Fediverse! I’ve been building a bridge to Bluesky, and they’re turning on federation soon, which means my bridge will be available soon too. You’ll be able to follow people on Bluesky from here in the fediverse, and vice versa.
Bluesky is a broad network with lots of worthwhile people and conversations! I hope you’ll give it a chance. Only fully public content is bridged, not followers-only or otherwise private posts or profiles. Still, if you want to opt out, I understand. Feel free to DM me at @snarfed (different account than this one), email me, file a GitHub issue, or put #nobridge in your profile bio.
@soc@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I recommend then either blocking the bridge or selecting one of the options they provide to opt-out. Their # nobridge tag is thorough because it'll also opt you out of other bridges running their software, but if you don't like that you can just block their bridge's instance.
Be aware though that if you're on the fediverse and not on a whitelist instance, you will be bridged to all reasonably compatible federated networks.
@f4grx@snarfed.org@snarfed.org congratulations, you don't have to have anything to do with Bluesky. But bridges are a normal part of federation, if this feels threatening I strongly recommend you read up on how ActivityPub (the protocol used by Mastodon) works, how bridges work, and the history of bridges in the fediverse.
Odds are you'll never see any personal impact from this whatsoever unless you make friends with someone who's on Bluesky or share something that goes super viral (in which case you'll probably be thankful for this because you have zero control over screenshots, but through the bridge you'll still have access to blocking, deleting, and editing of posts)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I’m looking forward to following #Bluesky accounts here. It seems like the other side has lots of knobs for twiddling opaque algorithms and all follows, but precious few for moderating what I see from the individual “knobs” I follow there.
@roburleconquerant@aeris@snarfed.org@snarfed.org you only need to check compliance if you're in a GDPR country (they are not), and GDPR's stance on this will be the exact same as on federation in general (as such if this is illegal than the entire fediverse is illegal to begin with)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I just came here to say that I support your work and I'm totally for building a bridge. The web should be free and so should the information in it.
You have this totally the wrong way round and are not respecting user privacy. If you're making big changes like this the default should be opted out, not opted in with a choice to opt out.
Don't be a dick like Facebook et.al do the right thing from the start.
Also we Europeans have stronger data protection laws and I suspect you're breaking them.
@gregsie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org they're already doing the right thing from the start and exceeding expectations, offering any such feature is totally abnormal for a bridge.
Maybe you should consider whether you're doing the right thing by coming into the fediverse with assumptions that bridges should be opt-in when in the community they've always been automatic, opting out purely by blocking.
And in regards to the GDPR (A) nobody outside of a GDPR country cares (B) GDPR applies as much to bridges as it does to other instances, if it's illegal for the bridge to operate then it's also going to be illegal for multiple core AP functions to operate as well.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews Trying to figure out how to access this, but @grislyeye.com@web.brid.gy doesn't seem to be working, and the docs aren't clear.
I think a lot of people think that Mastodon is the fediverse, and then freak out when they find out that it is actually connected to all of these other things too. I am guessing no one told them what federation is and how it works.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed glad to see this already underway, sorry however to see the amount of hate you're getting from people who don't understand how the fediverse works... if they think this is bad, should I tell them about Mostr? lol
@tness16@nizarus@ghazi@snarfed.org@snarfed.org this isn't a window, it's an adjoining door. It's letting us and them talk without having to first exit the house, walk around the building and re-enter a completely different house.
And to be clear, the fediverse is both, this bridge is the fediverse in action. What you mean is ActivityPub.
@shiri Shiri that’s the most apt analogy I’ve found so far! May I appropriate that? I find myself sometimes trying to explain fediverse concepts to outsiders.
I usually resort to the villages-of-many-small-unique-buildngs vs. one-single-monolithic-high-rise allegory.
@tness16@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews@nizarus I'm a little bit torn regarding this issue. While it is good to be able to interact with new people who prefer Bluesky for whatever reason, some people don't want their posts shared outside of the fediverse.
Whatever we post here is publicly accessible to anyone anyways, so I don't think this is a completely bad idea.
Assuming the big door in this context is to join an ActivityPub server, I know several people who came here when Twitter blew up and weren't warmly welcomed. Lots of people telling them they were doing it wrong, etc. So, they left and went to places like Threads or BlueSky. This is giving them a chance to be on their instance of choice (BlueSky) and still follow their friends who did stay on ActivityPub.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge
I am not against the people of Threads or BlueSky my opinion is the management of relationships between these two very different worlds, a world of enormous capital based on profit thanks to advertisements and a free and voluntary world which seeks tranquility
1/2
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge with this bridge the infiltrations of artificial intelligence will go unnoticed and will spread like a cancer. There are a lot of questions for example spammers who will enter through this bridge who can stop them? The list of questions is long.
2/2
I think it's ok to question the management and assess the risks (as long as you don't do it in a vacuum...AI is/will be an issue on ActivityPub as well). But, I also would remind you that there are real people who just want to get along and interact with their friends who happen to be on ActivityPub. This bridge allows that.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge
Let's assume that the intention is good, it's true, social relations are important, I agree. Will the bridge only allow humans to pass? or bots too?
My guess is it won't have any way to know. But I don't know if BS has a bot tag like Mastodon.
