Fediverse! I’ve been building a bridge to Bluesky, and they’re turning on federation soon, which means my bridge will be available soon too. You’ll be able to follow people on Bluesky from here in the fediverse, and vice versa.
Bluesky is a broad network with lots of worthwhile people and conversations! I hope you’ll give it a chance. Only fully public content is bridged, not followers-only or otherwise private posts or profiles. Still, if you want to opt out, I understand. Feel free to DM me at @snarfed (different account than this one), email me, file a GitHub issue, or put #nobridge in your profile bio.
Thank you all for the feedback, both good and bad. I knew I’d hear some pushback that this should be opt in instead of opt out, and I obviously did. I’ve also had some useful conversations and ideas on how to bridge (ahem 😄) that gap and make opt in more realistically usable, along with a few interesting compromise points between opt in and opt out. I’m grateful to everyone today who engaged and talked constructively and offered those new techniques. It’s very possible that this will land somewhere along that spectrum other than fully opt out.
I had plenty of work to do already before launch, and now I have a number of other important ideas to explore too. That’s great! I really do appreciate it. I’ll definitely check back in well before this launches.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org The GDPR applies to US-based companies that offer services to people in EU Member States. It applies to not-for-profit organisations. It will apply to you. Figure this out before launch.
Besides, consent matters even if you don't get fined for ignoring it.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org imo mastodon needs user preferences for this situation. there is a preference for disallowing your account from being indexed for searching. this is similar, but a bit different. it’s a bit strange because mastodon isn’t providing the functionality, but it kinda has to be this way to enable builders to build without being dominant enough to support an opt-in approach on their own, while it is feasible to have mastodon provide such an opt-in preference
Pagan Plus will be blocking the blue sky bridge for automaticly opting unaware users into sharing and introducing the fediverse to bluesky's moderation problems.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed sure wish the number of you thinking about this for a while had thought long enough to make it opt in for those interested rather than opt out for those not interested.
I’m looking forward to following #Bluesky accounts here. It seems like the other side has lots of knobs for twiddling opaque algorithms and all my follows, but precious few for moderating what I see from the individual “knobs” I follow there.
I think a lot of people think that Mastodon is the fediverse, and then freak out when they find out that it is actually connected to all of these other things too. I am guessing no one told them what federation is and how it works.
I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...
So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...
Fill feature-requests to your projects to build a pressure-peergroup for your devs to demonstrate the need for.
For my part...
I left the commercial serviceproviders, when i discovered the fediverse. They are destroying the internet and they are also destroying democraties all over the world with their algorithms and monetarization of their users ...
This is evident. Free democratic countries do not need humanophobe tech-bros from silicon-valley or somewhere else.
So... i won't support their business-model. Free internet works by people like me, who host their own services, and work by devs of free software, who build code for selfhosters.
Think about, whose busimess you will support with your bridge.
> I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
> As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...
>
> So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...
I am also an administrator of Friendica and for this very reason I know that I cannot ask the developers of the other social networks in the Fediverse to develop special connection bridges with other social networks.
In fact, Friendica is a software that was born "hyperconnected by design": today it supports Bluesky and Tumbir and I remind you that Friendica also supported Facebook and Twitter, at least until these social networks removed support for their APIs!
For this reason you shouldn't worry about the bridges that are about to be built: the nice thing about bridges is that they connect to other places, but in case of danger they can be blown up.
Another bridging mechanism to extend the reach and interoperability with other Fediverse protocols in the #DeSoc space is most welcome, and from the limited analysis I've been able to perform so far this is a novel approach to what some point in the future will find other Fediverse platforms incorporating in their network stacks.
So far, we've got seamless nostr interoperability to add to the other fine protocols such as Diaspora, ZOT, Nomad, OStatus, ActivityPub, and others in the mix. You might also wish to take a look at the repo for Minds to see how they've made seamless integration between the ActivityPub and nostr portions of the #Fediverse as well, and oh, pay no mind to the infantile and disparaging remarks that some small minded folks in this thread have exhibited - they are free to *defederate themselves from the Fediverse at any time.
