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.
I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...
So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...
Fill feature-requests to your projects to build a pressure-peergroup for your devs to demonstrate the need for.
For my part...
I left the commercial serviceproviders, when i discovered the fediverse. They are destroying the internet and they are also destroying democraties all over the world with their algorithms and monetarization of their users ...
This is evident. Free democratic countries do not need humanophobe tech-bros from silicon-valley or somewhere else.
So... i won't support their business-model. Free internet works by people like me, who host their own services, and work by devs of free software, who build code for selfhosters.
Think about, whose busimess you will support with your bridge.
> I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
> As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...
>
> So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...
I am also an administrator of Friendica and for this very reason I know that I cannot ask the developers of the other social networks in the Fediverse to develop special connection bridges with other social networks.
In fact, Friendica is a software that was born "hyperconnected by design": today it supports Bluesky and Tumbir and I remind you that Friendica also supported Facebook and Twitter, at least until these social networks removed support for their APIs!
For this reason you shouldn't worry about the bridges that are about to be built: the nice thing about bridges is that they connect to other places, but in case of danger they can be blown up.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews To the people on this thread who talk about GDPR violations: I’d be interested in the specific clause in the GDPR that you believe a bridge like this violates. Curious.
Johannes, There isn't one - they're talking out of their ass.
They're just making noise and emotionally distressed to discover that this is how the #Fediverse currently works, and always has worked - and it's not just the #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse, or even the Fediverse - it's the entire #Internet...
"If you affect a public post, you have no expectation of privacy".
For those who still feel some sense of having been offended, I welcome them to unplug their computers and toss their iPhones and Androids into the trash. That's really their only option, and they'll come to that realization some day, maybe, and it is of no consequence for anyone else in the world if they don't.
@tallship The counterpoint is that people generally respect CC licenses (weakly) attached to their creations. (For people != the AI crowd)
We need something similar to that — well, inspired by — for posts. I’m sure Ryan would gladly honor “do not propagate to for-profit entities”, for example, if it could be attached to a post.
Yes, we do try to respect the Creative Commons licenses - it's a great thing.
And statistically, studies have revealed that we also do our very best to respect the wishes of publishers who rebuke and refuse to allow their works in a distribution channel where items are DRM encoded.
People should have more faith in the intentions of folks trying to do good, methinks :)
Another bridging mechanism to extend the reach and interoperability with other Fediverse protocols in the #DeSoc space is most welcome, and from the limited analysis I've been able to perform so far this is a novel approach to what some point in the future will find other Fediverse platforms incorporating in their network stacks.
So far, we've got seamless nostr interoperability to add to the other fine protocols such as Diaspora, ZOT, Nomad, OStatus, ActivityPub, and others in the mix. You might also wish to take a look at the repo for Minds to see how they've made seamless integration between the ActivityPub and nostr portions of the #Fediverse as well, and oh, pay no mind to the infantile and disparaging remarks that some small minded folks in this thread have exhibited - they are free to *defederate themselves from the Fediverse at any time.
We've been following withe some enthusiasm your project in the Fediverse-City community and it would be a pleasure to have you participate there. Your insight into the open and public aspects of Fediverse traffic in the #DeSoc world is a testament to the innovation and evolution that is possible in obviating the proprietary, privacy disrespecting, deprecated monolothic silo networks that have sowed so much acrimony and subjugation over the very people whom they seek to quantify as their business products.
You're performing a great service here, feel free to block any miscreants in this thread who don't understand the definition of public.
There are a lot of Fediverse platform developers I'm sure that you'll find welcoming, encouraging, and willing to offer assistance in formulating solutions to silence the adolescent juvenile mindsets that have been berating you in this thread for your selfless commitment to the well being of us all.
In the future, the Fediverse that we perceive and interact within will become its own heterogeneous superset of networking protocols to facilitate effortless communications between individual parties regardless of which portions of the Fediverse and their associated protocols implemented. Just like #OStatus has been largely supplanted by ActivityPub, and #ZOT has been superseded by #Nomad, the ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse will also eventually be deprecated and replaced by other stacks that will emerge from the ether of creativity. In the meantime, we'll be bridging between the various protocol stacks, and Bridgy-fed is one of those tools that serves to make that a reality :)
Thank you again, for your selfless contribution to #DeSoc and the Fediverse. it's a fantastic achievement that will serve to benefit many in both the #ATP and #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse!
Wow. This is just such an epically bad call. I can't imagine reading the room this badly.
ANY privacy advocate you talk to - and I really suggest you talk to a few - will give you the burning side-eye for thinking you have the right to force folks to opt out.
And you should definitely look into the fact that you may be violating the GDPR. Someone else certainly will.
@grrrr_shark@snarfed.org@snarfed.org it neither violates the GDPR (and if you think it does you either woefully misunderstand what a bridge is or what the GDPR covers), and as a privacy advocate... any privacy advocate that actually cares about their privacy rather than the vague concept of privacy would shrug at this.
You posted publicly and it's visible on another instance... that's all that's happening here.
I've noticed others below seem to think this is something like a web scraper or that it will do something invasive? A bridge just translates between protocols, once this is up it just means that bluesky users and activitypub users would be able to talk to eachother through this instance with it translating requests between the two (ie. user1@bluesky wants to follow user2@mastodon, they'd follow something like user2.mastodon@brid.gy; user2 will get a follow request from something like user1.bluesky@brid.gy; if they accept then they'll be sharing their posts between eachother)
@jeremiah@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @sarae The entire fediverse is opt-out structure by default.
