My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
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To be clear, I don't trust Fedi to handle this information with care, either. Difference being that on Fedi, your mods aren't some VC/blockchain-funded corporate entity. They're often enough your friends, your neighbors, or yourself.
While there are certain database-related exploits which can be used to pull a blocklist, often enough that's a challenge for a typical layperson with an axe to grind. And it's an incomplete picture thanks to the quirks of federation. Not so on Bluesky.
I'm not going to talk about Bluesky anymore for a bit, but I know folks are coming back here after hanging out there for a while, and I want to encourage Fedi users not to gloat, not to be jerks about it.
And if you're just (re)joining us on Fedi, like all affinity groups, you're going to run into enthusiasts who are gloating, but I promise most of us are just happy you're here and want to help make this place awesome for you.
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
I'm glad you asked.
"Who you block" is a reasonable indicator of your personal alignments. If you block TERFs, you're likely trans-friendly, if not trans yourself. If you block white supremacists, you're likely in support of multiculturalism.
If you block government entities, well, you know how this goes.
Do I trust Bluesky to handle that information with care? Hell no.
@vkc It's the "is metadata data" question. https://ssd.eff.org/module/why-metadata-matters
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I'm not going to talk about Bluesky anymore for a bit, but I know folks are coming back here after hanging out there for a while, and I want to encourage Fedi users not to gloat, not to be jerks about it.
And if you're just (re)joining us on Fedi, like all affinity groups, you're going to run into enthusiasts who are gloating, but I promise most of us are just happy you're here and want to help make this place awesome for you.
@vkc yerp
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I'm not going to talk about Bluesky anymore for a bit, but I know folks are coming back here after hanging out there for a while, and I want to encourage Fedi users not to gloat, not to be jerks about it.
And if you're just (re)joining us on Fedi, like all affinity groups, you're going to run into enthusiasts who are gloating, but I promise most of us are just happy you're here and want to help make this place awesome for you.
@vkc To me the biggest problem is that who blocks who should never be public. That's like making your private messages public. Who blocks who is personal and private and people block people for all kinds of reasons. It's one thing to publicize your fediblock list or something but... Unless I'm misunderstanding what blocklist we're talking about.
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@vkc To me the biggest problem is that who blocks who should never be public. That's like making your private messages public. Who blocks who is personal and private and people block people for all kinds of reasons. It's one thing to publicize your fediblock list or something but... Unless I'm misunderstanding what blocklist we're talking about.
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I'm not going to talk about Bluesky anymore for a bit, but I know folks are coming back here after hanging out there for a while, and I want to encourage Fedi users not to gloat, not to be jerks about it.
And if you're just (re)joining us on Fedi, like all affinity groups, you're going to run into enthusiasts who are gloating, but I promise most of us are just happy you're here and want to help make this place awesome for you.
@vkc I totally agree. I'm trying to be extra nice to the n00bs. If we want them to feel happy and welcome, then we need to do things that make them feel happy and welcome.
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I'm not going to talk about Bluesky anymore for a bit, but I know folks are coming back here after hanging out there for a while, and I want to encourage Fedi users not to gloat, not to be jerks about it.
And if you're just (re)joining us on Fedi, like all affinity groups, you're going to run into enthusiasts who are gloating, but I promise most of us are just happy you're here and want to help make this place awesome for you.
@vkc well, if they smell funny I might say something. I reserve that right.
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
I'm glad you asked.
"Who you block" is a reasonable indicator of your personal alignments. If you block TERFs, you're likely trans-friendly, if not trans yourself. If you block white supremacists, you're likely in support of multiculturalism.
If you block government entities, well, you know how this goes.
Do I trust Bluesky to handle that information with care? Hell no.
I already had my doubts but when ICE was accepted, I left immediately!
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P Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary shared this topic
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
I'm glad you asked.
"Who you block" is a reasonable indicator of your personal alignments. If you block TERFs, you're likely trans-friendly, if not trans yourself. If you block white supremacists, you're likely in support of multiculturalism.
If you block government entities, well, you know how this goes.
Do I trust Bluesky to handle that information with care? Hell no.
@vkc This is honestly why I prefer fedi tech that lets me "bin" people on the receiving side, such as Friendica. Everyone i choose to goes into buckets that I can choose to view (or avoid) as I see fit, with labels that only make sense to me. Even if you get at my meta data, it's not easily clear why some fedi profiles are in the bucket "Orthopedic" and some are in "Birb Feeder" or "WhatPlantsCrave" and so on and so on. I've blocked you but you'll never know it, screaming into one of the voids. -
@vkc And if it's public, it's not handled with care.
It's not.
What you post to your PDS is public. The updates to it go to the "firehose", which is this public stream of updates. App views then take that information and filter it and crap. There's some other stuff going on here but this is pretty much it.
So your block list is a request to these views to not show your public posts to certain people.
If you are expecting more than that you are quite mistaken.
Don't put sensitive info on social media.
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
I'm glad you asked.
"Who you block" is a reasonable indicator of your personal alignments. If you block TERFs, you're likely trans-friendly, if not trans yourself. If you block white supremacists, you're likely in support of multiculturalism.
If you block government entities, well, you know how this goes.
Do I trust Bluesky to handle that information with care? Hell no.
@vkc As a European I would 'wear' such public blocks as a badge of honour, but I am not on bluesky.
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?"
I'm glad you asked.
"Who you block" is a reasonable indicator of your personal alignments. If you block TERFs, you're likely trans-friendly, if not trans yourself. If you block white supremacists, you're likely in support of multiculturalism.
If you block government entities, well, you know how this goes.
Do I trust Bluesky to handle that information with care? Hell no.
@vkc When you say “do I trust” I’m pretty sure they’re public; they’re aggregated on https://clearsky.app/.
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It's not.
What you post to your PDS is public. The updates to it go to the "firehose", which is this public stream of updates. App views then take that information and filter it and crap. There's some other stuff going on here but this is pretty much it.
So your block list is a request to these views to not show your public posts to certain people.
If you are expecting more than that you are quite mistaken.
Don't put sensitive info on social media.
@crazyeddie @vkc Even a block list can tell a lot. It's not just about what you don't want others to see, but also what you don't want to see yourself.
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@vkc When you say “do I trust” I’m pretty sure they’re public; they’re aggregated on https://clearsky.app/.
@adamshostack it is public, I said that in the first sentence of my post!
The point I'm making is that I could imagine Bluesky cooperating with authorities or advertisers in providing additional metadata well beyond the public data, and this could be used for nefarious purposes.
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@crazyeddie @vkc Even a block list can tell a lot. It's not just about what you don't want others to see, but also what you don't want to see yourself.
@niko @vkc If you just don't want to see it then that's what mute is for. It's possible to provide that feature without it being public and it apparently does that in bluesky.
Mastodon does the very same thing. Mute is just for you. Block also informs the user and won't let them see what you post. This is at least partially public because servers have to know to do this for you. If you are on an openly federating server then you are probably exposed here.
Were you properly informed?
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@niko @vkc If you just don't want to see it then that's what mute is for. It's possible to provide that feature without it being public and it apparently does that in bluesky.
Mastodon does the very same thing. Mute is just for you. Block also informs the user and won't let them see what you post. This is at least partially public because servers have to know to do this for you. If you are on an openly federating server then you are probably exposed here.
Were you properly informed?
@crazyeddie @niko a big difference here is that on Fedi, the block informs *your server* and *the other server*, but on Bluesky, it informs *everyone* because it's centralized.
An end user has to be pretty smart to exploit that via Mastodon, and it'll be incomplete because of federation/defederation. On Bluesky, it's trivial and complete.
