The Nexus of Discussions

@quippdblog it's frustrating because Glitch and Hometown are noticeably better than vanilla Mastodon in several ways but almost none of the larger instanes run them -- and hosting companies don't generally offer them. I wrote about the community aspect of this in https://privacy.thenexus.today/a-tale-of-two-prototypes-2/

@risottobias Thanks for the feedback, but this article's not about the FediForum meltdown. Once I do an article on that, I'll link to it.

In terms of whether Bluesky users have thought this through. ... @anildash just posted a reminder that everything's public and archived by intelligence agencies ... here's his (accurate) summary of the responses.https://bsky.app/profile/anildash.com/post/3lkjet5k75s2z@hrefna @fediversereport

@thenexusofprivacy @reiver @socialwebfdn @jaz @reiver.bsky.social users on the Fediverse aren't anti tools or anti discovery, we just want our choices to be respected. After all, being a space where our choices and privacy are respected in a way that Big Tech doesn't is a big part of the reason why the Fediverse is popular!

@box464 Interesting. Thanks!

I certainly agree that we need to be legislation specifically around the use of data for AI training, and that it's a different situation for public data as opposed to data that's only accessible eith an account or via an API. Still, scraping data in violation of the terms of service isn't necessarily legal -- as Solove and Hartzog write in The Great Scrape, "Privacy law regularly protects publicly available data, and privacy principles are implicated even when personal data is accessible to others." Ulrike Hahn's Bridging to Bluesky: The open social web, consent, and GDPR look at the interactions between the ActivityPub Fediverse and Bluesky; the joint statement from a dozen data protection offices and Kieran Mcarthy's Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee look at scraping in general. TL;DR summary: it's complex!@mastodonmigration @leberschnitzel @dogzilla @Lydie

It's great that you're thinking abou this @springdiesel! I don't know any great moderator training materials that emphasize anti-racism but a couple o other resources that might be useful. A lot of the suggestions in 5 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people are relevant to moderators as well (and therre are lots of links with more background about past issues here). The appenxdix on "Blocklist resources for moderators" has suggestions about getting a good instance blocklist in place, which is a critical thing to do ASAP.Sarah Gilbert's Towards Intersectional Moderation is a great read on an overall approach@gunchleoc

You can track the SocialCG's public discussions at https://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialCG - it has links to the email list and meeting notes. Here's an example of somebody from a Meta-funded non-profit (who's got a major role in the discussions going forward) attempting to shut down criticisms of Meta on the email list. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2025Jan/0026.htmlThe SocialCG is currently in the process of coming up with a charter for a Working Group to create the next version of the ActivityPub spec. Things to look for: does Meta have a representative on the working group? (Since they're a dues-paying W3C member, they're entitled to one, so presumably the answer will be yes.). How many people from Meta-funded non-profits (or organizations that take funding from Meta or Meta-funded non-profits) will be in the group? What roles will they play, publicly and behind the scenes? How many people critical of Meta will be involved -- and what roles will they play?@nemesis @adrianmorales @ophiocephalic @ntnsndr

Yeah, Mastodon's unwillingness to allow max post length to be easily configured is a huge issue (dating back to 2017!). So frustrating.It's worth checking out GoToSocial --it meets your requirements of > 500 characters (and includes Markdown formatting) and more than 4 images. It's still beta but very solid, I've been using it for @jdp23 for a while (with phanpy as the web interface) and love it. K&T hosting has plans starting at $3.75/month - https://www.knthost.com/gotosocial @AnthonyJK @paule

Yep. Here's some additional thoughts on how white people can make fedi less toxic for Black people - https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/@run_atalanta @cavyherd @DarrenNevares

@mastodonmigration the difference between “public” and “made publically available” (if any) is a term of art question, so you’ll want to get input on that from privacy lawyers (and other experts but it’s precise enough that you really want at lest some lawyers on this). GDPR and My Health My Data may have different analyses; both Ulrike and Carey both discuss stuff related to this with GDPR.On uses of data you’ll need to take the ToS into account as well as the privacy policy. But remember that others use of publically available data isn’t necessarily limited by these uses.

@OliviaVespera a new fediverse/bluesky search engine

Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if #FreeOurFeeds incorporates the feedback.Although, one of the biggest things people were giving #FreeOurFeeds a hard time about was their out-of-touch focus on relays and lack of awareness that they're fairly cheap and becoming cheaper ... a perspective that's very common (and equally out-of-touch) here in fedi as well. And, we've also got boondoggles here, just with somewhat-lower stakes (hundreds of thousands instead of the millions). So, there's a lot of learning for fedi from this session as well, and it'll be just as interesting to see whether the feedback gets incorporated.@mastodonmigration

A great project! Thanks @Sarahp for covering it!

@jon@discussions.thenexus.today excellent, this reply federated through!

@elosezno Yes, and there are several different projects working on different aspects of it. They're not there yet but there's a fair amount of momentum. @mastodonmigration

@frigginglorious @mike @liaizon @pixelfed There can be startups behind open-source projects, but we're definitively not one of those, we're a French not-for-profit organisation dedicated to popular education on the challenges of the digital age and the cultural commons.

"A.I. Training Is Like Reading And It’s Very Likely Fair Use"These people are unbelievable.

@oli yeah i don't think it was trying to frame Bliuesky's "billions" as a community

Right. That's kind of the point! The proto-fediverse was dominated by a VC-funded startup -- just like today's ATmosphere. And eight to ten years later the next-generaiton protocols (originally also developed by a corporation) got refined and adopted by a standards bodies -- just like will probably happen with AT Proto. And presumably just as somebody from a Meta-funded non-profit has repeatedly shut down criticisms of Meta on the W3C ActivityPub mailing list, at some point somebody from a Bluesky-funded non-profit will try to shut down criticisms of Bluesky on whatever standards group is trying to take things forward.There's a lot to critique with Bluesky but many of the critques apply to the ActivityPub fediverse as well.@Gargron @halva @ai6yr