I would also say not all bots are bad. You can have bots that report traffic or weather. Governments have bots for distributing information.
I feel like a lot of the responses to this have been reactions to the worst possible scenario. That rarely happens. Reality is somewhere in the middle.
@jamie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge There is good and bad everywhere, I am like anyone who loves this fediverse world as it is with these current flaws, and the motivated people who each try to improve it on their own. I hope the bridge follows the same logic.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews
I have no interest of connecting into Bluesky, and I'm offended by your assumption that me, and most people, would be interested (opt-out instead of opt-in).
I call for #fediblock of bsky.brid.gy, and I'm blocking you. Thank you for listening.
@jcastroarnaud@snarfed.org@snarfed.org it basically is opt in because someone on one side or the other will have to request the content, either one of your users requests a bluesky account or a bluesky user requests your account.
And the assumption is perfectly reasonable given that it's essentially just another instance, as if Bluesky spun up an activitypub endpoint themselves. The opt-out is at least a nice gesture (though unnecessary because blocking a server is an opt out regardless).
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I trust that you will change OptOut to OptIn before your bridge goes online.
Just to make sure, I hereby prohibit the bridging of any information from this instance to BlueSky.
Furthermore, what are your plans for posts with more than 300 characters? I hope that you are not planning to forward incomplete posts to Bluesky, possibly destroying their meaning.
@zeitverschreib@snarfed.org@snarfed.org (a) the hashtag goes in your bio (b) that's not going to change, they're being nice, the norm is that bridges don't ask and the only way to have a say at all is to just block the bridge... which you can always do.
If you feel like your content needs to be opt-in to distribute, you should set all your posts private (bridge will only see them if you accept a follow request from a Bluesky user on the bridge), or you should move to a whitelist server (where your posts will only federate to explicitly approved servers)
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org
I'll just respond to say, thanks for letting me know. I hope things go well, and I like the option to connect withore people. @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews
@allen099@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @Gargron I sent a message to snarfed telling him what I thought of his outrageous "opt-out" option ...what a way to pad the numbers count for bluesky!
Who would want to deal with an organization that has the audacity to pull this stunt!
@Snowshadow@Gargron Agree! Though for me, part of the appeal of being in an open world (Fediverse) is not having someone sign me up for something I didn’t ask for. It’s a simple as that.
@Snowshadow@allen099 you are not being signed up for anything with this, it's just another instance translating between the two protocols and all normal tools still apply.
The arrogance is thinking you can make public posts on a federate platform and dictate how they federate.
I'll also note that this isn't a corporate person doing this, it's a private individual. Bluesky has promised to federate under it's own protocol since it's beginning, once it does so you will see many instances on the bluesky protocol much the same as we're talking on the activitypub protocol, this bridge just connects the two protocols and a lot of people are interested in implementing such tools because that's the whole point of federation.
@shiri@Snowshadow Am I understanding correctly that you think it’s arrogant to simply ask an instance moderator a question, while not threatening to burn the village down?
It’s cool that people are interested. Where there’s one side, there’s another. The point we’re trying to make is this should be OptIn BECAUSE it’s created by a private entity, that’s all. It’s not an outrageous take.
The point we’re trying to make is this should be OptIn BECAUSE it’s created by a private entity, that’s all. It’s not an outrageous take.
Out of the over 46,000 independently operated servers on the fediverse, how many are run by private entities? I don't know but I am guessing that it is more than 1.
At least with Bluesky and Threads, it is easy to block. But I am guessing that it would be nearly impossible to figure out which of the 46,000 ActivityPub-enabled servers are commercial and which are not.
And Threads will be connecting to ActivityPub natively. And so will WordPress. Both will bring in millions of users.
I respect people's choice to block whomever they want, but the ActivityPub part of the fediverse already has commercial servers in it. Bluesky would just be one more, which you are free to block.
@proximacentauri@allen099@Gargron Maybe...
What irritates me is that I left social media for quite a period of time b/c I was fed up with the nonsense going on in corp. owned social media platforms. So I found out about fediverse and now threads is here and bluesky.
That's fine...I just don't want to see any of it or interact with those instances and I have blocked them...I don't want that toxic element in my TL.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews lovely, thanks for creating this, looking forward to talking to old and new friends on #Bluesky from the comfort of my #Mastodon account !! so please by any means opt me in (should it come to it)
@retiolus@snarfed.org@snarfed.org Biggest problem is that there are plenty (and likely more) people who don't want to deal with bots but who don't mind bridges
The hashtags in description is unfortunately just a limitation of AP until they come up with some other method to set a flag like that. (Think of it like how hashtags themselves weren't a feature anywhere until after people had already been using them in their posts on Twitter for quite a while)
Hi @snarfed.org@snarfed.org
as a Friendica user I already have the possibility to connect to the world of Bluesky, but I'm really happy that you are creating a useful tool for all other users of the fediverse!
Bluesky is a project with many critical issues and with volumes that can be problematic to manage for the instances of the Fediverse, but it is objectively a very interesting environment that is attracting the best of the users who had remained on Twitter but who unfortunately had not managed to settle into the architecture of the Fediverse.
Every project designed to create bridges deserves to be respected and supported.
