The uproar over the #mastodon/ #bluesky / #blueskybridge thing is confusing to me.
The bridge only works on posts that are set to public.
By setting your posts to public, you've already explicitly allowed your posts to be available to the open internet, as well as any Mastodon instance that your instance hasn't defederated w/.
In other words, when posts are set to public, Mastodon default federates your stuff to all instances in "opt-out" mode. How is the bridge meaningfully different?
"The bridge only works on posts that are set to public"
What about the people who interact with me and my "posts set to public"?
Here's the fullness of the entire problem: our bright-eyed coder bro has written his killer app and only after the fact is giving any thought to the people on #Mastodon who are --> not on #Bluesky <-- for a very conscious and specific reason
But none of that seems to bother any of the bright-eyed coder bros
My current boilerplate on the issue:
The entire #Bluesky <--> #Fediverse #Bridge issue can be distilled down to:
1) Bryan writes a Bluesky <--> Fediverse bridge application
2) Bryan has total administrative control over said bridge application
3) Bryan effectively has a man-in-the-middle viewport into all bi-directional traffic through his bridge - don't try to claim this isn't true
4) What does Bryan do with the participant IDs and traffic content he can view?
5) Is there any notice or consent involved other than opt-in re: Bryan's monitoring and potentially using said bridge traffic?
6) Is there any option to opt-out for --> third parties <-- who are participating in a public Mastodon conversation *they* believe is on one end only and do not want to be bridged over to the opposite side of Bryan's bridge?
@FinchHaven Don't #2 and #3 apply to all Mastodon instance admins?
As for #6, would domain-blocking of the bridge on the individual and/or instance level accomplish that?
"Don't #2 and #3 apply to all #Mastodon instance admins?"
This has nothing to do with instance admins
This has entirely to do with the feature set included in software by a software developer
"As for #6, would domain-blocking of the #Bridge on the individual and/or instance level accomplish that?"
Why does it always have to fall to the individual to defend themselves against global software issues?
How many people are even following this issue on Mastodon out of 933,498 Monthly Average Users?
How many of them *don't* know about domain blocking because they have had to defend themselves against this sort of thing - assuming they know about it to begin with?
And this is not the only example of broad scraping and aggregation: do a search for #Newsmast and look at the Profiles
They're aggregating content by hashtag and repackaging/distributing it as their own
No opt-in, no permission asked
Just a done deal
That's neither a "telegram" nor "email"
It's not one-to-one
That's a Mastodon screenshot from two days ago
Do the search today; I"m sure the Follow numbers are bigger
It may not bother you personally but that is *not* the contract the vast majority of Mastodon users agreed-to:
"You can scrape my posts by the hashtags I use and repackage them for your own self-promotion. Oh! And you want everyone to please make a donation to your foundation."
cc @andrew
Andrew
FinchHaven sfba
AndrewFelix 🐀🏴☠️ 🇵🇸