Bluesky intends their indexing to be used by third parties

https://write.as/ulrikehahn/bridging-to-bluesky-the-open-social-web-consent-and-gdpr

by ColinWright • 2 years ago

23 11 2 years ago

Actual page title:

Bridging to Bluesky: The open social web, consent, and GDPR

So the title I have provided here is not the title of the page ... I know ... but this is deliberate as the title I've given reflects the issue that drew me to the page. The title I've given is from the article:

"Bluesky gathers posts etc. into a common index that mediates all communication:"

“Each user account has one repository, and it contains all of the actions they have ever performed, minus any records they have explicitly deleted ...

... repositories are public, anybody can crawl and index them using the same protocols as our systems use.”

The article then says:

"The preprint also suggests that it is very much the intention of Bluesky that this infrastructure be used by third parties for purposes unrelated to communication"

Does Bluesky intend to honour any concept of privacy or content?

Quoting from the article:

The Bluesky privacy policy notes:

“Profiles and Posts Are Public. The Bluesky App is a microblogging service for public conversation, so any information you add to your public profile and the information you post on the Bluesky App is public.”

Note also other passages of the privacy policy:

“Business Partners. …We may also share your personal information with business partners with whom we jointly offer products or services.”

Also be worth mentioning this from Bluesky’s privacy policy:

“Do Not Track.” Do Not Track (“DNT”) is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers. Please note that we currently do not respond to or honor DNT signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers, as there is no consistent industry standard for compliance.”

crtasm2• 2 years ago

The expectation here is to use the original title and only add context with a comment. Thanks for sharing the link.

ColinWright2• 2 years ago

Having been on this site for 16 years[0] now, I do know this. In particular, in the guidelines page[1] it says:

Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

In this case the title is misleading concerning the reason I was submitting it. It's not about bridging, it's about BlueSky actively making it easy for third parties to use the content, and actively ignoring DNT.

So in this case I believe the original title to be sufficiently misleading, and the version I used instead to be a better guide for this community.

[0] Originally with a different handle

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

andrewstuart• 2 years ago

The outcome of StackOverflow making all its data available was an infinite number of garbage sites republishing the data to try to scoop advertising dollars and polluting the SEO .

iosjunkie• 2 years ago

Is that a SO problem or search indexing (Google) problem?

lukev2• 2 years ago

This is a good article on the complexities and interaction between ActivityPub servers, their existing ToS, and Bluesky.

But as far as Bluesky itself is concerned, the answer is wonderfully simple: it's just public. Full stop. Posting on Bluesky is equivalent (from a privacy perspective) to creating a Wordpress blog. Anyone on the internet can see it, and there's no way to stop them, and that's kind of the point.

I find this refreshing and exciting and I hope it leads to a cambrian explosion of innovation in the social media space. The collective creativity of the world can be brought to bear on the network instead of a small handful of strategists employed by the platform.

mikae1• 2 years ago

Yes, very public. Even blocks are public.

https://docs.bsky.app/blog/block-implementation

lukev2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

poisonborz• 2 years ago

Depressing that this is "refreshing and exciting". Apart from the last 15 years this was the norm.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Article from February.

Have they said anything more on this since? Times have changed for them with scrutiny.

Been finding it hard to keep up with what they're saying about various items because it's all over the place from github to their media channel(s), AMAs, lead devs saying this and that randomly. A symptom of them developing in the open, building this piece by piece, day by day.

Bluesky intends their indexing to be used by third parties

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