Well if it isn't cryptocurrency spam coming from the biggest, open instance on the #Fediverse. 👀
I wonder if this is at all related to challenges with moderating an instance of checks notes 200k active accounts? Or with moderating new accounts on the only instance actively promoted in the official apps? :thinking_rotate:
Thankfully we can always defederate! What's that? It's the biggest instance so there are real concerns about a lot of people losing connections? Whodda thunk it!
The size of mastodon.social means that it is hard to moderate current accounts there.
The fact that it is promoted as the instance by the official apps, combined with the fact that in the public mind fedi is Mastodon, means it's difficult to effectively moderate new accounts.
And its size also means that bad actors are not compartmentalized into small, manageable groups on defederate-able instances.
@codesmith@ericdano every registration would need to be confirmed by an admin before the account can post at all.
If I am the admin and I see an account like "AI Doge" with a bunch of numberse in the username, I know something fishy is going on, and will at least closely monitor it (if I let it through at all).
@rysiek@codesmith@ericdano they will simply disguise spam accounts more effectively. Now they are just following the path of least resistance, which doesn't call for being subtle, because obviously they get away with it.
I think mastodon.social needs to stop accepting more users than they can effectively moderate.
@nirro@rysiek@codesmith@ericdano that’s the answer - don’t accept more users than the humans behind it can manage. Spammers are adept at overcoming account setup checks, they’ve been doing it for many many years. If the prize if juicy enough they’ll put in the effort. This isa somewhat inevitable challenge with fedi growing in popularity.
@szbalint sure, but it is an option. Which makes admins of these smaller instances more willing to engage with the rest of fedi and talk through some solutions. Maybe close registrations if you don't have enough manpower to properly screen them? Maybe get more moderators on board?
Mastodon.social is notoriously bad at engaging with the rest of fedi. And they can get away with it because of the size.
Yeah, but if other instances are spending time on cleaning up mastodon.social's lax moderation and screening, they are going to find themselves limited or suspended by a lot of instances.
There are already instances that have limited mastodon.social today over this.
If you are the BIGGEST you should also have the moderation force to police the instance.
@ericdano@rysiek@szbalint it’s a fair amount of hassle and work. I and our mods just got flooded with hundreds of reports. We divide and conquer, but this is the 3rd time in maybe two weeks? And they seem to be getting bigger
I had my concerns when Eugen made his honeymoon announcement (it mostly concentrated on new features and very little about the actual moderation resources that m.s has, and he's also openly admitting he will be away from the instance for a few days). I'm MS does have more than just one mod, but you never really get to hear who they are (or even that they exit) compared to who is working on dev stuff/new features...
@jerry does silencing an instance mean that people on your instance who get @-mentioned by a spammer on the silenced instance do not get a notification?
Look, I’m in the select group of people who have dealt with spam/abuse on a large ecommerce scale and some rando using m.s to spam is just really the beginning if Mastodon usage continues to increase (if - there is not that much problem with only a few million active users).
Yes and no. If enough instances complain, then perhaps they will do something about their instance. There are ALREADY a lot of instances TODAY that are suspending mastodon.social until they fix their shit. So….
@rysiek@jerry@ericdano@szbalint all three of them came from m.s iirc. i got two DMs from the first, none from the second (but i saw screenshots), and one from the third
@szbalint my point is: mastodon.social being as big as it is and still having registrations open is not helping to solve that problem. It's actively making it worse.
If mastodon.social is taking the position that it should be the DEFAULT registration center for Mastodon, then I think it is incumbent on them to do this.
Otherwise, they are going to get limited or suspended by a lot of other instances. I already see in the federated timeline instances limiting mastodon.social over this.
I haven't done that here, but it is really annoying they seem so lax on their registrations.
@FinchHaven that's a question to Gargron. He created this problem for himself, he should find a way to solve it — instead of externalizing that moderation cost to every other instance out there.
Or you know, he could close registrations on m.s and stop promoting it as the default instance. Just a thought.
If I'm spending a lot of time cleaning up their mess, I don't think it's worth federating with them. Most of the most interesting people are not on mastodon.social anyway.
Great question, which @gargron seems not to have an answer for.
Making itself the default, perhaps they should have thought about what it would need to do to be that. They seem to have failed multiple times now to prevent mass creation of spam accounts.
