Gregory's ServerThat'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.
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75 comments
 @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. I didn't say i meant the whole fedi - there are communities here for whom it's true. I don't think there is one Fediverse Community and i don't see any logic to minimizing various parts of the fedi as "only a subgroup" except to justify ignoring their wishes and boundaries. Me, i do think it should be shut down. If you want to feed Dorsey's Data Mill you are free to register there. We can't take that away from you. But the question at hand for the bridge is opt-in vs opt-out.  @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. @TomSwirly @polotek @sbszine @tillshadeisgone How is he taking? If a post is marked public, its public - if you don't want it taken, don't mark it public. @Da_Gut just because someone makes a public post on the fedi doesn't mean they want it to end up on Bluesky. That's not an unfair way to feel. @tillshadeisgone We use different meanings of the word "public". To you, public means "the fedi", to me, public means everyone, everywhere - the original meaning of public. I'm not sure how to reconcile the differing meanings, frankly. @Da_Gut @TomSwirly @sbszine @tillshadeisgone people are very concerned about the honor system on the internet. You didn't know that? @polotek @TomSwirly @sbszine @tillshadeisgone Autistic, There is a metric shit ton I don't know, especially socially. @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. @sbszine @tillshadeisgone I'm not dodging anything. It's you that is pretending that this one guy is your only problem. Or that your strategy for privacy is going around making strident moral arguments to every other human in the entire world to get them to do what is best for you personally. Rather than availing yourself of the tools at your disposal. Good luck with that I guess. @sbszine @tillshadeisgone "if he's not doing what I want then fuck that guy. But yeah I totally care about protecting other people from harassment. Just not him. Cause fuck that guy." @tillshadeisgone you do have some say. With your admin and your local insurance. I'm not sure how many ways I have to try to explain this. Your controls over how your data spreads are in your hands. It doesn't require going around the entire world trying to prevent every other human from making decisions you don't agree with. I promise you will fail at that. @tillshadeisgone I did address the points. Very directly. I understand people have decided to yell at this one guy and try to force him to make his tool opt-in. I don't agree with that strategy, but whatever. My point is what happens when the next guy doesn't even ask you before he does it? Do you expect everyone who tries this to announce it? @tillshadeisgone my actually point that very few people want to address is if you care about privacy, why aren't you doing anything about your actual privacy? Why are you waiting until somebody announces that they're gonna do something you're uncomfortable with? Why aren't you rethinking the decisions about what instance you joined and what controls you have? "I'm concerned about harassment on the internet. I guess I have no choice but to join the dogpile on this one guy".  @polotek thanks Marco, you’re making a ton of sense and speaking clearly. these are great conversations to be having and I appreciate you opening a few new ways to think about it @tillshadeisgone I did address it. But sure. I'll do it yet again. I didn't say that I think he should be able to do this. I don't have an opinion either way. What I said was nobody can stop him. Nobody is in charge. You keep trying to have a moral argument with me and I'm politely declining. I don't have any power to dictate what that guy does and does not get to do. And I'm making decisions accordingly. @tillshadeisgone is that clear? I know it's not the answer you were hoping for. But it is a direct answer. Is there a different way I can directly answer your question so that you don't have to keep repeating it? Let me know. @tillshadeisgone none of this is "baffling" to me. I understand everything about why people are upset. You seem to confused because I'm still suggesting that being upset is not sufficient to solve the actual problem. People seem to think that having random strangers acknowledge that you're right to be upset will somehow make everything okay.  You're making wrong assumptions about every single part of that process and the bridge's functions you mention, yes. Please take at least a few seconds to check the actual project before you assume the worst, as you're fighting proverbial windmills here. It's a bit annoying. @Qazm @dgold if there's one thing I came to understand after talking to people yesterday it's this. People definitely want these problems to be solved without them personally needing to do anything or understand anything. They want to just emote loudly until someone else takes action on their behalf. And they certainly don't want to pay anything for it. So you know. We'll just wait and see how well that works out. @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 I think a fundamental problem is that bluesky is "too big to fail". When problems happen you can't really defederate because it is too big. Same problem as mastodon.social except 40x bigger. @polotek If I want to block a Mastodon instance, I can just search, find an account on that instance, and block. That is the social contract here. Unless I’ve missed something, Brid.gy has no accounts I can find and block. This would be trivial for the developer to solve, but instead he demands that I either advertise his service with a hashtag in my bio or DM him to plead my case. That isn’t how this works for other servers. Bridgy and Bluesky aren’t special. @DinosaurRobo you've missed something. The bridge guy is telling anybody who will listen what the name of his bridge will be so you can block it. Did you actually ask? @polotek Why wouldn’t that have been in the announcement? Why would I have to ask personally? If I want to block any other server, I don’t ask around, I search and block. We were given a server name, brid.gy, and as a user I can’t block that. I think that’s bad enough on its own, but it also tells me what to expect from future behavior. @DinosaurRobo what does it tell you to expect? That people might use your protocol that is open by default and not actually ask your permission? That's probably a great thing to expect. What are you gonna do about that very important reality? @polotek i think the issue is that people see it as a contagion, yes your own instance locks it out what happens with the instances that you are connected to who don't, do you have to lock them out too? if so then i think that many feel they will become isolated. |
@polotek amazing thread. I really appreciate your thoughts and viewpoint. Given me lots to think about.
Thanks!