#indieweb 2024-01-20

2024-01-20 UTC
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gRegor That might be a better topic for #indieweb-dev
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[tantek] +1
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r4dhexe_ yeah, was just curious
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gRegor [snarfed], reading now, good post so far. Would it be fair to say the value of Bridgy Fed letting people follow any site is they can see the posts in Mastodon (or whichever service) instead of subscribing in a reader?
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gRegor Trying to fully wrap my head around the use cases
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gRegor If I was not set up with BF already, I think I would be pretty surprised to find my posts appearing there, like the fromjason.xyz discussion you linked.
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[KevinMarks] [snarfed] the post is a solid discussion with a lot of good links. The challenge is always the tension between "did anyone see my post?" and "who are all these people shit-talking me?"
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[KevinMarks] It's very hard to tell when the context has collapsed in code.
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gRegor what is context collapse
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Loqi Context collapse refers to when a social media user who belongs to a specific peer or social group shares a post publicly but with the expectation that the audience understands the social norms and practices of the group creating a “private” post in public https://indieweb.org/context_collapse
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[snarfed] thanks [KevinMarks] gRegor!
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[snarfed] gRegor for web sites that haven't explicitly opted in? I guess I'd see the use case as just as much for web site owners themselves, to have an automatic default presence in the fediverse
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[snarfed] but yeah, for existing fediverse users, it's following them, but also replying, liking, reposting, etc
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[snarfed] all the full bidirectional interactivity
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gRegor I'm thinking of sites that have never heard of BF and maybe don't support interactivity like some of our building blocks. If people start following example.com via BF and liking/replying, those interactions are just out there and the site owner has no idea.
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[KevinMarks] The challenge with a default open system is that you end up complicit in abuse and spam, and filtering that becomes a big part of your day.
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[tantek] [snarfed] I agree with the comment that there's no reason to give N**is any more airtime even "brand" mentions than actually necessary for specific real world examples
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[snarfed] gRegor true! just the same as if a site doesn't support webmentions and someone replies on their own site
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[snarfed] [tantek] sure! will update
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[snarfed] [KevinMarks] true! hence "My primary goal is to empower each network's existing moderation ecosystem" https://fed.brid.gy/docs#moderation-policy
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gRegor Hmm. If they reply on their site, though, they're looking at my site which I control, not a profile that appears to be me and maybe has my photo
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[snarfed] sure
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[snarfed] again though, lines get fuzzy fast. feed readers arguably do the same thing, right?
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capjamesg[d] Good morning, IndieWeb!
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petermolnar Another one bites the dust: ://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/
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[lifeofpablo] Good morning capjamesg[d]
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gRegor Not sure, the feed is also something the publisher controls, and doesn't have the interactive layer on top of it that federation adds.
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gRegor I'm not super opposed, just thinking through it. The main advantage seems to be letting people subscribe to a feed, but in a federated social app instead of a reader
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Loqi hey gRegor, I don't mean to be a bother, but federation, federated seems like a better conversation for #indieweb-dev
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gRegor ah, I tried :)
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[KevinMarks] https://library.xandra.cc/long-live-webpages/
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[Murray] [gRegorLove] just a thought on whether the author controls the feed: I feel like this is increasingly not necessarily the case. The feed reader I use (and they're far from alone here) uses explicit feeds (e.g. RSS) for initial discovery and then as a fallback. Most of the content I see has actually been scraped by their bots. I don't love this strategy, but I do understand why it exists. And it also very much adds an interactive layer on top,
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[Murray] too, with note taking and other "social" features; social readers would do this even more, right?
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[Murray] (also dammit, I tried just @ing "gRegor" there and apparently Slack autocorrected it 😒
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[snarfed] even non-IndieWeb social readers have their own social layers, including commenting etc, eg NewsBlur and others
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capjamesg[d] https://aeon.co/videos/why-strive-stephen-fry-reads-nick-caves-letter-on-the-threat-of-computed-creativity
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capjamesg[d] A great speech.
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capjamesg[d] Or, rather, letter.
