6 ms·

Bird.makeup: a Twitter to ActivityPub bridge

107 points by tambourine_man 4y ago

LeoPanthera 4y ago
Will this stop working when Twitter makes its API a paid service in a few days?
- winterqt 4y ago
  No, per https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/: > Unlike BirdsiteLive, bird.makeup doesn't use official twitter api, but the undocumented frontend api, just like nitter.net, which doesn't have rate limiting.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    It probably does have rate limiting, just not a low enough limit to be noticeable.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      nitter.net is rate limited and can't display twitter data the majority of times I use it. Other nitter instances are better. There's definitely rate limiting going on.
  - bdcravens 4y ago
    If it's undocumented, how would someone know that it doesn't have rate limiting?
riffic 4y ago
In case people don't know what "ActivityPub" is (there are a few of you out there!), it's an open spec for social media sites to interoperate in a federated manner. Most of the software that speaks the protocol is open source[0] and there has been a growing interest in it lately for some reason. If you were to look at the wider ecosystem, it would be fair to say it's a genie that won't be placed back inside its bottle. More info here: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub [0] but there is no rule that says this needs to be the case.
barbazoo 4y ago
It's not clear to me how this works. Is this following Twitter handles and forwarding posts to ActivityPub?
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  This allows you to follow Twitter people from ActivityPub. Twitter doesn't federate (it doesn't even allow third party clients at this point) but this bridge will do all of the federation work for Twitter. Basically, if you want to follow Twitter user @barbazoo, you search for @barbazoo@bird.makeup and hit follow. Their tweets will show up in your client as if they were sent through ActivityPub. This service can poll/subscribe to Twitter users or search for posts actively, then turn the results into ActivityPub posts. I run a walled-off version of BirdSiteLive, which this is based off, that does the same thing (but uses the Twitter API which will probably shut down soon). I guess I'm going to have to migrate.
  - camjohnson26 4y ago
    I’ve been using it for the few accounts I really miss from Twitter and it works perfectly.
pronoiac 4y ago
It's a Twitter-to-Mastodon mirror. From their source page, https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ - > Bird.makeup is a way to follow twitter user from any ActivityPub service. The aim is to make tweets appear as native a possible to the fediverse, while being as scalable as possible. Unlike BirdsiteLive, bird.makeup doesn't use official twitter api, but the undocumented frontend api, just like nitter.net, which doesn't have rate limiting.
simonw 4y ago
There are a bunch of services like this out there. One unfortunate unintended consequence of these is that people from Twitter often get the impression that Mastodon is full of impersonator accounts! Try a search for "web3isgreat" on any popular instance to see an example of the problem - here's a screenshot: https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/109835687372186227 https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/109835687372186227 It's not a huge deal, but I've certainly seen people get upset because they don't understand Mastodon yet and they think it's already full of people impersonating them.
- saurik 4y ago
  FWIW, I feel like I at least mostly understand the premise of Mastadon and how it works--though there are crucial details I know I don't related to how replies interact with federation (exactly where the data gets cached and stored in such cases... it isn't clear to me if that content is "owned" by the server of the parent or the child, and then how other servers manage to find it)--and I'd still be extremely frustrated by a public/discoverable mirror/proxy of my content, and will claim that that consequence isn't just an "impression" but is actually a fair description of what is going on. Let's put it this way: is it really any fundamentally different from someone setting up an Instagram account for someone else who is only on TikTok and then copying all of their content there, because they prefer using the Instagram client or don't want to install the TikTok app? I'll claim "no": the federated nature of Mastadon doesn't actually change why people want to do this and it doesn't even change the mechanism for how it is being done. Now, maybe you are OK with such mirrors--and, FWIW, I can begrudgingly defend that position if required to--but I hope it provides the right framing. I'm also going to assert that you should not ascribe benign intent to people doing this, even if initially it seems fair to do so or you yourself are the person doing it and you swear you are just providing access: I've seen people do this kind of thing--including to me, as I have in the past been considered to have extremely high-value / sought-after content (back when I was posting updates about iOS jailbreaks)--many times over the years, and eventually they realize they now have a ton of followers on "their" account and can start inserting their own content or even modifying mine. Meanwhile, people end up trying to contact me by messaging a mirror account--as while some of those in your screenshot are ostentatiously adding "[UNOFFICIAL MIRROR]" to every tweet, not all of them are--as they absolutely do just look like an official account and so people follow it and then start responding and communicating with it... that simply never goes well for anyone: I have definitely had people reach out to me complaining about interactions they had with "me" when they were actually communicating with some random person providing a content mirror / translation. If you want to do something like this for a service, it should either be part of your client (as opposed to a server/protocol issue) or (barring that, and given Twitter now trying to red team people with their API, I get it) be more like how people build XMPP bridges: something that is pretty ostentatiously a special bridge mechanism to the consumer who probably themselves actively installed and configured it so it is really clear what is going on, rather than it merely being a bunch of "this is just a regular user account" accounts created by people who are claiming to be neutral.
finnn 4y ago
ah yes, another fork of BirdSiteLive. Every one seems to make their own fork of that thing. And none of them (that I've found) set a user agent when delivering messages to other AP servers. You can see where bird.makeup sets the headers here[0] (with a distinct lack of user agent) and an issue I filed against the upstream[1] asking them to please set a user agent. [0] https://git.sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/tree/master/item/src/BirdsiteLive.Domain/ActivityPubService.cs#L96 https://git.sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/tree/master/item/src... [1] https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive/issues/188 https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive/issues/188
ssss11 4y ago
Doesn’t Twitter just shut this sort of thing down?
Hamuko 4y ago
"Search this handle to find it in your instance" "Could not find anything for these search terms" Not really sure how this is supposed to work.
- jFriedensreich 4y ago
  depends on your instance. eg. mastodon.social seems to block this which is reason for me to consider moving
danbmil99 4y ago
I took a shot at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737 Hard to get traction; doesn't really fit with Mastodon culture; and Elon will shut it down as soon as it hits his radar. Having said all this, there needs to be a realistic, scalable way to migrate Twitter users (and their following/followers) or Mastodon will remain a niche platform IMHO.
dom96 4y ago
These kinds of services will always be vulnerable. Especially now that the Twitter API is getting monetised. I had the same goal: helping Twitter users transition to Mastodon. But I decided to go about it a different way: by getting Mastodon into Twitter user’s timeline. So I created a browser extension to do just that. It’s definitely not a perfect either, but I hope it will be a useful way for some to transition or at least get exposure to Mastodon. The extension is here: https://chirper.picheta.me https://chirper.picheta.me
college_physics 4y ago
Messaging apps implement this "X is now on Y" feature which, while invasive, is very effective in reconstituting social graphs. I wonder how that could be implemented on the fediverse. A brute force way would be to scan your birdsite data dump and try to find if any of the same handles exist.
infinitezest 4y ago
I would log for this to work but these bots always have 0 posts in their timelines.
zimbatm 4y ago
Is there a service like that, but where you can bridge back replies from Mastodon to Twitter? I didn't think about it deeply, but it would be nice to be able to log in with Twitter and basically extend the network.

