Post #3154324

2026-05-22 15:13 UTC

@mike@flipboard.social We have threads and the bsky bridge blocked from mastodon.art. Does this respect those blocks? I.e. if one of our community leaves a reply on a Mastodon post that unbeknownst to them is matriculating across all of those different services, I'm assuming that reply WON'T show up on sites we have blocked? (I saw you saying that a reply/interaction on bsky appears on fedi if bridged, I just want to understand and check the scope and security of this)

Replies (1)

@greg@flipboard.social 2026-05-22 19:07

@welshpixie@mastodon.art @mike@flipboard.social Good question! Surf works differently from instance-to-instance federation — it's a multi-network client that connects to Mastodon, Bluesky, and other networks independently. So your instance-level blocks of Threads and the Bluesky bridge are fully respected within Mastodon's own federation, but Surf surfaces content from those networks on its own, outside of that federation layer. There is a Mastodon API (/api/v1/instance/domain_blocks) that can expose an instance's blocklist, but only if the admin has chosen to make it public — many instances don't. And even where it is available, it raises a broader question for us: Surf's purpose is to bring multiple networks together in one place, so honoring instance-level federation blocks in a non-federation context is something we'd need to think carefully about. It's actually a topic that has popped up quite a bit lately that I don't have a reliable solution for that doesn't raise even more questions.

Open ##3154325