Gregory's Server@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.
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48 comments
 @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." @sbszine @tillshadeisgone trump, netanyahu and some random guy with a laptop. The new axis of evil. This gave me a good laugh. Thanks for that. Sincerely. 😂 @polotek An ad absurdum obviously but you get the idea! Not everyone has equal power and privilege. Bridge guy is nowhere near the Trump level but initially he was oblivious to any ethical or privacy concerns. (His years at Google probably didn't help there either!) This is a common thing I see in tech classrooms, where the people with the privilege to be in tech see end users as a faceless resource or a means to an end. @sbszine this post is rife with a ton of your own simplistic and presumptuous notions about other people. It's super weird. For the record, I do not "get the idea". Bringing trump and netanyahu into this context was incredibly jarring and did nothing to help you seem more reasonable. And this post only makes it worse. It feels clear to me that you're not a person I want to be talking to. I'm gonna move on. Take care. @polotek @tillshadeisgone As I've said to you elsewhere, I agree this one guy isn't the only problem and my preferred answer to this is delegated authorisation as used by LTIs and the like. Putting pressure on bad actors is the tool at my disposal so I'm doing that. So far it's working, but as I said above it's not my preferred solution. @sbszine @tillshadeisgone "so far it's working". I think this is the specific part that I disagree with. And I keep asking why people think it's sufficient. But I get it. That's all people feel empowered to do. So we're gonna just wait around until the bad thing happens. And then be mad about that to anybody who will listen. Being mad in public is the security blanket. I think we understand each other better. Thanks for hanging in there. @polotek It's a question of how you see protesting and social pressure. Sometimes, yep, it's just people getting mad & nothing is achieved. Sometimes it's effective or maybe just lets you know you're not alone. It's a case by case thing. For me the Iraq invasion protests were unsuccessful but it was good to see the huge worldwide turnout. The pressure has been successful with this bridge thing & I think it's a good result where you can still use the bridge if you want. @polotek And again, I agree it's not sufficient or sustainable -- the protest has to work every time -- but it's what we have absent a technical solution to our data being flowed to an advertising server like the bsky indexer. If the next bridge or whatever ignores the social pressure then you might see legal action or some sort of technical response. Anyway I'm satisfied with the outcome here where bridge fans can opt in & privacy is the default. @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.  Is it like, you're looking at this bridge episode as indicative of the overall Fediverse structure being inadequate for privacy/safety, whereas most people (me too I admit) have had their focus on the shape of that one particular situation? kind of like "don't get hung up on this one particular example with this one particular guy, there's a bigger picture which needs attention"?  @polotek @tillshadeisgone someone else always _does_ try. and we have to yell at them _too_, or our privacy goes out the fucking window. we're fucking tired of it!  @polotek If / when BlueSky decides to enable federation on their AT protocol then Fediverse servers (that are capable of multiprotocol support) will be free to choose to add support for it on a per server basis and that will be actual federation. |
@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.