He wrote a great article back in January entitled “Moderate people, not code” that is good background
> “Whether ActivityPub or ATProto or webmention, the underlying technical protocol a community uses to interact online is a poor way to judge who they are and whether you might like them.”
This is similar to your feed reader (a foreign network protocol) subscribing to the RSS feed of your Mastodon account.
It’s open. The rules of the protocol are being followed. There is no opt-in for that RSS feed — other than turning on “request to follow” in your Mastodon account.
@boris Thank you for this reflection. I think that's a really healthy attitude. Social media should be about meeting people where they are, not implicitly banning them until they join you in your tech choices. Anything that supports helping people connect as openly as possible is a good thing.
Compare to email. Yes, I would much prefer everyone to join me in hosting their email at a co-op with FLOSS tools. But in the meantime, I'm glad we can still email each other.
@boris respectfully I strongly disagree with "moderate people not code".
It is extremely important to moderate both people AND code equally and simultaneously. Just as there are toxic people there is toxic software. When we encounter toxic software we must work towards fixing it, and if it cannot be fixed or the developers are unwilling to fix it then it should indeed be moderated like toxic people are...because toxic software attracts and creates toxic users.
I am not totally and permanently closed minded to BlueSky, but in its present state I have serious concerns. The proposed "Composable Moderation" is currently under-specified and there is less control over federation than in AP protocol. As such I will be watching activity from such bridges and absolutely will "moderate code" if need be.
Do you agree that implementations of a well-specified protocol should interop with each other?
eG Mastodon should be able to talk to Pixelfed
I know Ryan, I know his software isn’t ill intentioned. I can’t say the same for what someone other than Ryan would do running it.
I’m happy to say “yes and” to moderate people AND code… but the code is mostly going to be “an instance”, run by a person, because that’s how it works.
Even if the protocol is perfectly well defined I would (and have) blocked AP instances that implement that protocol poorly (even if it was a technically correct implementation).
I think, on the whole, Mastodon and Pixelfed are relatively high quality and are responsibly maintained, so I encourage such interoperability. OTOH I have blocked "indexing" and "discoverability" applications in the past that, while perfectly implemented the AP protocol, abused user's consent. I will not interoperate with toxic applications, whether or not the toxicity was not intentional.
So basically I treat bad software like I treat badly moderated instances of good software...I block them.
This has always been my policy having run email servers for 25 years. You don't federate with open email relays or servers full of spammers just because they do SMTP perfectly.
@boris Well the developers' intent isn't the sole factor in determining toxicity. Sometimes things are just designed badly and result in unintentionally bad consequences.
There are good people who use bad software, and I will still defederate from instances of bad software run by good people, just like I defederate from instances of good software run by bad people. It is all about evaluating the consequences.
So when it comes to this particular bluesky bridge I will be evaluating it not based on there being good people on bluesky, nor on the professed character or intentions of the person who developed or runs the bridge. I will base my decisions on how the software works. If it is doing mass follow requests bases on an "opt out" policy, and if it is building up a massive PDS full of fedi posts to dump in the firehose that can enable bad actors to evade fedi blocks, then the bridge is blocked right away.
I will NOT wait for bad actors to take advantage of the toxic software before I block it.
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