If you want opt-in I recommend moving to or setting up a whitelist instance (an instance configured to only federate with instances added to the whitelist, meaning all instances are opt-in by your admin).
@shiri@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @sarae Sure, but this isn't bridging to another Fediverse server.
I have tools within Mastodon to deal with other ActivityPub servers without talking to admins. This isn't that. This is bridging to corporate networks which is what many of us are explicitly trying to avoid.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews This should be opt-in, not opt-out. BlueSky doesn't use ActivityPub and, therefore, the tools users have to protect themselves on Mastodon are incompatible with your bridge.
I'll be talking with the other moderators and admins of furry-focused servers to inform them of this new risk to marginalized users and I'm confident they'll be taking appropriate actions to keep our communities safe.
@KinkyKobolds@snarfed.org@snarfed.org The entire fediverse is opt-out structure by default.
If you want opt-in I recommend moving to or setting up a whitelist instance (an instance configured to only federate with instances added to the whitelist, meaning all instances are opt-in by your admin).
@shiri I know that public posting means it's readable to anyone on the Internet who finds it. But as long as it's on Mastodon, I still have controls to edit and remove things as necessary. My account being mirrored to another service without my consent removes the ability to control my content.
And besides, the right to reproduce a work belongs to a copyright holder. All it takes is one person who can afford to lawyer up and this becomes a prohibitively expensive lesson in copyright law.
@KinkyKobolds@shiri@activitypubblueskybridge this is an excellent point. The bridge would effectively remove a significant layer of control that is inherent in the Fediverse and ActivityPub.
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews A lot of people are upset about this but ya'll know, straight up, if your feed is live & people not auth'd can read your server feed you don't have privacy. Mastodon and the fediverse in general never said anything about expectations of privacy.
Snarfed here could have been a bad actor and never told you anything and as far as I know it's in the clear.
If you don't like it, block the bridge and move on.
A bad actor, for example, is likely already gathering your servers data and training it on a LLM as you have no power over THEIR server; you have volunteered that data by federating. Your ToS means nothing. Oops.
Someone truly worried about privacy would not be federating at all.
If you have active Admins and you can bring your concerns to their table, or they pay attention to #mastoadmin and do their due diligence, you will have a “safer” server.
@shanie@fediversenews@chris@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs Unlike every other social media, you can just spin up your own instance and be your own admin. Unless you’re paying your admin, you have zero right to demand or expect anything from them and it’s on you as a user to whom this (or any other issue) is important to follow that stuff.
If you don’t agree with how your admin runs their instance, fire up your own
@dogzilla@shanie@fediversenews@chris@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs I never said anything about “demanding” anything from anyone. If you have a shit admin though, or believe they are not healthy for you, yes, feel free to change servers. Only weakness is you “lose” your previous posts but whatever.
But if you are an admin and don’t at least sit and listen to your server, why are you an admin of social media?
@dogzilla@chris@shanie basically always. You're either constantly consciously deciding what level of compromise you're willing to make or you're giving away your privacy and freaking out over nothing.
eh ... as with Threads + fedipact, there's likely a spectrum where the louder voices can mask the "middle of the road" voices, for better or worse. Anti-Bridge-Pact?
What exactly is the difference between this and a new instance? I'm genuinely unclear?
Like, do kbin instances respect search indexing preferences? What about other commercial instances like moth?
@maegul@shlee@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews Agreed. I just want to actually interact with people I actually know on other platforms from the comfort of Mastodon. I miss people I actually know in real life.
Yea, for me, the whole "I want a relatively anti-social social media" motive of many on masto seems like something that requires better institutional/infrastructural devices rather than merely distributing it amongst defed, personal blocks and outcries over opt-in/opt-out.
At some point, it seems, some people just want a different system than what this is. Like a closed FOSS Discord.
It's just that the amount of noise and "drama" necessary to maintain this constant vigilance against what a decentralised social media protocol naturally allows seems like a potential dead end with diminishing returns.
EG, many on bsky that those here would like to talk to have probably left here because of this "noise" however much they align with the values here.
@maegul@shlee@snarfed.org@snarfed.org @jbwharris I've seen this for a while, many people on here are highly xenophobic. They found a place for themselves and they now want to close the gates on anyone else joining, seeing "foreigners" (other platforms) as threats rather than a foundational part of how this service works.
On top of that, they often demand ideological purity... it's actually one of the reasons Twitter survives and people use other shitty platforms... because they hopped on here and found only hostility to any way in which their social norms differed from what people considered acceptable.
@maegul
I just checked and Mastodon does have a whitelist mode instances can use of they really want control over their data.
"This mode is intended for private use only, such as in academic institutions or internal company networks, as it effectively creates a data silo, which is contrary to Mastodon's mission of decentralization. This setting was known as WHITELIST_MODE prior to 3.1."
@johentsch@snarfed.org@snarfed.org If you take issue with your post being federated then you really should note that you've opted in already by posting publicly and on a non-whitelist server.
@shiri
OK it's good that you're going around explaining to people what a bridge is but I don't see a lot effort on your side to understand the deeper implications that people associate with bsky, the ones that sets it apart from "worse bridges". As a privacy advocate you must have come across people who take issue with their friends storing photos of them on gPhotos? That's the spirit. Yes, a bridge translates: we eschew what follows after. @snarfed.org@snarfed.org
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.
@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!
@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 @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 @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 @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.
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 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!
