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Ben Ramsey

@homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration From a legal standpoint, how does a bridge differ from any other Fediverse server, which are all already opt-out by default?

13 February at 2:28 | Wall-to-wall | Open on phpc.social
12 comments
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@ramsey @lisamelton @mastodonmigration

Fediverse servers are assumed to be federating and this is made clear when people join. Being able to follow people on other Fediverse servers is explicitly stated to be the reason you might sign up. For example have a look at this official video made by Mastodon:

fedi.video/w/cbQE3NRw76FayQCSd

Bluesky isn't part of the Fediverse, no one on here has been told they may end up being connected to Bluesky.

13 February at 2:32 | Open on social.growyourown.services
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@ramsey @lisamelton @mastodonmigration

p.s. The author knows they are on dodgy ground, as they admit they may be defederated because of the bridge:

"I know some admins may determine that this kind of bridge isn’t in their users’ best interests and choose to defederate/block it. That’s their prerogative."

13 February at 2:34 | Open on social.growyourown.services
Ben Ramsey

@homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration No one here knows who they’re going to be connected with at all, when they sign up, though.

13 February at 2:34 | Open on phpc.social
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@ramsey @lisamelton @mastodonmigration

They know it won't be on bluesky, which is what this bridge is trying to change.

13 February at 2:38 | Open on social.growyourown.services
Ben Ramsey

@homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration But there are thousands and thousands of domains federating with ActivityPub right now. Your contention is that, when users sign up on any given ActivityPub instance, they’re doing so because they know they won’t be federating with Bluesky ever?

13 February at 2:40 | Open on phpc.social
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@ramsey @lisamelton @mastodonmigration

Bluesky isn't using ActivityPub. If it was, there wouldn't be any need for a bridge.

If they start using it, I'll be posting advising the blocking of its domain (or at least ones connected to Dorsey if they ever actually decentralise), the same way I've been calling for threads.net to be blocked.

13 February at 2:41 | Open on social.growyourown.services
Ben Ramsey

@homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration That’s fine. I don’t agree with running a Bluesky bridge, either, because Bluesky consciously chose not to use ActivityPub and to remain separate from the Fediverse, but I don’t understand why running the bridge would pose legal challenges, since the whole point of these protocols is to federate.

13 February at 2:46 | Open on phpc.social
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@ramsey @lisamelton @mastodonmigration

Because it's not the network they signed up for an account on?

I am not a lawyer so I cannot comment on legal challenges, I'm just very curious to know if bridging to a network you didn't sign up on with an opt-out system is legal.

13 February at 2:55 | Open on social.growyourown.services
Ben Ramsey

@homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration I’m not a lawyer, either, but I would be willing to bet it would be very difficult to argue that in court, since the openness of the protocol means anyone can build an application on it. The “network” is opaque to users.

13 February at 2:59 | Open on phpc.social
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@ramsey

I have no qualifications on this so I can't really comment on what would happen.

13 February at 3:01 | Open on social.growyourown.services
Tim Chambers

@ramsey @homegrown @lisamelton @mastodonmigration However, Bluesky lead developers were cool with the idea of bridging from the start, Ben, I specifically pressed them on that. So they were always ok with it but didn’t have bandwidth to do themselves.

13 February at 3:00 | Open on indieweb.social
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