What the fuck is this and is there a reason *not* to block it
@mcc@mastodon.social @oblomov@sociale.network the fedibuzz relay has been around for a very long time (relative to AP anyway)
It allows you to set up a relay that follows specific hashtags, or in your case, an entire instance. It's helpful for small instances to get "up to speed" with the fediverse without needing to follow everybody.
There's nothing nefarious about it.
![gabboman the wafrn dev [SINGLE INSTANCE EDITION]](https://media.gabboman.xyz/1764776490819_e536f6b79c3beea6716621b8e437c4430a427641_processed.webp "gabboman the wafrn dev [SINGLE INSTANCE EDITION]")
@mcc@mastodon.social
the team has blocked the server relay.fedi.buzz, I hope it stops annoying people with rewoots.
@gabboman Depending on how they're scraping your instance feed this might not actually do anything 🤔
@mcc@mastodon.social
feels like they are scraping mastodon social feed, posts still apear.
sent a dm to @astro@c3d2.social to opt out.
some people seems to be reciving notifications because of this and it even looks like its wafrn endorsed. and given the great reading comprehension of people in this social network… oh god
@gabboman@gabboman.xyz @astronot@mastodon.online I mean, from a technical point of view, the Announce back to the original author is a courtesy, and could be omitted entirely.
If truly what people are annoyed by is the rewoot/boost "noise", then this is a problem with a very simple solution.
And I believe @evan@cosocial.ca already made a PR to Mastodon so that boosts from bots are now silenced, or something. So really, I don't understand the problem.
@gkrnours it's not the same software.
@instance-app.wafrn.net@relay.fedi.buzz @mcc@mastodon.social
@gabboman@gabboman.xyz tagging you in here, is this yours?
@instance-app.wafrn.net@relay.fedi.buzz @liquidparasyte@app.wafrn.net @mcc@mastodon.social
Nope will investigate what is later.
Wafrn does not support relays
@gabboman why don't you support relays on the Fediverse side?
@evan@cosocial.ca
Truth is im lazy and only do what I consider important
Also fun fact we dont do outboxes either
Correction: Also is there a reason why if I type out
@\instance-app.wafrn.net@\relay.fedi.buzz
Without the backslashes, it gets shortened to just "@\instance-app.wafrn.net". Isn't that maybe bad. Like I notice mastodon often shortens @-mentions to just people's short handles, which is fine, but it seems bad to do this when shortening it makes it potentially confusable with a (potentially real?) instance account (unless that's a bluesky account?)
Looks like whoever made these made quite a few of them.
Without wading into the "relay" debate, I find these particular bots problematic because
1. They are fully unexplained— profile is empty
2. Without the benefit of explanation, they seem to imply that the accounts are in some way blessed by the instance (but I just spoke to the wafrn operator, who says it isn't)
Discovery feeds without a way to understand what it is you're discovering seem like just context collapse and nothing else
Without the benefit of explanation, they seem to imply that the accounts are in some way blessed by the instance (but I just spoke to the wafrn operator, who says it isn't)
I don't think that implication holds. I could create an @mcc@mydomain.com, but there's no implication that it is you.
@mcc o h
Yeah sorry idk i did not realize that at all 😅
@mcc is that wafrn through some unfortunate accidental sequence of events showing the instance actor (which is an artifact of how activitypub is used here and every instance has one but you’re not supposed to see it in regular use)
@artemist@social.mildlyfunctional.gay @halcy@icosahedron.website
wafrn was janky but not THAT janky.
Also, the account is not even on wafrn servers.
its someone making a manual relay it seems. for naming stuff and mastodon stuff, it looks like @mcc@mastodon.social was mentioning some actual wafrn account, when in reality it was fedibuzz or something like that.
