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Bluesky already doing enshittification (feddit.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/fedimemes@feddit.uk
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Toot

@FediThing@chinwag.org on Mastodon: "If you click on a link in a Bluesky post, it is now automatically redirected via the domain go.bsky.app before it actually goes to the link in the post. There is no way to stop this or know that it is happening as the redirect only flickers on the screen for a fraction of a second. Presumably this means Bluesky can now track all link clicking on their platform, including IP addresses, destinations etc? Or have I misunderstood? Bluesky is spinning it as a tool for publishers to track referrals, but going beyond the spin it seems to be giving Bluesky access to people's online activity?"
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[–] 101 points 2 years ago (9 children)

They already know your IP address, you're using their website/app.

It's either to track outbound clicks (And potentially block them if they're harmful, YouTube and Steam do that), or a much more unlikely option is to hide the referrer from the target site (Since browsers have better ways to handle that now, but old ones don't)

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Wouldn’t it be easier to just scan the original post for harmful links?

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Then you have to scan every single existing known post every time a new link is blocked, if you redirect it through a bouncer it's a single endpoint to block any link, regardless of the source of the post (since bluesky is in theory decentralized)

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Interesting idea. Is that what devs & mods have commented about the system setup in update notes (if any?)? I'm not in web development, and not at all sure about what's considered standard practice or new. Others seem to be commenting in a way that sounds as though they feel put out or deceived, but you're saying it's just a minor security protocol?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Could be that.

    Could be big data. If you click a link to furaffinity on Bluesky, this change means they know your account visited that website, and they know you're a furry. So they sell that data to Fursuits-R-Us. Then Fursuits-R-Us buys some feed priority with furry users, and now you're seeing a lot of posts about Fursuits-R-Us. Ta-da, that's the magic of feed-integrated personalised advertising. You get marketed to, and you don't even know it.

    You might think advertising fursuits is harmless. But what if The Heritage Foundation buy that data and that feed priority instead? Or what if a right-wing Twitch streamer just started a playthrough of Red Dead Redemption, so they pay Bluesky to promote their content to all accounts that are marked as politically naive Red Dead fans?

    This is how elections are bought and sold.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    No such thing as a free lunch, amirite? At least with the realization that your data is getting harvested like tuna by pirate fishing, you can purposely feed it bullshit to skew the metrics over time. If you want to get on the inside track of cheese sales, setup a program to search for cheese 1-3 hours/day during your time away from the terminal, and see how many sales of delicious brie/roquefort/edam/camembert/cheddar/emmentaler you get. Might as well get ads for delicious cheese wheels while you're at it.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So either they are solving problems the most common browsers are solving or they are tracking clicks to sell user data. Somehow the latter sounds more likely, especially since they have no reliable source of income yet.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    True, but at the same time it's their app. They already know what profiles you're looking at, what posts you're viewing, and the images you view, knowing what links you're clicking on is just another event handler.

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