Slowly, but surely my Mastodon posts (this one included) are showing up on Bluesky. Bridgy.fed kicks in. Thanks to @snarfed.org@snarfed.org for all the hard work.
After the hectic months of February and March, things are more stable in Bluesky. The biggest development is the first president that has joined Bluesky, with Brazilian president Lula joining Bluesky as part of a larger conflict between the Brazilian government and X.
The News
Brazilian president Lula has opened an account on Bluesky, Brasil247.com reports. The news comes after an escalating conflict between X and the Brazilian Courts. Elon Musk publicly refused to follow orders by the Brazilian court to block certain accounts on X, and a Brazilian judge has ordered an investigation of Elon Musk for obstruction of justice. President Lula opening an account on Bluesky is a direct response to the ongoing conflict between the Brazilian government and X, and indicates how governments are starting to be fed up with the situation at X. President Lula used his first post on Bluesky to say that 38 slaughterhouses will be authorised to export meat to China. (?) Finally, Bluesky dropped their official policy against heads of states joining Bluesky.
Skygaze, the organisation behind the For You custom feed announced that they have quit the feed, and transferred ownership of the feed to the Bluesky organisation. The For You feed was by far the most popular custom feed that had a personalised algorithm. Skygaze said that they are moving on to other projects. Skygaze had been fairly involved in the Bluesky community, running a hackaton only 2 months ago. Recently, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber stated that one ways Bluesky plans to make money is to create a marketplace for custom feeds and third party moderation, where Bluesky will take a cut of the payments. Skygaze was one of the only creators of custom feeds that appeared to have a commercial side, as they seemed to have an affiliation with YCombinator. With them leaving the ATmosphere for other projects there are no other organisations that operate a third party service on the ATmosphere have expressed a clear interest in monetisation of their services yet.
Bluesky announced the second batch of ATProto grant recipients. The total grant was 4.8k USD, spend on various microgrants. SkyBridge is the grant project that got the most attention (TechCrunch, The Verge), which got a 800USD grant to rewrite the project in Rust. SkyBridge has been around for almost a year, although I personally never really got it to work properly. The grant should give the project a boost and renewed interest.
In February, Bluesky announced that they started federation, allowing people to run their own PDS, albeit under significant restrictions (apply for Relay access, limit the PDS to 10 accounts) while the process underwent testing. So far, these restrictions have not been lifted yet.
App updates
The official Bluesky apps have gotten some updates this month:
That’s all for this month, thanks for reading. You can follow me on Bluesky, or subscribe to my newsletter below. You’ll get a weekly update on the fediverse in your inbox, and a monthly update on Bluesky and the ATmosphere.
When he built a bridge to connect Bluesky to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms, @snarfed.org@snarfed.org started a new chapter for the fediverse. The software engineer opens up to @mike about his rollercoaster ride in the latest episode of Dot Social:
Tried #bluesky today, and the more I tried to use it, the more I found myself wanting to come right back and use #mastodon. Guess I just like it here too much 🤷.
I just realized that #GhostCMS being compatible with #ActivityPub (and possibly #ATProtocol / #Bluesky at a later date) means that it will probably be possible to tag somebody directly in a newsletter post, via their #Mastodon or #Threads profile for instance.
We’ve had a tremendously busy first quarter, too much too fit in a newsletter, so here’s the roundup of what’s been happening these past few months.
Content Classification System
This is the biggest project we have underway: build an opt-in, privacy-preserving CSAM detection and reporting system to help protect the Fediverse. We are halfway through our initial buildout, which will allow server operators to optionally send their media to IFTAS for hash and match detection using the Safer platform from Thorn. No media leaves IFTAS, and if we get a pertinent match we take care of the necessary reporting. This one’s a complex activity, but we are working our way through and hope to have more on this soon.
We’ve set aside funds to pay active moderators a monthly stipend for their guidance and input on our activities, and we are extremely pleased to announce our initial cohort has been onboarded and the first payments went out for March. This group is tasked with reviewing our our products and services, and ensuring a broad range of voices are heard throughout the process. You can review our Moderator Advisory Panel on the About Us page, welcome to everyone who stepped up to help guide this work and thank you for your participation!
FediCheck / CARIAD
FediCheck is our moderation-as-a-service domain federation app, it allows Mastodon servers to sign in and automatically update their domain blocks and retractions from a trusted list. For this iteration we are using our CARIAD list (an aggregation of the most blocked domains) combined with our Do Not Interact list, each domain is reviewed before inclusion, and the service is intended for new administrators to get a kick start on their federation choices while keeping them safe from day 1 harassment.
We’ve onboarded our first batch of beta testers and while we’ve got some kinks to iron out, the service is working well. We’ll keep adding more servers from the initial round of requests, and work our way toward making this a free, public service.
We have contracted with Tall Poppy for up to 20 moderators to gain access to a range of personal safety tools, including live support during online harassment and doxxing attacks. We are scheduling the first onboarding and hope to offer this to many more in the coming months.
Working with the great folks at Tremau, we launched the first of our regulatory guidance materials, this easy-to-read guide to the DSA allows Fediverse administrators to review their exposure to the DSA, and practical guidance on working toward compliance.
We’ve installed and experimented with the Bluesky open source moderation tool Ozone. As part of this activity, we’ve set up a labeller account on Bluesky, we’re not actively moderating anything (yet) but we are looking into if and how we can support labelling on the network. Our Bluesky links:
Lillian and Jon have been conducting a survey of moderators to help guide the production of a number of templates for moderation teams, including a moderator agreement and code of conduct. Longer-term this will become a handbook for hands-on moderator activities.
IFTAS is now a recognised 501c3 organisation, this means we can accept tax-deductible donations to support our work. Everything we do is free of charge and we need your support to keep the work moving forward!
We have a number of ways for you to support the mission:
If you’re considering making a contribution, your employer may have matching funds available! We are registered with Benevity, check with your company’s giving program to see if you can double your contribution!
Spoiler Alert
We are slowly opening the doors to our collaboration portal “IFTAS Connect”.
We’ve issued invitations to our Needs Assessment participants, and will be opening up more broadly in late April. IFTAS Connect is a community of practice for moderators, community managers and researchers new and old to come together, share what works, seek help, and get guides and resources for their day to day work.
Signals sharing – we will soon be convening a group to begin the work of classifying shareable information to strengthen the Fediverse defenses against spam, disinformation and more, using an ISAC-like format. Email us for more info.
Additional regulatory guidance for administrators, GDPR, UK’s OSA and more on the list.
Moderator wellness and resilience education
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