Mastodawn

nicdex 🇨🇦 🇺🇦

#techhub defederation notice

All #birdsite instances. Birdsite is a ActivityPub compatible software that allow mastodonians to follow "twits" on Twitter. In short it re-post tweets on #mastodon.

Here's my reasoning for blocking:
1) it's confusing, we've receiced a couple of report saying these accounts are impersonating someone when in fact it's re-post from twitter original account
2) most of us left #twitter for good, not wanting to go back. Seeing tweets reposted here is defeating that.
3) most importantly these birdsite instances don't have either Twitter or the tweet's poster permission to re-post on Mastodon.

Let me know if you disagree I would be open to let one of them muted instead of blocked.

@nicdex
Thanks for letting us know. I appreciate the transparency.

😱 Brian Morearty Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex Thanks for letting us know. I don't personally follow any #birdsite instances because I haven’t left Twitter for good, so this decision doesn’t affect me.

Having said that, I don’t agree with reason #3. I doubt anyone has ever needed Twitter’s permission to re-post something on another site (although I suppose anything could happen with its new owner). And I’m even more certain you don’t need (legally or ethically) the tweet poster’s permission to re-post elsewhere since tweets are public.

😱 Brian Morearty Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex Here’s another reason to keep allowing bird bots that I hadn’t thought of. :) https://techhub.social/@awilbert@mastodon.social/109553409446305289

Adam Wilbert (@[email protected])

One of the things I would miss here on Mastodon was all of the alerts from my local infrastructure and government twitter accounts. These will likely take a very long time to make the migration. With https://bird.makeup, you can create bot accounts that put those tweets in your Mastodon timeline. For instance, I follow the Washington State Patrol account for regional weather related road closures and accident reports: @[email protected] EDIT: I Should have tagged the project's creator: @[email protected]

Mastodon

Nate Rich Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex as a new user of Mastodon, I’ve definitely been confused by these accounts. Now that I know what they are, I guess I don’t have a problem with them (though I don’t intend to follow them), but it was certainly confusing at first when I thought I was following a person and instead I was just following a bot.

Kelli Blue 📸Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex unless the real lies to the post go back to the original poster on #Twitter there’s really no reason for bot accounts reposting tweets.

If someone wants visibility on mast they can just come here and make a real account.

Curious why your apostrophes show up as code?

Kelli Blue 📸Dec 24, 2022

@kelliblue @nicdex the “replies”

nicdex 🇨🇦 🇺🇦Dec 24, 2022

@kelliblue That was my thinking too. We shouldn't bridge the two. If they want follower on Mastodon, open an account on one of the many instances.

I am unsure why the apostrophes show as code, they look fine on my side. 🤔

Ahmad 🇪🇬🇵🇸Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex I personally disagree with this decision, the birdsite still has few cool and informative accounts which I wouldn’t like getting disconnected from.
Also, you don’t Twitter nor the ‘tweeter?’ permission to copy their tweets anywhere, these tweets are posted to the public and intended to be seen by everyone.
Those who have problems with these Mastodon instances could simply block them by themselves ‘maybe provide them with the a list?’; if possible, you could do an instance wide poll to see what would the users prefer.

Thank you for being transparent.

nicdex 🇨🇦 🇺🇦Dec 24, 2022

@Dislocate6281 I am not lawyer, but I think the "it's posted public so I can do what I want with it" is not a real thing. In some cases copyright could still apply. Also in this case it's not simply "everyone can read it", but I am re-posting it on another platform, which is completely different. The notion of redistribution comes into play, thus the potential risk with material that could constitute copyright.

Again I'm no lawyer, but that's the interpretation I am making of what I read on copyright law in the digital age.

Atz Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex @Dislocate6281 ah, yeah I made the same "they're public" mistake as well. They're not - they're publicly available which is not the same. Twitter is granted a licence to use the content, techhub is not...

Ahmad 🇪🇬🇵🇸Dec 24, 2022

@atzanteol @nicdex I’m not a lawyer too, but after a simple Brave search, I came across [this answer https://law.stackexchange.com/a/27602 showing that 🐦️ states in their TOS that users’ agree to making their tweets ‘available to …. or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services’.

Also, don’t forget that these tweets aren’t hosted on techhub’s & even most of the instances which host these tweets give credit to the ops

Are tweets an intellectual property?

I am currently planning to use someone's tweet in my book & tweet won't include any images (which will made commercially available). So , first are tweets intellectual property protected by ce...

Law Stack Exchange

@nicdex personally, I fully support what you did. I came over here for real people posting.

D Wilson Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex I follow Corey Doctorow via the bird site, but he has a non-bird site account so I am OK with that. I think I lost Neal Stephenson - but I did not realize it may not have been him who set it up on a bird site

Ted Dec 24, 2022

@nicdex Are you talking about blocking accounts like @nwspittsburgh_bot ? Sorry if I misunderstand.

Atz Dec 24, 2022

I don't like the idea of simply banning a source because it's Twitter - or even external. Bridging things like IRC and slack is a time honored tradition in the OSS world. Some folks may like to follow yet-to-migrate accounts. Hate the sin not the sinner and all that.

#3 seems to be a reasonable objection - but tweets are public so it's a bit of a grey area...