Gregory's ServerAs 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"?
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185 comments
 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 amazing thread. I really appreciate your thoughts and viewpoint. Given me lots to think about. Thanks!  @polotek brilliant thread, thank you. I’ve been thinking similar things but in a vague and inarticulate way, I haven’t been able to put words to it.  @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.  @polotek how much time is each of us supposed to spend keeping track of what tools and domains we should opt out of, just to maintain the existing state of our networks? How much room in our bio is for us, and how much is for randos to dictate by making us opt out of their crap? What about users who don't speak English or don't happen to see the announcement of these opt-out services as they pop up? If we're not supposed to raise a stink about it, missing announcements is much more likely. @redoak I'm not telling you what to do about it. Raise as much stink as you want. But I'm not sure why that feels like less work than just turning off open federation. @polotek sure, better tools is the best long term answer to a lot of the issues being raised by the bluesky bridge. But it's not unreasonable to respond unkindly to someone you've never met showing up and announcing they're going to violate your community norms and expectations just because technically they can.   I could be wrong, but I doubt it's going to be shut down. More likely it's going to become opt-in. That will likely lead to wider adoption in the long run, because if it's opt-out, it'll get a lot of opt-outs at instance level.  @polotek This is the unity of means and ends in action. People are shaped by how they have had to act in the past. We’ve never had a social network that works this way before. It’s profoundly different, and it’s going to take time to learn and adapt to—in part because people have to exercise those new possibilities to internalize them. @tillshadeisgone I'm not sure you have this right. What you're choosing is a world where you have to yell at every individual who ever tries to federate from outside of mastodon. There's nothing special about this one guy. Somebody else could try the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. And you don't have control over any of them.  @polotek @tillshadeisgone You're right about that. The ideal solution would be if instance API users had to do delegated authentication via OAuth2. Then anyone could build whatever they wanted, but data would only move around with consent. From there you could elaborate to blocklists, sensible defaults, etc.  @polotek The thing is, with Mastodon software, tools for controlling federation choices (both individually and at the instance level) are very limited in Mastodon. Allow-list federation at the instance level is strongly discouraged by Mastodon and cumbersome to manage; it doesn't exist at the individual level. Anything policy based, which is what you really need to make it scalable, isn't even a concept. Which is a problem! But it's hard to resolve at the individual level ... Other fediverse microblogging platforms all have blockers to broader adoption -- functionality isn't fully there yet, horrible UI, not a lot of support from hosting companies, etc. And with most of them, support for controlling federation choices isn't much better. So things are trapped in this weird suboptimal state; and most microblogging resources go to Mastodon, so it's been hard to break out of the cycle. And there's historically a LOT of resistance in the fediverse to consent-based federation. @anildash talks about how consent's a key often-unstated value in the fediverse, and that's true, but in practice it's also very intermittent. And many (most?) high-profile fediverse "influencers" are in the camp that's actively hostile to consent. So incremental change is hard.  @jdp23 @anildash @polotek @tillshadeisgone I think (and we have already stated that in other conversations), that at least part of the resistance is the idea that small instance would suffer from consent-based federation. And I know that there are some ideas to overcome that, but it’s not an easy one to solve.  @polotek @tillshadeisgone I keep saying this in context after context but the only way you stop people like the dipshit who wanted to opt everyone into his nonsense, as well as trash like Richard Spencer is to intimidate, drive them out of the commons, and make sure the others understand that if they attempt to enclose our commons (including feeding it into their analytics or AI crap) they will have a very miserable day. @polotek @tillshadeisgone I say this as someone who helped organize a work place, people with power over others will never willingly let go (and copying data into Jack's garbage site is power over) and you fight power with power. @polotek @tillshadeisgone and no, I'm not a particularly fun person or great at parties. @emma @tillshadeisgone Emma you really just took this random guy who wanted to mess with some tech and put him in the same sentence as Richard Spencer. He doesn't have any "power" except for the power to run a server. Same as you and me. @polotek @tillshadeisgone yes, I did that, and I stand by that. @emma @tillshadeisgone understood. It's gonna be great sharing an internet with you. I feel safer already. @polotek @tillshadeisgone there is a through line from dude hoovers up everyone's data to tech billionaire trying to overturn elections they don't like the results of, to people like richard spencer. All of these are people who don't care about the harm they cause. @emma @tillshadeisgone I'm not sure why you felt the need to explain again. I believed you the first time you said you stood by it. You've been heard. I find this leap to be pretty unreasonable and scary. I'm gonna move on before you decide I'm also the Antichrist for some reason. Take care. @polotek @tillshadeisgone An angle I'd like you to think about is how you should respond when someone tells you they're hurting. You could tell them they aren't really & that they need to toughen up, or you could tell them that it's for their own good, or any number of responses. Even if you don't personally understand or relate to someone's situation, I think it's best to say 'I hear you' or show some empathy. People are really afraid of brigading from this. @sbszine @tillshadeisgone how do you think the bridge guy is doing today? You think he might be hurting at all? I mean people are equating him with Richard Spencer today.  @polotek @sbszine @tillshadeisgone There's one of him, but he wants to take the content of millions of us. @polotek @tillshadeisgone I'm not a moral relativist. I'm fine with the one bad guy having a worse time than the many victims. Keep dodging the issue though. @polotek I think you are spot on. I don't understand how Bluesky would be different than any other Mastodon instance in this case. Must be up to each and every Mastodon admin to opt out, like they would from any other instance that they don't agree with. @polotek  @polotek Well, reductively, turning off open federation is an unpleasant solution because Mastodon has deprioritized that mode of operation since the beginning, for ideological reasons, and so it's considerably more difficult to vet potential new instances to federate with than it is to vet a request for a new user account, for instance @polotek If you're looking for a serious answer: a) because I don't control any instance nor have the skills run my own, and b) because I don't want to have to play whack-a-mole everytime some techbro wants to pipe my stuff into an advertising server. No, I CAN'T just make my instance opt out. @sbszine these are all reasonable assumptions. They are false. But I understand why you think you have these limitations. That still doesn't explain why you think the right alternative is to yell at other random private citizens every time they misstep when trying to participate. That's not a world I wanna live in either. Maybe this whole fediverse thing was a mistake? @sbszine @polotek I may have this wrong, but I think that Marco's point is that you address your instance admin and not the guy who is creating the tool. The hope being that there is some kind of democratic process at the instance level. The users of an instance creating the culture and policies of that instance, even if ultimately the admin functions as an executive, whilst the fediverse is federal so different instances doing things differently within a very lose framework.  @sbszine @polotek sbszine this looks a lot like a case of "I want all the rights but none of the responsibilities." someone holding a gun to your head making you use mastodon? or is there a chance your expectations could be adjusted to cater to accepting that tools made by other people will, and should, be made to their specification, rather than the specification of the people who are choosing to use and benefit from them for free. @polotek @tchambers We’re really lucky the attitude people yelling at this guy have wasn’t prevalent when things like DNS and email were becoming popular  @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.  @polotek @polotek The people complaining about the bridge keep referencing safety, but the safety is purely encoded in social conventions. Even right now without the bridge, if you block an instance your post can end up on that instance and the people there can reply and discuss it and you won't see any of it. That's fine for protecting yourself from seeing bad things but it doesn't protect you from swatting for instance.  @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?