It should be pretty obvious that a decentralized network that many use specifically to not be connected to centralized networks houses mostly people who do not wish to have their posts bridged to B...
You only have the option if it’s your instance that you’re having defederated. You cannot prevent anyone from:
Spinning up a new instance then federating with you, then bridging the content from there to the defederated instance.
Simply using a web-scraper and a bot to post your stuff on another instance.
The second part is basically what is happening here.
Importantly, I feel people misunderstand on a fundamental level what it means to post things openly on the internet. Your only way to prevent this is simply to not post to a site that people can access freely and without a process through which you are vetting them for whether you trust them. As in: Just like IRL when you decide whether to tell things to friends or acquaintences or well, not.
But, on the web, you not only cannot prevent someone taking your public data and copying it over to wherever they so desire, you don’t even know since they could be posting it in a place that you in turn have no access to so you cannot see it there.
Copying data through a protocol that purports to be integrated with the network frames that copying as a part of that network. If it was acquired through a bridge that does not respect federation then it is dishonestly coopting the legitimacy of the fediverse. Screenshots or copy-pastes won’t have the same appearance of integration and will be intuitively understood by the reader as being lifted from another context. This happens all the time and we’re very familiar with it. If copying data were all this was about, this solution should be sufficient.
It brings fediverse users into direct contact with non-federated networks in a way that they have not consented to. The ability to post directly back & forth exposes people to the kinds of discussions that we had previously moderated out of our networks. Defederation is an important tool for limiting the access bad actors have to our discussions, and accepting a situation where we can no longer defederate neuters that tool.
This isn’t just about “information wants to be free”. This is about keeping the door closed to the bigots, and forcing them to come onto our territory if they want to talk to us, so we can kick them out the moment they show their asses.
EDIT:
Spinning up a new instance then federating with you, then bridging the content from there to the defederated instance.
This is exactly part of the problem with a bridge that doesn’t rely on federation. With threads, we could just defederate and forget about it. With a bridge like this, we’re playing whackamole with every anonymous instance that bluesky spins up, which they can do easily faster than we can detect them.
If this open source system is told to pack its bags and leave, then yes, they can do it more covertly, but if they do that then they’re doing shady shit, and that can be exposed as the shady shit that it is. The point of protesting this is saying that we won’t allow this kind of entryism to openly exist on the network.
You can’t defederate from the bridge because it’s not going to be the only instance of the bridge. Anyone will be able to host an instance of the bridge server, just like anyone can host an instance of any fedi software. Sure, you can block brid.gy, but then you also have to block every other instance, too. On the mastodon instance I use, there are 45 blocked instances of Birdsite Live, a (now defunct, one way) Twitter bridge!
Opting out with a hashtag technically works, but there is a character limit in the mastodon bio. It also depends on all bridges agreeing to the same hashtag.
Opt-in just makes a lot more sense, imo. It avoids different instances hosting duplicate mirrors and it avoids anyone (on bsky or fedi!) from having their posts scraped and mirrored to a different network without their knowledge.
Instance can block bridge domain and it will not be federated
I was referring to the
Put the text #nobridge in your profile bio, refresh your profile on your user page, and Bridgy Fed will stop bridging your account. Or feel free to send me a request privately.
That’s user level changes. You can still defed from the bridge. It actually makes this whole situation even more ridiculous. If you don’t agree with who your instance federates with you fucking leave.
In ActivityPub, you have the freedom to defederate.
This bridge doesn’t allow you to do so, I can understand why people have issues with it.
So/so.
You only have the option if it’s your instance that you’re having defederated. You cannot prevent anyone from:
The second part is basically what is happening here.
Importantly, I feel people misunderstand on a fundamental level what it means to post things openly on the internet. Your only way to prevent this is simply to not post to a site that people can access freely and without a process through which you are vetting them for whether you trust them. As in: Just like IRL when you decide whether to tell things to friends or acquaintences or well, not.
But, on the web, you not only cannot prevent someone taking your public data and copying it over to wherever they so desire, you don’t even know since they could be posting it in a place that you in turn have no access to so you cannot see it there.
There are differences:
Copying data through a protocol that purports to be integrated with the network frames that copying as a part of that network. If it was acquired through a bridge that does not respect federation then it is dishonestly coopting the legitimacy of the fediverse. Screenshots or copy-pastes won’t have the same appearance of integration and will be intuitively understood by the reader as being lifted from another context. This happens all the time and we’re very familiar with it. If copying data were all this was about, this solution should be sufficient.
It brings fediverse users into direct contact with non-federated networks in a way that they have not consented to. The ability to post directly back & forth exposes people to the kinds of discussions that we had previously moderated out of our networks. Defederation is an important tool for limiting the access bad actors have to our discussions, and accepting a situation where we can no longer defederate neuters that tool.
This isn’t just about “information wants to be free”. This is about keeping the door closed to the bigots, and forcing them to come onto our territory if they want to talk to us, so we can kick them out the moment they show their asses.
EDIT:
This is exactly part of the problem with a bridge that doesn’t rely on federation. With threads, we could just defederate and forget about it. With a bridge like this, we’re playing whackamole with every anonymous instance that bluesky spins up, which they can do easily faster than we can detect them.
If this open source system is told to pack its bags and leave, then yes, they can do it more covertly, but if they do that then they’re doing shady shit, and that can be exposed as the shady shit that it is. The point of protesting this is saying that we won’t allow this kind of entryism to openly exist on the network.
Defederate from the bridge, then?
Unless it’s parsing the HTML of your frontend, but you can probably block the user agent in that case.
@Blaze What do you mean by “doesn’t allow you to do so”? Instance can block bridge domain and it will not be federated
How is it different from the rest of instances?
@Carighan
You can’t defederate from the bridge because it’s not going to be the only instance of the bridge. Anyone will be able to host an instance of the bridge server, just like anyone can host an instance of any fedi software. Sure, you can block
brid.gy, but then you also have to block every other instance, too. On the mastodon instance I use, there are 45 blocked instances of Birdsite Live, a (now defunct, one way) Twitter bridge!Opting out with a hashtag technically works, but there is a character limit in the mastodon bio. It also depends on all bridges agreeing to the same hashtag.
Opt-in just makes a lot more sense, imo. It avoids different instances hosting duplicate mirrors and it avoids anyone (on bsky or fedi!) from having their posts scraped and mirrored to a different network without their knowledge.
I was referring to the
https://fed.brid.gy/docs#opt-out
Seems like defederation is not enough in this case, as it’s not mentioned as a way to opt-out.
That’s user level changes. You can still defed from the bridge. It actually makes this whole situation even more ridiculous. If you don’t agree with who your instance federates with you fucking leave.