Mastodawn

Ozzelot Jun 19

@FediTips
I keep saying it's a Twitter clone in every way possible. I keep being proven right.
@mastodonmigration

🌸 lily 🏳️‍⚧️

θΔ ⋐ & ∞Jun 19

@ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration i wish we were in a world where i could reply, "durrr, that's so obvious", but unfortunately, to some people it isn't

@FediTips @mastodonmigration

@ozzelot
What's your predicted time on Couchfucker not being banned for disgusting posts?

Ozzelot Jun 19

@dzwiedziu
I don't think about him enough to make a prediction tbh
@FediTips @mastodonmigration

@FediTips @mastodonmigration

@ozzelot
Fair enough

HeinousTugboat Jun 19

@dzwiedziu @ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration he already *was* banned. They walked it back and made it so it wouldn't happen again.

@ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration

@htugboat
Oh, lol, kind of not expected that. Do you have a writeup somewhere?

HeinousTugboat Jun 19

@dzwiedziu @ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration no write-up, but saw people talking about it on bluesky last night.

https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/114707791849276578

@htugboat
Eh, just a false positive from an impostor detector.

Give me a proper ToS ban.

@ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration

Mastodon Migration (@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online)

You may have heard VP JD Vance is now on #Bluesky https://twp.ai/4iokRP ""We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky," the company said." Would like to point out this is a fundamental weakness of a centralized US corporate platform. The company has no practical option but to 'welcome' VP Vance. In a truly decentralized network, individual instances have options on how to deal with such a situation. With Bluesky it's an all or nothing proposition.

Mastodon

Comfortably Numb Jun 19

@dzwiedziu They ban these people only when they suspect impersonation. Once they confirm it's the genuinely shitty account - they verify it.

Mastodon Migration Jun 19

@dzwiedziu @ozzelot @FediTips

He will not be banned. He is too powerful. The company would have to stand up to power, which is not going to happen.

@mastodonmigration
I know, I know. But we can have a chuckle each time the algorithm would be smarter ^_^J

@ozzelot @FediTips

Phoenix Paulina Schmid Jun 19

@ozzelot @FediTips @mastodonmigration It's basically Twitter. Bluesky and ATProto were started at Dorsey's Twitter. They only really became what they are today because Musk bought Twitter.

Aga, das Gartenzwergmammut 🦣Jun 19

@FediTips @mastodonmigration

Somit weg von Bluesky und hierher ins Fediverse. ☝️👍😊🐘🦣

McWabbit 🍋🌻🍉Jun 19

@FediTips @mastodonmigration Not surprising that they open him with open arms "to the conversation".
As if you can converse in a meaningful way with fascists. 🙄

I wonder what happens should he or anyone from that sickening regime joins a fediverse instance.

@McWabbit

If Vance joined a Fediverse instance, and the instance admin didn't kick him off, other instances would defederate that instance.

But this isn't possible on Bluesky because it's centralised.

@FediTips @McWabbit but it is decentralised and there are independently run atproto services that do block this account for anyone using them
why do you lie?

Essojadojef Jun 19

@ipg @FediTips @McWabbit Bluesky isn't decentralised as Mastodon is, tho. Like, how many users does an indie bluesky instance have on average? I'm not an expert, but I'm using an unofficial Mastodon client on an unofficial Mastodon instance. While on Bluesky I have to use the official app and the official instance.

@essojadojef @FediTips @McWabbit I use deer.social, an unofficial app, and i'm using my own "instance", with a custom relay set up

Hello feditips.

I am a moderator at this instance you see me posting from, app.wafrn.net.

We have optional (read: opt-in) bluesky integration and we have just banned JD Vance

Yes, we can do that. Because yes, Bluesky is just a bit more open than you make it out to be :)

And no, this is not done with Snarfed's bridgy, this is native in our instance software that we're building.

That's a bridge, not actual federation.

And blocking just Vance is not defederation. It does nothing to isolate the instance that is hosting him and platforming him. If you want to defederate, you need to block the entire bsky.social instance.

https://github.com/gabboman/wafrn/tree/main/packages/backend/atproto

No, we are not a bridge, here read our source code:

We ingest the firehose directly, we interact with bluesky directly. You can even view bluesky accounts like, say, bluesky's own directly: https://app.wafrn.net/blog/@bsky.app

Notice how there's no bridgy in there? You can check my profile on the bluesky side at https://bsky.app/profile/alexia.at.app.wafrn.net too ← Notice how there's no bridgy here either?

wafrn/packages/backend/atproto at main · gabboman/wafrn

Wafrn is a federated social media inspired by tumblr. Join us and have fun - gabboman/wafrn

GitHub

Also see how you cannot do something like @bsky.app@app.wafrn.net because, you guessed it, we are not a bridge :P

If you are federating, are you now going to defederate bsky.social?

