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.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @tchambers Holy moly "moderate people, not code" is so good. So many ideas I've wanted to express but you had the skill and knowledge to express them so much better than I'd have been able to!
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews will you be able to e.g. reply to a Bluesky post from the Fediverse, in a way that people on Bluesky will see your reply?
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed sure wish the number of you thinking about this for a while had thought long enough to make it opt in for those interested rather than opt out for those not interested.
Pagan Plus will be blocking the blue sky bridge for automaticly opting unaware users into sharing and introducing the fediverse to bluesky's moderation problems.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @gogobonobo You need to make this opt IN not opt OUT. It absolutely fucking sucks that you want to force the majority of decentralized posts here into content for Jack fucking Dorsey.
@Cyrus@gogobonobo@snarfed.org@snarfed.org I get the feeling you think a bridge is a scraper...
Bluesky is about to start federating just under it's own protocol (their equivalent of ActivityPub which others will be able to host servers on the same as we can host servers on AP). A bridge translates between two protocols. Your content isn't getting scraped and uploaded to Bluesky.
A bridge just means that Bluesky users will show up to us like new users on this bridge. user1@bluesky will turn into something like user1.bluesky@brid.gy.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews I'm a big fan of bridges and this is the big one I've been eagerly waiting for. I'll probably add it to my wizard soon after it's available. Once the moderation issues get sorted out, I firmly believe that in the end, this will be a net positive for both networks, since Bluesky users will be able to follow and engage with the vibrant and growing communities and services here, and we'll be able to follow and engage with shitposters from Bluesky.
The moderation issues should be sorted out promptly, and I'm a little disappointed that you're going to open it up with little consideration about mod tooling, especially considering the lists and lists of known problematic users on Bluesky, from mere crypto-shills and scammers to bigots, transphobes, racists, fascists, and genocide supporters. I don't have any way to find or use Bluesky's mod lists from here so there needs to be some other way.
Plus, I'm sure Bluesky users want a way to mass-mute and mass-block bridged users, maybe even from particular instances, especially considering our ongoing tone police and reply guy problems, which have driven numerous people from here to there. I feel like this part is imminently solvable with automatically-populated moderation list(s), though.
@SuperMoosie@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed@blake to be clear, where have you signed up for my server's TOS? And I don't mean that just to be silly, it's very explicitly how the legal take works here.
You can not apply your TOS to outside users and they can't apply their TOS to you. If you take issue with it you can block the instance.
And as far as "Bridges should be opt in" that ship passed decades ago, bridges aren't remotely new, this is just probably the first you've noticed.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org honestly fuck you. Do you really expect everybody to have enough space in their bios to opt-out of your fucking bs? How many opt-out bs am I supposed to put there?
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews Glad to hear it! I would prefer to have a single account that gives me access to the wider Fediverse than have to have multiple identities across multiple networks. Thanks for your work! How do we use it?
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org Just want to say thank you for all your work on this! I'm on BlueSky as well but not comfortable with their VC backing. It's going to be nice to be able to interact with folks on there from my Mastodon account!
You do not have the resources to moderate everything that will flow over this bridge, so you shouldn't do it. Your project will force this work on other instance mods.
Opt-out is unethical because people aren't aware they're being opted-in, but also because it makes this bigger and dumps more work on other instances.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews honestly, we probably need another project like #fedipact to track things like this. I don't want to keep an eye out for every scraper/indexer/bridge project, I just want to pick an instance where my admins defed and opt everyone out. As a bonus, this would place pressure on projects to be opt-in only, so they don't get blocked on sight by whole communities.
@unlofl@snarfed.org@snarfed.org That's literally a whitelist server, you join a server that only federates with pre-approved servers.
That's the only functional way if you want to pro-actively avoid being accessible from all bridges. Though to be honest you can also just pay attention to the usernames of whomever follows you to see if it's a bridge account, not like it's hard to spot randomuser:bluesky@instance
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews I am excited for this, thank you for the time and effort you're putting into building this ActivityPub <> ATproto bridge, especially the two-way communication support! I have had very poor experiences with BlueSky myself, but I have multiple friends that prefer it and just aren't interested in Fedi. It will be amazing to be able to rebuild that part of my social circle and keep tabs with them, while still being able to utilize the filtering and timeline curation tools that only Mastodon provides right now.
