Is it OK to write code that does new things on the Fediverse?
-
@evan No, that's not how it works. The fact that someone is able to *read* something I publish does not give them the right to republish it, aggregate it, use it to drive harassment mobs, incorporate it into slop-generation models in an attempt to mimic my writing style and deceive people, etc. etc. etc.
There is no explicit or implicit license to do anything with anyone's posts except display them temporarily, honoring any future block/deletion/etc. events, to users who the protcol indicates are allowed to see them.
-
@kleisli @evan It's not. That's why commercial social media has vile "Terms of Service" that demand you grant them license to basically do whatever they want with your writing/images/video, and sublicense them to other parties.
Respectable Mastodon instances do not do that. (The flagship tried and got such backlash they backed down.) This means there is no legal basis for doing *anything* with other people's posts. It's all potentially copyright infringement, relying on the author's intent and goodwill not to take action. But if you are doing stuff that clearly violates the author's intent and consent, you don't have any legal defense for that.
-
@evan new things like what?
@bkardell If I knew what the new things were, they wouldn't be new.
-
@Mark Andrew
I guess that, more often than not, the only new developments that are widely welcome are those that happen on Mastodon, that still don't make Mastodon feel different, and that don't introduce features to Mastodon that are (considered) bad on 𝕏.
This alone is the reason why many Mastodon admins hold on to older Mastodon versions for their dear lives: They want to boycott new Mastodon features which they don't like, but they don't have what it takes to soft-fork or even only hard-fork Mastodon and remove the new features.
Now, when it comes to developments in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, they tend to be even more nerve-grating for Mastodon users because they often aren't in line with Mastodon and its culture at all. That is, many Mastodon users don't even notice that these features exist unless these features directly hit their timeline. But once they do, they're considered bad new developments even though they've actually been around for much longer than Mastodon itself.
For example, quote-posts and full-text search. Mastodon users tend to be staunchly against both because they're used to harass and dogpile minorities on 𝕏. If at all, they're only okay with these if they come with an opt-in, and/or if server admins can turn them off entirely.
If only they knew that Friendica has had both since May, 2010, five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. That Friendica has been search-indexing and able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's very launch. I guess they'd demand the immediate destruction of Friendica or at least its complete and permanent defederation.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #FullTextSearch #Mastodon #FriendicaThat's very Mastodon-centric.
When I think of new things on the Fediverse my first thought is of something like the 3D print library Manifold, or of the federated review tool for OpenStreetMap that somebody needs to build.
-
@Mark Andrew I guess that, more often than not, the only new developments that are widely welcome are those that happen on Mastodon, that still don't make Mastodon feel different, and that don't introduce features to Mastodon that are (considered) bad on 𝕏.
This alone is the reason why many Mastodon admins hold on to older Mastodon versions for their dear lives: They want to boycott new Mastodon features which they don't like, but they don't have what it takes to soft-fork or even only hard-fork Mastodon and remove the new features.
Now, when it comes to developments in the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, they tend to be even more nerve-grating for Mastodon users because they often aren't in line with Mastodon and its culture at all. That is, many Mastodon users don't even notice that these features exist unless these features directly hit their timeline. But once they do, they're considered bad new developments even though they've actually been around for much longer than Mastodon itself.
For example, quote-posts and full-text search. Mastodon users tend to be staunchly against both because they're used to harass and dogpile minorities on 𝕏. If at all, they're only okay with these if they come with an opt-in, and/or if server admins can turn them off entirely.
If only they knew that Friendica has had both since May, 2010, five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. That Friendica has been search-indexing and able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's very launch. I guess they'd demand the immediate destruction of Friendica or at least its complete and permanent defederation.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #FullTextSearch #Mastodon #FriendicaFWIW identi.ca launched in 2008.
-
I feel the hidden question of the #poll is: Given the #technology base exists, can you just code against it at will? I.e. the tech #ethics question is asked. Where on one end of the spectrum we find the techbro / fossbro, and on the other end of the spectrum we are still learning what we should have there as an alternative to make a social web be social and keep it that way. As "social web" technology by itself offers zero guarantee of that.
