Somehow found myself arguing with someone who talks about "the fediverse" like it is a) a singular thing and b) a separate thing from bluesky. It helped remind me of a fundamental truth about talking to people who are mad on the internet. What they're mad about is entirely uncorrelated with how well they understand the issues. Anger is an emotion. So is fear.
In my commentary about mastodon and bluesky today, I didn't say all that much about my thoughts on the core issues of privacy and consent. That's what most people actually want to fight about. For people who are worried about that, anybody who isn't immediately on their side is the enemy. I'm used to that specific internet dynamic, so I'm not that bothered by it.
What I'm realizing is that I don't wanna talk about that though. Not because I don't care. I do. But there are much smarter people who have spent way more time on those issues. It's a deep and gnarly topic. So I don't have anything to say about it that is smarter than what is already being said by people who are actually working on the issues.
Instead, my musings from the peanut gallery are driven by something else that is bothering me as I observe people's evolving relationship with The Fediverse™.
To me, one of the fundamental things to understand about the concept of decentralization and federation is that nobody is "in charge". There's no central authority to appeal to.
In short, who are you yelling at? Who do you expect to "fix" things for you? Right now people are coming down on the guy who is building the bridge to bluesky. That specific guy. They're yelling at him and telling him to make different decisions to protect their personal privacy. Is that what people think they signed up for with the fediverse? Fighting with other individual humans and trying to force them to do what you want?
I keep feeling like I'm missing something. But it seems clear to me that fighting with every other individual in the whole world until you carve out the specific level of visibility that you are comfortable with is a solution that doesn't scale very well.
More importantly though. I thought the whole point of the fediverse as a concept was that each of us can chose a platform that gives us the tools we want so that we're not beholden to the choices that other people make.
What's wild about the bluesky bridge thing is that it seems to be trying to follow all of the rules. It's using the same ActivityPub protocol as everyone else. It has a name and the author is trying to make sure it respects everybody else's moderation settings. You can block it or defederate from it. But very few people who I've seen talking about it seem to be placated by that. They're still mad for some reason.
As I was puzzling through that, I landed on what I think is a core issue. People do not feel that the tools necessary to protect themselves are in their hands. They're still operating as if they have to ask other people to do the right thing. (Or yell at them as the case may be). Is that a failure of the way mastodon is set up? Have we not gone far enough with "you get to decide how your presence on the internet works"?
@polotek > People do not feel that the tools necessary to protect themselves are in their hands.
This is absolutely the problem and also actually true as far as I can see. They don't have the tools. I'm not sure an instance block is enough to ensure data doesn't get across the bridge because the protocol itself is pretty damn aggressive about pushing data out.
If server A blocks server N (for nazi) and server B doesn't, then a post from A boosted by someone on B will get published to N.
@poswald yes, but only if the server allows anonymous GETs of content. Because only the ID is passed around in a boost, if server A has authorized fetch enabled, then it will not return a usable Note to server N
If you don't want your content to be bridged to bluesky without your consent, you shouldn't have to fight with anybody except the admin on your local mastodon instance. You can yell at them all you want. I have fewer judgments about that.
Many people have yelled at the bridge guy telling him to make his tool opt-in by default. He shouldn't have to do that. You can make your own instance opt-out by default. Why is that not a preferable solution?
@polotek because I want to opt out and I do not want to force my preference on the largest instance in my country. Let others make their own choices. It's that simple.
Edit:
Why do I want to opt out? Because I do not trust that moderation will be adequate or balanced. And: I don't want to facilitate abuse of my content.
Afterthought: If personally blocking bluesky opts me out, I'm already good 👍
@deborahh what if you can't block individually. Does that mean mastodon itself doesn't actually meet your needs in terms of privacy? Because your decisions are too bound up with everybody else on your instance?
@polotek ... and, if "block bluesky" is *already possible, at an individual level, creating this special featureset for bluesky seems a waste 🤔
A) features need to be mirrored/accomodated in 3rd party apps, and also maintained. Only features that add real value are worth this (mostly volunteer) effort.
B) It seems to creates a sub-class of fedizens with special treatment -- unnecessarily, since a person or an instance can already block. This seems contra to the feel of fedi as it is today.
@polotek ... hmm. I'm reading the thread below. I didn't realise that this "bridge" to bluesky seems to operate differently. If I cannot block the bluesky instance easily*, it definitely needs to be opt-in from the start.
and even if I can block it, fedi needs to ensure all users are aware in advance so they can block proactively.
So many are hoping fedi will be a safer place than the commercial platforms. Forced bluesky integration threatens that, imo.
@polotek ok, granted. But it's a federation, right? Which I assume means there are conversations between admins, some agreements, and other recommendations made.
That's not rhetorical. I'm really open to the possibility that I'm missing something. It seems like people who have more concerns about privacy and safety have the ability to organize their mastodon instance so it is locked down by default. And they can open up selectively. Yes, it puts more onus on you to make decisions rather than depending on other people to do the right thing. But again, I guess I thought that was the tradeoff people were making intentionally.