@noxypaws@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews The Fediverse is already made up of literally dozens of various services that all speak the same protocol - Mastodon, Firefish, Pixelfed, Pleroma, Frendica, among many others - and users on one service can freely interact with users on another service. Personally I don't see this bridge as being anything different, really. I have essentially zero issue with a public post of mine being visible to any and all - that's the whole point of a public post on the open web, imo. As long as they hold true to their word that non-public posts won't be viewable via the bridge, I have no issues with it.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews Here's a thought... While it's not a concern for me, I'm seeing a lot of worry from others about opt-in consent for this bridge. Could you consider (either by option or by default) having the bridge send newly-followed users a message through their service saying, basically, "this is an automatic message from Bridgy Fed. <User> wants to follow you from <service> via this bridge. Do you want to allow this?" and offer always, yes, no, and full opt-out options in response. The user who initiated the follow request wouldn't see anything until the newly-followed user responded, and no response would equal a "no" answer. Could something like that be doable?
@baralheia@snarfed.org@snarfed.org that's pretty much already native with how a bridge works.
When a Bluesky user goes to follow you, you'll get a follow request from that user:instance@bridge (or similiar format username).
A lot of the confusion and freak out comes from people (a) not knowing how bridges work and (b) taking vague offense because they don't like Bluesky and think that the whole fediverse should conform to their personal standards
@shiri@snarfed.org@snarfed.org You misunderstand me - I'm well aware of how follows work on Fedi. What I'm suggesting is that there be an additional active consent prompt via DM specifically for the Bridgy Fed bridge when someone follows you through the bridge - the idea being since BlueSky is an external service and not part of the Fediverse, this not only informs users that Bridgy Fed is a thing and gives them control over whether or not they will allow their posts to be bridged over to BlueSky independent of their normal Fedi follow settings.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews I hope your creepy non-consensual fucking project gets defederated from every instance and your shitty fucking bridge becomes completely fucking useless
@hazelnot@snarfed.org@snarfed.org reporting you to your server admins for violating rule 7 on your server...
Bridges are a dime a dozen (literally there are so many out there already and this is open source so good luck de-federating them all without just joining a whitelist server), the fediverse doesn't work the way you think it does, bridges probably don't work the way you think they do, and dogpiling on someone for sharing their project for feedback, especially for offering a polite feature to exclude yourself from the bridge which no other bridge I've seen offers just makes it clear you're an asshole.
@shiri This is increasingly how I'm inclined to treat these crybullies. Ryan's doing really important work to move the Fediverse forward and these are people who just get off on abusing strangers online. They'll never be satisfied.
@hazelnot I don't get why people get angry over a freakin' bridge, yet they have no issue with the existence of projects like #BirdsiteLIVE. This is just so entitled. If you don't want to have your content available live on every place, just post it with a different privacy option smh
@hazelnot you give consent when you publicly post something online. In fact, guess what, I can see your profile and whatever you publicly post without even logging in to your instance. How? I use a web browser.
Did you also give your consent to an obscure 3rd party app to display your content inside it? No. Let's just ban them all then, just like Xitter and Reddshit did, or like Meta/Faceshit did in the 1st place.
Oh, it's so great when we have stuff to help us reach content, from friends, from people we follow, but God forbid someone else reaches our content from other parts of the internet. Those that want that are just techbros.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews Cool! Looks interesting, sucks you are getting some piss poor negative feedback but the Fediverse does like to hurt itself pretty bad with stuff like this. I hope everything goes smoothly. Don't take the fedi mob seriously.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org thanks for the heads-up! Blocked the domain on the server level. Centralized corporate social media always goes to shit, so it's nice to block it out from day 1.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org build bridges not walls is great! being able to add #nobridge to individual profiles seems like a reasonable way for folks to opt out. Thanks for all your work!
Such a service should be opt-in only, for the handful of folks who DO want their content used to generate traffic for Bluesky.
As I'm not one of those people, I am notifying you that I am opting out. It'd be nice if that request was honored, but realistically I know it won't be.
