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1. Embed this notice
   Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:29 JST Marco Rogers

   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.

   • Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     esmevane, sorry (ironchamber@mastodon.esmevane.com)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:22 JST esmevane, sorry

     in reply to

     @polotek yeah idk, I saw a lot of the behavior you’re talking about today. But I agree, it’s just a protocol and no one is abusing it. This is one of the ways it’s supposed to work. People just can’t behave I guess?

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:23 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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.

     esmevane, sorry repeated this.
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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:24 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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.

     Tim Chambers, Thomas 🔭🕹️ and GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:25 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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?

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:26 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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.

     Yohan Yukiya Seseㆍ사요한・謝雪矢 repeated this.
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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:27 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:39:28 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:40:00 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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"?

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:16:07 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @polotek only thing I'd say in response is, it's not so easy to make your own instance. It requires some time, learning, and money. Not everybody has those resources to spend on social media.

     And if your admin has to block an instance to opt out all of their users, it's not a default.

     Now, was every bit of this dogpile on the guy necessary? Probably not. But was it necessary to force everyone to yell at their admin/move instances and therefore risk losing connections/make their own server just so the bridge would have more users by default? Definitely not.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:16:20 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     That's not rhetorical. I'm really open to the possibility that I'm missing something. It seems like people who have more concerns about privacy and safety have the ability to organize their mastodon instance so it is locked down by default. And they can open up selectively. Yes, it puts more onus on you to make decisions rather than depending on other people to do the right thing. But again, I guess I thought that was the tradeoff people were making intentionally.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:16:32 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     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?

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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 21:07:32 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @polotek Hmm, a right to what? A right to have some say in how my data is spread? I don't think that's unfair.

     It's already been said down thread, but I don't think the issue is federation itself. The fedi isn't just Mastodon, and most users are aware of that. But Bluesky, like Meta, is very different from an Akkoma or a Misskey. The venture capitalists behind both Meta and Bluesky build wealth over data mining. I can see why that would upset some people, especially because it's not clear that blocking the domains would fully stop data from getting vacuumed up. Many folks came here to stop giving their data wholesale to corporate hell social media companies. I think that makes sense.

     Furthermore, I have yet to understand why this guy couldn't have made it opt-in. Why would centering consent have been so impossible, especially given the position he has placed everyone in? I, like many others, just don't think it's fair that folks should have to potentially take major actions like moving instances, starting an instance, etc just because of something they never agreed to.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 21:07:41 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone I'm not sure you have this right. What you're choosing is a world where you have to yell at every individual who ever tries to federate from outside of mastodon. There's nothing special about this one guy. Somebody else could try the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. And you don't have control over any of them.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 22:09:41 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     @polotek 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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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:08:48 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     @janl @polotek yeah but that’s sort of a separate issue? Another way to put it, this guy is bad at marketing to fediverse users.

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     Jan Lehnardt :couchdb: (janl@narrativ.es)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:08:50 JST Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @anildash @polotek the social norms are worthless the first time a bad actor joins the scene. I find it irresponsible by those folks to claim mastodon/fedi has safety properties that it clearly doesn’t have. And then yell at folks for pointing that out as if that is a sustainable safety practice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:09:31 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • CartyBoston

     @CartyBoston @polotek it’s differently bad. lol

   • Embed this notice
     CartyBoston (cartyboston@mastodon.roundpond.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:09:32 JST CartyBoston

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @anildash @polotek

     "different economic model" different or much worse?

   • Embed this notice
     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:32:47 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     • Da_Gut

     @Da_Gut just because someone makes a public post on the fedi doesn't mean they want it to end up on Bluesky. That's not an unfair way to feel.

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     Da_Gut (da_gut@dice.camp)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:32:48 JST Da_Gut

     in reply to

     • Tom Ritchford
     • carl marks
     • sbszine

     @TomSwirly @polotek @sbszine @tillshadeisgone How is he taking? If a post is marked public, its public - if you don't want it taken, don't mark it public.
     It seems the tools are already in place to deal with this.

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     Tom Ritchford (tomswirly@toot.community)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:32:49 JST Tom Ritchford

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • sbszine

     @polotek @sbszine @tillshadeisgone

     There's one of him, but he wants to take the content of millions of us.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:32:59 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • sbszine

     @sbszine @tillshadeisgone how do you think the bridge guy is doing today? You think he might be hurting at all? I mean people are equating him with Richard Spencer today.

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     sbszine (sbszine@dice.camp)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:33:00 JST sbszine

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @polotek @tillshadeisgone An angle I'd like you to think about is how you should respond when someone tells you they're hurting. You could tell them they aren't really & that they need to toughen up, or you could tell them that it's for their own good, or any number of responses. Even if you don't personally understand or relate to someone's situation, I think it's best to say 'I hear you' or show some empathy. People are really afraid of brigading from this.

