Fediverse contains multitudes.

Stefan Bohacek

@Mikal Ah, you know what, I guess not?

I do see a few "thank you"s here and there, though.

Stefan Bohacek

The topic of consent in the fediverse is fascinating to me. I am definitely still learning how to best navigate it myself.

Examples I used seem pretty straightforward. I've also seen people ask for permission before boosting someone's post, which makes sense if you're a high-follower account and may not want to draw too much attention to someone with fewer followers.

There are definitely situations that are a bit harder to get right. This could be an article of its own.

#fediverse #consent

BeAware :fediverse:

@stefan the issue comes when people post with "public" setting and expect privacy.

If they're on Mastodon, they immediately have no privacy because their profile has an RSS feed.

Here's yours in an RSS reader.

Stefan Bohacek

@BeAware To be fair, there is an open ticket to allow people to opt out of this.

Allow RSS feed opt-out · Issue #22172 · mastodon/mastodon

Pitch Currently, all Mastodon users' Public and Unlisted posts are included in an RSS feed There's no way to disable this on vanilla Masto, but disabling RSS has already been implemented in Hometown and glitch-soc: hometown-fork#1232 gli...

GitHub (github.com)

An example I like to use is, a website can be public, but it can still limit how it can be interacted with through robots.txt.

Imagine being able to create a robots.txt file for your social media profile as if it was your personal website!

BeAware :fediverse:

@stefan I can only speak about what currently exists. Not wish for what COULD exist because it might never become so.‍️

Currently, there's no real privacy here. Maybe one day there will be. As for right now, people need to know to protect themselves and not expect it automatically.

Raphael Lullis

@stefan @BeAware

robots.txt is no contract, no one should expect to be protected from being crawled just because they placed some hints indicating what user agents are welcome.

Relying on consent and general good behavior is just bad digital hygiene. I'd rather people just acknowledged that and make it a basic principle: do not post anything on the open web unless you are sure you don't mind it being available to any present or future malicious/adversarial entity.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@raphael @stefan @BeAware while it is no contract, it doesn't mean we can't both go directions. The same way you shouldn't post some stuff on the open web, we should make it harder to capitalize over what we do post.

BeAware :fediverse:

@laxla @raphael @stefan sure, we SHOULD. However, so far, we haven't. Therefore the best course of action is to protect yourself and not expect something that doesn't exist yet.

Stefan Bohacek

@BeAware Fair enough. The different understanding of what "public" means and the lack of tools to better control this are definitely at the root of a lot of the disagreement.

Look at tech companies now arguing that they should be free to use anything posted online to train AI.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/big-tech-lobby-ai-use-1235916540/

That's a bold statement. And they are indeed getting away with it, for now.

Stefan Bohacek

@laxla @raphael @BeAware Yes, I wish I knew where to start on something like this: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112604352640135688

Raphael Lullis

@laxla @stefan @BeAware

Is it really effective? How hard is it for any unethical player to just ignore the social cues and do whatever they want with the data?

Tom Casavant

@stefan @BeAware I think there could be a legal exploration into this topic as well.

I know implied copyright has been discussed for years regarding publishing to the web or to an RSS feed. In the US I recall a case where a subscription news-syndication platform was pulling in the full text of RSS feeds and they were being sued under the idea that just because someone posts an RSS feed doesn't mean you can use the contents of that RSS feed for any purpose.

I'm not sure if the same would apply to ActivityPub but I don't know if I have an explanation for why it wouldn't

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@BeAware @raphael @stefan yup. Intended meaning was, don't use that as a reason to prevent implementation of further protections.

Stefan Bohacek

@raphael @BeAware "do not post anything on the open web unless you are sure you don't mind it being available to any present or future malicious/adversarial entity"

Sure, that is a solid advice for now. But we do have to work towards improving this, and definitely not dismiss people who want things to change.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@raphael @stefan @BeAware robots.txt isn't a social cue. It is a legal one.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@stefan @raphael @BeAware I'd say W3C privacy committee recommendations.

Stefan Bohacek

@laxla @raphael @BeAware I looked into this a bit, and from what I've seen robots.txt is not at all legally binding.

Even Google doesn't really respect robots.txt.

"While Google won't crawl or index the content blocked by a robots.txt file, we might still find and index a disallowed URL if it is linked from other places on the web."

Robots.txt Introduction and Guide | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

Robots.txt is used to manage crawler traffic. Explore this robots.txt introduction guide to learn what robot.txt files are and how to use them.

Google for Developers (developers.google.com)

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@stefan @raphael @BeAware three things:

Unenforced ≠ Legal
America isn't an example because it's basically the hypercapitalistic layer of hell
It isn't a legal contract, it is a legal cue. "You do not have consent to access this website, and if you index it/train AI on it for profits, we'll sue you"

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@stefan @raphael @BeAware Google is just big enough to trust it'll have better lawyers than whoever's trynna sue them.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@stefan @raphael @BeAware (the USDoJ be like: challenge accepted)