Blogs, replies, and federation

Anything you post online is liable to be propagated, remixed, rebroadcast, and otherwise indexed somewhere, and wherever that somewhere may be, someone may be talking about it if there’s enough interest. This includes the main post and any ancillary posts (comments) about it. The internet is a public square and while there may be buildings and paths branching off of it, I always assume whatever I say in one place (an instagram post for example) will wind up being discussed in other place (on twitter).

This is why I’m pretty judicious about what I decide to share and post on the web. During all my time online (since the late 1990s) I’ve seen context collapse play out in real time. I understand why people have both hesitations and expectations for their activity online.

But I also have one of those “connected websites” starrwulfe is talking about here. My website broadcasts to RSS readers as well as the federated universe and I have very little control over what that looks like in everyone’s feed. I also syndicate all my posts and notes to a couple social media accounts. My blog supports classic WordPress comments, but also webmentions from other sites. I’m connected to another website called Brid.gy which funnels Mastodon and Bluesky likes, reposts, and replies back to my website as webmention comments. How do I give users on those social sites a heads up that their activity will most likely make its way back to my blog?

What could be nice is a setting in Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky/whatever app that allows a user to say “I don’t want my activity showing up outside of XYZ”. Maybe its a dropdown of options? That could be tricky on any fediverse platform like Mastodon, which is very much a creature of the open web mentality. Not to pick on Mastodon, but I think they have some received some fair criticism on the UX of the more granular features. I like the way ActivityPub on WordPress has been rolled out so far. It’s opt-in (a plugin), not a core feature.

But I’m starting to brainstorm technical solutions to a social problem. This all reminds me a bit of Sara’s and Tracy’s posts from last year, about IndieWeb interaction social norms and barriers to a more social IndieWeb. Go read those, because they are much more thoughtful than anything I’ve vomited into this reply so far.

Here’s what I know I can do, personally: If you don’t want your activity from a social account showing up on my website, I can take it down. Since going full #indieweb, I only got one troll comment (from Bluesky) for one syndicated post from this blog. Obviously that one got removed from showing up on my site, and the account was thusly blocked. I can definitely do the same if you only meant to interact with me in one particular silo. Just let me know.

I’m an open web enthusiast, but not absolutist. I support anyone’s decision to have or not have a personal website and to add as much or as little functionality to their site. If someone wants their entire online existence to be a place like Facebook or LinkedIn, that’s fine, too. I’ll just be less enthusiastic about it.