The Bluesky Bridge
Sam Whited
Public
Seen by 244
Hi all,
As you may be aware a new bridge with the bluesky network is being deployed that allows two-way federation.
I have temporarily taken the liberty of limiting the bridge pending community discussion. This is not my decision to make, and I recognize that, but I thought it was broadly the same as federating with Threads and, though I strongly disagree with the decision not to suspend Threads, the community chose to Limit it so I took the same action here so that follows from the bridge would at least need to be approved first.
The gist of the matter is that this is different from most bridges in that it doesn't just allow you to read the posts of eg. Twitter users, but more like Threads it allows you full two-way communication with them. It also allows Jack Dorsey to vacuum up all of your public posts and sell them for sentiment analysis or train AIs on them or whatever. If someone from Bluesky follows you, your (opt-in on the mastodon side) full text search preferences are no longer respected. Also, the author has a terms of service that he claims you are accepting by using the bridge (this is almost certainly not legal in any jurisdiction, but I'm not a lawyer), etc.
The author of the bridge has written a blog post [1] where he gives the game away somewhat: "If bridges were opt-in, and I could only follow 4% of people on other networks, they would be drastically less useful." in other words, he doesn't care about your consent.
I strongly think we should fully suspend this bridge, but also acknowledge that it's exactly the same as Threads and this community didn't want to suspend there, so I'd like to follow up and ask separately for us to discuss what to do with this bridge. I'll follow up with a full proposal and vote later on depending on the results of this discussion. Thanks.
If you'd like to block it yourself for your own personal account you can block the domains
brid.gy, and
You can also add #nobridge to your profile and the author says they're respecting that as an opt-out flag (but suspending both domains above is probably the better option).
[1]: https://snarfed.org/2024-01-21_moderate-people-not-code
Brian Vaughan Thu 15 Feb 2024 5:11PM
@flancian In my experience, when a small organization tries to create a bridge to a larger, problematic organization, in hopes that it will help participants in the larger to escape to the smaller, it usually ends with the smaller organization absorbed into the larger.
Jay Tue 13 Feb 2024 7:37PM
Thank you, I agree limiting out of the gate is a good idea.
Sky Leite Tue 13 Feb 2024 8:00PM
It's frustrating to me that this kind of thing isn't an immediate block, to be honest. I legitimately understand the points about wanting to communicate with people on those platforms, and I think they're valid, but to me the entire point of not having an account in those services is that the companies behind them can't (reasonably) use my words for whatever garbage they're producing this month. I don't even know how to emphasize how much I don't want that, so I guess this is all I have to say.
Brian Vaughan Tue 13 Feb 2024 8:36PM
I agree that limiting the bridge, pending discussion, was the appropriate response. I don't like the fact that this bridge is opt-out, and I agree with what others have said on the Fediverse, that we use it to avoid the all-devouring corporate networks, so simply bridging them is unwelcome.
dyani Tue 13 Feb 2024 9:28PM
Thank you for taking this action quickly. My choice to join the fediverse hinged on the spirit behind "opt-in", not "opt-out". There are so many detrimental effects of using opt-out as the default, and very few truly detrimental effects of opt-in.
Henry (cryptix) Tue 13 Feb 2024 10:16PM
I’ve been going back and forth about a “well actually that’s not how it works” post but I defer to this one instead:
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] The entire fediverse is opt-out structure by default.
If you want opt-in I recommend moving to or setting up a whitelist instance (an instance configured to only federate with instances added to the whitelist, meaning all instances are opt-in by your admin).
https://foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095f-2165-cbe1-cace-beb789728853
I’m not saying “go find another instance” (which includes myself FWIW) but trying to make it work for both sides seems a bit futile to me.
Flancian Thu 15 Feb 2024 4:58PM
@Henry (cryptix) thank you for this. I don't fully understand why people think this is significantly different from an instance running some new Fediverse software joining the Fediverse; I don't think we should block new instances running new ActivityPub-speaking software by default, no matter how large (although I do know that some people wanted to suspend Threads.net).
Matt Noyes Tue 13 Feb 2024 10:34PM
Seems like "block until opt-in is clearly implemented, then limit" is a good path?
Flancian · Thu 15 Feb 2024 4:55PM
@Sam Whited I also know Ryan from previous interactions having to do with bridges and I can only say that he comes across as an ethical and well-intentioned person.
Also, full disclosure, I agree with him in that opt-out is better than opt-in in this case. We need to consider not only the direct effect on individuals who are anti-connectivity with other networks by default, but the indirect effects on the goals we are trying to accomplish: to give people in corporate platforms a window (and a way out) into the Fediverse, to reclaim the internet from unethical corporations in general and to fight back against walled gardens in particular.