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Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

bsky.social

461–470 of 471 posts

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Mastodon do it?

By externalizing costs onto server owners, the same way they do everything. It's not a good way to do it, though, and it's worse for Bluesky because it implies that in order to move your PDS (one of the best features of the design), you'd have to pick up the freight for video that already exists. If PDS mobility is important, attaching large economic strings to that is a big disincentive.

> By externalizing costs onto server owners, the same way they do everything.

I mean that's the whole point of the Fediverse, a federated network of independent nodes. Of course the nodes take care of the functionality.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#462
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf. The problem with censorship is censors are subservient to his nation and don't get to pick victims at his will? "demonstrates ... that they can expect there to be actual consequences" ? You really must hate the concept of a modern nation and social contract. Post 18th century world started with peasants beheading kings and gutting his body into pieces so no single individual shall have any meaningful parts of it…

Sure, telling people who openly advocate for the death of people in your group to take their opinions elsewhere is exactly like peasants beheading kings or kings throwing people they didn't like into the pit. I'm not even sure how to begin responding to such a creative interpretation of what I said.

> throwing them out demonstrates to the other people in your club house that they can expect there to be actual consequences to that kind of behavior, allowing them to feel safe knowing that they won't have to worry about it.

> telling people who openly advocate for the death of people in your group to take their opinions elsewhere

These parts of your comments imply your default model of safety is a safe haven in a barbarian land with perimeter walls and armed guards and a benevolent property owner. Clearly your thinking is privatized violence is integral to safety. You might be thinking that's what freedom of speech is, as in freedom implemented in speech domain, but that is wrong. Freedom of speech as this phrase is used is something different from that.

Freedom of speech means speech is always taken as unserious as practically possible. Absolute freedom of speech would mean even advocating for death, or however terrible the messaging might be, are taken as weird jokes until an action is taken.

This is not the matter of thresholds and analogies, your model of freedom is just wrong.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The element of moderation that you consider essential -- the latitude to apply subjective judgments that rely on knowing the specific identities of the participants -- is precisely the element that I do not trust moderators to perform. That this moderation strategy would prevent the use of all slurs (even reappropriated ones) sounds like a feature to me, not a bug.

"That this moderation strategy would prevent the use of all slurs (even reappropriated ones) sounds like a feature to me, not a bug." You're proposing erring on the side of censorship to avoid some gray areas. While this is a reasonable position, it doesn't satisfy some ideal of neutrality and won't really avoid the gray areas, and so still would require subjective judgement.

No, I'm proposing erring on the side of consistency. I think it's likely that this strategy would result in less "censorship" in some cases, and more in others.

What we have now is a system where, on many platforms, moderators often put their thumbs on the scale and decide that certain groups need more protection than others. Generalizing about or disparaging certain groups is ok, but the sensitivities of other groups are considered sacrosanct and must be deferred to.

Like I said, draw the line anywhere you like. If it applies to everyone equally, I am happy. I am fine with things that require subjective judgment, as long as that subjective judgment is behind a screen that conceals identity.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That this moderation strategy would prevent the use of all slurs (even reappropriated ones) sounds like a feature to me, not a bug." You're proposing erring on the side of censorship to avoid some gray areas. While this is a reasonable position, it doesn't satisfy some ideal of neutrality and won't really avoid the gray areas, and so still would require subjective judgement.

For sure. While at the same time allowing the more clever variety of abuser to sail on past. In practice, almost any nominally "neutral" position ends up allowing an enormous amount of abuse. Which is why you'll see most platforms that start with a free-speech maximalism approach coming up with a lot of nuance and exceptions over time. And those that don't turn into cesspools. Most people are pretty great, but modera…

If detecting abuse requires knowing the identities of the people involved, it sounds like another way of saying that some behaviors are fine if they are directed at certain people, but "abuse" if directed at other people.

Which is ultimately what I object to.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#465

I really like the fresh ideas in Bluesky, in this case especially the different ideas regarding federation in comparison to Mastodon. I've tried Mastodon extensively and it is lacking in so many ways. There's no algorithmic feed other than "popular" (on large instances) which shows the same 10 people posting for months in a row, daily. Hence, discovery of people and content is very hard. No content or people are reco…

All good points and I've experienced similar.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#466
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What thing is consent? Mastodon is an odd sort of network, there's more blocking than I expected and it somehow seems as if blocking is an intrinsic part of the design. In Mastodon, blocking looks like a choice one makes for whatever reasons, not an unloved measure needed for fighting abuse. As if the design doesn't tell users "you can follow people in the fediverse" but rather "your ability to follow people in the f…

> what makes bluesky different from some unvetted mastodon site run by weird people? Absolutely nothing! Fediverse admins block unmoderated sites all the time , for being unmoderated. Bluesky is just, effectively, one unmoderated instance that everyone will block by default.

Assuming your assertions are correct (they're not, but let's assume they are) - what's the problem with the bridge being opt-out if everyone will block it anyway?

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public is public. And someone else will just go build an opt-out (or maybe even no opt-out!) bridge.

Nah. Consent is a thing and this wasn't consensual. Yes, the posts were publicly accessible, but the intent of posting to Mastodon isn't to have it show up automatically on another network. It's technically possible, yes. It's still a dick thing to do and it pissed people off. And again, it wasn't about Bluesky in particular. If Google announced that they were going to ingest all Mastodon content and post it in a new…

> If Google announced that they were going to ingest all Mastodon content and post it in a new Google Groups kind of thing, they'd be pretty understandably upset about that, too.

Except that's not what the bridge does, at all. It only follows you on someone's behalf when someone on Bluesky specifically requests to follow you through the bridge.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalny’s wife was just banned and then shadow banned. There are countless examples of leftist accounts getting banned just for being critical about Musk. It’s absolutely conservative cesspool. Nazis can are literally posting 14 words propaganda all day long and there are no consequences.

How do you get shadow banned after getting banned ?!?

They publicly claimed to unban her so they could convince people it was a mistake, and then they shadow banned her.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalny’s wife was just banned and then shadow banned. There are countless examples of leftist accounts getting banned just for being critical about Musk. It’s absolutely conservative cesspool. Nazis can are literally posting 14 words propaganda all day long and there are no consequences.

To think that Navalny or his wife are in any way leftists is insane. They were leaning more towards nationalism (just for Russia instead of the US). In the face of current events though, that can be overlooked as it is not a narrative that serves western interest. But to give an anecdote about an alternative, I rarely see any bigotry on Mastodon. Instances which allow that or don't moderate it correctly get block lis…

They’re left of Putin so I dunno what you’re talking about.

Putin is a fascist dictator and Navalny wanted democratic rule.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that the tool in question is Bridgy Fed. Bridgy Fed has existed for a long time and is a very useful tool. Its alternative, Bridgy, has also been used to bridge between closed social networks and the open IndieWeb. Why are Fediverse people only angry about it now? It's an open protocol. If you want privacy, don't publish something for the entire world to see. That's just basic common sense. At the very…

In general, people on the Fediverse want to be able to make local moderation decisions; the way that extends to other federated sites is by not federating with them . Most Fediverse sites will not federate with sites that have bad or nonexistent moderation (or simply incompatible moderation policies). Bluesky's architecture basically means that it is one big unmoderated site. The normal reaction of Fediverse admins i…

I agree that they should block it, I just don't think they should be harassing Bridgy Fed developers. The GitHub issues were pretty insane.
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