   • Embed this notice
     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:58:48 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @polotek the reason you feel like nobody is hearing what you are saying and that you keep repeating yourself is that you aren't engaging the points being raised.

     You're saying there are tools available, we're saying those tools aren't readily available or equally accessible to all users. You don't seem to believe that, but it is the case.

     You're saying we're trying to control everyone's behavior, we're saying we're trying to preserve privacy and safety and consent. Opt-in has been suggested and I still don't see why that would have been so terrible or unimaginable. All I've heard you say against it is that he shouldn't have had to do it that way. Why shouldn't he? What is so important about opt out? What right does he have to forcing everyone else to respond to his actions? Why is our concern for privacy less important than his desire for participants?

     Finally, I've heard you say a few times that it's unrealistic to try and control how other people behave. Obviously we cannot control other people's decisions. But what, are you arguing we're not supposed to have any reactions to what other people do, ever? Especially when it impacts us? What kind of sense does that make?

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 00:58:49 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone you do have some say. With your admin and your local insurance. I'm not sure how many ways I have to try to explain this. Your controls over how your data spreads are in your hands. It doesn't require going around the entire world trying to prevent every other human from making decisions you don't agree with. I promise you will fail at that.

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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 02:23:29 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @polotek I mean, my personal answer is that I have done something about it. I've moved servers multiple times and currently I am primarily using an instance that I own.

     But as I mentioned earlier, the things I have that allowed me to make those decisions and follow through with those actions are not available to everybody in equal measures. Furthermore, migrating servers is considerably easier than it used to be, as I understand it. But it's an imperfect process that can still sever connections even if you're very careful about how you do it.

     When we're talking about an important project like the bridge, all I am saying is that it would be nice if the person doing it would consider those who are not as replete in the technical know how, time, and determination that makes all of these features easier to navigate. They deserve to be considered too. Their consent should have been sought through an opt-in mechanism.

     This is one of my biggest issues with a tech heavy space like the fediverse. A lot of people seem to think everyone who doesn't know as much as they do about technology are fucking idiots. Not everyone who has trouble moving servers is unintelligent or reckless with their privacy. The condescension from people who work in the field about what every hypothetical user should be able to do easily is absurd and alienating. We should be making decisions with all of our users in mind, NOT JUST THE SAVVY ONES. It's not unreasonable and it's not unfair.

     And in the category of questions not addressed, WHY is it so important that he gets to do this?! What's so hard about opt-in????

     I've asked you multiple times, and despite you claiming to have addressed every point raised to you directly, you haven't said anything about it. So I'm not going to say anything else to you until you answer.

   • Embed this notice
     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 02:23:31 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone my actually point that very few people want to address is if you care about privacy, why aren't you doing anything about your actual privacy? Why are you waiting until somebody announces that they're gonna do something you're uncomfortable with? Why aren't you rethinking the decisions about what instance you joined and what controls you have?

     "I'm concerned about harassment on the internet. I guess I have no choice but to join the dogpile on this one guy".

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 02:23:32 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone I did address the points. Very directly. I understand people have decided to yell at this one guy and try to force him to make his tool opt-in. I don't agree with that strategy, but whatever. My point is what happens when the next guy doesn't even ask you before he does it? Do you expect everyone who tries this to announce it?

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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 02:55:22 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @polotek actually, that was helpful. My last response will be this:
     Sometimes people get upset when other people do things that they don't like that affect them, even when they have no power to stop them from doing it.

     And it's great for you and for me, who have our own instances, and who have taken whatever steps we felt were necessary in light of that. So I can understand why it's not important to you.

     But there are other people, who don't have what we have, who get to have it be important to them. They get to be upset. Hell, I'm in community with some of these folks so I'm upset too.

     I guess that's just going to be baffling to some people and I'll just make my peace with it

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 02:55:31 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone I did address it. But sure. I'll do it yet again. I didn't say that I think he should be able to do this. I don't have an opinion either way. What I said was nobody can stop him. Nobody is in charge. You keep trying to have a moral argument with me and I'm politely declining. I don't have any power to dictate what that guy does and does not get to do. And I'm making decisions accordingly.

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     Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 09:22:52 JST Strypey

     in reply to

     • Orion (he/him)

     We may have griped and lamented about the change in the vibe. But we never tried to stop other people using decentralised social network software from the joining the fediverse. Because that would go against the very nature of what it is; an open federated network, where nobody needs permission from a central authority to join.

     I suspect most of the people objecting to a bridge from BlueSky have only been here a year or two. Otherwise they'd know better.