@FinchHaven cool, you are welcome to start your own thread and do that then. You replied in a thread I created and I would appreciate if you did not bring Gargron into the thread I started.
You can of course ignore my polite request that sets a certain boundary. And I can of course react to you ignoring that polite request of mine.
The size of mastodon.social is breaking the moderation story of the #Fediverse.
Moderation on fedi relies on:
instance admins and moderators being able to manage bad actors on their own instance;
instance admins being able to silence or defederate from insufficiently moderated instances.
Mastodon.social's size and the speed new accounts are set up there means that 1. is very difficult. The size of m.s. and the clout of some of its users means 2. is a hard decision.
@AlgoCompSynth let's start by not promoting a single biggest instance as the default for new users.
There will always be large and small instances, sure, but we can also make it easier or harder for gigantic instances to emerge. I'd like to try to make it a bit harder.
@rysiek I'm approaching this strictly as a (relatively straightforward) computer system capacity planning problem, and a somewhat harder engineering economics problem, not as a messy human political problem. I did computer system capacity planning for a living for 16 years. 🙂
Exponential growth is bad. It breaks things. If promotion stopped tomorrow the growth rate would be reduced but it would still be exponential.
> Let's focus on moderation as the issue and not make people feel guilty for choosing a large instance if it's where they feel most comfortable.
The problem is, as I have stated repeatedly in this thread, that the size of mastodon.social makes the moderation problem much, much more difficult to deal with.
And in the context of the spam attack that started this thread — third in 10 days, all coming from mastodon.social! — the size of mastodon.social is the moderation issue.
> I think we could solve the problem by throwing more moderators their way.
I disagree, looking at the current growth rate of m.s.
> de-federating a huge instance is going to leave a lot of people out in the cold who are still trying to figure the place out.
I agree, but we need to find a way to make m.s not "too big to be defederated from." The problem got created by the decision to make a single huge flagship instance in the first place.
@rysiek This was also my concern, combined with new people signing up and then being on a less well moderated server so they have a bad initial experience before they even understand how the fediverse works or have many friends to help them.
@rysiek It also relies on having enough tools, like mastodon moderators/admins are helpless when spam waves aren't centralised on a single instance but instead use a bunch of different open-registration servers or a spam software directly targeting ActivityPub.
@rysiek does Mastodon support blocking a single user at the instance level? like instance B blocks @user?
likeminded instances/mods could build a shared Blocklist.
moderation at scale is always going to be a hard problem. cc @mmasnick
@pacanukeha yes it does, but that's externalizing the moderation cost to literally all other instances. And also raising this cost substantially, because now every single other instance has to take action on a bad account, instead of just the originating instance.
I know it will be painful for people to defederate from 1 in 7 users, but it will be a lot less painful than 1 in 4, or 1 in 2, or wherever it is heading for on the current course.
@FediThing I wonder if a coordinated one or two day temporary defederation from m.s by a lot of other instances, announced ahead, would provide enough of a shock to the system for this to start getting fixed?
I'm waiting for the next update of the official app to see if they fix the onboarding. If they leave it as it is, with m.s still promoted as the main way to sign up, that will say a lot about their intentions (IMO).
Defederation should be a nuclear option only for virtually unmoderated servers in my book. Blocking larger servers doesn’t do any good, doesn’t encourage users to migrate or set up own servers, and seems self-defeating. Better would be help mid to smaller servers do better distributed outreach and onboarding and teach users on big servers the value and ease of moving to smaller servers. And I say this as an admin of a small/medium server.
I've been trying to teach people about smaller servers for a long time, on things like @feditips and @FediGarden
It's tough though, because by the time they are on m.s the damage has been done. It's much harder to get people to move to a smaller server, than to steer them to the smaller server in the first place. If they start out on somewhere other than m.s, the job is much easier.
The problem we have is Eugen now has total control over most people's onboarding. If he says m.s is the server people should sign up on, most people will believe him and never look any further into it.
I don't think it does any good to allow this centralisation to continue. It doesn't encourage users to migrate, quite the opposite, it gives the impression that mastodon.social is the place to be. There could be runaway feedback.
If m.s gets bigger and bigger, and if Eugen shows no signs of changing course, I'm not sure there is any other way to affect the situation other than defederation.
