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Christine Lemmer-Webber

It is ONE thing to be able to block JK Rowling and for you to see that JK Rowling is blocking you.

It is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING for ANYONE to see who is blocking JK Rowling and who JK Rowling is blocking

This one is shocking to me: this seems like a vector for abusive actors

381 comments
Natty :butterflyN: replied to Christine

@cwebber@social.coop Already happening, bots scrape and harass people who sub to a labeller marking transphobes or something

It's like getting a list of targets on a silver platter

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

Now to be completely fair this is something that Bluesky's devs are interested in potentially changing: there is an open issue to discuss the possibility of private blocks github.com/bluesky-social/atpr

What I am saying is there are architectural consequences to fundamental design abstractions

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

Yes, I may sometimes seem silly over here, SICP-hugging fangirl, come on we're just trying to build things that *work* over here

Look I'm a lisp lady, I know the realities of "Worse Is Better" more than most, I now the right CS designs don't win

But Conway's Law flows in two directions!

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

You know what, we'll come back to "bidirectional Conway's Law", let's talk about Direct Messages for a minute because I think those are telling

Direct Messages in Bluesky, wait how do they work if ATProto is public?

Did you guess?

DMs are centralized! All DMs flow through Bluesky

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

Now to be completely fair Bluesky is clear about this *in their blogpost announcing DMs*, but just like this thread, I doubt nearly anyone has read that far (am I talking to the void? I don't know, if you actually have gotten to this message reply with "I found the easter egg" or something)

Chris Evelyn replied to Christine

@cwebber Still here, thanks for writing this :blobcathearthug:

Мя :sparkles_lesbian: replied to Christine

@cwebber i found the easter egg! (Actually readin this thread in semi-realtime)

lily 🏳️‍⚧️ replied to Christine

@cwebber@social.coop i mean you're on my timeline every 2 seconds, it's hard to miss

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

The thing that is telling to me about DMs is that we *have* federated direct message protocols like XMPP which have been around for ages; if Bluesky wanted to they could have tacked that on pretty quickly, E2EE or not. It still would have been decentralized at least

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

The point is that I have *seen in the wild* people saying "Oh yeah Bluesky added DMs to their decentralized protocol" and augh

I know they aren't claiming this but it's very clear to me that people are reading things as being completely different architecture than it is

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

But to Bluesky's credit, Twitter's DMs aren't decentralized either! And getting and shipping something that works, now for the influx of Twitter users, again... I am sympathetic

Bluesky's team is doing an INCREDIBLE JOB in that way of scaling to meet the incoming stream of Twitter refugees

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

On that note, again, I am not reading the replies right now because I am (a) afraid to and (b) I'm never gonna finish this and we are a bit over HALFWAY THROUGH the analysis but I have this fear that EVERYONE is mad at me, Bluesky fans, fediverse fans

I am trying to be analytical. I am trying!!!

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

I said we are about halfway through and criminy we're halfway through the afternoon, I need a break to get some tea

We have a few big topics left:

- Decentralized identity, how does it work (magnets too, yes)
- The Org is a Future Adversary
- Christine critiques the fediverse
- Wrap up

Christine Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

And so, it is TEA TIME

Go get yourself a hot beverage. Put honey or agave in it, if you like. Dairy, or perhaps, non-dairy, if you prefer.

=== BREAK TIME! Time for tea! ===

Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber replied to Christine

I can confirm, @cwebber is currently making us both tea :)

Josh Simmons replied to Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber

@mlemweb @cwebber Excuse me while I slide in to say you two are the best and I hope you are both having a fine Friday. Also, thank you Christine for this fantastic analysis – extremely helpful for people who care but Don't Quite Get It like me.

Les Orchard replied to Christine

@cwebber i, for one, am nodding along and occasionally clapping

forest :therian: replied to Christine

@cwebber this entire thread is enlightening so far! (and i figure liking each post manually would be kind of insane to do.)

Elliott B. Edwards replied to Christine

@cwebber indeed the `void*` is listening. Please do continue.

Bredroll replied to Christine

@cwebber being able to see blocks also let's massed malicious targeted messages be more powerful. You know which accounts to use to deliver your targeted content.

bipolaron replied to Christine

@cwebber I can't claim to understand but I'm at least reading... ;-)

Fluchtkapsel (Abonnement) replied to Christine

@cwebber I found your Easter egg. Please publish a count of all responses to this Easter egg. 🙂

socks replied to Christine

@cwebber "I found the easter egg"

But seriously, your dustycloud post is a great read and the more relaxed thread here is amazing, thank you :HoloHeartHug:

Softwarewolf replied to Christine

@cwebber I found the easter egg :yoshi_egg:

Jo Dusepo (Дусепо, دو‌سپو) replied to Christine

@cwebber Egg discovery. 🥚 🍳 🐣 I learnt something, and I don't even use BlueSky (nor want to).

aeva replied to Christine

@cwebber it is a well known fact that activitypub and bluesky are both worse because they're not written in lisp 😎

Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻‍💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵] replied to Christine

@cwebber yeah, I haven't been on Twitter in a hot minute but I lived there for years and you could see things like follows and the most telling was Likes, even before they started getting put in people's TLs, you could look it up -- which were legit the first way we found out JKR was a terf, she wasn't posting it yet or RTing even but she was constantly liking terf shit.

However that was the most detailed info you could get on someone, the one thing they didn't necessarily intend to share.

forest :therian: replied to Christine

@cwebber oh my god yeah. some friends of mine were discussing this briefly yesterday; it seems like ripe fields for harassment and public shaming

LiquidParasyte replied to Christine

@cwebber a yup

Actively exploited too

Grassroots Joe replied to Christine

@cwebber

Egads!
I'm already starting to point out the unacceptable risk of Bluesky doing to them what Twitter did in just about 3 years presents to some folks at a couple of progressive organizations I know.
This is another substantial specific risk on top of the general one for me to suggest they consider in these conversations.

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