Will this stop working when Twitter makes its API a paid service in a few days?

winterqt 4y ago
No, per https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/: > Unlike BirdsiteLive, bird.makeup doesn't use official twitter api, but the undocumented frontend api, just like nitter.net, which doesn't have rate limiting.
- userbinator 4y ago
  It probably does have rate limiting, just not a low enough limit to be noticeable.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    nitter.net is rate limited and can't display twitter data the majority of times I use it. Other nitter instances are better. There's definitely rate limiting going on.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  If it's undocumented, how would someone know that it doesn't have rate limiting?

In case people don't know what "ActivityPub" is (there are a few of you out there!), it's an open spec for social media sites to interoperate in a federated manner. Most of the software that speaks the protocol is open source[0] and there has been a growing interest in it lately for some reason. If you were to look at the wider ecosystem, it would be fair to say it's a genie that won't be placed back inside its bottle. More info here: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub [0] but there is no rule that says this needs to be the case.

barbazoo 4y ago

It's not clear to me how this works. Is this following Twitter handles and forwarding posts to ActivityPub?

jeroenhd 4y ago
This allows you to follow Twitter people from ActivityPub. Twitter doesn't federate (it doesn't even allow third party clients at this point) but this bridge will do all of the federation work for Twitter. Basically, if you want to follow Twitter user @barbazoo, you search for @barbazoo@bird.makeup and hit follow. Their tweets will show up in your client as if they were sent through ActivityPub. This service can poll/subscribe to Twitter users or search for posts actively, then turn the results into ActivityPub posts. I run a walled-off version of BirdSiteLive, which this is based off, that does the same thing (but uses the Twitter API which will probably shut down soon). I guess I'm going to have to migrate.
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  I’ve been using it for the few accounts I really miss from Twitter and it works perfectly.

pronoiac 4y ago

It's a Twitter-to-Mastodon mirror. From their source page, https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ https://sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/ - > Bird.makeup is a way to follow twitter user from any ActivityPub service. The aim is to make tweets appear as native a possible to the fediverse, while being as scalable as possible. Unlike BirdsiteLive, bird.makeup doesn't use official twitter api, but the undocumented frontend api, just like nitter.net, which doesn't have rate limiting.