@tchambers @FediThing@rysiek
> Blocking larger servers doesn’t do any good, doesn’t encourage users to migrate or set up own servers, and seems self-defeating.
yeah, that's my concern. let's say that everyone does defederate m.s and people do spread across smaller servers, but after some time one of those grows in size and gets hit by a similar wave of spammers. do we repeat the same thing over and over, further fracturing the Fediverse? at some point most people will grow tired of it.
@noodlejetski@tchambers@FediThing or we learn that maybe we should keep instance size in check and spread the load. Large instances disable registrations, admins that want more action open new instances instead of scaling one till infinity and beyond.
@rysiek @tchambers@FediThing that would be optimal! I'm just worried that it'll take too many iterations for people to finally learn that, and we'll end up with a jumbled mess of Defediverse.
I would say it locks you off from those already there, and definitely does zero to dissuade new users who know nothing - and shouldn’t - of internecine cross server Fedi blocks.
We talk about our "culture" from this consensus building we social "police" our "commons" it's basic stuff we should not need to talk about, it's natural if we are not worshiping a #deathcult
The project of the #4opens for the last ten years, is a non-legalistic path towards codification of #FOSS culture. A tool to compost healthy soil to nurture seeds of hope.
@tchambers@FediThing@rysiek Yeah, I am happy on mastodon.social but I never discourage people from migrating off. It's a good landing zone, but it's healthy for people to move off into more specific communities.
@tchambers
> Defederation should be a nuclear option only for virtually unmoderated servers in my book
Funny, I've been arguing this too, but I'm starting to come around to @FediThing's position. The combination of John Mastodon's decision to funnel most newbies into his mega-instance, with the persistent crypto-spam coming from it, is the final straw for me. Something's got to give.
@tchambers
I suggest drafting an open letter and getting it signed by other server admins. Tell John Mastodon his instances will be defederated if he doesn't address the problems they're creating. My suggestions for the conditions;
a) reverse the decision to funnel all new users of the official apps into his instances
b) manually approve all new accounts on them to weed out spammers
@tchambers
c) close registrations for at last a week whenever spam or other serious abuse is (accurately) reported, so mods can redirect their attention from pre-approving new accounts to weeding out Bad Actors among existing ones.
d) maintain a mod to user ratio of no lower than X per thousand.
@tchambers
Another possibility, maybe John Mastodon's instances need to be hived off as platform cooperatives? Even if they stay under the umbrella of the Mastodon not-for-profit, they could be democratically managed by the people actively using them. That way JM could focus on the governance of the dev community around the software.
It's not an ultimatum, just a statement of fact. Some admins are already Limiting m.s. Defederation, like winter, is coming if he doesn't get House Mastodon in order.
> Plus he already knows what needs to be done
Maybe. I'm no mind reader, so I don't know. At least if it's stated openly, a) he definitely does know, and b) there's evidence of due process when people complain about defederation.
It's worrying in itself that we are having to guess his intentions, as it shows the project isn't operating openly and also shows that one person has far too much power. It's the monoculture Rysiek was warning about a while ago.
My suggestion would be we wait to see how the official app behaves after its next update? To see if there is any reaction at all to the concerns? Or is that too long?
@FediThing
> My suggestion would be we wait to see how the official app behaves after its next update? To see if there is any reaction at all to the concerns? Or is that too long?
I see no reason to wait. People have been complaining about John Mastodon's cavalier attitude towards the rest of the 'verse community for years. It's time a group of admins stood up to him together, and made it clear what's expected of fedizens with the level of power and responsibility he has.
@FediThing
Ironically I've often been the one defending John Mastodon's right to run his projects as he sees fit ; ) I still believe that, but I don't see anything wrong with the rest of the community making our needs and expectations clear. It's a better option than just quietly defederating and grumbling amongst ourselves.
Sure, but Gargron's decisions — making m.s the default in official apps, making the local timeline difficult to find in the local apps (did that get ever fixed?), etc — make this growing of middle and low ends very hard!
His decisions are actively undermining such efforts. That's the problem. We can debate all year about how we should grow middle and low ends, but Gargron is making it harder and harder.
> Not sure I know what this issue was: "making the local timeline difficult to find in the local apps ...
as of last summer the official Mastodon app didn't provide a way to browse the local timeline -- which isn't useful for people on m.s. but is very valuable functionality for people on smaller instances.
There's a danger is that the more m.s grows the more the network effect will kick in.
I'm often having to deal with people on @feditips who think m.s is better because it's where everyone is going anyway.
