain (e.g. you are @someone@domain.com), and you can’t move that account somewhere else. You can’t even change the domain of a server, because all the accounts on that server would be known by a different domain and be treated as separate new identifies. In Bluesky your identity is basically a random number, it’s shown in the URL of a profile page for example. You can link that to a domain temporarily and get a nice user handle, but you can always move to another domain later. That means you can migrate between servers and keep all your friends and followers, something that’s currently not possible in the Fediverse.
The thing about schemas is a technical detail, not really any consequences for users. Then there is a different format for user handles, so the Bluesky people don’t like the double @ signs for those.
The last thing is about how you don’t just pick one server/instance in Bluesky, instead you can pick different servers for different things. One server hosts your account, but a few others can fill and sort your news feed, block spam for you or let you search through content. It’s supposed to create an open ecosystem for these services, and allow you to keep your account on a server that offers none of these by itself, e.g. a small home server. Of course there is nothing like that in the Fediverse, you pick a service and a server, and that’s it.
I have to say Bluesky looks extremely interesting from a technical perspective, there’s just the fact that it’s completely dominated by the official server right now. People can create their own servers though, so we’ll have to see how it evolves.
I think I would be very interested in this version of doing things. Would it be feasible to build a link aggregator on that protocol? I don’t like the microblogging UX.
Yes, that’s basically what those schemas are about. You can create different schemas for different kinds of posts and content structures, so something like Lemmy should be possible. The Fediverse has something similar as well, but the way you introduce new schemas is different between the two as far as I understand it. In the former you’ll have to adapt some features of the underlying ActivityPub protocol to your new usecase, or work with others towards extending the protocol. The later allows you to just declare and describe your new structure in a machine-readable way, and others can then choose to support it. So Bluesky is more flexible and open in that regard, but could also end up more fragmented.
you can’t move that account somewhere else.
That means you can migrate between servers and keep all your friends and followers, something that’s currently not possible in the Fediverse.
It absolutely is possible to move accounts between instances on the fediverse. I’ve done it multiple times.
It does have some quirks tho. Posts aren’t migrated to your new account. (Some fedi software lets you migrate posts, but from what I hear it’s kinda jank).
It’s not seamless, but the option is there, and you won’t lose any friends or followers (unless they’re defederated or something)
Bluesky accounts seem like they’ll be more portable than fediverse accounts but I don’t know much about it
rn not much. In the future there’ll be properly portable accounts using cryptographic keys and once federation kicks in lighter servers making it probably more distributed.
So nothing to keep an eye on considering an overwhelming amount of cons of Bluesky.
pretty sure those are the noisy minority. afterall more content drives more people. artificial walls wont benefit anyone…
Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:
- Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
- On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
- On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
- On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
- Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.
Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081
Literally backed by Jack Dorsey and crypto bullshit. Fuck off.
The concept is nice, problem is there are too many cryptobros.
I don’t like bluesky because I don’t like it’s owner. I don’t like the owner because he thinks everyone is dumb and forgot the fact that nobody pointed a gun on his face to sell Twitter to some Arab dictators.
Jack Dorsey doesn’t “own” Blusky, he just gave them grant money in the beginning to kick things off, and is one of the board members.
“Prior to the seed round, Bluesky’s website described the company as a Public Benefit LLC owned by CEO Jay Graber and other Bluesky employees. Post-seed round, the company describes itself as a public-benefit C Corp.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(social_network)#Company_history
This is what so called open ai does. It isn’t open even in the sense of open group Unix. I just feel pity for American tax payers as elections are near. Both of these people have significant say in US/World politics.
I think not wanting to federate/bridge with Bluesky is a very bad idea. The entire idea is that we should get a Fediverse that is as connected as possible, not split up into many tiny subsets of users.
People care about Bluesky? Like at all? Interesting.
I’m in mastodon but I wouldn’t mind trying Bluesky when there are third party servers.
