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I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

worthdoingbadly.com

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Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#171

Post by eat_veggies »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #146
gpm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even when it is visible, it is "fuzzed," so that the location anyone (other than you) can see, is a random one, within a 10Km square. I hope the implementation of this isn't that I can start sampling your location repeatedly and average them out to find out where you live?

Oh, sure, but it would take a while. The system is not Fort Knox. If someone wants to find one of the members that badly, then there are actually easier ways, outside of the system. If we decide that it is a concern, I already know how I'd deal with it. I would add a "governor," to slow the process down. Depending on how the location is updated, that could be enough to render it worthless. People can't even see the "…

The standard solution for dating apps is to snap the location to the nearest x kilometer grid point, so that you are losing information rather than simply adding noise

https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/09/how-tinder-keeps-your-lo...

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#172

Post by tshaddox »

capableweb wrote: post #131
btown wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when B comes across a A post and reposts it to B’s followers with a call to action to harass A. If you don’t give A the ability to avoid this by influencing A’s presence on B’s feed, A will quit the platform entirely, and B will have been rewarded (with engagement) and incentivized to stir up mobs in the future. It creates a toxic environment. Blocking is an effective speed bump to this happening!

> The problem is when B comes across a A post and reposts it to B’s followers with a call to action to harass A. Realistically, there is no way to prevent this. Even if you prevent B from interacting with A via the platform itself, they can always just take a screenshot and post that. Or copy-paste the text. Or numerous other ways.

I always thought it was funny that you can run a cross a tweet that’s hidden to you because the author blocked you, but that tweet is of course visible when you’re logged out.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#173

Post by KerrAvon »

eli wrote: post #161
feanaro wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federation is the only viable choice unless you want to submit to a central power. If you want strong safety, you shouldn't be broadcasting publicly into the aether.

Right I’m saying I don’t particularly care about the governance structure of the protocol underlying my social media network. A centralized network run by a nonprofit or a b-corp and a relatively open API sounds great to me. User safety is a dealbreaker though. Pretty sure I’m not alone.

What nonprofit do you trust to run such a thing? When their employees receive targeted harassment from political vigilantes, what do you think is going to happen? When the nonprofit board is stacked with Musk or Trump acolytes, what do you think is going to happen?

Media organizations are hugely vulnerable targets and they — nonprofit or commercial — are not proving resilient to outside pressure and influence. Decentralization is the only sustainable way forward if you want diversity in social media.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#174

Post by KerrAvon »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #163
eli wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong user safety features are at odds with a federated protocol. IMHO federation is a mistake.

There's no shortage of social media that offer "user safety" (ie; arbitrary censorship, unaccountable mods, enforced thought bubbles). Internet without the training wheels should at least be an option, for those of us who have thick enough skin to dismiss the stuff we don't like without needing a self appointed authority figure to decide for us.

You really need to read https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#175

Post by dawidpotocki »

mulmen wrote: post #139
eli wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong user safety features are at odds with a federated protocol. IMHO federation is a mistake.

Federation is great when properly applied. Email is an example of federation done right. But federated social media is a mistake. Not because it is federated, but because all social media is a mistake.

As someone that self hosts email, hell no.

SMTP by itself has no authentication and we had to add crap on top of it like SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Don't have it? Oops, sorry, to spam it goes. Oh and don't forget about a reverse DNS record for your IP address with a correct domain, otherwise some mail servers will deny you. Want other mailservers to send you emails via TLS? Well, there is DANE, but that uses DNSSEC so Gmail doesn't support it. MTA-STS exists, but it's kinda silly and was made just for people that don't want DNSSEC for some reason, but at least Gmail supports it. For some reason there is also TLS-RPT for reporting about TLS use, so mail servers will send you emails that they used TLS, yay. Want your email address to have a picture? There is BIMI, but some mail servers won't display it if you don't pay few thousand dollars a year for some special certificate. Oh and it needs to be a pretty small SVG.

Oops, your email still went to spam? Maybe your IP is on some obscure blacklist for no god damn reason? Or Outlook just randomly decided to ban your IP, but will offer you to unban it automatically by filling some weird form? Or maybe Gmail decided to randomly put your reply email to spam to someone that emailed you first?

Want to retrieve your mailbox? Oh, do you want IMAP or POP? Obviously you don't want POP, you want IMAP, but you remembered that there is this "new" standard JMAP that is saner than IMAP. Oh what's that? Nobody supports it? Oh well.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#176

Post by ShamelessC »

snowoutside wrote: post #155

It's very interesting they are using camelCase for their Postgres column names instead of snake_case. I like it. Is that something folks are doing? Can it be done without "doubleQuoting" all of the response column names or without using an ORM?

That’s very interesting? Not trying to be rude, just seems very mundane to me.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#177

Post by KerrAvon »

Zetice wrote: post #153
eli wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong user safety features are at odds with a federated protocol. IMHO federation is a mistake.

It's so much easier to build this into the app (which is what you're saying) rather than try to solve this at the proto level, I'm honestly surprised they even tried to include it into the protocol. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. There's a really large trans community active on Bluesky right now, and they've been extremely vocal about what's important to them, with blocking being the thing demanded the loudest…

I’m not sure any of that is accurate. According to The Verge, they added blocking earlier than they wanted to because Matt Yglesias was getting brigaded for his anti-trans views.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#178

Post by ShamelessC »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #127
latchkey wrote: post #20

I signed into it and there was a meme about posting pictures of butts. Apparently porn still drives the internet.

That google leak about AI, part of their reasoning is civitai and stable diffusion. The subtext is “we can’t compete with AI because it’s all porn and thus super popular”.

Are you referring to the blog post from an individual employee? Not really a leak per se. or was there something else that I missed?

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#179

Post by jasmer »

chefandy wrote: post #106
jug wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also trying to stay positive. In that spirit, I really enjoy: 1. The very good documentation this early in the project! This is not common. 2. The very rapid response developer team that does it live! Once the combination of surprisingly rapid membership growth + no blocks blew up and it became an urgent moderation feature, they had blocks within weeks despite the technically challenging task due to the kind of f…

I really like your take and the one to which it responds. Mastodon is super neat and I'd love to see a broadly appealing open-source, non-commercial, decentralized social media network become dominant. However, the sharp decline in active users since the Twitter exodus supports what I've been saying for years: it is simply too much technical resistance for general social media audiences. I find it annoying and I used…

I think the issue is partly technical, but mostly product, in that neither Mastodon nor it's servers are very obvious in usage, and finally its 'too decentralized'.

We don't need 'ultra decentralization' aka a different grocery store on every corner, nor do we want one single grocery store in the middle of the city, but rather just 'choice'.

Frankly it's like most things, we just want to avoid monopolization.

That said, a slightly different Mastodon configuration and a killer use case might enable it to rise aka business adoption.

Re: I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky

#180

Post by navigate8310 »

Aeolun wrote: post #150
mcv wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm especially interested in what their new protocol offers that ActivityPub doesn't. There are more protocols than just ActivityPub, like Zot6 which focuses a lot more on nomadic identity than ActivityPub does. I'd love to know what it is that makes BlueSky's protocol better and therefore worth adding. Because if it doesn't do anything that other protocols already do, then what's the point?

Well, if it offers anything like increased speed and more useable searching thst’s good enough for me.

I don't think "useable searching" depends upon the protocol but the way how something is implemented over it.
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