There could be a feedback loop where growth causes growth.
Also, as m.s gets bigger there's more chance of it being sold to someone worse. Eugen might change, or get bored, or get an offer he cannot refuse (not mafia, but just a lot of money 😁 ).
The proper use of "network effects" should be to rally the thousands of mid-range and smaller servers to grow, and to encourage users to migrate to them from M.S. not to balkanize or fragment the Fedi.
Onboarding doesn't only happen at the JoinMastodon level unless folks don't push it at the local servers.
BTW: the new onboarding now only apply to the mobile app, right, the web UI is unchanged? And don't most use other apps now (Ivory, icebubes etc)?
As far as I can tell, vast majority of new people sign up on the official app. That's why I am so concerned.
At least on feditips, most new people who talk to me are unaware there even are any other apps. Many aren't aware they can use website at all, they call Mastodon "the app" or "this app".
As far as I can tell, the membership flow is now this:
Hear about a social network
Look it up on their phone's app store
Install the official app
Sign up via the official app
People have been trained by years on Twitter, Facebook, Insta, Tiktok etc to think that the concepts of social network and apps and official apps are all one and the same thing.
This is why I think commercial platforms started to shut down or severely restrict APIs for third parties, to encourage this official app flow.
@FediThing Yeah but this is normal! People don't understand the fedi so they need to have simple onboarding and initial experience so they stick around long enough to start to understand it and then make informed choices. (Even some of the newer admins complaining about Mastodon/Eugen don't seem to understand what the fedi is or how it works!) I mean, I was around for StatusNet and understand the fedi and I started on m.s.. @tchambers@strypey@rysiek
@FediThing Granted, that was partly because I couldn't figure out how to reclaim my Friendica account because I think it was tied to my dead statusnet email 😂 That said, it still took me a while to figure out how things work here, etc. I think a lot of people underestimate how opaque the fedi can be for many people. @tchambers@strypey@rysiek
@ramsey Exactly and there were a lot of people here insisting that Mastodon needed to make the onboarding process easier for newbies who don't understand the fediverse (most new users but also quite a lot of less new ones apparently, which is fine, people shouldn't have to be working in tech or sociology to figure out how a complex social media service works). Choice is great until it's overwhelming and self defeating! Starting simple is good.
@FediThing Any suggested server would become the biggest anyway and since Eugen is being made responsible for this (by people in the fedi) then choosing one of the servers Mastodon runs really does make the most practical sense. Now, having a rotating roster of well run servers might be a better option (but that would also make some people angry and a lot of smaller servers don't want to be the entry point for all the random newbies).
Suggest one server, but it is picked at random from a pool of servers with reliable track records going back a year or more (or whatever criteria you want to apply).
If new people don't care what server they're on, then they won't care if it is picked at random like this from a trusted pool.
@FediThing I don't see how this would end up being any different at all and how it would solve spam or moderation problems of being the entry point (so growing in size and facing similar size problems).
Do YOU want your instance to be part of this lottery?
@FediThing Plenty of smaller instances can be spam problems too because they're run by a sole admin or have neglectful admins or moderators, etc. Size really doesn't denote quality or lack of quality. My other instance only allows new members via invite at this point. This whole idea that only larger instances can be a problem is ideological not practical since it always has to do with how the instance is run. @ramsey@tchambers@strypey@rysiek
@Lucinda@FediThing@tchambers@strypey@rysiek Blocking a smaller instance is less catastrophic to users than blocking a large instance, though. So, having a lot of smaller instances allows for easier moderation of the whole network.
@ramsey It's no less catastrophic to the individuals being cut off from the fedi or having friends cut off from the fedi. Let's try to stop thinking about the fedi in mass market type terms.
@ramsey I already made the rotating between instances suggestion. That said, I understand that Eugen has specific responsibilities and considerations vis a vis Mastodon the org that other instance admins don't have, I can understand why he made an instance Mastodon runs the entryway when people were asking him, personally, to make the onboarding process easier. I mean, you can be part of the fedi without using Mastodon's software so there are options...
@ramsey Nope, I just don't think the magic solution some seem to. And I'd like people to be transparent about their own agendas too, particularly if they're going to accuse Eugen of being some sort of evil dictator out to ruin the fedi. (I think it's fair to critique decisions and processes, of course, but also recognize what he's having to manage.) He's not bean dad ffs. 😂 It's more like herding cats.