We've been following withe some enthusiasm your project in the Fediverse-City community and it would be a pleasure to have you participate there. Your insight into the open and public aspects of Fediverse traffic in the #DeSoc world is a testament to the innovation and evolution that is possible in obviating the proprietary, privacy disrespecting, deprecated monolothic silo networks that have sowed so much acrimony and subjugation over the very people whom they seek to quantify as their business products.
You're performing a great service here, feel free to block any miscreants in this thread who don't understand the definition of public.
There are a lot of Fediverse platform developers I'm sure that you'll find welcoming, encouraging, and willing to offer assistance in formulating solutions to silence the adolescent juvenile mindsets that have been berating you in this thread for your selfless commitment to the well being of us all.
In the future, the Fediverse that we perceive and interact within will become its own heterogeneous superset of networking protocols to facilitate effortless communications between individual parties regardless of which portions of the Fediverse and their associated protocols implemented. Just like #OStatus has been largely supplanted by ActivityPub, and #ZOT has been superseded by #Nomad, the ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse will also eventually be deprecated and replaced by other stacks that will emerge from the ether of creativity. In the meantime, we'll be bridging between the various protocol stacks, and Bridgy-fed is one of those tools that serves to make that a reality :)
Thank you again, for your selfless contribution to #DeSoc and the Fediverse. it's a fantastic achievement that will serve to benefit many in both the #ATP and #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse!
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @tchambers Holy moly "moderate people, not code" is so good. So many ideas I've wanted to express but you had the skill and knowledge to express them so much better than I'd have been able to!
@soc@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I recommend then either blocking the bridge or selecting one of the options they provide to opt-out. Their # nobridge tag is thorough because it'll also opt you out of other bridges running their software, but if you don't like that you can just block their bridge's instance.
Be aware though that if you're on the fediverse and not on a whitelist instance, you will be bridged to all reasonably compatible federated networks.
@f4grx@snarfed.org@snarfed.org congratulations, you don't have to have anything to do with Bluesky. But bridges are a normal part of federation, if this feels threatening I strongly recommend you read up on how ActivityPub (the protocol used by Mastodon) works, how bridges work, and the history of bridges in the fediverse.
Odds are you'll never see any personal impact from this whatsoever unless you make friends with someone who's on Bluesky or share something that goes super viral (in which case you'll probably be thankful for this because you have zero control over screenshots, but through the bridge you'll still have access to blocking, deleting, and editing of posts)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews This sounds great. Can't wait to follow #Bluesky accounts. Please go on with your original opt-out plan and don't listen to the sad haters on #Mastodon.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews I'm undecided about Bluesky, but I was undecided about Threads. My thing with Threads was, "I'm a single person instance (now a 2 person instance briefly a 3 person instance) so the damage done while I'm not around is minimal". Bluesky seems to be trying to be not a problem, but I'm not sure they will prove to be not a problem. Thanks for your work.
@roburleconquerant@aeris@snarfed.org@snarfed.org you only need to check compliance if you're in a GDPR country (they are not), and GDPR's stance on this will be the exact same as on federation in general (as such if this is illegal than the entire fediverse is illegal to begin with)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I just came here to say that I support your work and I'm totally for building a bridge. The web should be free and so should the information in it.
You have this totally the wrong way round and are not respecting user privacy. If you're making big changes like this the default should be opted out, not opted in with a choice to opt out.
Don't be a dick like Facebook et.al do the right thing from the start.
Also we Europeans have stronger data protection laws and I suspect you're breaking them.
@gregsie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org they're already doing the right thing from the start and exceeding expectations, offering any such feature is totally abnormal for a bridge.
Maybe you should consider whether you're doing the right thing by coming into the fediverse with assumptions that bridges should be opt-in when in the community they've always been automatic, opting out purely by blocking.
And in regards to the GDPR (A) nobody outside of a GDPR country cares (B) GDPR applies as much to bridges as it does to other instances, if it's illegal for the bridge to operate then it's also going to be illegal for multiple core AP functions to operate as well.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed glad to see this already underway, sorry however to see the amount of hate you're getting from people who don't understand how the fediverse works... if they think this is bad, should I tell them about Mostr? lol
@tness16@nizarus@ghazi@snarfed.org@snarfed.org this isn't a window, it's an adjoining door. It's letting us and them talk without having to first exit the house, walk around the building and re-enter a completely different house.
