[CaptainFever]

I'm surprised that the tool in question is Bridgy Fed. Bridgy Fed has existed for a long time and is a very useful tool. Its alternative, Bridgy, has also been used to bridge between closed social networks and the open IndieWeb.

Why are Fediverse people only angry about it now? It's an open protocol. If you want privacy, don't publish something for the entire world to see. That's just basic common sense. At the very least, use Mastodon's privacy controls. The Fediverse is not special here, it doesn't get to destroy the open Web for everyone else.

[NoGravitas]

In general, people on the Fediverse want to be able to make local moderation decisions; the way that extends to other federated sites is by not federating with them. Most Fediverse sites will not federate with sites that have bad or nonexistent moderation (or simply incompatible moderation policies). Bluesky's architecture basically means that it is one big unmoderated site. The normal reaction of Fediverse admins is then to block it.

As a controversy, it's been blown out of proportion. It's just Fediverse admins setting the moderation policies for their own sites, as always.

[CaptainFever]

I agree that they should block it, I just don't think they should be harassing Bridgy Fed developers. The GitHub issues were pretty insane.

[jeromegv]

Well first not everyone on the fediverse is opposed to the bridge. I agree that public is public. But there are concerns about moderation being incompatible, it’s normal to voice them.

As for the fediverse destroying the open web for everyone else, I think you’re hyperboling quite a bit, the fediverse has done mountains to make social media more open, probably more than everyone else.

[CaptainFever]

Yeah you're right, I think I did overgeneralise there. I was meaning more of the culture of "Mastodon users"; Mastodon itself has done a lot to help the open Web too.

Though I think "voicing concerns" is a bit of an understatement. I feel really bad for the developer of Bridgy Fed, working on their passion project and just getting caught up in all this heat and harassment.

[rakoo]

I'm one of the persons who blocks the bridge, not because of privacy concerns but because it bluesky, specifically. I do not like the idea of for-profit, vc-backed entities being given data, or any kind of decision. We all know exactly where that leads, a term has been coined, mountains have been wrtten about it and yet it still happens.

It's the same situation with Threads.

As for privacy I disagree with you. There's nothing because nothing has been discussed, but the technical feasability should never dictate what we want as a society. When a family member dies, even though the news is known you know how to behave, who to share that information with, what to say. Would you be okay with a company coring up to you and saying "hey we learned your mother died, would you like to tweet it ? It is free !"

[CaptainFever]

I half agree that technical feasibility isn't everything. For example, I can murder someone with a knife. But it's not what we want as a society.

But it's not never. For example, I can see your post. So I can send a screenshot of your post to my friends to dicuss it. I can't see your hard drive contents. So I shouldn't hack into it and send a screenshot of your hard drive to my friends to discuss it.

So technical feasibility influences what is reasonable to do as a society. It's not "feasible = reasonable", or else murder would be reasonable, but it definitely does influence it.

And in this case, I believe what the Fediverse people commenting in the GitHub issue want to be unreasonable. It is unreasonable to publish something publicly, on a federated network, where privacy controls exist (but are not being used), and then claim to have an expectation of privacy in a public space, especially when such bridges provide utility and benefit to others that just can't happen if it's opt-in.

It is reasonable to block it. It is unreasonable to expect everyone else to restrain themselves from using public data in the spirit of the open Internet. It is especially unreasonable to harass non-profit bridge developers in this case. That's not a social solution, just harassment.

Note about copyright: that's not a path one should go down, because it'll make the Fediverse illegal as a whole. It's probably fair use, anyway.

Note about AT protocol: yes it's designed by a for-profit, but it's good. Just because something is for-profit and VC-backed does not mean it will enshittify; take Element for example. It solves a lot of issues that people were having with Mastodon such as global full text search and a global feed. I would use it if it only had more relays to spread out the control.