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In my commentary about mastodon and bluesky today, I didn't say all that much about my thoughts on the core issues of privacy and consent. That's what most people actually want to fight about. For people who are worried about that, anybody who isn't immediately on their side is the enemy. I'm used to that specific internet dynamic, so I'm not that bothered by it.

What I'm realizing is that I don't wanna talk about that though. Not because I don't care. I do. But there are much smarter people who have spent way more time on those issues. It's a deep and gnarly topic. So I don't have anything to say about it that is smarter than what is already being said by people who are actually *working* on the issues.

Instead, my musings from the peanut gallery are driven by something else that is bothering me as I observe people's evolving relationship with The Fediverse™.

To me, one of the fundamental things to understand about the concept of decentralization and federation is that nobody is "in charge". There's no central authority to appeal to.

In short, who are you yelling at? Who do you expect to "fix" things for you? Right now people are coming down on the guy who is building the bridge to bluesky. That specific guy. They're yelling at him and telling him to make different decisions to protect their personal privacy. Is that what people think they signed up for with the fediverse? Fighting with other individual humans and trying to force them to do what you want?

I keep feeling like I'm missing something. But it seems clear to me that fighting with every other individual in the whole world until you carve out the specific level of visibility that you are comfortable with is a solution that doesn't scale very well.

More importantly though. I thought the whole point of the fediverse as a concept was that each of us can chose a platform that gives us the tools we want so that we're *not* beholden to the choices that other people make.

What's wild about the bluesky bridge thing is that it seems to be trying to follow all of the rules. It's using the same ActivityPub protocol as everyone else. It has a name and the author is trying to make sure it respects everybody else's moderation settings. You can block it or defederate from it. But very few people who I've seen talking about it seem to be placated by that. They're still mad for some reason.

As I was puzzling through that, I landed on what I think is a core issue. People do not feel that the tools necessary to protect themselves *are in their hands*. They're still operating as if they have to ask other people to do the right thing. (Or yell at them as the case may be). Is that a failure of the way mastodon is set up? Have we not gone far enough with "you get to decide how your presence on the internet works"?

If you don't want your content to be bridged to bluesky without your consent, you shouldn't have to fight with anybody except the admin on your local mastodon instance. You can yell at them all you want. I have fewer judgments about that.

Many people have yelled at the bridge guy telling him to make his tool opt-in by default. He shouldn't have to do that. You can make your own instance opt-out by default. Why is that not a preferable solution?

That's not rhetorical. I'm really open to the possibility that I'm missing something. It seems like people who have more concerns about privacy and safety have the ability to organize their mastodon instance so it is locked down by default. And they can open up selectively. Yes, it puts more onus on you to make decisions rather than depending on other people to do the right thing. But again, I guess I thought that was the tradeoff people were making intentionally.

@polotek only thing I'd say in response is, it's not so easy to make your own instance. It requires some time, learning, and money. Not everybody has those resources to spend on social media.

And if your admin has to block an instance to opt out all of their users, it's not a default.

Now, was every bit of this dogpile on the guy necessary? Probably not. But was it necessary to force everyone to yell at their admin/move instances and therefore risk losing connections/make their own server just so the bridge would have more users by default? Definitely not.

@tillshadeisgone I'm not sure you have this right. What you're choosing is a world where you have to yell at every individual who ever tries to federate from outside of mastodon. There's nothing special about this one guy. Somebody else could try the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. And you don't have control over any of them.

@sbszine @tillshadeisgone how do you think the bridge guy is doing today? You think he might be hurting at all? I mean people are equating him with Richard Spencer today.

@polotek @sbszine @tillshadeisgone

There's one of him, but he wants to take the content of millions of us.

@sbszine @tillshadeisgone I'm not dodging anything. It's you that is pretending that this one guy is your only problem. Or that your strategy for privacy is going around making strident moral arguments to every other human in the entire world to get them to do what is best for you personally. Rather than availing yourself of the tools at your disposal. Good luck with that I guess.

@sbszine @tillshadeisgone "if he's not doing what I want then fuck that guy. But yeah I totally care about protecting other people from harassment. Just not him. Cause fuck that guy."

@polotek @tillshadeisgone Correct. Likewise Donald Trump, Netanyahu et al.

@sbszine @tillshadeisgone trump, netanyahu and some random guy with a laptop. The new axis of evil. This gave me a good laugh. Thanks for that. Sincerely.

@polotek An ad absurdum obviously but you get the idea! Not everyone has equal power and privilege. Bridge guy is nowhere near the Trump level but initially he was oblivious to any ethical or privacy concerns. (His years at Google probably didn't help there either!) This is a common thing I see in tech classrooms, where the people with the privilege to be in tech see end users as a faceless resource or a means to an end.

@sbszine this post is rife with a ton of your own simplistic and presumptuous notions about other people. It's super weird. For the record, I do not "get the idea". Bringing trump and netanyahu into this context was incredibly jarring and did nothing to help you seem more reasonable. And this post only makes it worse. It feels clear to me that you're not a person I want to be talking to. I'm gonna move on. Take care.

@polotek Likewise on all counts.

@sbszine @tillshadeisgone "so far it's working". I think this is the specific part that I disagree with. And I keep asking why people think it's sufficient.

But I get it. That's all people feel empowered to do. So we're gonna just wait around until the bad thing happens. And then be mad about that to anybody who will listen. Being mad in public is the security blanket. I think we understand each other better. Thanks for hanging in there.

@polotek It's a question of how you see protesting and social pressure. Sometimes, yep, it's just people getting mad & nothing is achieved. Sometimes it's effective or maybe just lets you know you're not alone. It's a case by case thing. For me the Iraq invasion protests were unsuccessful but it was good to see the huge worldwide turnout. The pressure has been successful with this bridge thing & I think it's a good result where you can still use the bridge if you want.