@polotek Over the last few years, there has been a tremendous increase in people intentionally using moral polarization as a strategy for change. It's a powerful tool, and sometimes the right one. But it can become a habit of mind, rather than an intentional choice, and I think that it has among many of my progressive friends. I don't know what to do about it. Probably nothing I can do about it. But I think what you're observing fits into this larger phenomenon. Thanks for your wisdom here!
@polotek This is all extremely insightful. Thank you for summing it up. A part of the problem I see, in addition to what you've said, is that while the point it activitypub is federation, mastodon is the most public face of it, and mastodon feels small and cozy. The idea of getting bigger I think bothers some people. "Don't take away my little cafe." Understandable! But imo, not accurate.
@orionkidder
> mastodon feels small and cozy. The idea of getting bigger I think bothers some people. "Don't take away my little cafe." Understandable!
Absolutely. That's how old school fedizens felt in 2016 when Mastodon joined the fediverse (mostly GNU social servers at the time) and newbies started flooding in from Titter, and then Tumblr.
I think if people want a small and cozy place, they should make one that's going to stay that way. Maybe by only allowing new people in by invite. Or maybe by only allowing new people in by majority (or some other fraction, maybe supermajority) vote of existing users.
@Hyolobrika
> if people want a small and cozy place
But they don't. Because if you point out they can set up servers that only federate with their chosen small and cozy subset of the larger fediverse, they screech about "reach". They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the benefits of open federation, without the moderation costs, and they get very grumpy at anyone who points out you can't have it both ways.
What really grinds my gears is the way they frame the issue as being about 'protecting marginalised people'. So anyone who doesn't agree with them is 'ignoring their privilege' or being a 'techbro' or whatever. I wonder how many people they'd identify as marginalised actually support their attempts at digital gentrification?
The question is, then, are there severs/instances like that? It's asking a lot to say, "just nature a server." That takes technical skill and equipment and, in effect, money. Of any such servers exist, then the next time someone says that's what they want, give them a link to them.
I will say, I don't know where I sit on opt in/opt out. It seems like it ought to be simple to give individuals the option to opt in, but I don't know the tech.
@orionkidder
> [running a server] takes technical skill and equipment and, in effect, money
Yes it does. So if a person can't supply those things, their only option is to negotiate with people who can.
Nobody owes anyone else a megaphone. A lot of very cool volunteers spend their free time - and often their own money - supplying free megaphones to people who can't supply their own, and that's great. But it's not a right, and if it is, maybe your government ought to pay?
@orionkidder
People who run their own server can just Silence or Block the BlueSky bridge. So the only people complaining about it are those who get a free megaphone, and want to dictate the terms of the megaphone business. Sorry, they don't get to do that here.
@strypey@Hyolobrika@polotek I just read how this is actually going to work. I had not realized that it's effectively opt-in anyway, AFAICT. It doesn't share messages until you follow someone across the bridge, and then it asks you if you want to do that. The only reason I can think of why anyone would knowingly object to that is to keep Mastodon hived off.
@strypey@Hyolobrika@polotek I just said this elsewhere, but personally, I think this is fucking awesome. I can follow my BlueSky friends from within Mastodon. I love it. I'm going to be the first in line.
And anyway, I don't think things should be withheld from mere users just because of some elitist attitude that only admins matter. But I'm not saying that those admins should be forced to provide those things. Just that the technology should be architected such that users have more power. For example, consider how end-to-end encryption gives users privacy. And
how Nostr/SimpleX-style architecture gives users autonomy in what kind of moderation they are subject to with low cost.
@Hyolobrika@strypey@polotek Unless I'm misunderstanding something—and I might be!—users activate the bridge by following someone who's on the other side of it. That's the ultimate opt-in. Just, like, don't do that if you don't want to do that.
I was trying to be even-handed, but I cannot see the objection any more.
@orionkidder
> users activate the bridge by following someone who's on the other side of it
Correct. Just like you activate federation between any two ActivityPub servers by following (or @mentioning someone on one from the other).
That's how AP works. Imagine if every server was constantly searching out new servers, and slurping up all their posts. There are millions of posts on the fediverse every day, some of them images and videos. Who could afford all that storage?
@Hyolobrika
> Users can mute the bridge, can't they?
True. If their app gives them tools to Silence/ Block domains. In that respect it's just like a server running Mastodon or any other fediverse software.
Also, the bridge won't affect them at all, until they follow or @mention someone on BlueSky, or vice-versa. It's not like the entire fediverse will flow through the bridge from moment it's turned on.
The more I think about it the more I wonder, why all the drama?
@Hyolobrika
> the technology should be architected such that users have more power
> Nostr... gives users autonomy in what kind of moderation they are subject to
💯%. I used to be hardline on putting all moderation tools in the UI of the people using the network. But I've been convinced of the value of moderation as a service, as long as people can choose their moderators. Imagine mods being like recallable delegates, rather than the feudal lords of the servers.