It's not always the case, but in general more staff per member means you can stay on top of problems more easily.
Taking it to extremes for illustrative purposes:
-If you had one member and one moderator, it would be very very easy to moderate.
-If you had a million members and one moderator, it would be impossible to moderate.
A typical Fedi server has 500-1000 members, so they have at least 1 moderator per 1000 members. If Facebook tried to have a ratio like this, they would need 3 million moderators (which they clearly don't have).
Big networks try to do moderation on the cheap without human beings, because at that scale they cannot afford to have humans moderating.
@FediThing No need to explain moderation to me, I understand the numbers game but small servers can be really badly run too, it's really not just about the ratios but the quality of moderation and the culture that's encouraged. Moderation isn't about math, it's about people and processes.
@ramsey Sure, I'm all for rotating the entry instance but they'll still all be big instances or people looking to become big instances opting in. A lot of established instances have been limiting their growth, it's the newer ones that seem to be keen to get much bigger (often run by rather fedi naive new admins it seems to me too!) @FediThing@tchambers@strypey@rysiek@feditips
@Lucinda
> I'm all for rotating the entry instance but they'll still all be big instances or people looking to become big instances
I'm not sure why you think that. They'd have to be instances with open sign-ups. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'd be big nor wanting to be big. They could close sign-ups when their active users numbers reached their preferred size, and ideally the app would detect that and automatically remove them.
ask me a few questions to help me find a suitable home for my account
The questions could be used to funnel people into location-based instances (eg send kiwis to mastodon.nz), or interest-based ones (eg send greenies to climatejustice.social), which would allow more niche servers to participate.
@strypey Because it seems that many older instances with proven track records that want to stay small have already shut down signups (and are invite only) because the November wave was already too much. (That said, the fediverse is vast and varied so there are probably some exceptions.)
Anyway, I think all of this one app to rule them all idea just makes it more confusing and complicated and still doesn't represent the fediverse but Mastodon.
@Lucinda
> this one app to rule them all idea just makes it more confusing and complicated and still doesn't represent the fediverse but Mastodon
Bang on. This is precisely what we're all here to complain about 😆
As I said to @tchambers in another post, fixing the overgrowth and under-moderation of m.s - which affects us all - isn't mutually exclusive of taking other actions to grow from the edges, help bring more instances into being, etc.
Include a visual progress bar to show how close to capacity any given server is. This could be added to something like the server list on join mastodon
Introduce additional guidelines and rules to the Mastodon covenant that define good moderation and capacity to properly moderate in terms of manpower, number of moderators, and user size per instance
That's terrible UX. Not only does it again suggests that the "theme" of your instance conditions which posts you see, which is one of the paralyzing miscoonceptions the entire default stance thing was supposed to fix. Only it's worse now because now there'd be all these extra steps.
I have stayed away from this whole arguiment, but man, what a frustrating mess this turned out to be.
While a lot of stuff I post is about infosec as well, I'm happy at todon.eu which is an explicitly leftist place. But I agree with pretty much any moderation policy here. And since that's virtually the only difference in day-to-day usage b/w servers (at least for me), it's crucial to take this into account.
That would be great. Although I chose a local instance, (uk) that doesn’t have a huge impact on how I use Mastodon; most of those I follow are elsewhere.
@peteralee
> I chose a local instance, (uk) that doesn’t have a huge impact on how I use Mastodon
The impact of good moderation often only becomes clear when it fails. I suspect that the benefits of a local instance are similar. Having said that, there's local and local. The Aotearoa instances are serving a population of about 5 million. Instances for London alone would be serving nearly twice that many.
Then a FAR, FAR better use of energy on decentralization would be to do a group fundraising, to offer to enable a round-robin onaboarding at the Mastodon.social level. If they chose to do that, the group raising that money would offer a donation to fund it.
@rysiek I've seen some admins calling for everyone to defederate from m.s (granted, it was in a thread that included admins hwo didn't realize you can silence an instance so... 🤷♀️ ) There seem to be a mix of people who seem to just want to shrink wrap the fedi (micro fedi personal stuff?*) and people who want to increase the accessibility of the fedi so more people can find a home here (meta fedi discussions).
@Lucinda sorry, I meant in this branch of the hellthread.