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[tantek] gRegor ironically I think Loqi's nudge is good indirect feedback for [snarfed]'s post, depending on what audience it's directed at
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[tantek] [snarfed] the use of the informalism "I'd kill for a" is IMO unnecessarily violent, especially in today's both global wars context and frankly local-to-the-US mass shootings trends :( (from your blog post, context: "First off, I’d kill for a thorough, "). Can you rephrase to use a non-violent method of emphasis?
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gRegor Clarifying: by "interactivity" I mean a narrower social media type interaction. None of those readers are creating a *public* profile that appears to be the person. Posting a reply on your site, social media, or a commenting system the reader has isn't the same as what I was thinking.
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gRegor Probably poor phrasing, it's not the interaction itself that I'm concerned about, but mainly the appearance of a public profile in an app where largely an account means "a person set this account up"
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[snarfed] [tantek] great point, will fix
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[snarfed] gRegor you're definitely not alone in that concern, eg https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/111737319152217700
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Loqi [preview] [fromjason.xyz 🖤] Someone set up a bridge account for my blog and has been spamming links on #Mastodon of all my posts, every couple of hours or so since yesterday. Of course, this gives server admins a big incentive to block my domain. The way the bridge account is s... https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/737/316/562/475/231/original/fbb918d8f2b7718d.jpeg
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gRegor Yeah, I saw that. Glad it seemed to resolve well, too
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[snarfed] I feel like the fediverse has had a bit of a double standard there. a bunch of RSS-to-fediverse bridges have been around forever, none have required web site owner opt in, and fediverse people have generally liked them. everyone _loved_ https://rss-parrot.net/ 's launch recently because it had nice UX. no one complained about the lack of opt in
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[snarfed] I suspect this is because it was bringing _other_ stuff _into_ the fediverse, and web sites generally weren't seen as "people," or as the in-group worth protecting
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gRegor Yeah, that's interesting. Honestly I didn't realize before this there were multiple things like that
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[snarfed] (obviously just my speculation though)
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gRegor Is that one always showing posts in the timeline with the RSS Parrot name and icon like their screenshot?
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Loqi hey [snarfed], gRegor, we try to keep dev talk (RSS) out of this channel, can you move to #indieweb-dev?
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gRegor ack
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[snarfed] this isn't dev, RSS is part of that product's name. happy to stay here)
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[snarfed] gRegor I think yes
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gRegor So that's a key difference for my concern and (speculating) fromjason's.
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[snarfed] the profile picture?
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gRegor Let me see if I can actually browse some examples on Mastodon
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[snarfed] (I'm still a bit salty that everyone loved this with all the other tools. only when it was suddenly seen as "happening to a fediverse person," ie part of the in group, did they suddenly flip and pull out the pitchforks, and just at BF. one of the commenters literally said "justifiable homicide." 🙁 but that may just be me overreacting)
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gRegor Ok, it's midway what I was thinking: https://mastodon.social/@taiwantrailsandtales.com@rss-parrot.net it's the service's icon, the site's title, but also a warning up front in the bio.
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gRegor Ouch, what an awful comment from them :/
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capjamesg[d] 😬
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aaronpk yeah... not great
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capjamesg[d] I don’t think that’s overreacting [snarfed].
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aaronpk It really is quite the double standard
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[snarfed] and if we agree with gRegor that there's still context collapse and user surprise here, then that applies to backfeed too, right?
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[snarfed] and does it also apply to the "native" fediverse federating back and forth with WordPress blogs running the plugin?
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[snarfed] I really do get that there are user concerns and issues here, but I just don't see how to draw bright lines. and it really doesn't make sense to methat they should be drawn based on which underlying network protocols are used, or which server software
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[snarfed] I guess that's the whole point of my post 😁
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[snarfed] (fwiw that thread did inspire me to add a loud label to non-opted-in BF fediverse profiles, and a louder warning to their user pages on http://fed.brid.gy)
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gRegor Nice!
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gRegor I was just noticing on the parrot one above, when I refresh it goes to a page on the service that makes it even more clear since it has their branding, etc. That's something I hadn't thought of and BF is probably doing as well.
