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 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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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.
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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 @vkc I didn't know that, but makes sense. Nice little OSINT trick! To me, it doesn't matter as much it probably does to someone else. I guess I've been lucky (or just privileged).
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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.
Is there a collection of national rules on this topic? Are servers hosted in some states more protected than others?
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@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.
@vkc Oops, thought you were implying that if they didn't keep the blocklists private... sorry!
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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.
Been using Mastodon off an on for some time. Spent some time on BS and felt icky. It stinks of corporate surveillance infrastructure.
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@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.
@vkc @niko It's actually the decentralized and modular design of the architecture that means it informs everyone. If it were centralized it could avoid making the block list public.
The fact that everything you post goes to a PDS that then sends all updates to a "firehose" of information is what does the AT protocol bad here.
Blacksky seem to be planning to plan to do something about this maybe. They want PDS that will limit output to just blacksky. Then it would be more like fedi here.
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@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.
@vkc @crazyeddie @niko A quick clarifying question; do you mean actual blocklists or simply who you have blocked? Because on BlueSky those are two different things
(For anyone who doesn’t know I’ll explain below)
If I make a block list on BS & start adding people to it, that’s easily accessible and trivially availableIf I simply block someone, that information is NOT trivially available, much the same as fedi; you CAN find it but you have to know how.
Block lists are meant to be shared (IIRC)
