Bridges — the scorer is paused
Cambridge TCG still holds the principle that mathematical structure can help communities understand one another. The first bridge implementation, however, used the wrong consent boundary. It treated a public profile or collective as permission to compare attached portfolios, wishlists, follows and member collections. That permission was never recorded.
Current behaviour
/api/v1/bridge returns a machine-readable paused status. It performs no person, portfolio, wishlist, follower or membership query. /bridge gives the same answer for human readers.
Why public was not enough
Publishing a profile answers one question: “may these selected fields be displayed?” Affinity scoring is another purpose. It combines records, infers a relationship between two parties and can support discovery. A lawful and respectful implementation needs a separate, specific choice.
- A portfolio records possession; it is not a public offer.
- A wishlist records planning; it is not permission to match a person.
- Collective membership does not transfer every member's data rights to the steward.
- An aggregate can still reveal private facts when the group is small.
Historical formulas
The pure mathematical functions remain in code as historical and reusable building blocks: Jaccard overlap, set intersection, region comparison and cadence ratio. They operate only on values a caller has already supplied. The database resolver that assembled hidden inputs has been removed.
Conditions for a future bridge
- Each party selects the exact fields allowed as bridge inputs.
- A publication receipt records notice, purpose, time and withdrawal.
- Collective-owned data is distinct from member-owned data.
- Small-group aggregates have a minimum disclosure threshold.
- People discovery has reporting, moderation, safeguarding, export and deletion controls.
Safe network available now
The organisation directory and its API publish only facts an organisation steward explicitly chose to publish. They do not expose a member roster or infer relationships.
Change history
v1 — 2026-05-13. Portfolio, wishlist, language, region and cadence affinity scorer introduced.
v2 — 2026-07-11. Live resolver removed and endpoint paused because profile visibility did not provide field-level inference consent.