A mild copyright violation based on a system designed around the constant distribution of copies of things is NOT a parable about sexual violence, people.

I feel like this extremely insensitive rape take is the fediverse’s version of the Godwin Law.

The fediverse has a built-in search engine?

I can only comment on my experience searching for communities in lemmy and people to follow on mastadon, but in both cases I am not sure I’d say “works quite well” would describe my experience.

But also that’s not what I think OP was talking about.

They want a search engine for a random fact like google. It’s been long true that you need to add “reddit” to the end of any google search to find the info you needed.

It’d be nice to have a fediverse alternative.

The link seemed to work for me from lemmy. I see three posts there when I click it at least.

Those well-meaning-but-terrible-in-practice consumer protection laws are probably a good indicator of why the EU isn’t a hub of technological innovation.

They’re at least a symptom of the same underlying outlook on the industry.

I don’t know the answer but they pointed this out further in the press release:

However, it’s also important for us that Mastodon is one of the few, if not the only social media platform that operates out of the EU, and we would like to keep it that way.

I’d assume that this is for a reason, too. If it were advantageous to run your company out of the EU people would probably do so sometimes.

You are describing the current situation in the fediverse, not a problem caused by the idea proposed.

Allowing for federated identity would also imply allowing migration of identity, which wholly prevents what you just described.

The current system is guaranteed to have larger instances where people won’t want to leave because doing so abandons your identity.

If I could move around the fediverse freely I would do so, but that is not a feature that is supported so I stick to the largest instance which happens to be the one I chose. I am not unique in this. Obviously, or this instance wouldn’t be so large.

Offering federated identity is only a better situation than today.

Imagine if login was a federated feature in lemmy.

What this would mean is that I could go to lemmy.ml and login using my lemmy.world account credentials and people from lemmy.ml could go to lemmy.world and log in using theirs.

Neither could go to beehaw and login because it does not federate with the two of them.

In this world I could create an identity on lemmy.world and a separate identity on lemmy.ml if I wanted to.

Now imagine if I could login with my lemmy.world account on a non lemmy platform that lemmy.world federates with.

There’s nothing centralized about this, and it is exactly in the spirit of everything else in the fediverse. To login on beehaw I would have to create an identity on beehaw or someone they federate with.

What you seem to be against is forcing you to have only one login. That does go against the model we are talking about.

And it isn’t what’s being suggested.

Nothing about this idea implies centralization. There is no reason identity has to be tied to the platform using the identity and no reason why there needs to be a central identity store.

In fact, right now my identity IS centralized to lemmy.world and I have no control over that.

Your solution to create as many identities as you want is great for avoiding having one identity, but not an example of decentralized identity.

I would like to be able to have multiple, decentralized, identities.

That’s all fair. I can see what you meant after reading it, so maybe it’s more of a me thing than one you have to consider in any depth. I know I have issues around feeling heard that aren’t the general. And people who don’t like being called out for cis-typical behaviors tend to be various forms of awful people that don’t really need to be included.

Anyway, thank you for the conversation and the blog posts. I’m using Hotspot Shield as a vpn, if that helps and looking at your site through Safari on my iPhone.

Thank you for the thoughtful response here.

If it helps, I feel like “Be an ally if you’re cis and joining the conversation” might fit what you’re saying and wouldn’t have bristled me. But I recognize that it isn’t your responsibility to manage the emotions of people who have unquestioned privilege.

I also hope this isn’t a weird question but I noticed that I have to turn my vpn off to see your site. Is that intentional?

On the other stuff, I love that you’re talking about the importance of account migration, and I like the idea of the concentric federation.

There’s a bit more in there about scalability. So it’s nice to see your thoughts around it. I was thinking that the opt-in process which messages you for approval was the closest to scalable from the former article, because it allows everyone the opportunity to opt in without requiring hidden knowledge. But it could also feel like some sort of fishing attempt to get a message asking for consent.

So I guess finding a way to build opt-in into the protocol in some way would be the most scalable option in the long term. However that could work.

