NOTICE: Your account may soon be bridged to #Bluesky whether or not you want it to be.
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NOTICE: Your account may soon be bridged to #Bluesky whether or not you want it to be.
According to @LaurensHof's excellent Fediverse Report (https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-121/) changes have been made to the Bluesky bridge.
"Bridgy Fed, the bridging software that connects ActivityPub with ATProto, has gotten an update where server admins can opt-in to the bridge for their entire server."
Thought Bluesky bridge opt-in vs opt-out was settled. Why has this been done without soliciting community input?
Just trying to understand the rationale behind this software change. People expressed their strong desire to not have BridgyFed automatically connect them to Bluesky. They wanted to make that decision for themselves. So BridgyFed now thinks that people will welcome having their instance admin make that decision for them. Is that the idea?
Edit: Also, what Mastodon instances want this capability? Are user's notified when their account is bridged?
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Just trying to understand the rationale behind this software change. People expressed their strong desire to not have BridgyFed automatically connect them to Bluesky. They wanted to make that decision for themselves. So BridgyFed now thinks that people will welcome having their instance admin make that decision for them. Is that the idea?
Edit: Also, what Mastodon instances want this capability? Are user's notified when their account is bridged?
@mastodonmigration As evident from their discussion in https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1305 certainly there is a use case for small organizations or instances mostly serving bots (based on feeds). Also, instance admins has always been able to force all users follow a specific account (I know mstdn.ca does it often for announcements), so there is no change other than allowing admins to decide the format of the Bluesky handle. The bot follows them back so users are notified and can unfollow the bot as well.
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@mastodonmigration As evident from their discussion in https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1305 certainly there is a use case for small organizations or instances mostly serving bots (based on feeds). Also, instance admins has always been able to force all users follow a specific account (I know mstdn.ca does it often for announcements), so there is no change other than allowing admins to decide the format of the Bluesky handle. The bot follows them back so users are notified and can unfollow the bot as well.
Thank you for posting the Github discussion. While some of the discussion is certainly about 'small' instances, the primary rationale seems to be this 'critical mass' argument which we heard during the original debate. It seems the argument is that not enough people are bridging, (only 4% on mastodon.social) so the solution is to enable the instance admin bridge them without their consent.
Would love to hear from some admins like @stux and @jerry on this.
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Thank you for posting the Github discussion. While some of the discussion is certainly about 'small' instances, the primary rationale seems to be this 'critical mass' argument which we heard during the original debate. It seems the argument is that not enough people are bridging, (only 4% on mastodon.social) so the solution is to enable the instance admin bridge them without their consent.
Would love to hear from some admins like @stux and @jerry on this.
@mastodonmigration @austin @jerry Hmm.. i kinda would like to see everything bridged from both Masto and Bsky I guess
A lot of people on Bsky also don't bridge, i wonder what number is bigger, Masto or Bsky in bridges?
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@mastodonmigration @austin @jerry Hmm.. i kinda would like to see everything bridged from both Masto and Bsky I guess
A lot of people on Bsky also don't bridge, i wonder what number is bigger, Masto or Bsky in bridges?
Feel like this is the problem with this software change. Many people do not want to bridge to Bluesky for whatever reasons. Giving admins the ability to make this decision is just another way of eliminating consent.
How would you determine if this were something mstdn.social would do? How would you inform your users?
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Feel like this is the problem with this software change. Many people do not want to bridge to Bluesky for whatever reasons. Giving admins the ability to make this decision is just another way of eliminating consent.
How would you determine if this were something mstdn.social would do? How would you inform your users?
@mastodonmigration
Yup true that.. I dont like that either! Hm.. Perhaps awareness should be a little better so people can make a better choice -
@mastodonmigration
Yup true that.. I dont like that either! Hm.. Perhaps awareness should be a little better so people can make a better choiceBottom line IMO. When you change something from opt-in to opt-out you are effectively doing something without user consent. Something like bridging to another network which has very different standards, privacy policies, and data rights should only be done by the individual.
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@mastodonmigration @stux @austin I wasn’t aware of that change. Personally, I follow many people on bsky from here, and I have a bunch of followers over there, and I know many people here value the interaction between the two universes. I’ll have to put more than the 5 minutes of thought into since I saw this thread, but my initial take is that I’ll enable the federation.
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@mastodonmigration @stux @austin I wasn’t aware of that change. Personally, I follow many people on bsky from here, and I have a bunch of followers over there, and I know many people here value the interaction between the two universes. I’ll have to put more than the 5 minutes of thought into since I saw this thread, but my initial take is that I’ll enable the federation.
@jerry bridging is already enabled on infosec for those who want it (I bridge my posts). The new functionality allows you as admin to changing from the current opt-in model (where people's posts are only bridged if they enable it) to opt-out -- in other words, you as admin can opt everybody on infosec in.
To me that seems like a huge privacy and consent violation; and, given that Bridgy Fed still only has limited trust and safety supprt (for example no way for a birdged account to subscribe to a Bluesky blocklist) it's also a safety risk. When I did a poll last year, most people who responded wanted Bridgy Fed to be opt in. Of course the fediverse's structure means that, each instance gets to choose their own norms, so I can see why admins that don't want to prioritize consent, safety, and privacy were clamoring for this functionality. But hopefully that's not you!
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@jerry bridging is already enabled on infosec for those who want it (I bridge my posts). The new functionality allows you as admin to changing from the current opt-in model (where people's posts are only bridged if they enable it) to opt-out -- in other words, you as admin can opt everybody on infosec in.
To me that seems like a huge privacy and consent violation; and, given that Bridgy Fed still only has limited trust and safety supprt (for example no way for a birdged account to subscribe to a Bluesky blocklist) it's also a safety risk. When I did a poll last year, most people who responded wanted Bridgy Fed to be opt in. Of course the fediverse's structure means that, each instance gets to choose their own norms, so I can see why admins that don't want to prioritize consent, safety, and privacy were clamoring for this functionality. But hopefully that's not you!
@thenexusofprivacy @austin if leaving it as it works today is an option, then that's my preference. I haven't see what's actually changing
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@thenexusofprivacy @austin if leaving it as it works today is an option, then that's my preference. I haven't see what's actually changing
My impression is that nothing has changed unless you as an admin explicitly decide to programmatically opt people in -- see the discussion here https://fed.brid.gy/docs#enable-api Which is good!
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My impression is that nothing has changed unless you as an admin explicitly decide to programmatically opt people in -- see the discussion here https://fed.brid.gy/docs#enable-api Which is good!
@thenexusofprivacy @jerry @austin I haven’t gotten a response from Mastodon Migration yet, but how do I block the bridgy fucks before my admin does something stupid and opts everyone in. He opted into threads over objections and promises to do otherwise and I’m not doing that again. I do not want Bluski putting Vance on and invading this place, including specifically my account and sharing anything of mine. Appreciate any help
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@thenexusofprivacy @jerry @austin I haven’t gotten a response from Mastodon Migration yet, but how do I block the bridgy fucks before my admin does something stupid and opts everyone in. He opted into threads over objections and promises to do otherwise and I’m not doing that again. I do not want Bluski putting Vance on and invading this place, including specifically my account and sharing anything of mine. Appreciate any help
@lawyersgunsnmoney You can block @bsky.brid.gy -- more details at https://fed.brid.gy/docs#opt-out