-
@kleisli @evan It's not. That's why commercial social media has vile "Terms of Service" that demand you grant them license to basically do whatever they want with your writing/images/video, and sublicense them to other parties.
Respectable Mastodon instances do not do that. (The flagship tried and got such backlash they backed down.) This means there is no legal basis for doing *anything* with other people's posts. It's all potentially copyright infringement, relying on the author's intent and goodwill not to take action. But if you are doing stuff that clearly violates the author's intent and consent, you don't have any legal defense for that.
-
My biggest "yes, but…" exception involves being a jerk. Should I create an ActivityPub slurper that ingests & archives everyone's feeds, indexing them to be searched into the future? There's a lot of anti-norms around that. Or a bot to find topics I find disagreeable and auto-harass any post/user on the topic? Or a scheme of circumnavigating server/user blocks/bans?
I love the idea of open innovation but that can come with social costs from folks who aren't aligned with the fediverse norms.
I guess I'm confused by the notion of slurping.
Mostly when you create a post in ActivityPub it is pushed to other servers or services where you have at least one follower. So it's like email: your content gets distributed all over the Fediverse, by design.
* I'm glad you didn't call it scraping, because that would be a silly thing to do with a public API available.
-
I guess I'm confused by the notion of slurping.
Mostly when you create a post in ActivityPub it is pushed to other servers or services where you have at least one follower. So it's like email: your content gets distributed all over the Fediverse, by design.
* I'm glad you didn't call it scraping, because that would be a silly thing to do with a public API available.
The API part comes in in situations like this one, where I'm replying to a reply. That wouldn't normally be copied all over, so some servers will lose continuity, perhaps receiving my reply to your reply without your reply.
So to help fix that ActivityPub servers request posts from one another to do backfill using the API.
-
@kleisli @evan Legally in US and many jurisdictions, you can always link. Traditionally in Japan that was NOT ok at least socially. You needed to ask permission to link to people's personal pages. I'm not sure what the standard is now.
But if you're saving it a way that's not for your own private personal use but as part of offering access to others, you need to be following the protocol for deletion and privacy. And you can't be making derivative works that aren't fair use.
-
The API part comes in in situations like this one, where I'm replying to a reply. That wouldn't normally be copied all over, so some servers will lose continuity, perhaps receiving my reply to your reply without your reply.
So to help fix that ActivityPub servers request posts from one another to do backfill using the API.
So in terms of respecting people's boundaries for their posts, the issues are more like email then they are like web publishing.
When I send this post to bsd.cafe, can that server forward it? Should it? If I don't want that to happen how can I prevent it?
But there's also a bit like blogging: if I want my posts to be single-server so you have to visit my site to see them, is it even possible? But then how would multi-party conversations like this one work?
-
@kleisli @evan Legally in US and many jurisdictions, you can always link. Traditionally in Japan that was NOT ok at least socially. You needed to ask permission to link to people's personal pages. I'm not sure what the standard is now.
But if you're saving it a way that's not for your own private personal use but as part of offering access to others, you need to be following the protocol for deletion and privacy. And you can't be making derivative works that aren't fair use.
@dalias > Traditionally in Japan that was NOT ok at least socially.
Were Japan just weirdly early on search engines and never had web directories or was something else going on? -
@kleisli @evan Legally in US and many jurisdictions, you can always link. Traditionally in Japan that was NOT ok at least socially. You needed to ask permission to link to people's personal pages. I'm not sure what the standard is now.
But if you're saving it a way that's not for your own private personal use but as part of offering access to others, you need to be following the protocol for deletion and privacy. And you can't be making derivative works that aren't fair use.
-
@gabboman so, maybe the person making a social web crawler is just as well-intentioned as the person making the no-mention private messages?
Sometimes. I know of a couple cases where once it was pointed out that somebody had violated longstanding norms here (or as @gabboman says, the "spiirt of the social contract of fedi") , they immediately apologized and took down the data they had scraped. And guess what? Those cases didn't lead to blow ups.
But in the cases I'm aware of where it did blow up, they the either said something that made it clear that they had intentionally not designing for informed, affirmative consent ... or made an intentional choice to ignore (or pushed back on) the initial feedback.
