Latest #FOSSAcademic post: "Maven Ain't So Mavenly":
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Latest #FOSSAcademic post: "Maven Ain't So Mavenly":
Maven Ain’t So Mavenly
The ever-alert Liaizon Wakest has informed the rest of us on the ActivityPub-based fediverse of a new social media site, Maven, which has ingested millions of posts from fediverse accounts, including mine. Multiple people have pointed out how this violates consent on the fediverse. In response, the CTO of Maven, Jimmy Secretran, has explained their reasoning: We are trying to connect up to the Fediverse, to allow interaction with other ActivityPub servers. This definitely seems to me to be within the spirit of what ActivityPub enables, but of course, I don’t want to have Maven connect to anybody who doesn’t want it. [Note that I normally do not quote fediverse posts without permission, but in this case, I am making an exception, for reasons that I think will be obvious.] I replied in the thread, arguing that, no, they are not really abiding by the spirit of ActivityPub: This isn’t how this works. No one starts a fediverse (AP) server by ingesting a bunch of posts from others without their consent. They start servers and start federating with the rest of the network. Please stop ingesting posts from AoIR.social (I’m the admin, btw). and The custom is to start a server with a code of conduct, including clear moderation rules, so that the rest of us can make informed choices about federating. What you’ve done with Maven is a pretty massive violation of norms, and likely it will result in your being defederated from many other instances. It’s a poor way to start an ActivityPub implementation. To be fair to Secretran and Maven, they have since stopped scraping my posts and, I presume, those of others who have asked them to stop. Still, I eagerly await Maven’s full ActivityPub implementation so that we can block them effectively. This incident got me to thinking about norms and customs on the fediverse and how important they are.
FOSS Academic (fossacademic.tech)
In which I argue that #Maven, a new social media site, is not only breaking norms of the #fediverse by #scraping without consent -- they're ironically violating their own stated reason for existing in the first place.
[Responses to this will appear as comments on my blog, unless you set privacy to followers-only or stronger. CWs will work]
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@[email protected] Good article! The thing is, the fediverse's norms around consent are somewhat inconsistent, far from universally held, and not broadly communicated -- most of the highest-profile fediverse influencers don't particularly prioritize consent.
It's frustrating because the same pattern keeps repeating itself. I wrote "8 tips for consent for fediverse developers" a couple of months ago but it could just as well be a retrospective on what to learn from Maven.
https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/