I don’t think you added anything new to the argument and their linked source addressed it from a technical and ethical perspective.

Personally, I don’t think that it’s reasonable when someone asks you to not do something for you to do that thing directly to them.

You’ve done that here. Whether or not you think you’re bringing up good points, it’s still pretty rude.

Anyway, you’re right that this isn’t about points. I started off trying to give you benefit of the doubt that you were respectfully responding to the article and just missed what they had said, but then you doubled down and triple downed.

I understand the need to try to voice concerns, and so I understand why you’re continuing to push.

DON’T say the things that developers who ignore consent typically say

That’s likely to increase the pushback.  If that’s your goal, great, go for it!  If not, though, it’s best to avoid stuff like this.

• “Posting publicly gives implied consent to use the data”

I don’t inherently agree with the article’s ask, but you’ve literally only proven its point by stating, verbatim, one of their “please stop making us retread these tired arguments over and over” points.

OP links to a Mastodon thread from a user who breaks down the technical limitations of ActivityPub and proposes how the situation can be improved. Maybe read that.

Also, if you think that these are reasonable suggestions, then perhaps ignoring them directly isn’t the best way to engage with this article?

Read the article, I didn’t write it.

“Implicit consent” is another one they call out directly.

The article addresses this directly in the section on things to not say, though:

ActivityPub does indeed  “makes assumptions that are fundamentally opposed to the kinds of protections that people seem to be seeking.” But in a discussion about whether or not to get consent, even the ones that are true the miss the point – just because ActivityPub leaves open possibilities for you to do something without getting consent, that’s not the only option.

I’m not sure there’s a better way to put them, but I bristled at the two suggestions at a high level which tell me what to say or not say, and call out my being cis as a thing to be careful about.

I’m glad that I read them despite the bristling, because I found that they were things I wouldn’t say or do, and they were reasonable suggestions.

But especially the cis comment made me kind of worried. As the platform grows these types of desired policies are going to be drowned out by the majorities.

All of the proposed solutions are intentionally not scalable ones, and seem designed to keep the platforms smaller and protected. This makes absolute sense especially when held up beside the marginalized peoples who are asking for them’s experiences of being marginalized.

I hope that we can find ways that satisfy those needs even through growth. It would be interesting to see scalable opt-in solutions for this problem. It would especially be useful to integrate solutions into the protocol.

But in truth I was shocked to learn about robots.txt recently, and more shocked to hear how well-ish that type of solution worked until AI came along and ignored it. So it’s anyone’s guess as to how well similar solutions might work here.

That’s similar to the “you’re being inconsistent” thing that the article says not to say, kind of.

Consent isn’t really built into ActivityPub and it’s inherently the opposite of how I understand it to work (copying your content all over the place regardless of your desires).

But their argument is kind of reasonable.

Who cares?

We can change ActivityPub, but we couldn’t change Twitter. People were tolerating worse just for the sake of having a community before they moved to the fediverse. They had no say before and they’re asking for better from it now that they can have their voices heard at all.

I am using their competitor’s products without issue, so I’m not seeing how this is anticompetitive.

But I do hate Meta.

Seems like the type of thing that if you cared about it you wouldn’t use a Meta product in the first place.

Then host it there if that’s what you want to do.

You are still better off knowing whether or not you are breaking the law when you do so.

I went to the article expecting rage inducing decisions based on your comment, but your TLDR has no relation to the article whatsoever.

The article is pretty glowing about Threads and Mastodon, and its author seems to be excited by them being connected through federation. They seem hopeful that they can use Mastodon to continue to enjoy their Threads communities.

They also claim that the default Threads experience is way better than the default Mastodon one, especially for the average user, but the API of Mastodon makes for a way better experience in terms of third party clients and tools.

They were able to consume the Threads content chronologically instead of through the algorithmic For You feed that none of us want.

Generally this is the first article posted I’ve seen that was talking about this from a UX perspective, as well as from a Threads user’s perspective, and I found it interesting to read.