@liaizon Nah it’s ok! It would have been the same for me because on Monday morning I have class in Rotterdam anyway

@tommi thanks tommi! I should have posted the event ages ago but was stressing about some things and was procrastinating

@berlinfediday @offline @f @sutty @pukkamustard So coooooool! Unfortunately I have to leave Berlin at midday 😭Looking forward to you organising many more gatherigs like this, @liaizon 👀💕

Early results are encouraging: experiences organizing against the surveillance-industrial complex in the ATmosphere and the fediverses -- Part 3 of The Time is Righthttps://thenexusofprivacy.net/early-results-are-encouraging/@general

Anyway, my answer is yes. It's OK for people to make code that does new things on the Fediverse.

ActivityPub is made for a lot of different use cases. I really like when people explore use cases we haven't tried yet.

Anyway, even for software that doesn't crawl the API, I think we need to give people the benefit of the doubt. People spend a lot of time and effort making that software -- usually open source, usually for free.

Second, a lot of the things we use on the Fediverse depend on reading that API data. Like user search, content search, hashtag feeds, relays, backfilling conversations, and aggregate data.

I don't even think "scraper" is a reasonable name for this kind of software. We usually use that for screen-scraping software, which takes HTML output and grabs the structured data out of it.

First, ActivityPub has a Web API that is used by federated servers to find out about people, the content they make, and what they've done. That's built in. It's on purpose. You have a lot of control of what is shared in this API. If you are concerned about what you share, you should check your software's privacy settings. There are a lot of knobs and levers.

Many of the replies mentioned "scrapers" as a category of software that's not acceptable. I think this is misguided.

Thanks all. I see a lot of developers getting brigaded for launching new tools on the Fediverse. At best, they're insulted and their motives are questioned. At worst, they're brigaded on GitHub, the Fediverse, or in real life.

@julian For Mastodon (Ruby) we use github.com/nomadium/linzer

@evan@cosocial.caIn another note: "yes but", the code shall not violate the spirit of the social contract of fedi. example: just a scraper: GTFO vs: "yeah I made this fedi software with a bunch of users and has this cool feature to backfill an user's profile's public posts as long as they dont block us"

@evan@cosocial.cayes, but you will recive death threats! #some-people-got-very-annoyed-at-invisible-mentions-in-wafrn #and-there-is-a-reason-they-are-now-the-first-line-on-this-reply #butt-you-should-check-this-post-in-original-instance

Anyways, my answer is "All except those you opted out of".

Setting the indexable flag, and using blocks or opt-out signals, is a "denylist" permission structure; "everyone except these enumerated servers".I don't think we have a good mechanism for an "allowlist" structure; "only these enumerated servers". If I were making a search engine, I'd have a way for someone to opt in manually, even if their "indexable" flag was missing or false.

A small minority of people seem to think that setting the indexable flag on your account doesn't enable search by any remote server -- you have to intentionally opt into each server, one by one. That's not how Mastodon treats it; it seems like a mistaken apprehension at this point.

IANAL, TINLA, BTW.I think search engines, including Mastodon search, should also include an opt-out for their specific engine. You should be able to have an "every search engine except these ones" policy. That can be implemented with blocks, maybe, or could happen by logging into the search engine interface and switching on a "don't index me" checkbox.

Thanks to everyone who responded to the poll.It seems like there's a common expectation that enabling "indexable" makes your content available for indexing without additional opt-in to a specific server. This is how Mastodon and other Fediverse servers treat the flag; if you've got the indexable flag set, your public content is indexed for full-text search. (Even if the indexable flag is not set, if you use a hashtag in your post, it's indexed for hashtag search.)

Said Peertube instances manifest as automated accounts that boosts all the content (Local videos only) made by its users.Here some examples:@peertube@peertube.wtf@peertube@makertube.net@peertube@neat.tube@peertube@dalek.zoneMost of them start with "@peertube@[respective instance]"Your account even shows as one of its followers on the /about/follows ("network" tab) page.2/2#Fediverse #ActivityPub #Interoperability #Instance #PeertubeInstance #Federation

I didn't use to like it. Now, I think it's great. Yes, but I wish more people understood it better.

@julian @z9mb1 There are already two Rust frameworks...Also some parts of the code look very familiar to me, which is not surprising given that the project is vibe coded (= plagiarized).@iftas @smallcircles

@iftas @jdlh woooooooooooo

@shimon1024Excellent slide