We may have griped and lamented about the change in the vibe. But we never tried to stop other people using decentralised social network software from the joining the fediverse. Because that would go against the very nature of what it is; an open federated network, where nobody needs permission from a central authority to join.
I suspect most of the people objecting to a bridge from BlueSky have only been here a year or two. Otherwise they'd know better.
@polotek all other things aside, what matters isn’t the technical architecture but the social norms. Mastodon is full of folks who are extremists (by modern tech standards) about consent, and who want defaults to be opt-in for nearly everything. In particular, Bluesky has both a different economic model and a different privacy model than the rest of the fediverse, so it makes sense to start with consent because the decision to federate is irrevocable in terms of data leakage.
@anildash@polotek the social norms are worthless the first time a bad actor joins the scene. I find it irresponsible by those folks to claim mastodon/fedi has safety properties that it clearly doesn’t have. And then yell at folks for pointing that out as if that is a sustainable safety practice. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@anildash@janl he doesn't have to market to them. He just noticed that they left all their doors open. Even if you're trying to read the room, there's not many reasonable signals that these people are "extremists about consent".
@anildash@janl I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be upset about this. I am arguing that being mad at this one person for doing what devs always do with open and available tech is not actually reasonable. Especially when these same people haven't taken advantage of any of the tools actually available to them to protect themselves from unwanted federation.
@polotek@anildash@janl
When 20 devs say "well I have no experience with the social part of this, and actually I'm privileged enough that I wouldn't suffer from consequences" do the thing, and people loudly complain, and then the 21st dev comes and says the same thing, I kinda think we can be a bit mad. As a treat.
@polotek@anildash@janl Correct me if I'm wrong, but "the tools actually available to protect ourselves from unwanted federation" are, in this particular case, putting a hashtag on my profile and hoping, or sending this dude a dm/email. Or to go ask bluesky to kindly not do that.
@jakelazaroff@polotek@anildash@janl
The question of opt-out vs opt-in is the crux of this issue. People are complaining precisely because this dev is pushing work onto us.
I shouldn't have to explain why somebody coming from a different network with the intent to monetize what I write without my permission and making me do extra work to avoid that is, yes, somebody else pushing work on me that I didn't want. But here we are.
If they wanted to not have a problem with the protocol, they could have made something with activityPub. Granted, people wouldn't have liked the monetization bit either, but.
@polotek@janl I understand your argument, but I don’t think I agree. It’s reasonable to be upset at someone for knowingly violating community norms, even if it’s technically doable.
@anildash what we disagree on is the definition of "community". Many people I've talked to about this don't give a fuck about community. They care about themselves. And they didn't know anything about what the norms were. They just hate bluesky. You're projecting the norms of your own circles onto a much wider group of people.
Also there is a strong argument to be made that the actual community norms are to federate with everybody. Because that's what happens in almost all cases today.
@anildash you may get to the rest of my threads about this at some point. But I'll say it here as well. My argument was never to say "people don't get to be mad about this". That's not even a discussion I care about. My discussion was "being mad at this one random guy does not solve your safety problem. So now what?"
@polotek@anildash i think people getting mad about it are trying to create and enforce cultural norms, they don't want the tools to be needed to protect people, they want it to be taboo, and harshly punished, to do the things they think are bad for privacy.
I think it's related to the "you can't fix social problems with technical solutions", idea, if you try to enforce things technically, there is always a way around, so they want culture to solve it instead. Except there will be outliers.
@polotek@anildash getting mad at everyone of them, doesn't really scale as a solution either, but the thinking must be that if the culture is propagated enough, the taboo strong enough, then people will just not do it.
I don't think it's a great solution either.
@polotek@anildash someone here today spoke of “the” social contract of Mastodon and… no?
I love me some social contracts, but this person’s idea of the network’s social contract was very different than mine (and I had an account on the first ActivityPub server). The network is already too large to have one set of norms, or one social contract. That fragmentation is perhaps not ideal, but it is reality.
there is definitely a cohort of people who use mastodon, who create publicly-available posts on publicly-available servers, using an open source protocol designed for federation and propagation of their content, who seem to get offended when something (new) comes along to federate it?
I'm all for privacy preservation and an aversion to big tech/Threads creeping into this space, but it feels like people broadly have a different notion of control of Their Stuff online.
@repeattofade@polotek@janl yep, it’s an evolving social norm. It’s unfamiliar to people who came online in a context where protocols or formats or platforms were ultimate authority about consent. But it’s changing, and that’s fine, imo.
@polotek Good points. Mastodon seems over-supplied with people trying to make other people post in a way that'll make them comfortable. Not viable. Better if they use the tools available to shape their own experience.
@polotek This discussion fascinates me because a have no “dog in the fight” and the whole thing seems low stakes to me, but people obviously care either way and I enjoy the thoughtful and considered arguments 🍿
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