I don’t like it when people bridge their various socials into Fedi but never interact with the populace. I get it, you want your msg to reach a bigger audience. But not interacting on this platform feels a bit like being used from my POV. Like you want my attention, but you yourself don’t have the time to interact. I wish this aspect of internet didn’t exist.
Yeah I follow a few ppl from the Bluesky bridge and I think I'm going to unfollow a few because it's much less fun without being able to respond
@eestileib @farah I think you can respond to brid.gy posts but only if you yourself have a bluesky account, which then crossposts your public posts from mastodon to bluesky
@jackeric @eestileib @farah I blocked the entirety of brid.gy for this exact reason. It's a one-way street, especially when you don't have a Bsky account. I was tired of seeing these posts here.
@Radgryd @eestileib @farah There's two specific people/entities who ought to be on here but are just on bluesky - lindsay broadwell and ballotboxscot - and I'm annoyed ballotboxscot is _not_ using brid.gy because I need to keep a browser tab permanently open to read his bluesky posts. lindsay uses brid.gy but my need to reply is insufficient to tolerate sending all my original posts to an unmonitored bluesky account as well as just replies
@Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah Same. I guess maybe it's fine for people who use social media passively, but it also seems unnecessary. Just use a third party client that can log into multiple accounts on several different services. Back in the day we had instant message programs that could do AIM, ICQ, and whatever else all in one app, I'm sure there's something like that for social media
@StarkRG @Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah pretty sure there isn't... apart from Bridgy.
Trillian is the software you're thinking of - and I was still using it right up until Google up-ended their Hangouts/Chat protocol for the umpteenth time and Trillian could no longer interface with it. They pivoted into being their own messenger system for medical institutions many years before (weirdly) and had long given up on being the one messenger app to rule them all.
@mossman @Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah
Actually, I was thinking of Pidgin (https://pidgin.im), but I knew there were others.
And, yeah, it looks like all the effort that would have normally gone into creating such apps is, instead, going into creating B2B SaaS apps (or maybe B2SB, business-to-small-business, would be a more apt description) for running company or "content-creator" socials.
@StarkRG @Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah well I thought Pidgin was basically an XMPP client with a few similar protocols tacked on. While Google supported XMPP that meant it happened to connect to Hangouts but those days are long gone.
Trillian was the first to do it back in the late 1990s and had the most protocols under its belt, as far as I know. They spent many years reverse engineering every time ICQ, MSN etc. deliberately broke things - but then people moved on to Facebook, Google made it's own changes and those old networks all basically died.
@mossman Pidgin was originally an AIM client released at the very end of 1998 (literally 31 December) and predated XMPP by a few days (first released 4 January, 1999). Plugin support was added in April/May of 2000, but the first mention in the changelog of multiple protocols was December of 2000. Trillian, meanwhile, was released in July 2000 as an IRC client (and extremely buggy, according to wikipedia).
@mossman Because it's closerd-source (and, as such, doesn't have a published changelog), I couldn't find anything definitive on when Trillian first supported multiple protocols, one source says end of November 2000, another (very slightly more trustworthy) source says 5 months after the initial release (making it December 2000). Ultimately, though, I think they're close enough to simultaneous that it's impossible to tell which was first.
@Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah I am considering to add #bridgy to the list of bot instances, but I didn't...
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/main/activitypub.bots.domains.block.list.tsv
I did add it to the general blocklist tho because it's value-removing!
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/2b472b72bd5c9ea1c271adcbadecfc6a26a5fc02/activitypub.domains.block.list.tsv#L54
@Radgryd @jackeric @eestileib @farah Yeah, I did too. I don't want to be engagement fodder or a number in a follower count.
@farah
I'm not here to be an audience. I'm here to interact with people, good, bad, or ugly. I think many on fedi feel this way.
Jul 7, 2026, 5:34 AM
@farah I don't like it either. Be here, or don't be here, but decide.
One of the quick signs that someone is doing this, apart from not responding when you comment, is to post images without alt-text (in one case I've seen, posting *text as an image without alt-text*, which seems like execrable* manners).
* I have to admit that I was glad of the chance to use the word "execrable".
@nxskok Had to look up that word! Thanks for enriching my vocabulary ☺️
@farah it is, you might say, as bad as it sounds.
I have had that thought myself. You articulated it far better than I.
@farah
I feel exactly the same and there is no point in engaging with those accounts, its a one sided conversation.
@MostlyTato @farah exactly. I'd like a way to label such accounts in my timeline so I don't even think about replying. Maybe there is one I just haven't found yet.
