Aurynn Shawso I've started seeing Mastodon apps fetch posts in threads from other servers directly, bypassing server blocks.
This is ... this is deeply concerning to me.
Simon Zerafa@simonzerafa @jerry Server admins could block apps that do this in their webserver, by checking for the useragent? beyond that, telling app devs to not do this
@simonzerafa @jerry I didn't say it's a good idea, it's just the only one I can think of
Jerry 🦙💝🦙@simonzerafa @aurynn I believe this is symptomatic of the big misunderstanding of blocks and defederation.
@simonzerafa @aurynn I’m less convinced this is the result of an attempt to circumvent blocks and more of a side effect of how the apps are collecting posts, combined with the reality that blocking an instance doesn’t actually block the instance (by default, at least)
@jerry @simonzerafa I agree that it's not meant for block circumvention, it just has that effect and will expose users to hate speech and other garbage and I won't have the ability to suppress that for my users.
Which is *bad*.
Alexander Bochmann@aurynn @jerry @simonzerafa Unauthenticated apps can only fetch the same posts that are visible on the public web interface via the API. Doing that removes some work for the app user (opening a post in a browser to see the thread).
If the home instance of the user is blocked, they shouldn't be able to make their instance pull the post in order to interact with it, but as others have said, blocks are leaky, and while secure mode / AUTHORIZED_FETCH should make it better, that has some additional drawbacks...
I'm not saying this is good, or the way it should be. But the public API functionality has been there all the time, just with very few apps actually using it. Mastodon itself doing such a bad job at completing threads drives development of alternative solutions.
@galaxis @jerry @simonzerafa I had to go and disable authorized_fetch since it was breaking bird.makeup, which is where the civil defence are mirrored, for the current state of emergency in Auckland.
I agree, this is a place where Mastodon core should have a gossip protocol feature, and communicate more of this stuff.