Creation of multiple hashtags such as #notabs and #nomatrix to enable match-making against people of the opposite opinion (#nobot will match you against an AI, #noindex against the other fingers)
"No u" opt-in option to automatically reply this to anyone attempting to compliment you
"Low-key private" scope that allows everyone except one specific user to read your posts because fuck you, yes you specifically
Fixes:
My posts didn't land in your notification list. All of them should appear again in your notifications and timelines from now on
Catboys quota has been met again, thank you all for your participation
Known issue:
All animals are labeled as dogs
Goth gf shortage
Won't fix:
Keysmashes
The person reading this
Making the Mario emoji a default on all instances
Roadmap:
Having an emoji pack of every single animal by volpeon by 2035
Eugen promises having at least one controversial change per semester
I posted a few things today, and suddenly, there are all these "helpful", "curated" #Bot accounts (all on Mastodon dot social) that are instantly boosting and faving my posts.
How can I block that?
I want #NoBot s in my feed. I already block all bots from following me.
Is there a way to block bots (all bots, not piecemeal...) from interacting with my posts?
Who actually thought that using hashtags in the profile is a good way to express consent or refusal of something?
I definitely wanna add 100 hashtags to my profile just to opt-in or opt-out of various services.
The first thing I do every morning is spending an hour to check if there is some new fedi bot so I can add the appropriate hashtags to my profile :neocat_facepalm:
How do I block completely all of meta and blue sky or whatever the big Social Media platforms federating here from accessing my posts? Specifically what do I have to do? Do the instances exist yet to block the domain?
@JoBlakely You can see a list (maybe imcomplete) of servers blocked from interacting with your instance here : https://mastodon.social/about . You need to add #nobot in your bio to opt-out (simplest way).
the year is 2025. in order to signal to the fediverse that you'd rather not have your toots exploited by third-party services you've not signed up for, you must include 73 variations of the #nobot hashtag in your profile, leaving you seventeen characters with which to describe yourself and your interests.
then, a new project is announced. to opt out, you must add the #NoHinkyHijinksPrettyPlease hashtag to your profile.
Fediverse! I’ve been building a bridge to Bluesky, and they’re turning on federation soon, which means my bridge will be available soon too. You’ll be able to follow people on Bluesky from here in the fediverse, and vice versa.
Bluesky is a broad network with lots of worthwhile people and conversations! I hope you’ll give it a chance. Only fully public content is bridged, not followers-only or otherwise private posts or profiles. Still, if you want to opt out, I understand. Feel free to DM me at @snarfed (different account than this one), email me, file a GitHub issue, or put #nobridge in your profile bio.
@wholesomedonut I wonder if there's a way to enforce #nobot on the server's end. That way, bots that don't enforce it natively will still be unable to interact with those profiles and the user's posts.
@sad_electronics Yes, but your account does not have any indication that you do not want any bot interaction, and this bot does not interact without human intervention.
I've opened an issue on the repo to respect the #nobot hashtag in user bios.
there is currently a bot inside MIT IP space, address 18[.]4[.]38[.]176, scanning fedi at large. i have confirmed this with 5+ unrelated instance admins, large and small instances, across mastodon/misskey/pleroma/akkoma.
the bot is poorly behaved. i have observed it making repeated requests, multiple times per second, for the exact same paths (the paths being, generally: user profiles, specific posts, and sometimes following links in posts). returning 403s does not stop this activity. one of my domains received hundreds of additional requests despite replying with 403 to all of them. i have also seen it make requests for paths containing html tags - seems like a badly written parser. the purpose of these requests and what data is being gathered is unclear.
PTR on the ip returns sts-drand03.mit.edu. a quick web search for "mit drand" brings back https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/david-g-rand and his personal website: https://davidrand-cooperation.com/ (note: other IPs in the /24 also have names in the PTR which match up with names of MIT faculty, but only the .176 IP appears to be involved in this activity).
seems he's doing research into "misinformation" and "fake news" on social media. he also appears to be on fedi! so @Drand, given this activity is sourced from an IP with your name on it, could you share the purpose of this traffic? what data is being collected and how is it being used? do you plan to respect robots.txt or identify yourself in your useragent? is there a process for instance admins to opt out of this activity other than blocking the source IP?
@Drand I appreciate the response, and that you've shut down the bot for the time being. However, this doesn't answer any of our questions or concerns regarding this project:
Data privacy. Many of the users that you've been harvesting from have specifically requested their accounts not be archived using multiple methods: robots.txt, #nobot, and #noindex. Based on the logs regarding which accounts have been getting scraped, the bot isn't actually respecting the privacy needs of these accounts, which I believe may be in violation of GDPR, especially for instances hosted in Europe.
This research seems to ignore qualitative data that's hidden from a public bot. Considering 95% of my moderating happens behind the scenes, collaborating with other instance admins in a Discord server... How is the research supposed to be aware of that? We intentionally do not make those conversations public in order to ensure a positive experience for our users.
By scraping data and being a bad actor, you are directly poisoning your own research data. Research HAS to be done with consent of everyone surveyed, otherwise, it is considered inethical. There's a reason why peer-reviewed surveys tend to include a long page of terms you have to agree to before you can fill it out. The users you've scraped have NOT agreed to this research, and have NOT agreed to having their data scraped. Due to the lack of ethics, my instances have already blocked your bot at the IP level, which will invalidate your research. And I know of several other instance who have also done the same.
Consider this as us admins being a positive influence on fediverse moderation by confronting a bad actor. However, I very much doubt that this confrontation will show up in your research.
If you do not want cvecrowd.com to process your Mastodon posts, please add either the custom tag #CveCrowdDeny or the more general #NoBot to your profile.
Alternatively, you can completely exclude your public posts from search results in your profile settings. This is the default setting on Mastodon.
@Susan60 Hi, I apologize. I've decided to indefinitely shut down the autobooster since I realized that this is a really ugly workaround (there's just no way as far as the software I used goes to even determine whether it's a reply or posted by a user that has #nobot in their bio) for #GoToSocial's lack of support for relays as well as #guppe and #chirpsocial not federating well with GTS (I can't follow groups from there).
Built a mastodon thread unroller since I couldn't find an existing one. Super barebones at the moment, yet to add support images/attachments and sand some other rough edges but it works!
I've incorporated your feedback in my Mastodon thread reader @mastoreaderio
It honors #nobot in your profile and will not unroll your threads. The requester gets notified via DM.
It supports unrolling via DM. When requesting an unroll, set visibility to "Mentioned people only". Keep timelines and threads clean! It will remind you to do so.
Otherwise, its replies will have visibility "unlisted" to keep the local instance timeline clean.