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Is it OK to write code that does new things on the Fediverse? poll (cosocial.ca)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/general@activitypub.space
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Is it OK to write code that does new things on the Fediverse? #EvanPoll #poll #ActivityPub #Fediverse

71% Yes
27% Yes, but...
0% No, but...
1% No
230 votes - ended 2 months ago
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[–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (7 children)

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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (6 children)

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

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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