Or are you okay with them platforming fascists?

Are you going to take a stand on this or not?

Well to answer that we must first look at how bsky.social is just the auto-assigned domains for new users

the underlying servers are all hosted at subdomains of .bsky.network, luckily mary-ext / mary.my.id has a neat lil' GitHub repo that collects them all in one place: https://github.com/mary-ext/atproto-scraping?tab=readme-ov-file#bluesky-hosted-servers

Now if we wanna specifically exclude content from the PDS that JD Vance is on, all I'd have to do is look up which one of these PDS instances vance's account is, nuke it from our database and stop ingesting content from that PDS through the firehose

For reference, we can use https://pdsls.dev to look up JD's server and determine it to be https://woodear.us-west.host.bsky.network/

problem is, unlike how fedi tends to work, the underlying PDS instances are assigned automatically; Vance didn't choose that PDS, it was chosen for him. As such straight up blocking this PDS from being indexed has about the same impact as blocking a large Mastodon instance like mastodon.social or something along those lines would have: We would hit lots of people that have nothing to do with vance, or are even actively blocking and shaming him

Now you are right in the observation that Bluesky PBLLC is choosing to platform vance, jesse singal and others; Their moderation is very akin to centrist beliefs, and as such quite weak in protecting especially those most vulnerable.

It's just that from a technical standpoint with how ATProto works, it doesn't quite make as much sense to block the server vance is currently on, it makes much more sense to block the account and associated did:plc identity ← This makes sure that even IF vance moves his account (although I'd doubt it) to another PDS, he will stay blocked on our infra.

#bluesky

GitHub - mary-ext/atproto-scraping at e311efe6f3351b936f1d5606119b8ea867d5c8b8

Git scraping of AT Protocol/Bluesky instances. Contribute to mary-ext/atproto-scraping development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

"As such straight up blocking this PDS from being indexed has about the same impact as blocking a large Mastodon instance like mastodon.social or something along those lines would have: We would hit lots of people that have nothing to do with vance, or are even actively blocking and shaming him"

...in other words, too big to defederate?

That's a copout answer, shame on you.

If mastodon.social was hosting Vance, other instances would be defederating them including mine.

"Now you are right in the observation that Bluesky PBLLC is choosing to platform vance, jesse singal and others; Their moderation is very akin to centrist beliefs, and as such quite weak in protecting especially those most vulnerable."

"It's just that from a technical standpoint with how ATProto works,"

Maybe you shouldn't be using ATProto then?

It's designed to give large organisations more control than small ones or individuals, and you chickening out over this is an example.

It is a bit harder to work around and the approach they took was basically "break up traditional scaling Social Media into separate hostable parts"

You're right with that too, but we are not just a PDS and index, we support both protocols and as such we would survive both Bluesky going entirely down, or a network split in the bluesky community with ease

Lyrenhex Jun 19

@FediTips @alexia This is an unnecessary focus on defederation imo: the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance.

In this case, they've assessed that there's sufficiently many innocent / good accounts which they want to maintain relationships with on bsky (or, equivalently, mastosoc) that it's worth the moderation overhead of banning the individual accounts instead to protect their users - something which is also a viable choice between ActivityPub instances, albeit rarely chosen.

Some instances are irredeemable: those whose purpose and entire user base is complicit in spreading hate and vitriol; that does not currently, ime, describe bsky overall, whose users have pushed back against Singal, Vance, and hell, even bullied Adobe off their platform (something fedi, in any other context, would usually be celebrating).

Freedom of association exists and should be one of fedi's greatest strengths. Would I agree with their assessment myself? Idk. But my opinion doesn't matter here as I'm not a user of their instance, so I'm unaffected. If I was affected, then my opinion would matter as to whether I defederated from them or not -- but again, thus far, their moderation has meant I've been unaffected by similar actors, so...

https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/112581263140051643

@lyrenhex @alexia

"the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance."

No.

This is absolutely the wrong approach to fascism and hatred. Once you leave it entirely up to individual discretion, you are opening up society to 1930s scenarios where hatred is mainstreamed.

