Scott M. Stolz

@HistoPol

I’d say, unless you limited the post to your followers, however if one of your followers were on the #Friendica or #Hubzilla platform, they’d still be able to quote your post and then you’d still lose control,…

Not exactly accurate. Anyone can copy and paste your words into the post box and quote you. Some platforms make it easier than others though.

Also, Mastodon is rumored to be including quote posts soon, so even on Mastodon, people will be able to quote you.

@HistoPol

I am a political commentator, as well as an activist. This is why I cannot remain silent:

For someone like you, you would probably want to post publicly, to as many platforms and protocols as you can, so you reach a wider audience. But you would need to choose a platform with better permissions and moderation tools.

For example, you would want to control who can comment on your posts and be able to delete comments that are toxic. Mastodon does not have this capability, but most platforms that have threaded conversations give you that ability.

@Qazm There are other options, like using a platform that has privacy, access lists, permissions, and better moderation tools. Mastodon only has block lists, which limits user’s control over their own posts.

For example, on Mastodon you can block someone so you can’t see their posts, but you can’t stop them from replying to posts they have already seen. On Hubzilla, you can actually turn off commenting on your posts so no one can reply or so that specific people can’t reply, and can even delete other people’s replies to your thread. You control the conversation in your thread. You can’t do that on platforms like Mastodon.

Also, on Hubzilla, it is all about user choice. So if Hubzilla implements the Bluesky protocol, both the admin AND the user would have to opt-in. Users would have to actively turn on the Bluesky addon to federate with Bluesky. Otherwise none of their posts will ever be sent to Bluesky. I am pretty sure Friendica will work the same way.

So Hubzilla and Friendica would actually do a better job at blocking Bluesky than the bridge does. And the bridge actually has a lot of options for blocking Bluesky.

So instead of blocking Hubzilla and Friendica, you probably want to start using it instead, since it gives you better protection against Threads and Bluesky than Mastodon does.

@HistoPol

I know what #whitelisting is general, but how would I go about this on #Mastodon?

The whitelist, if I don’t want to do everything manually (no-go,) would need to be “intelligent” and able to discern the platform s.o. is using for his handle…

I don’t use Mastodon, so I don’t know for sure. Some people have mentioned that there is a whitelist mode that is called “limited federation mode” or something like that. The admin would have to turn that on since it is for the whole instance.

If you don’t want to use whitelist mode, people have been talking about blocklists that can be imported into Mastodon. I am not familiar with how they work. Maybe someone who uses Mastodon could answer this one?

@HistoPol It is my understanding that boosts won’t be passed on if you block the bridge or add #nobridge to your profile because the boost still has you as the original author. This would be true no matter which software a person is using.

But if someone quotes you (on any platform, not just the ones mentioned) or takes a screenshot of your post, that would not be blocked. And people can do that now without the bridge. Windows comes with software that allows people to take screenshots. So do phones. And most other fediverse platforms other than Mastodon allow quoting.

The fediverse has over 100 different projects and multiple protocols already connected to it. If you are concerned that people will quote you or boost you on other networks, you might want to consider a whitelist servers where you only allow approved Mastodon instances.

With or without the Bluesky bridge, you are about to be outnumbered by Threads, WordPress, and other projects coming online. ActivityPub is an open network, after all. Always has been.

But the nice thing is that you can control who you connect with by blocking or whitelisting. In your case, being on a whitelist server would probably address your concerns.