Post #3449012

2026-06-28 13:19 UTC

Now, I can't speak to details of the current kerfluffel. I can speak to the comments made about it. So, ActivityPub is a sociotechnical system whose obligations are defined by the affordances allowed as part of the ActivityPub API. The only reasonable expectation you have, unless you have a very tight knit server that's established its own norms, is that anyone engaging with your content will engage with it via the ActivityPub API, and some general Mastadon cultural norms. If you create Fediverse content and distribute it, it is very much like distributing a book. So long as the person follows the API and doesn't: - Redistribute the content in a way that violates the API - Impersonate you - Share a private message - Make and distribute copies outside of the API - Etc... Then the person is entitled to do whatever they want with the content. The API is the contractual relationship. A relay bot, typically, is only acting within the confines of the API, and usually following Mastadon conventions. So, the relay can't be claimed to be "violating consent". Again, I don't know details of the initial incident, and I can't speak to it, but people were absolutely making the claim that Relay's are consent violations unless they are opt-in. They aren't and that's not how ActivityPub works. In order for that to be the case it would require that you restrict sharing of your content according to someone's relationship with you.

Replies (1)

@AeonCypher@lgbtqia.space 2026-06-28 13:28

Form here I have two other points. One is on ethics, and the last ties back to the post that started this thread addressing sociotechnical systems and individual accountability versus systemic behavior. Unless you adhere to Libertarian ethics, which is strict contractualism and NAP, then you must recognize that not all shitty behavior is a consent violation. It's not a consent violation write a parody of your music without permission. It is shitty, which is why Weird Al always gets permission first. (It also saves legal headaches, but it's optional.) A relay that, for example, just reboots every single post on a server to all other servers as an opt-out service is a shitty thing to do. However, it's absolutely allowed as part of the Activity Pub API, nor is it a violation of the well established Fediverse norms. There is no reasonable expectation that content you post isn't going to be seen or shared by randoms. ActivityPub is structurally designed as a way to publicly publish through FOAF semantics to an arbitrarily large audience. If this was G+ and you took a screenshot from within one community and pasted it elsewhere, which happened all the time, that actually _is_ a consent violation because the entire design of G+ was to be able to keep communication intra-community instead of inter-community.

Open ##3449270