I've tried to give an example here:

Vulnerable minorities will suffer and die if you use an individiual block approach.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈 (@FediThing@chinwag.org)

Imagine a stranger spreads lies about you. They tell everyone you're doing horrible stuff, the worst crimes imaginable. They make videos, articles, livestreams, all pushing the same lies designed to make everyone hate and fear you. Would you "just block them"? What happens when other people don't block them? When other people believe them, follow them, share their lies? What if this turns into real life abuse? If someone attacks you or your family? This is what vulnerable minorities face because of badly-moderated social media: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-02-20/facebook-accused-of-letting-activists-incite-ethnic-massacres-with-hate-and-misinformation-by-survivors-in-ethiopia/ 🙏 Please defederate threads.net or ask your server admin to do so. #Threads

Chinwag Social

@lyrenhex @alexia

It's vital that we drive fascists out of all mainstream discourse. They are not participating in good faith, they are participating in order to radicalise people to do acts of the worst kind of hatred and violence.

They don't care if individuals block them, because all they care about are those who don't block them. Those who don't block them can be radicalised into spreading hatred themselves, which radicalises even more people.

Fascism is a virus, it thrives on publicity.

Lyrenhex Jun 19

@FediTips
I feel obligated to clarify, given that you have misrepresented my words in your reply.

I did not, at any point, talk about individuals blocking fascists. I talked about instances banning the individual fascists, rather than cutting off entire instances, as a choice of moderation style. I also agree that defederation is a valid option for instances, perhaps due to moderation burden, or because the remote instance in question is irredeemable.

An instance banning Vance means, on that instance, no user is capable of being radicalised by Vance's account. This is the same as if an open-signup instance banned Vance's account upon registration. This is the same result as defederating the entire remote instance for the sole reason that Vance is on there, except that otherwise innocent users on the remote instance are not caught in the crossfire.

Many of those remote users will not be aware of Vance's presence on their instance (especially when that instance is Bluesky), and therefore cannot be considered Nazis by mere affiliation: they have not interacted with him. Those users remain on that instance, and defederating will do nothing to protect them if he attempts to radicalise them; however, a moderation team can monitor the users of that instance and continually assess the risks and whether defederating later is reasonable to them. What can, in fact, sometimes happen is the opposite: the Nazi gets bullied out of there, or -- as in the Nazi bar analogy -- the users notice the Nazi and leave of their own accord (at which point I'm sure the calculus will shift in favour of defederation); perhaps such users move to fedi in this scenario, having not been ostracised for reasons they would not otherwise have understood.

Finally:
Does your instance currently block mastodon.social? If not, as some instances have out of concerns for its moderation & size, then that is an example of what I was describing which you quoted and responded "No." to.

Fedi.Tips Jun 20

@lyrenhex

No instance should be hosting a fascist who has masked thugs literally kidnapping people off the streets without due process.

Any instance that hosts such a person is itself supporting fascism, and should be shunned by everyone. Admins should defederate it, users on that instance should leave it.

The idea is to isolate not only fascists but those who tolerate and help fascism.

Fascism has to be resisted in every way possible, while such resistance is still possible.

@FediTips @lyrenhex @alexia

azalea 🌸Jun 19

….you yourself are treating it as an individual moral discretion thing.

“vulnerable minorities will suffer and die if you use an individual block approach”
why them? why specifically them?

it just distracts from whats actually going on, makes people blame each other/themselves as individuals, rather than trying to make a societal shift

there are ways to conceptualize “yeah we should probably ban the fascists” that dont rely on hellish ideas of “purification”/Purging
…but theyre not as popular, because this society is already slanted towards purging, thats why the fascism takes this form in the first place.

but if someone tried to work out a “ban the fascists without relying on purity narratives” idea, and tried to popularize that, it would be a meaningful change, way more than “this bad thing is happening because you, specifically, were not pure enough” [which is already how this society handles things, that is the problem in the first place]

Wilfried Klaebe Jun 19

@lyrenhex If you accept one Nazi into your bar, you are a Nazi bar.

@FediTips @alexia

@FediTips @alexia if people blocked the specific bsky.network node that jd vance was on (or bsky.social), then he could just migrate his account somewhere else - keeping all his posts and followers, which will now be visible to people who blocked "the server" rather than the individual

ATproto is more decentralised than ActivityPub, users are way more than just their instance...

