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We need to talk about the recently published WeDistribute Article regarding Mastodon user's response to a new federated service.

To make a long story short, someone tried setting up a website called ContentNation which would display Fediverse posts. To do so it adhered to the ActivityPub protocol, just like every Mastodon server or other Fediverse service. Due to the decentralized nature of the Fediverse this means you could view your own posts on this platform by fetching them, this, again, is possible on every Mastodon server or other Fediverse service. This is how the Fediverse works.

The creator of this platform has essentially created a free Fediverse library with no monetization (no ads, no trackers, no cookies) yet was labeled a “scraper” or “crawler” and, in my opinion, was very mistreated. You can argue about some ActivityPub features being implemented incorrectly or consent for those posts being displayed not being given, but before seeing this as malicious, try seeing it as a new Fediverse developer making mistakes.

Since through this platform you could see every post on the Fediverse, someone posted CSAM (child sexual abuse material), then (others) viewed it through the platform, and then reported ContentNation to their host for “having” CSAM.

Additionally, Kescher, the admin of CatCatNya.com, wanted to “make the crawler crash”. This is just a wonderful way to welcome new developers onto this decentralized platform.

We need to call out and condemn behavior such as this and not see a threat where there could be an opportunity to learn.

I'll leave you with this quote from the article:

Culturally, we need to accept that most people coming into the community for the first time are operating with a lack of prior knowledge. We can’t simply cross our arms and say “You should have known better”, and socially punish people, when in fact there was no way for them to learn about it.

— Sean Tilley, WeDistribute