Mastodawn

Dave xxxiv 🇨🇦📷🔭✨12h ago

Mastodon Migration

How About Some AI With Your Bluesky?

A tale of two social networks.

Last week some enterprising Mastodon account was discovered to be scraping posts to feed to an AI for the purpose of helping people navigate the Fediverse. The response was swift. The alarm went out. The account was widely blocked and shunned.

Yesterday to great fanfare #Bluesky announced, as a new corporate feature, all posts would be scraped and an AI would now help users navigate the ATmosphere.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/bluesky-leans-into-ai-with-attie-an-app-for-building-custom-feeds/

Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, an app for building custom feeds | TechCrunch

Bluesky’s new app Attie uses AI to help people build custom feeds the open social networking protocol atproto.

TechCrunch

@mastodonmigration So glad I never created an account over there. Just as fucked up as the bird site

datenwolf 10h ago

@mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney

Create an account that you'll never use, just to occupy the namespace, and prevent impersonators from taking the handle.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 9h ago

@datenwolf @mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney it doesnt even matter. People who matter to you know on which platforms you are. The others do not matter. Stop thinking "exposure" and "fame". Think " friends".

datenwolf 9h ago

@mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney @f4grx

It's not about exposure. It's about impersonation. Without occupying the namespace, some malicious actor could just set up a bot to mirror your activity on – say – the Fediverse, and give the people you think you know the impression, that you're on that other service, too.

And when the time is ripe, do nefarious stuff with that.

datenwolf 9h ago

@mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney @f4grx

Create the account, set it to private, lock it, and archive. But occupy that namespace!

Annie in Progress 4h ago

@datenwolf @mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney @f4grx

Could you tell me how to set the acct to private? I'm not seeing the setting. I just want to occupy the namespace.

foundseed 1h ago

@LikeItOrLumpIt @datenwolf @mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney @f4grx the private setting I've seen disallows the public from viewing the profile, while still leaving it open to see and follow by bskies. Did they do an update for actual private account settings???

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 7h ago

@datenwolf @mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney people will quickly know it's a bot. Dont worry.

@lawyersgunsnmoney @mastodonmigration

I mean, I never quite got the appeal.

"Come join this site created by birdsite folks, it's like the birdsite before wannabe-square-mustache-guy took over!"

vs.

"Come join the fediverse, where we by and large care about each other and watch out for each other, and cooperate to build a better world."

"NAAAAAAH! Gimme the corporate crap, it's all I know, and I cannot grow as a person, or something."

Flippin' heck, people. 🤦‍♂️

@rl_dane @mastodonmigration I know, right?

Knightmare 12h ago

@mastodonmigration oh no.

Nicole Parsons 12h ago

@mastodonmigration

#TranslatedFromTheRepublican

"Authoritarian billionaires continue efforts to steal all human knowledge, then rent it back to us."

https://gizmodo.com/sam-altman-says-intelligence-will-be-a-utility-and-hes-just-the-man-to-collect-the-bills-2000732953

https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-ai-utility-electricity-water-openai-2026-3

Refuse to pay a ransom to billionaires who struggle with executive function & who suffer from decision-making disorders

https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-sam-altman-adult-chat-sora-pivot-2026-3

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/movies/the-ai-doc-movie-anthropic-openai-claude-chatgpt.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/02/sam-altman-train-a-human/686120/

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/popular-twitter-user-explains-how-sam-altmans-openai-may-have-caused-the-worst-consumer-hardware-crisis-with-purchase-orders-that-were-never-real/articleshow/129879770.cms

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-ai-labor

Sam Altman Says Intelligence Will Be a Utility, and He's Just the Man to Collect the Bills

"Intelligence too cheap to meter" doesn't quite come across the way Altman might intend.

Gizmodo

@Npars01 @mastodonmigration

Simply criminal…

:FreeBSD:7h ago

@Npars01 @mastodonmigration

Scam Altman still at it...

ItsComplicated 12h ago

@mastodonmigration

I’m sick of companies ignoring the fact many of us don’t want our information scraped and thrown in databases somewhere, for who knows what.

The Frog 6h ago

@NotKnown @mastodonmigration

The "help navigate" is more like "mass surveillance"...

Gillinger 12h ago

@mastodonmigration @MxVerda
Who could have foreseen that this would happen? 🤔

Mx Verda 11h ago

@mastodonmigration What’s the name of the masto account doing the scraping?

Maddad ☑️11h ago

@mastodonmigration

Which mastodon account (s) are scraping?

Paul Chambers🚧10h ago

RE: https://mastodon.tomodori.net/@vga256/116296743458567673

@maddad [email protected] was the scraper. Search for post "alpaca.gold" to find posts about the issue.

@mastodonmigration

This post has the link to the LLM announcement post in it: https://alpaca.gold/@seldo/116229243453108157

@paul @maddad @mastodonmigration Appreciate it!

Maddad ☑️9h ago

@chad @paul @mastodonmigration

trying to block it, but I can't.

