I'm disabling Bridgy Fed on this account.(at least for now) -- if you're at risk of harassment, consider doing the same

The Nexus of Privacy

I'm disabling Bridgy Fed on this account.(at least for now) -- if you're at risk of harassment, consider doing the same

Harassment has increased significantly on Bluesky over the last week (which tends to be what happens when a site's moderators find an excuse not to take actionn against a coordinated anti-trans harassment campaign, but that's another story). Bluesky blocklists provide some protection, but unfortunately there's no way for fedi accounts to subscribe to Bluesky blocklists or labelers. So there's basially no protection for bridged accounts.

I haven't yet hard any reports of harassment getting directed at bridged accounts ... but then again if somebody on Bluesky who hasn't opted in to Bridgy fed is spewing hate speech in bridged posts replies, we wouldn't necessarily know about it. So, better safe than sorry. If you're currently bridging to Bluesky consider doing the same!

Here's the bug I just filed in the Bridgy Fed Github. https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1632

Bridgy Fed's development is very resource constrained right now; as far as I know it's still just @snarfed.org working on it part-time, and they've had their hands full just keeping up with the increased load. So, not sure how quickly they''ll be able to respond.

#BridgyFed #bluesky #trans

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] I wonder if it might be useful to come up with a way to standardize blocklists across different networks. It would be handy to be able to import a Bluesky or Nostr blocklist to Mastodon, or do it in the inverse direction.

Luca Sironi

@deadsuperhero @thenexusofprivacy

I don't want to diminish the importance of this feature, i don't want to be passively associated (what if they start to follow me ? what people with think of me not reacting because i can't ) with hateful guys too.

As far as i can understand, the possibility of harassment is limited tough, i mean, if they are bridged you can block them, if they are not bridged, it's like they are reading/subscribing your "public rss feed".
If they reply, or say bad things about you, this is not gonna reach you.

Blocklist don't limit their capacity of shouting crap publicly

The Nexus of Privacy

If they are bridged you can block them

Sure I can block them after they've harassed me. Subscribing to a blocklist lets be block them before the harassment.

if they are not bridged, it's like they are reading/subscribing your "public rss feed".
No, unlike an RSS feed they can reply in the app -- so that it's easy for others to see it.

(RSS feeds are a potential harassment vector too, and we should be able to turn them off -- in fact they should be off by default, as they are in Hometown and GoToSocial -- but that's another story)

If they reply, or say bad things about you, this is not gonna reach you.

Whether or not peplies reach me, they reach everybody who's following me on Bluesky and looks at the post. That's still a harassment vector!

@luca @deadsuperhero

The Nexus of Privacy

Just announced: "A New Social", a new non-profit focused on building cross-protocol services and tools for the open social web, is now leading development of Bridgy Fed.

Hello, Social Web 👋🏼

Our mission is to liberate people's networks from their platforms, enabling The Last Network Effect and leveling the playing field across the open social web.

A New Social (www.anew.social)

Exciting stuff! Bridging is an important approach that hasn't gotten enough attention, and this work really complements the other multi-polar efforts. Original Bridgy Fed developer @snarfed.org is CTO, and @quillmatiq is the CEO and Executive DIrector.

The press release has supportive comments from @mike, Emily Liu of Bluesky, the Threads team at Meta, @andypiper of Mastodon, Evan Prodromou of @swf, and @jaz of @iftas.

Bridgy Fed has set an important precdent here by prioritizing consent with their opt-in model, and it's really paid off. In fact the threats from Bluesky's current tolerance of anti-trans harassers and the multiple datasets of scraped Bluesky data are exactly the scenarios that advocates of an opt-in approach warned about -- an opt-out approach would have left people on fedi exposed by default. So let's hope that this focus on consent doesn't get lost as things more forward!

@fediversenews

#BridgyFed #bluesky #fediverse

Anuj Ahooja

@thenexusofprivacy Thank you! We're definitely focused on doing this the right way based on the culture and needs of each platform (and by platform in the ActivityPub world, I mean each instance). Looking forward to getting your advice on our approach soon as well!

The Nexus of Privacy

@quillmatiq I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve!

It's an interesting question as to how far to take supporting the culture and needs of each instance. Suppose some instance admins have a culture that includes exposing trans people to harassment, and need specific functionality from Bridgy Fed to make it harder for trans people to protect themselves ... how would you react?

The Nexus of Privacy

And here's @Sarahp's article in TechCrunch on A New Social.

Bridgy Fed, a project to connect the open social web, is now becoming a nonprofit | TechCrunch

Bridgy Fed, which is working to connect the social network Bluesky with the wider fediverse (i.e., the open social web), which includes sites like

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

"The nonprofit will also work with existing leaders in the space, like Bluesky, Flipboard, Meta (which is integrating with ActivityPub via its app Threads), and Mastodon to help identify these projects and their developers.
“Before we even started this, we [made] sure that the platforms are on board, because if they’re not on board, then our existence doesn’t even matter,” Ahooja points out. “I think that’s one of the reasons an organization was important, so we’d have a process around all of these different platforms: getting them in the same room and having these conversations.”"