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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 (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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