Prevent people from following me?
I didn't find a setting to prevent users and bots from following my piefed account without my approval. Is that just not supposed to be there?
Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
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17 replies
When developing the following functionality recently I wasn't sure if this is something people wanted, seeing as how the threadiverse is quite different from Mastodon.
Thanks for your feedback, I'll add an approval queue.
It basically comes down to how ActivityPub works. When someone follows you, what happens next depends entirely on how the recipient's software is programmed to handle that request. Mastodon has a way to handle it, and Lemmy/Piefed has a different way.
Mastodon is a microblogging software focused on 'personal' accounts and posts, and if a user enable the option to require a follow request, the backend will wait for the request to be accepted before approving it.
On the other hand, Lemmy/Piefed were designed as a public forum software, with a focus on public communities and discussions. Since all posts and comments are treated as public data, there's no reason for a follow request/approval system. So when someone follows a Lemmy/Piefed user, the backend approves it automatically.
If a Mastodon user follows a Lemmy/Piefed user, Mastodon sends a follow request to Lemmy/Piefed backend, which automatically accepts the request (because Lemmy/Piefed always accept follow requests automatically).
If a Lemmy/Piefed user follows a Mastodon user, it depends entirely on what the user settings are. If they have the approval request option disabled, then the backend will also accept the request automatically, but if they enabled the approval request option then they need to actually accept that request.
That being said, there's nothing shady about that. It's just how each software (Lemmy/Piefed/Mastodon or whatever) operates based on their own purpose. They share the same ActivityPub protocol which makes them able to communicate with each other, but they don't share the same philosophy design.
It's the philosophy design I'm questioning then. Let me give a second point, if I go to a piefed user's profile, I can see exactly who they are following and who they are followed by. I don't even need to be logged in. Why do I need to be able to know that?
Like you said, it's a public forum software. To me that means the point is the discussions, not the users. People go to the fediverse for privacy concerns, those don't stop at "not using your real name". If someone wants to keep all that stuff public and let others know exactly what they're up to, I don't mind it being an option. But just because I'm okay with my posts and comments to be public for someone who searches for them (ironically enough that's the one thing I can limit), it doesn't mean I want everyone to be able to profile me. At least make them put in some effort instead of just handing it out.
I'm not very familiar with RSS Feeds, but I'm pretty sure that anyone can follow, without approval, any user, using RSS, from Reddit, Lemmy, Piefed or Mastodon and they wouldn't be notified about it. What Piefed does is just facilitate it from within ActivityPub, almost like an built in and more transparent RSS Feed.
So...
Are you saying piefed users can enter a username, and Everytime that account posts they get notified?
Yeah, that's some stalking shit, and if there's anyway to opt in, I'm interested.
What is really like to see tho, is instances have an "opt out" for federization.
Like if an instance has this type of bullshit, I'd like the option to tell my instance, to never send any of my posts/comments to those instances in the first place.
That also gives users from other instances some control over their own data
But its public data... Anyone can just autofetch any community or user history, thats kind of the point of this platform.
I think there's a difference between having my posts and comments be public in places I choose and enabling other people to easily follow everything I do.
Especially when mastodon users can add everyone across the fediverse to their feed, but can themselves disable other people to do it to them.
Well you cant stop it without removing the core concepts of the fediverse. Even if following people is not built into the platform, anyone can very easily just write a piece of software (or custom client) that does it for them. There is no way to stop this except not using the fediverse.
Can you write a piece of software or custom client that lets you follow mastodon users who disabled the setting? Did you?
Yes im pretty sure i could. But why would i do something that has already been done?
Not sure why you're bringing Mastodon up when it's a different software, different conceit, different purpose.
no following does not work that way. I follow two people and don't get notified about every post. I think it effects the feed when looked at with hot or such. im not sure as I don't use those feed views.
You can get notified about every post separately from following them, which adds their posts to your subscribed feed afaik.
Only counts for posts in both cases though, not for comments.
is it the bell. I have only used it for low content communities. Just realized its use recently and oh man is it ever useful.
Well I just got an email a little while ago that I got a new follower, which appears to be a rather suspect looking mastodon user who claims to be an anti-scammer.
...funny enough that you answered, because I looked at their profile and you are also on the list of people they followed. https://mastodon.social/@Scammhelp/following
So apparently mastodon users can follow Lemmy users too.
Note that mastodon itself does have a setting to require approval for people following you. I'm not using my mastodon account though so I don't know how it works exactly.
Yeah, super weird...
I get that they wanted to jam twitter and reddit knockoffs together, but it really shouldn't be.
Icing on the cake was that there's someone else following me, but Mastodon says I "chose" not to share that info?!
https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/followers
I haven't fucking chosen anything with Mastodon, have no account and never interacted it before just now to see who was "following" me.
But it defaults to letting people do it, and prevents those accounts from even seeing who's stalking them.
Bad news: should you even "choose" to share your follower list, Mastodon.social would show only your followers from Mastodon.social. Full list of your followers is technically available only on your instance. But Lemmy has not forethought its users being followed...