Today we were made aware of multiple Fediverse blog posts incorrectly attributing “vote Trump” spam on Bluesky to the Mostr.pub Bridge.
This spam is NOT coming from Mostr. From the screenshots used in these blogs, it's clear the spam is coming from an entirely different bridge called momostr.pink. This bridge is not affiliated with Mostr, and is not even a fork of Mostr. We appreciate that the authors of these posts responded quickly to us and have since corrected the blogs.
Mostr.pub uses stirfry policies for anti-spam filtering. This includes an anti-duplication policy that prevents spam like the recent “vote Trump” posts we’ve seen repeated over and over.
It is important to note WHY there are multiple bridges, though.
When Mostr.pub launched, multiple major servers immediately blocked Mostr, including Mastodon.social. The moderators of Mastodon.social claimed that this was because Nostr was unregulated, and suggested to one user that if they want to bridge their account they should host their own bridge.
That is exactly what momostr.pink, the source of this spam, has done.
The obvious response to the censorship of the Mostr Bridge is to build more bridges.
While we have opted for pro-social policies that aim to reduce spam and build better connections between decentralized platforms, other bridges built to get around censorship of the Mostr Bridge may not — as we’re already seeing.
There will inevitably be multiple bridges, and we’re working on creating solutions to the problems that arise from that. In the meantime, if the Fediverse could do itself a favor and chill with the censorship for two seconds, we might not have so many problems.
nostr:npub1d03clrrrma7mlpxm0mz2dehmhkx3nh9rhxqwltgctpwyduztymustepzfs
Hey I'm back with another question. Was toying around on Activity Pub and got a username at my domain to redirect to my Mostr account (so searching for username@domain leads to key@mostr). Would it be possible to do something like that where a username could actually be proxied to a different domain.
Dunno if it could be with some sort of reverse proxy, a couple of static files on a site, or even potentially integrated a copy of the bridge? Or none of the above? If it was doable figures it could be a cool way around all the servers that blocked the Mostr domain, ones that freak out at long usernames, and the longer key based usernames. But no idea if it was so figured I'd ask.
Credit to the guy who figured out aliases
https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2022/11/05/mastodon-own-donain-without-hosting-server.html
Thanks!
Hey interesting idea! I'm not sure, but I'll think about it.
Thanks - we're looking into this! There's another account that was also experiencing the same issue and a couple of other bugs with federating to Bluesky that may be related.
We've been trying to troubleshoot this error. Can you try pushing an event from your Threads acount (make a new post, update your profile, etc) and see if that pushes it through the relay?
We unblocked ourselves 😉
https://soapbox.pub/blog/threads-server-blocking/
That being said the federation Threads is currently permitting is super limited, so you won't really have much success talking to people there. You can follow accounts that opt in, but they won't be able to see or engage with you yet. Threads claims these features are planned for the future.
Here's what they say about that:
> "In the future, we expect content to flow from the fediverse into Threads. Federated Threads users will be able to see and engage with replies to their posts coming from other servers, or follow people on other fediverse servers and engage with their content directly in Threads. Our plan is for fediverse-enabled Threads profiles to ultimately have one consolidated number of followers that combines users that followed them from Threads and users from other servers."
That's a Threads decission, I assume because they percieve potential liablility regarding minors data being outside of their realm of control.
Good question - only United States, Canada, and Japan so far.
https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/21/networking-traffic/threads-has-entered-the-fediverse/
Threads users aged 18+ with public profiles can now choose to share their Threads posts to other ActivityPub-compliant servers -- which means they an federate across the Mosr Bridge! Here's how to follow opted-in accounts on Threads from Nosr.
At the moment, Threads federation only works one way, and it''s unclear how many users are opting in. Nonetheless, we know that growing the available network on #Nostr is key for lowering the barrier to entry new users experience when joining decentralized platforms. #GrowNostr
Follow the us to stay up to date!
Can you try making a post or updating your profile to push it through the relay?
Check out this talk from #NostrAsia on why bridging matters for #Nostr to succeed, especially in the early stages:
We've added the ability to look up supported accounts by their local username across multiple platforms including the Fediverse, Bluesky, and Threads!
Try it here: https://mostr.pub/
Manually - there's still a limited number of accounts that opt in to the bridge on either platform, so they can be hard to discover.
We've added some new suggested followers on Threads to the Mostr bridge. Check it out!
Know of any accounts on the Threads or Bluesky who have opted into Federation that you think we should feature? Let us know!
Nostr (via Mostr) ➡️ Activitypub (via Bridgy Fed) ➡️ Bluesky
We have also udpated the Mostr Bridge search tool to include Bluesky accounts! Give it a test drive:
That's correct! It's not us being nice, though, it's nostr:npub1pqr3g2gk3vsnrqk9kwfqqcxc6d5cwjr0hyc0nlzz9py5nf92vd9sn02sck. They chose to be opt-in-only to be polite.
We, on the other hand, do not care. 😃
(ps. thanks to nostr:npub1mu9wmykl7qx5llk69axd3rvk0hzhdd25jsqtj2hmnzjpn2sxum6s8jjj0t for all their work on this yesterday!)
Nostr users can now follow Bluesky accounts thanks to a combination of the Mostr Bridge and nostr:npub1pqr3g2gk3vsnrqk9kwfqqcxc6d5cwjr0hyc0nlzz9py5nf92vd9sn02sck! Learn how to follow Bluesky users from #Nostr:
We bridge from Nostr -> Fediverse
nostr:npub1pqr3g2gk3vsnrqk9kwfqqcxc6d5cwjr0hyc0nlzz9py5nf92vd9sn02sck bridges from Fediverse -> Bluesky
Threads will also be bridged from the Fediverse via Mostr when federation is implemented.
(in short)
With Nostr, ActivityPub, Bluesky, and Threads all moving towards interoperability or bridging with each other, it's clear who's still living in the dark ages. Centralized platforms are dying. Open protocols are the future.
Oh myyyy... you can now follow George Takei on #Nostr thanks to the Mostr bridge!
https://primal.net/p/npub17sn2jzhqzccn9j7h6vhywec2zr6lzw5p2d5z7lnplsxwqvrs4duqv6jgfe