These repeated firestorms really are an unfortunate pattern but as I've said for quite a while it's going to keep happening until fedi influencers with big megaphones change their behavior.
start repeatedly emphasizing that consent and resistance to surveillance capitalism are very important norms here.
share and model best practices for how to avoid unintentionally violating norms -- including asking before releasing something (because it's not always obvious what will set off a firestorm) and listening to the feedback rather than dismissing it
It's frustrating because it's been over two years since I wrote https://thenexusofprivacy.net/consent-for-fediverse-developers/ and @deadsuperhero did a remix of it on We Distribute at https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/fediverse-privacy-and-consent/ In fact I think you might have even been at a #FediForum session (probably in 2024) where we discussed this! And yet, there really doesn't seem to be much interest from high-profile developers in getting the word out about this.
-
I feel the hidden question of the #poll is: Given the #technology base exists, can you just code against it at will? I.e. the tech #ethics question is asked. Where on one end of the spectrum we find the techbro / fossbro, and on the other end of the spectrum we are still learning what we should have there as an alternative to make a social web be social and keep it that way. As "social web" technology by itself offers zero guarantee of that.
This "fossbro" term really bothers me for some reason. What does that mean?
Is that somebody who shares most of, if not all of your values, and provides volunteer labour to give you platforms to express those values, but then makes something that doesn't initially seem like something you'd want to use so now you hate them and encourage everybody else to hate them too?
Because that sure is what it sounds like. Please correct me.
-
This "fossbro" term really bothers me for some reason. What does that mean?
Is that somebody who shares most of, if not all of your values, and provides volunteer labour to give you platforms to express those values, but then makes something that doesn't initially seem like something you'd want to use so now you hate them and encourage everybody else to hate them too?
Because that sure is what it sounds like. Please correct me.
-
This "fossbro" term really bothers me for some reason. What does that mean?
Is that somebody who shares most of, if not all of your values, and provides volunteer labour to give you platforms to express those values, but then makes something that doesn't initially seem like something you'd want to use so now you hate them and encourage everybody else to hate them too?
Because that sure is what it sounds like. Please correct me.
@spraoi @smallcircles @gumnos @evan
These days (I hate to say “these days”, but I need to use it now), it seems to be fashionable to add “bro” to every group considered “harmful.” It often takes a particular demographic stereotype, usually white, straight men, who show a strong passion for a particular interest, and turns them into a caricature onto which a whole set of negative traits can be projected.
-
@spraoi @smallcircles @gumnos @evan
These days (I hate to say “these days”, but I need to use it now), it seems to be fashionable to add “bro” to every group considered “harmful.” It often takes a particular demographic stereotype, usually white, straight men, who show a strong passion for a particular interest, and turns them into a caricature onto which a whole set of negative traits can be projected.
True, though I think initially the words built on a genuine observed diversity or lack thereof, for gender choice. Where the "techbro" refered to a stereotypical tech solutionist, Silicon Valley mindset. Then extended to FOSSbro to refer similar mindset in different context.
But today the words are deliberately used, in online fights, in the way you say.
In the past I suggested using alternatives for similar often used gendered terminology, just because a simple rename would lead to a friendlier online environment. Like rename "reply guy" to "reply sigh", and "mansplaining" to "oversplaining".
-
True, though I think initially the words built on a genuine observed diversity or lack thereof, for gender choice. Where the "techbro" refered to a stereotypical tech solutionist, Silicon Valley mindset. Then extended to FOSSbro to refer similar mindset in different context.
But today the words are deliberately used, in online fights, in the way you say.
In the past I suggested using alternatives for similar often used gendered terminology, just because a simple rename would lead to a friendlier online environment. Like rename "reply guy" to "reply sigh", and "mansplaining" to "oversplaining".
@smallcircles @spraoi @gumnos @evan
Before we started internalizing the jargon from across the pond, we Italians had a habit of simply calling someone a “testa di cazzo,” roughly “dickhead.” It was neutral and inclusive: it could apply to anyone. We didn't need words like fascist, racist, homophobe, antivaxxer, Russian troll, or whatever else is trendy. Someone could simply be a dickhead. Nothing less, nothing more.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login