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[snarfed] BF goes to each site itself
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[snarfed] I think that's what we want for opted in people, but I could reconsider it for non opted in
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gRegor Makes sense
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aaronpk hm, i suppose i should opt my site out since my blog is already able to be followed directly
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[snarfed] aaronpk I have your site special cased to not send wms for AP activity 😆
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[snarfed] happy to just opt it out entirely for you if you want
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aaronpk i don't fully understand what that means but yes probably best
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[snarfed] will do
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[tantek] Agreed on the double-standard and good insights gRegor & [snarfed]
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[tantek] FWIW I think that's worth it's own follow up post [snarfed]
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[snarfed] maybe! not sure I want to poke that hornet's nest more
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[tantek] The fediverse double-standard: consent for me, but not for thee
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[snarfed] right
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[tantek] [snarfed] the Fediverse/Mastodon is all about making points with hot takes. Like Twitter before it, that's what gets the retoots
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[snarfed] lol
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capjamesg[d] That’s what will have me leave Mastodon.
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[tantek] Needs the crying outline face meme guy
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[tantek] Do Fediverse folks complain about the summaries of their posts showing up in Link Previews outside of the Fediverse without their permission?
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[tantek] How about the summaries of their posts being indexed in search on sites/services outside of the Fediverse (eg Slack)?
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[snarfed] my experience is that at least some of the fediverse is willfully ignorant of even Google indexing their posts
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[snarfed] there's a widespread myth that most of the fediverse's robots.txt blocks search engines
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[snarfed] (I've downloaded them all, or at least >25k servers' worth, and the vast majority do not block search engines)
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[0x3b0b] Setting aside for the moment a somewhat baffling array of different levels of understanding throughout the fediverse of where one's posts are actually going, what robots.txt does, and so forth, I think one of the conversations you had hit the nail on the head about both the clear indication that it's a bridge and the clear path to opting out being critical.
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[0x3b0b] One thing about the situations Tantek mentioned is that if _a person_ takes one of their posts and (for example) posts it in a chat where it gets link-previewed or features it in a blog post, whether they are _okay_ with that or not, it usually doesn't _look as if_ they were the one who chose for it to appear there.
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aaronpk yeah i agree a clear indication that this is not attempting to "steal" the content is helpful. even aside from mastodon, there are a ton of blogs that will pull in another blog's RSS feed and republish the blog posts as if they are their own, often removing the author name or even running the text through an automated thesaurus to rephrase things
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aaronpk and then of course since most of these get posted to wordpress blogs they will send pingbacks to the original post so it's hilarious to see the list of spam blogs that rip off your own blog posts in the list of responses below
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aaronpk so basically make sure you don't look like that :P
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[snarfed] aaronpk 0x3b0b definitely agreed, thanks. I'm curious what you think of Bridgy Fed's current disclaimer? eg https://fed.brid.gy/web/nature.com
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aaronpk that looks great
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[snarfed] 🙏
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aaronpk for the logs:
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aaronpk > Bridgy Fed is providing nature.com a presence in the fediverse. This account was generated automatically when someone first followed it. Learn more here.
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aaronpk > Do you own nature.com? You can opt out or upgrade your fediverse handle from @web.brid.gy to @nature.com.
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aaronpk clear user-centric description, and a clear path to resolving if the person doesn't like it. I also like the "upgrade" language
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[0x3b0b] I think rss-parrot, just as one example, may have had a small edge over you on how much of the audience was likely to catch on that it was a bridging service just from the name...one minor point of evidence in favor of that assessment being Jason's initially misposting it as .cy instead of .gy
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Loqi hey aaronpk, [0x3b0b]: it looks like this conversation is getting pretty technical (RSS), can you take it to #indieweb-dev?
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aaronpk haha rss-parrot
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[snarfed] yeah makes sense
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[0x3b0b] I agree, I like how you have that set up now.
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[tantek] Naming << when naming a user service or product (in contrast to a developer service or product), avoid the use of any [[jargon]] terms or especially acronyms, unless your goal is to limit the appeal/understanding of your service or product to only developers versed in said jargon
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Loqi ok, I added "when naming a user service or product (in contrast to a developer service or product), avoid the use of any [[jargon]] terms or especially acronyms, unless your goal is to limit the appeal/understanding of your service or product to only developers versed in said jargon" to the "See Also" section of /naming https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=92495&oldid=91152
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aaronpk 👀
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aaronpk stares into webmention.io and indieauth.com 🤦‍♂️
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aaronpk tho to be fair, webmention.io did start out intending to be a developer service