Can anyone tell me what is #NodeBB and why is it scraping and republishing fediverse content without consent?
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@dentangle I thought it was just forum software.
I wasn't aware that everything was being republished.
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@onepict @dentangle yeah it implements activitypub so people can remote follow and every post that comes in goes into "uncategorised" as i understand it -
@dentangle NodeBB is a forum software that optionally supports ActivityPub, i.e. it's part of the fediverse (if the specific NodeBB instance wants). In my experience its lead ActivityPub dev @julian@community.nodebb.org (same first name, no relation
) is very approachable if you have questions about why and how it does things. He is currently at a convention though and may be a bit busy today.cc @onepict
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@Rairii @dentangle kinda feel a bit icky about a remote follow that isn't directly following tbh.
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@onepict @dentangle all the posts coming in is because of a follow relationship. from what I can tell, all the posts coming into community.nodebb.org is because their main activitypub dev has ~250 accounts on their follows list -
@Rairii @dentangle So does that mean I have a follower from nodeBB and that's how it's being populated via federation?
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@Rairii @dentangle thanks.
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@onepict It is forum software, but is scraping posts from the fediverse (incl. Mastodon and PeerTube) and reposting that on the public web for search engines to discover.
AIUI making the fediverse searchable is an explicit non-goal in the community, and every previous attempt to do so has been met by blocks and defederation.
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@julian@fietkau.social @julian@community.nodebb.org @onepict I have no problem with Julian following me. I do have a problem with his software reposting everything I write (including unlisted posts) on the public web and making that searchable by engines.
That is explicitly against what we allow on the Fediverse.
Julian - you need to fix your software and respect the conventions the community has established for the Fediverse.
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I must admit I'm a bit upset about everything being backfilled in and being uncategorised.
Especially since in Mastodon I explicitly selected to not be searchable on search engines.
It feels a little bit like the time Maven ingested everything.
Just because this time it's a forum over ActivityPub doesn't make me feel happy about it.
https://dotart.blog/cobbles/happy-bi-visibility-day -
Hi @ordnung
Are you aware that posts are being scraped and reblogged by community.nodebb.org?
The #nodebb software is reposting content, including unlisted posts and effectively making the fediverse searchable.
This looks like a #Fediblock to me.
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@onepict @dentangle secondary indexing that doesn't respect prefs is v bad, i have yet to figure out how in the world nodebb federates because it doesn't work like any other software that treats posts like author-owned entities, even lemmy handles this better.
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@dentangle @julian @julian @onepict indeed - https://docs.nodebb.org/activitypub/visibility/
"NodeBB does not differentiate between these separate states. Follower collections are ignored, and unlisted/quiet objects are considered fully public posts in NodeBB."
the first thing, looking at the code to try to confirm -> followers-only posts will just get discarded I think?
but yes, to nodebb, unlisted == public: https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/blob/83a55f6adcd246920ba08415dcdf46505503c4a4/src/activitypub/inbox.js#L38-L42
(public address in cc means unlisted, this is treated as same as public) -
@Rairii @onepict @julian@community.nodebb.org @julian@fietkau.social Even public posts should not be showing up in search engines.
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@dentangle @onepict @julian @julian i agree, but that's technically a different issue: currently there is no support for the discoverable/indexable flags. -
@jonny @onepict @dentangle The copy of the profile should definitely not be served up in a way that can be indexed by search engines. This must be an oversight, I'll let them know. That being said, that kind of copy exists on every Mastodon server as well, the only difference is that NodeBB has a different look.
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@Gargron @jonny @onepict As far as I can tell all public and unlisted posts are being posted publicly on the web by nodebb and have been picked up by search engines.
I realise everything on here is effectively "public" including DMs, but there has been strong resistance until now from the community to making the fediverse searchable.
NodeBB has broken that expectation.
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^ @Taweret there is definitely something to nodebb's tendency to corndog the datasets
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Forum software NodeBB joins the fediverse
This might have something to do with it.
I'm pretty sure a Fedi instance is supposed to cache posts. That is literally what one is supposed to do.
(So I searched for some of my previously deleted accounts. They didn't cache any of those. It seems they're being reasonably good Fedi citizens and respecting deletes.)