simonw 4y ago

There are a bunch of services like this out there. One unfortunate unintended consequence of these is that people from Twitter often get the impression that Mastodon is full of impersonator accounts! Try a search for "web3isgreat" on any popular instance to see an example of the problem - here's a screenshot: https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/109835687372186227 https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/109835687372186227 It's not a huge deal, but I've certainly seen people get upset because they don't understand Mastodon yet and they think it's already full of people impersonating them.

saurik 4y ago
FWIW, I feel like I at least mostly understand the premise of Mastadon and how it works--though there are crucial details I know I don't related to how replies interact with federation (exactly where the data gets cached and stored in such cases... it isn't clear to me if that content is "owned" by the server of the parent or the child, and then how other servers manage to find it)--and I'd still be extremely frustrated by a public/discoverable mirror/proxy of my content, and will claim that that consequence isn't just an "impression" but is actually a fair description of what is going on. Let's put it this way: is it really any fundamentally different from someone setting up an Instagram account for someone else who is only on TikTok and then copying all of their content there, because they prefer using the Instagram client or don't want to install the TikTok app? I'll claim "no": the federated nature of Mastadon doesn't actually change why people want to do this and it doesn't even change the mechanism for how it is being done. Now, maybe you are OK with such mirrors--and, FWIW, I can begrudgingly defend that position if required to--but I hope it provides the right framing. I'm also going to assert that you should not ascribe benign intent to people doing this, even if initially it seems fair to do so or you yourself are the person doing it and you swear you are just providing access: I've seen people do this kind of thing--including to me, as I have in the past been considered to have extremely high-value / sought-after content (back when I was posting updates about iOS jailbreaks)--many times over the years, and eventually they realize they now have a ton of followers on "their" account and can start inserting their own content or even modifying mine. Meanwhile, people end up trying to contact me by messaging a mirror account--as while some of those in your screenshot are ostentatiously adding "[UNOFFICIAL MIRROR]" to every tweet, not all of them are--as they absolutely do just look like an official account and so people follow it and then start responding and communicating with it... that simply never goes well for anyone: I have definitely had people reach out to me complaining about interactions they had with "me" when they were actually communicating with some random person providing a content mirror / translation. If you want to do something like this for a service, it should either be part of your client (as opposed to a server/protocol issue) or (barring that, and given Twitter now trying to red team people with their API, I get it) be more like how people build XMPP bridges: something that is pretty ostentatiously a special bridge mechanism to the consumer who probably themselves actively installed and configured it so it is really clear what is going on, rather than it merely being a bunch of "this is just a regular user account" accounts created by people who are claiming to be neutral.

finnn 4y ago

ah yes, another fork of BirdSiteLive. Every one seems to make their own fork of that thing. And none of them (that I've found) set a user agent when delivering messages to other AP servers. You can see where bird.makeup sets the headers here[0] (with a distinct lack of user agent) and an issue I filed against the upstream[1] asking them to please set a user agent. [0] https://git.sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/tree/master/item/src/BirdsiteLive.Domain/ActivityPubService.cs#L96 https://git.sr.ht/~cloutier/bird.makeup/tree/master/item/src... [1] https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive/issues/188 https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive/issues/188

ssss11 4y ago

Doesn’t Twitter just shut this sort of thing down?

Hamuko 4y ago

"Search this handle to find it in your instance" "Could not find anything for these search terms" Not really sure how this is supposed to work.

jFriedensreich 4y ago
depends on your instance. eg. mastodon.social seems to block this which is reason for me to consider moving

danbmil99 4y ago

I took a shot at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737 Hard to get traction; doesn't really fit with Mastodon culture; and Elon will shut it down as soon as it hits his radar. Having said all this, there needs to be a realistic, scalable way to migrate Twitter users (and their following/followers) or Mastodon will remain a niche platform IMHO.

dom96 4y ago

These kinds of services will always be vulnerable. Especially now that the Twitter API is getting monetised. I had the same goal: helping Twitter users transition to Mastodon. But I decided to go about it a different way: by getting Mastodon into Twitter user’s timeline. So I created a browser extension to do just that. It’s definitely not a perfect either, but I hope it will be a useful way for some to transition or at least get exposure to Mastodon. The extension is here: https://chirper.picheta.me https://chirper.picheta.me

college_physics 4y ago

Messaging apps implement this "X is now on Y" feature which, while invasive, is very effective in reconstituting social graphs. I wonder how that could be implemented on the fediverse. A brute force way would be to scan your birdsite data dump and try to find if any of the same handles exist.

infinitezest 4y ago

I would log for this to work but these bots always have 0 posts in their timelines.

zimbatm 4y ago

Is there a service like that, but where you can bridge back replies from Mastodon to Twitter? I didn't think about it deeply, but it would be nice to be able to log in with Twitter and basically extend the network.