     (2/2)

     @orionkidder
     @polotek

     Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 09:22:55 JST Strypey

     in reply to

     • Orion (he/him)

     @orionkidder
     > mastodon feels small and cozy. The idea of getting bigger I think bothers some people. "Don't take away my little cafe." Understandable!

     Absolutely. That's how old school fedizens felt in 2016 when Mastodon joined the fediverse (mostly GNU social servers at the time) and newbies started flooding in from Titter, and then Tumblr.

     But we coped. The verse grew.

     It's how we felt again when Eternal Nov began;

     https://www.hughrundle.net/home-invasion/

     But we coped. The verse grew.

     (1/2)

     @polotek

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     Orion (he/him) (orionkidder@writing.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 09:22:56 JST Orion (he/him)

     in reply to

     @polotek This is all extremely insightful. Thank you for summing it up. A part of the problem I see, in addition to what you've said, is that while the point it activitypub is federation, mastodon is the most public face of it, and mastodon *feels* small and cozy. The idea of getting bigger I think bothers some people. "Don't take away my little cafe." Understandable! But imo, not accurate.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 10:02:27 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     @polotek @janl I understand your argument, but I don’t think I agree. It’s reasonable to be upset at someone for knowingly violating community norms, even if it’s technically doable.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 10:02:36 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash
     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     @anildash @janl I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be upset about this. I am arguing that being mad at this one person for doing what devs always do with open and available tech is not actually reasonable. Especially when these same people haven't taken advantage of any of the tools actually available to them to protect themselves from unwanted federation.

   • Embed this notice
     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 10:02:43 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash
     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     @anildash @janl he doesn't have to market to them. He just noticed that they left all their doors open. Even if you're trying to read the room, there's not many reasonable signals that these people are "extremists about consent".

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 10:05:00 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:
     • garry

     @repeattofade @polotek @janl yep, it’s an evolving social norm. It’s unfamiliar to people who came online in a context where protocols or formats or platforms were ultimate authority about consent. But it’s changing, and that’s fine, imo.

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     garry (repeattofade@tootr.co)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 10:05:01 JST garry

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash
     • Jan Lehnardt :couchdb:

     @polotek @anildash @janl

     there is definitely a cohort of people who use mastodon, who create publicly-available posts on publicly-available servers, using an open source protocol designed for federation and propagation of their content, who seem to get offended when something (new) comes along to federate it?

     I'm all for privacy preservation and an aversion to big tech/Threads creeping into this space, but it feels like people broadly have a different notion of control of Their Stuff online.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:44:55 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     @polotek yeah that’s fair.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:45:02 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @anildash what we disagree on is the definition of "community". Many people I've talked to about this don't give a fuck about community. They care about themselves. And they didn't know anything about what the norms were. They just hate bluesky. You're projecting the norms of your own circles onto a much wider group of people.

     Also there is a strong argument to be made that the actual community norms are to federate with everybody. Because that's what happens in almost all cases today.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:45:34 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Gabriel Pettier

     @tshirtman @polotek it’s worked at chasing off lots of devs and even more casuals. For sure.

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     Gabriel Pettier (tshirtman@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:45:35 JST Gabriel Pettier

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @polotek @anildash getting mad at everyone of them, doesn't really scale as a solution either, but the thinking must be that if the culture is propagated enough, the taboo strong enough, then people will just not do it.
     I don't think it's a great solution either.

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     Gabriel Pettier (tshirtman@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:45:36 JST Gabriel Pettier

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @polotek @anildash i think people getting mad about it are trying to create and enforce cultural norms, they don't want the tools to be needed to protect people, they want it to be taboo, and harshly punished, to do the things they think are bad for privacy.
     I think it's related to the "you can't fix social problems with technical solutions", idea, if you try to enforce things technically, there is always a way around, so they want culture to solve it instead. Except there will be outliers.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 11:45:47 JST Marco Rogers

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     @anildash you may get to the rest of my threads about this at some point. But I'll say it here as well. My argument was never to say "people don't get to be mad about this". That's not even a discussion I care about. My discussion was "being mad at this one random guy does not solve your safety problem. So now what?"

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Friday, 16-Feb-2024 01:29:42 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Gabriel Pettier
     • Andy Gocke

     @agocke @tshirtman @polotek this is only tech solving a social problem if every conversation everywhere is encrypted. You can't fix social problems with technical solutions.

   • Embed this notice
     Andy Gocke (agocke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 16-Feb-2024 01:29:43 JST Andy Gocke

     in reply to

     • Gabriel Pettier
     • Anil Dash

     @tshirtman @polotek @anildash “you can’t fix social problems with technical solutions” is a phrase I see with basically no support whatsoever. Encryption, for example, seems to be a very effective solution to “don’t snoop on private conversations.” There’s even varying levels of technical security based on how much you care.