@FediTips @alexia it is a fundamentally different network that you are refusing to take any time to learn about because you want to make it a turf war and want to, quite frankly, act like a smug prick rather than actually *caring* about any of this

you don't care about moderation. you don't care about people's safety. you don't care about an open internet. you care about being smug online about your choice of software. which is why you want to put "shame on" people who are doing way more to take action on any of these problems than you ever will

thank you emma ur cool

irelephant Jun 20

Well, maybe not more decentalised, but its more portable, which is great.
Its possible on AP too, but its not really implemented.

ipod nano Jun 22

@ipg @FediTips @alexia thats simply not true. you are caught up in ATProto vs ActivityPub as if the technical merits of the protocol are whats important here and thats literally just not the case. there is pressure on fedi instances to not platform bad actors because of the threat of being blocked and losing their social graph, and bluesky in practice as it is today does not have that because users are by and large not split up across instances. there is a fediverse without mastodon.social, there is no usable bluesky without bsky.social. this is just network effect and entities gaining power in numbers and has nothing to do with protocol minutiae (and i think you know that?)

…in other words, too big to defederate?

not really, we defed. Mastodon.art too despite being quite large

it's moreso that it has downsides and, unlike fedi, the entire identity including the identifier and post contents can just be moved to another server

in the case of fedi, you can setup an alias, but there is no standard way to transfer the whole actor document and posts; It's even less effective on bluesky to stop indexing a particular server than it is on fedi – and there bad actors can also just move between servers! Difference is that on fedi we have to determine that a migrated account has been previously banned ourselves

in ATProto, did:plc documents move between servers and stay blocked regardless of migrations.

Lillian Violet Jun 19

@alexia @FediTips Hahaha, you really want to make the case that you're not holding water for fascist and then saying that you block one of the main anti racist instances on the fedi though because reasons. I think I can guess the reasons.

cmdr ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 19

@FediTips @alexia fedi tips, let me ask you something: despite all the warnings and continued bad decisions, how many instances are defederating fosstodon despite its size? The answer might invalidate your argument

@daemon_nova @alexia @FediTips

The Alchemist Jun 19

Precisely. I saw a number of their moderators dismissing and gas lighting the concerns of LGBTQ people in my feed

I don't see that on Bluesky. In fact when there is a trans /homophobic user there, they are dealt with swiftly by the community. Here there are often crickets, or when marginalized groups bring up concerns there is much defensiveness.

@alchemistsstudio @daemon_nova @alexia

"I don't see that on Bluesky. In fact when there is a trans /homophobic user there, they are dealt with swiftly by the community. "

Vance's first post is all about eroding trans rights, and Bluesky are sending emails to Fox News telling him how welcome he is.

cmdr ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 19

@FediTips @alchemistsstudio @alexia This is true, I'm writing a gigantic blog post about this

@FediTips @daemon_nova @alexia

The Alchemist Jun 19

I guess you care more about making a point then addressing valid concerns about trans/homophobia here on the Fediverse.

I find that sad.

JD Vance is not a moderator on Bluesky.

And believe me, the fediverse often platforms racism, transphobia, misogyny and homophobia. Here it can only be dealt with after the fact. On Bluesky its mostly dealt with proactively.

sanana🏴🏳️‍⚧️Jun 19

@alchemistsstudio @FediTips @daemon_nova @alexia yep asukafield hides him already and someone created a "JD Vance Follower" labeller so his followers can be isolated

sanana🏴🏳️‍⚧️Jun 19

@alchemistsstudio @FediTips @daemon_nova @alexia this is the closest you get to a defederation in Bluesky. Singal is the single most blocked person right now, and most people also block his followers. That made him isolated to his own bubble within Bluesky and he eventually stopped being active. He basically only crossposts to Bluesky i think

David Fleetwood - RG Admin Jun 19

@alchemistsstudio @FediTips @daemon_nova @alexia You are dodging the point by bringing up a situation that in fact many of us are actively monitoring and/or taking action on. The fact is on Bluesky you cannot do that. It's either every user has to decide to block the one account, or the instance owner blocks all of bsky. There is no in between.

The fact that you can ask that about fosstodon *is* the point, we have many layers of capabilities here and many of us have taken some action.

@daemon_nova @alexia

If Fosstodon hosted Vance, you can bet it would be defederated by people who are on the fence.

I would personally defederate any instance that hosted Vance, including mastodon.social.

I've also spent lots of time trying to discourage large instances even existing, I run a site at https://fedi.garden and account at @FediGarden to promote good smaller instances.

Fedi.Garden

Highlighting nice servers on Mastodon and the Fediverse