@farah I block the popular fedi posters who just post a screenshot of their Twitter post, or just link to their Bluesky or a Lemmy post. Most of the time they don't even reposnd to replies because the Mastondon post was automated, they don't actually use their account, they actually live on Twitter with all the racists.
@farah I kind of agree. But I also quite like checking in on their links, where there is more interaction. I quite often boost or like them, so they know there is a public here as well. I hope then they will get involved, and help the fediverse grow.
@farah it's un fedilike, I feel that ppl here frown upon inauthentic PR
@farah
That's where the good old Block comes in handy.
@farah I also hate this, because I'm here to talk, someone posts something great, but never checks it? I've wasted my greatest puns on a bot of person.
That's the corposcum social media effect... people just post links for likes and never interact... they expect and demand that others do their work for them... sharing their posts far and wide without any effort of their part.
I tend to mute those accounts... I'm not wasting my time and effort talking to a wall.
@farah +9001%
#Fedi is a bidirectional channel!
- If one doesn't want to answer comments, thencit's the wrong tool for that! They should stick with #blogposts & #RSS for theor (corporate) website instead!
@WeirdWriter @farah there are options for that too, ranging from #Newsletters to [if they really insist] #loginwalling & #paywalling stuff...
- Or just doing a #FollowersOnly - Account on the #Fediverse with #Followers-Only Posts!
@farah I blocked the BlueSky bridge and if anything, it made the Fediverse better.
@farah I have to agree with you! It really aggravates me when I choose to reply to a message that was bridged from another platform and I get an error message that the account owner doesn't't bother to interact on this platform. It's almost always an automatic block for me. If you're not going to communicate with me, I don't want to read what you post.
@farah I block the bridge. I'm not in the mood to interact in any way with people who are too good to reciprocate. Save that bs for BS.
If I gave a fk about Shitter, or BSky, or what ever other Oligarch owned social, I'd be on those shite sites and not here instead....
Leave it there.
Jul 7, 2026, 11:49 AM@farah @maxleibman
That seems to be the purpose of social media for a lot of people. If your goal is to have a gajillion followers you aren’t not intending to engage.
Jul 7, 2026, 12:09 PM@farah I agree. I have loved being on Mastodon because it generally does require posters to do the necessary work to be social. I understand why some people use media platforms for reach and amplification, but that doesn't feel to me as though it is social media any longer; it's more like a subscription.
@farah I was pleasantly surprised at how long it took for me to encounter a Bluesky post after moving instances and not keeping my block list.
I agree, it feels like they want me to be happy just to have the opportunity to gaze upon their posts, and don't even pretend they might interact. I'll pass.
Some people just want to increase their "reach" but don't see how the fediverse differs from other systems. I'm reminded of the journalists who checked us out when Twitter was bought and declared Mastodon could never work (because they couldn't rapidly get juicy follower numbers here to show their editor).
Jul 7, 2026, 12:21 PM@farah Mostly agree. Though I do appreciate a few specialist folks (like public health) who are spreading good science in the public interest and may not have capacity to chat. Those are rare.
@farah I'm irritated by celebrity leftists who feel they're too important to take the time to consider community standards for communication.
"I'm too busy fighting capitalism and centralization on big commercial platforms to learn the silly rules of your community. Please pre-order my new book where I invent another new word for capitalism."
@farah agree @TheSpaceshipper worse yet are the abandoned ones who don't even bother to go that far @Scarredforlife etc
@farah Yeah this is a great way to put it. I agree. I'm here to interact, to make connections, even brief and passing ones. Asking me to look at your stuff but not being willing to actually see me or interact with me, feels rude. If I wanted to be treated like a customer, or join some parasocial "community", I know where I could go. There's a reason I don't hang out in those spaces.
Jul 7, 2026, 7:36 PM@farah@beige.party It feels pointless? Like, why would we give them attention if they don't even care to take it?
@farah I'm not so interesting in following people who don't want to engage. I get some accounts are they to announce their political hot takes and the point on them is to shut up and listen and share.
While that's fine for things you believe in, as a whole it's exhausting that all your time is taken by you following the latest big controversy.
If you deeply care, then everyday controversies are engaging, but if you've got othering things on your mind, they are like advertising and they sap up your positive energy and you get very little in return.
That's why I choose Fedi over those corporate platforms. Here I chat to people about things and I'm not constantly bombarded with someone's video selfie as they take ten minutes to explain what should really take them one.