The ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions
This blog uses WebMention technology. If you write an article on your website and mention one of my blog posts, I get a notification. That notification can then be published as a comment. It usually looks something like this:
This means readers of my post can see where it has been mentioned around the web. They can read your article after reading mine. Nice!
I've also set up a "bridge" service which looks for people posting comments about my work on social media. For example, if you post a link to my blog on Twitter - or reply to someone who has shared a link - I get a notification. That means if I think it is an interesting comment, I can publish it in the comment section. It usually looks something like this:
This means readers of my post can see your Twitter or Mastodon comments. They're identified by the logo. Users can go to Twitter or Mastodon to reply to you. Nice!
Everyone is one big happy family, no matter where on the web you are.
Or so I thought. There are a few drawbacks with this system.
I didn't write that!
I had one reader complain that someone else was impersonating them in the comments of my posts. It wasn't immediately clear to them that I'd syndicated their comment and reposted it. After that, I added the Twitter logo to make it a bit more obvious. But many people still find it unintuitive that content can be replicated outside of its original publication.
I deleted that!
I had another reader who automatically deletes their Tweets every month. My blog retains a copy of their Tweets because it doesn't check for deletions. This might be against the user's wishes - especially if they had posted something inappropriate. Twitter doesn't send a "deleted" notification to services which have stored Tweets - and it would be impractical to periodically check every single Tweet I have stored. The reader was ambivalent about whether they should be kept on my blog.
I'm not that person any more!
One of the comments was a person who had changed their name & Twitter avatar. Understandably, they weren't happy about still being referred to by their deadname on my site. Again, neither Twitter nor the bridging service notifies me when a user changes their name or avatar. Naturally I deleted the comments when they contacted me.
I have the copyright to that!
An overly aggressive person was furious that I'd copied their © content onto my blog without permission. Personally, I thought that adding their 7 word reply was covered by fair-dealing, but I didn't fancy pissing them off. So I deleted it. If I'd embedded directly from Twitter it would have been fair game - but some people feel there's a material difference between embedding and copying.
Now what?
This is a complicated problem. I want to see what people are writing in public about my posts. I also want to direct people to the conversations which are happening elsewhere on the web. But people - quite rightly - might not want their content permanently stored by my site.
So I think I have a few options.
- Do nothing. My site; my rules. If you don't want me to grab your hot takes, don't post them in public. (Feels a bit rude, TBQH.)
- Be reactive. If someone asks me to remove their content, do so. (But, of course, how will they know I've made a copy?)
- Stop syndicating comments. (I don't wanna!)
- Replace the verbatim comments with a link saying "Fred mentioned this article on Twitter" . (A bit of a disruptive experience for readers.)
- Use oEmbed to capture the user's comment and dynamically load it from the 3rd party site. That would update automatically if the user changes their name or deleted the comment. (A massive faff to set up.)
What do you think I should do?
Caboom! Comment Anywhere, Bring Onto Own Media
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And oEmbed, quite apart from the faff required to implement, would have the side-effect of having sundry social network's stuff poking into your website — possibly jarring, definitely a concern if said network is off the snoopy or security-bug-ignoring kind. (Which, unfortunately, means the majority of social networks.)
The ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions
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I’m effectively doing 02 on my site, although I’m prepared to do 03 if that becomes a real problem. When in doubt, I default to 01, of course; I do accept mentions of deletes and honour them automatically, and if the platform you’re commenting on doesn’t send these mention, you shouldn’t have used that platform. I know it’s rude, but TBH I’m sick and tired of the infantility people approach their public speech with.
05 is a thing I would absolutely love to do, and will do as soon as the legislation changes. As it is now, I can be held accountable for what my website shows to a reader, and embedding something that can be changed without me knowing, resulting in legal actions against me, is not exactly what I keep my website for.
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When someone actually sends me a webmention, though, I’ll likely show it—in full if it’s short enough, or a brief snippet and link back to their post.
If my site supported ActivityPub and someone replied to one of my posts using Mastodon (or a similar service), I’d probably do the same.
In both cases, honoring updates/deletes seems like the right thing to do.
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I do definitely prefer people to comment natively on my site's comment system for a number of reasons, though, particularly because I really don't want people making public webmention-replies to my private/restricted entries.
Ivan says:
That would be very nice. The rest of the Internet may have made a copy anyway, and may only mark things as deleted instead of actually removing the data.
In addition to being a muff to set up, third-party dynamic content has privacy implications that the comment section currently doesn't have.
Mr Andrew Fielding says:
It doesn't really help if they change their mind much later on, but at least it gives them an opportunity at that moment to ask you to remove it.
That said, if every blog chose to do this, Twitter would become a useless garbage heap of repli....oh. Nevermind.
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I’ve been blogging for nine years now on my personal website. I like owning my own domain as it allows me to retain control and stay independent of particular services. Private platforms have a tendency to be bought out and/or ruined by commercial interests, especially now with tech growth slowing down and investors getting uneasy.
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