And to be clear, the fediverse is both, this bridge is the fediverse in action. What you mean is ActivityPub.
@shiri Shiri that’s the most apt analogy I’ve found so far! May I appropriate that? I find myself sometimes trying to explain fediverse concepts to outsiders.
I usually resort to the villages-of-many-small-unique-buildngs vs. one-single-monolithic-high-rise allegory.
@tness16@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews@nizarus I'm a little bit torn regarding this issue. While it is good to be able to interact with new people who prefer Bluesky for whatever reason, some people don't want their posts shared outside of the fediverse.
Whatever we post here is publicly accessible to anyone anyways, so I don't think this is a completely bad idea.
Assuming the big door in this context is to join an ActivityPub server, I know several people who came here when Twitter blew up and weren't warmly welcomed. Lots of people telling them they were doing it wrong, etc. So, they left and went to places like Threads or BlueSky. This is giving them a chance to be on their instance of choice (BlueSky) and still follow their friends who did stay on ActivityPub.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge
I am not against the people of Threads or BlueSky my opinion is the management of relationships between these two very different worlds, a world of enormous capital based on profit thanks to advertisements and a free and voluntary world which seeks tranquility
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@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge with this bridge the infiltrations of artificial intelligence will go unnoticed and will spread like a cancer. There are a lot of questions for example spammers who will enter through this bridge who can stop them? The list of questions is long.
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I think it's ok to question the management and assess the risks (as long as you don't do it in a vacuum...AI is/will be an issue on ActivityPub as well). But, I also would remind you that there are real people who just want to get along and interact with their friends who happen to be on ActivityPub. This bridge allows that.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge
Let's assume that the intention is good, it's true, social relations are important, I agree. Will the bridge only allow humans to pass? or bots too?
My guess is it won't have any way to know. But I don't know if BS has a bot tag like Mastodon.
I would also say not all bots are bad. You can have bots that report traffic or weather. Governments have bots for distributing information.
I feel like a lot of the responses to this have been reactions to the worst possible scenario. That rarely happens. Reality is somewhere in the middle.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge There is good and bad everywhere, I am like anyone who loves this fediverse world as it is with these current flaws, and the motivated people who each try to improve it on their own. I hope the bridge follows the same logic.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org please consider adding #noBlueskyBridge as a valid keyword to opt-out since people might opt in some bridges and not others: #noBridge is about opting out ALL bridges which is not what one may want.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews
I have no interest of connecting into Bluesky, and I'm offended by your assumption that me, and most people, would be interested (opt-out instead of opt-in).
I call for #fediblock of bsky.brid.gy, and I'm blocking you. Thank you for listening.
@jcastroarnaud@snarfed.org@snarfed.org it basically is opt in because someone on one side or the other will have to request the content, either one of your users requests a bluesky account or a bluesky user requests your account.
And the assumption is perfectly reasonable given that it's essentially just another instance, as if Bluesky spun up an activitypub endpoint themselves. The opt-out is at least a nice gesture (though unnecessary because blocking a server is an opt out regardless).
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I trust that you will change OptOut to OptIn before your bridge goes online.
Just to make sure, I hereby prohibit the bridging of any information from this instance to BlueSky.
Furthermore, what are your plans for posts with more than 300 characters? I hope that you are not planning to forward incomplete posts to Bluesky, possibly destroying their meaning.
@zeitverschreib@snarfed.org@snarfed.org (a) the hashtag goes in your bio (b) that's not going to change, they're being nice, the norm is that bridges don't ask and the only way to have a say at all is to just block the bridge... which you can always do.
If you feel like your content needs to be opt-in to distribute, you should set all your posts private (bridge will only see them if you accept a follow request from a Bluesky user on the bridge), or you should move to a whitelist server (where your posts will only federate to explicitly approved servers)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org
I'll just respond to say, thanks for letting me know. I hope things go well, and I like the option to connect withore people. @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews
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