#indieweb 2023-10-13

2023-10-13 UTC
gerben, eitilt, [catgirlinspace], rocto, mald0r0r-, geoffo, rvalue, timdream, dmowitz, Nuve, [tantek], wagle, win0err, ehmry and emery joined the channel
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Loqi [indienews] New post: "I love "ugly" internet sites that "can't do anything"" https://dead.garden/blog/i-love-ugly-internet-sites-that-cant-do-anything.html
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[snarfed] poll: if you have an indieweb site, and you want to opt out of bridges like Bridgy Fed, how would you expect to do that?
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[snarfed] there are a couple precedents in the fediverse. the older one is to put a tag like #nobot in your profile bio. the newer one is UI settings that set specific fields (indexable? toot#indexable) in the underlying ActivityPub actor (#indieweb-dev, apologies)
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[tantek] BridgyFed is a proxy/router, not a bot.
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[aciccarello] What would you be opting out of exactly?
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[snarfed] right, but in spirit #nobot is interpreted broadly in the fediverse afaik. I'd want to be generous in following that spirit
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[tantek] bridges are federating, and thus "opting out" is the same way people out of of federating, they can block a user on an instance or an entire instance
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[snarfed] I'd also probably honor a more specific #nobridge
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[snarfed] agreed that that's the indieweb spirit, but it's not so much the fediverse spirit. if I don't follow their spirit and piss enough people off, entire instances will start defederating with BF on the whole, and that's a big hammer I hope to avoid
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[snarfed] [aciccarello] if a user opts out, BF would just not bridge anything for them, either direction
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[aciccarello] Isn't it already opt-in since you need to set up config on your site to point the fediverse to bridgy fed?
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[snarfed] for indieweb sites yes, but not for fediverse users
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[aciccarello] Ah, on the other side. Gotcha.
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[aciccarello] Wouldn't they just block bridgy fed?
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[snarfed] or for other upcoming protocols, or eventually for web sites if I add a version that serves them on @fed.brid.gy that doesn't need them to do anything on their site
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[snarfed] afaik individual fediverse users can block individual other users but not whole instances?
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[snarfed] depending on server software I guess
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[aciccarello] Oh, I haven't actually tried that.
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[tantek] how does Bridgy Fed even impact other fediverse users if they don't explicitly opt-in by following someone who is using Bridgy Fed?
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[tantek] what's there to opt out of?
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[snarfed] you, as a non-fediverse user, can follow them, interact with them, etc
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[tantek] ah, to block follows & replies from Bridgy Fed users?
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[snarfed] right
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[snarfed] so far, the fediverse expectation seems to be mostly that users have to _opt in_ to services like BF. I'm reluctant to do that since uptake will be awful, generally very few people ever discover opt-in settings. eg Mastodon's new per-instance opt in full text search got a ton of fanfare and attention, and months later, only 2% of Mastodon users have opted in
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[snarfed] even if I do opt out, I expect some blowback since it's not opt in, but it's at least better than nothing
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[snarfed] (BF has been up and running since 2017 without either opt in or opt out, and they haven't chased me out of town with pitchforks and torches yet, but I fully expect that's only because it's small, not because they're all ok with it)
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[aciccarello] In my mind, bridgy fed is just like a mastodon instance.
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[snarfed] right, with all of the downsides, notably that other instances can defederate with BF entirely, which happens pretty often for what feels like not much more than "vibes" 😢
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[aciccarello] true, and bridgy fed isn't really moderating anything so I could easily see that happening 😞
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[snarfed] yup, hence me wanting to placate them beforehand as much as possible by offering at least opt out
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[snarfed] in other news, BF outbound @-mentions are working! huge thanks to [manton]++ for his help. writing docs now
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[tantek] whoa
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[tantek] that's worth testing out!
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[tantek] [snarfed] did you ask [manton] if he setup an opt-out option for http://micro.blog from other Fediverse users?
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[snarfed] not yet but great nudge, I'm curious now!
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[tantek] What are "services like BF"? IMO crawling/indexing/searching is not "like BF"
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "services like BF" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "services like BF is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[snarfed] [tantek] again you're technically right, but many people on the fediverse tend to use a broad brush for all of this. I fully expect they'll lump BF in with all of those tools more than draw fine distinctions
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[snarfed] I did ask the mostr.pub maintainer, will see what he says
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[snarfed] mostr.pub is interested in offering it but evidently hasn't fully prioritized it yet, https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/mostr/-/issues/26
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[aciccarello] [snarfed] Do you have any process for handling abuse via bridgy fed right now? Specifically I'm thinking of the kind of most egregious kinds of content like spamming or hate speech (which the Mastodon community has different definitions of).
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[snarfed] nope
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[snarfed] I'm reluctant to, I have minimal knowledge and zero hands on experience
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[snarfed] same w/Bridgy classic
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[snarfed] so far I've hid behind the claim that they're transports and not hosts
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[snarfed] 🤷
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[aciccarello] Yeah, definitely a hard problem with few clear-cut answers.
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[snarfed] one small silver lining is that media doesn't pass through BF at all, so I fortunately don't have to handle CSAM, no paying for PhotoDNA or reporting to NCMEC etc
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[aciccarello] Nice, that would be a big burden...
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[aciccarello] I both am curious what moderating mastodon instances is like and also wouldn't want to be exposed to the problematic posts. 🙈
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[snarfed] BF @-mention docs are up: https://fed.brid.gy/docs#mention
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[manton] [snarfed] [tantek] Yes, in http://Micro.blog you essentially “delete” your ActivityPub username and that stops posts going out or coming in to your account.
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[tantek] [manton] I mean from the other side. Like a Mastodon user that doesn't want replies or follows from http://micro.blog users.
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[tantek] [snarfed]++ excited to try BF @-mentions!
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Loqi [snarfed] has 38 karma in this channel over the last year (161 in all channels)
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[manton] [tantek] Oh. I guess from Mastodon you could block the http://micro.blog domain name. But if someone is using a custom domain name, that’s probably not going to work, unless Mastodon rejects ActivityPub requests that contain that domain name anywhere.
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Loqi friendly reminder [manton], we try to keep jargon (ActivityPub) out of this channel to make it more inviting to newcomers, can you move this to #indieweb-dev?
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[manton] Ha, oops.
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gRegor snarfed++, just tried an at-mention for you via BridgyFed
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Loqi snarfed has 39 karma in this channel over the last year (162 in all channels)
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[snarfed] gRegor got it! 🎉
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Loqi [indienews] New post: https://snarfed.org/2023-10-13_51135
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