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Somehow found myself arguing with someone who talks about "the fediverse" like it is a) a singular thing and b) a separate thing from bluesky. It helped remind me of a fundamental truth about talking to people who are mad on the internet. What they're mad about is entirely uncorrelated with how well they understand the issues. Anger is an *emotion*. So is fear.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Nora, Tech Aspect
Nora, Tech Aspect
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i'm curious why you don't see it as seperate from Bluesky, if you have the bandwidth to share?
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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In my commentary about mastodon and bluesky today, I didn't say all that much about my thoughts on the core issues of privacy and consent. That's what most people actually want to fight about. For people who are worried about that, anybody who isn't immediately on their side is the enemy. I'm used to that specific internet dynamic, so I'm not that bothered by it.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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What I'm realizing is that I don't wanna talk about that though. Not because I don't care. I do. But there are much smarter people who have spent way more time on those issues. It's a deep and gnarly topic. So I don't have anything to say about it that is smarter than what is already being said by people who are actually *working* on the issues.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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Instead, my musings from the peanut gallery are driven by something else that is bothering me as I observe people's evolving relationship with The Fediverse™.

To me, one of the fundamental things to understand about the concept of decentralization and federation is that nobody is "in charge". There's no central authority to appeal to.

in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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In short, who are you yelling at? Who do you expect to "fix" things for you? Right now people are coming down on the guy who is building the bridge to bluesky. That specific guy. They're yelling at him and telling him to make different decisions to protect their personal privacy. Is that what people think they signed up for with the fediverse? Fighting with other individual humans and trying to force them to do what you want?
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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I keep feeling like I'm missing something. But it seems clear to me that fighting with every other individual in the whole world until you carve out the specific level of visibility that you are comfortable with is a solution that doesn't scale very well.

More importantly though. I thought the whole point of the fediverse as a concept was that each of us can chose a platform that gives us the tools we want so that we're *not* beholden to the choices that other people make.

in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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What's wild about the bluesky bridge thing is that it seems to be trying to follow all of the rules. It's using the same ActivityPub protocol as everyone else. It has a name and the author is trying to make sure it respects everybody else's moderation settings. You can block it or defederate from it. But very few people who I've seen talking about it seem to be placated by that. They're still mad for some reason.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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As I was puzzling through that, I landed on what I think is a core issue. People do not feel that the tools necessary to protect themselves *are in their hands*. They're still operating as if they have to ask other people to do the right thing. (Or yell at them as the case may be). Is that a failure of the way mastodon is set up? Have we not gone far enough with "you get to decide how your presence on the internet works"?
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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If you don't want your content to be bridged to bluesky without your consent, you shouldn't have to fight with anybody except the admin on your local mastodon instance. You can yell at them all you want. I have fewer judgments about that.

Many people have yelled at the bridge guy telling him to make his tool opt-in by default. He shouldn't have to do that. You can make your own instance opt-out by default. Why is that not a preferable solution?

in reply to Marco Rogers

Anil Dash
Anil Dash
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all other things aside, what matters isn’t the technical architecture but the social norms. Mastodon is full of folks who are extremists (by modern tech standards) about consent, and who want defaults to be opt-in for nearly everything. In particular, Bluesky has both a different economic model and a different privacy model than the rest of the fediverse, so it makes sense to start with consent because the decision to federate is irrevocable in terms of data leakage.

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