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@maddad I opened up your instance and searched for the account [email protected] and it shows up in the search

Not sure why you can't

@chad @mastodonmigration

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@chad For what it is worth, the dev of that AI timeline tool says it now supports several ways to stop it.

Zeitgeist now:
* respects the `noindex` preference if set on your account
* respects #noindex or #nobots if those are in your bio
* sends a unique user-agent ("Zeitgeist/1.0") if you want to block the client entirely.

@maddad @mastodonmigration

Maddad ☑️9h ago

@paul @chad @mastodonmigration

I was just there reading that and I set the #noindex and #nobots in my bio now.

How could he make that account so you can't just block it?

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@maddad I replied to your other comment re blocking. Not sure what issue is causing you that. You should be able to block the account like any other account

Maddad ☑️9h ago

Thats what I thought too. There is no block option when I try to block it

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@maddad Just to clarify, There is no such fediverse account for anything zeitgeist.blue. The account to block is the [email protected] account, if that is the issue.

Maddad ☑️9h ago

Ok, my bad lol, I went to it using the account name and was able to block it.

Thanks for the tips. 👍

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@maddad K. Glad you sorted it out. lol.

Maddad ☑️9h ago

I must be low on caffeine 😆

Paul Chambers🚧9h ago

@maddad Do you need me to call 911 and have them dispatch Juan Valdez and his mule your way with some emergency coffee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7To4Gkwkjk8

1991 Colombian Coffee TV Commercial

YouTube

Maddad ☑️8h ago

😂 it's ok, I have my caffeine drip attached now 😆

The alpaca server only has nine users so I blocked the whole thing.

Paul Chambers🚧8h ago

@BobLefridge I did also but I also added the user-agent to my robots file. Not sure how easy it is for others now to spin it up separate, since the source code is on github, I think. @maddad

Maddad ☑️8h ago

@BobLefridge @paul

Never thought about that, found it and blocked the server.
Why on earth would anyone think it's ok to scrape accounts here.

Paul Chambers🚧7h ago

@maddad Just looked, and they also added a #NoAI tag for Mastodon

🔗 Add #noai to Mastodon opt-out bio tags
https://github.com/seldo/zeitgeist/commit/90b09ad6f683d7059ef4a5c4a3883704a7e71057
@mastodonmigration

That might be something good for people to add to their bios

Maddad ☑️3h ago

@paul @BobLefridge @mastodonmigration

Thats excellent 👍

Mastodon Migration 3h ago

@paul @chad @maddad

Which amounts to "opt-out" for something that if it exists at all really should be "opt-in."

Ben Todd 4h ago

I left a message on the original thread and it looks like he's blocked me 😂

@maddad @mastodonmigration @chad

Maddad ☑️3h ago

@monkeyben @paul @mastodonmigration @chad

Was he trying to twitterize Mastodon? 😂

Cairo Braga 11h ago

@mastodonmigration hey @snarfed @snarfed.org @bsky.brid.gy will bridged accounts be affected by this, as in: will we be scraped as well?

@cairobraga Good question.

@mastodonmigration @snarfed @bsky.brid.gy @snarfed.org

Mastodon Migration 8h ago

@jandi @cairobraga @snarfed @bsky.brid.gy @snarfed.org

Very good question.

@mastodonmigration Awaiting Mike's "this is OK, actually".

Mastodon Migration 10h ago

He already has. Wonder if the two are related 🤔

https://social.coop/@cwebber/116295733832599557

@mastodonmigration Cheers. I couldn't get all the way through that.

Mastodon Migration 4h ago

No. Couldn't either. Typical AI promo word salad.

In #Flancia we'll meet 10h ago

@mastodonmigration FWIW these sound like two different failure modes to me; if you're referring to the account I think you are referring to, I think the behaviour of the community was substandard and some of it was based on a misunderstanding of what this developer was doing. Shunning is not good behavior in this case.

⠠⠵ avuko 10h ago

@flancian @mastodonmigration if this is referring to the AI idea I think it is referring to, the problem was not the person, it was the idea behind the “feature”, as well as the engagement with the community (or the lack thereof) and the functionality of the tool itself.

No need to pile on the person, but no reason to not respond as a community to what’s being shoved onto/into us without consent either.

@flancian @mastodonmigration He wasn't shunned.
People blocked him and his tool, because according to him that was the only way to opt-out from him sending their posts to a third party for processing.

RaysOfRed 10h ago

@mastodonmigration I thought one of the reasons people were migrating was to avoid Grok lmao

George Liquor, American 9h ago

@mastodonmigration shockedpikachu.jpg

@mastodonmigration john bluesky: "ok bros, hear me out. it's like twitter..."

bros: "yeah?"

john bluesky: "yeah."

🇪🇺 Paul Schoonhoven 🍋🍉9h ago

@mastodonmigration @heleenkuiper well ... I use BS also to scrape some news content. 😅

It keeps my time line free of to much news I don't really like..