I keep seeing people mentioning "fracturing fedi is bad" over and over again and it just feels like flogging a long-dead horse. This branch of the conversation, from what I understand, had moved way passed "de-federate from m.s", and it feels quite unnecessary to keep bringing it up?
@tchambers@FediThing@Lucinda@ramsey@strypey@rysiek@feditips A coalition of servers with willing and funded admins forming a “welcome center” for getting new users onboarded, spreading the load, and offering some decent moderation would be a beautiful thing.
@tchambers@FediThing@Lucinda@ramsey@strypey@rysiek@feditips
Would it be a terrible idea to have onboarding instances? "Find a home after 90 days or we will politely suspend this account." I've been meaning to migrate, for a while now, but never get around to it.
@alm
> Would it be a terrible idea to have onboarding instances? "Find a home after 90 days or we will politely suspend this account."
I love this idea! Would be great even for veterans who want to kick the tyres on fedi software we haven't tried. It would need to be made very clear that all posts would be deleted after 90 days. Some way of marking onboarding accounts too, so the rest of us can actively invite cool folk to our instance.
@tchambers why are you constantly mentioning "fracturing of the fediverse"? Nobody here is advocating for de-federating m.s. This is I think the fifth time you mention it, and it just seems completely detached from what is being discussed here.
It feels, frankly, like a cheap rhetorical trick to paint "the other side" (however defined) as somehow "evil". I know that this is not your intention, but that's how it feels to me reading it.
@rysiek@tchambers Perhaps "fracturing the fediverse" is a poor choice of words. What Tim seems to be advocating generally is positive actions like his round robin portal idea to approach new users. Everyone seems to be on the same side here.
@mastodonmigration@tchambers yes, so let's focus on that. I made it very clear in my thread that I am not advocating de-federation; we all seem to agree that m.s size and privileged position is a problem; there are a few solutions to this suggested…
So let's drop the "fracturing of fediverse" bit please, it's not helpful.
@tchambers@rysiek The alternative portal idea seems like a really good one. Let's see if we can get some momentum behind it. It could also serve the purpose of generally promoting Mastodon and the Fediverse as the real open distributed social media platform, a concept which has some currency these days. Don't think it is controversial to say, PR has not been Mastodon GmbH's strong suit. What do you think?
@mastodonmigration@tchambers I think it's a good idea. Question is can we get enough people to actually do the work. I cannot contribute much time, but I could contribute some.
@mastodonmigration@tchambers@rysiek Anybody up for a "Fediverse Marketing Network"? (Or use a less perhaps controversial term ... but it would bring people together who care about where potential new users are, what their mindset is, how to reach them, how to sign them up, in a way that reaches the right goals)
@rysiek@mastodonmigration@tchambers It could be focused on that. But I think there are larger issues at play, such as 1) what's the "brand" that the user is told to go to get onboarded 2) what does this brand represent compared to other brands present in the mind of the user? 3) How have they heard about this brand, through which communication channels? 4) Who owns it and whose agenda is being implemented here? .. if those are solved for onboarding, a lot of other issues are solved, too.
If all the rest of fedi — including admins of Mastodon servers that are fed up with Gagron — banded together and built a single, reliable, safe, and usable entry point to the Fediverse, that would be a pretty powerful thing to do.
In terms of "all the rest of fedi ... banded together", isn't a git repository about the best way to band together in an open, transparent, participatory way that can easily be forked in case the maintainers become authoritarian?
@boud it's really not usable enough to be a default landing page for all new fedi users.
As far as safety is concerned, we would need some BIPOC people to help design this to make sure PoC people joining fedi land on instances that are safe for them. That's not a given even with large, well-known instances.
If we want to set up an alternatives to JoinMastodon etc, we have to stop calling this place "mastodon".
Eugen owns the trademark on that word in relation to social networks. This gives him the legal right to say which app is official, which servers can use the name "Mastodon" etc.
As for safety, as far as I know fediverse.party does not curate servers based on safety or reliability. If you're going to have a portal, it has to have human beings screening which servers are listed.
I've done this on https://fedi.garden by just asking servers to commit to the same terms as the Mastodon Covenant, which seems a reasonable starting point. If they're already trying to be on JoinMastodon, it's easy for them to comply with identical standards.
This explainer is great, but the practical issue is that the world and the media are aware of Mastodon, but not the Fediverse.
It is a pretty high hill to climb, from a marketing point of view, to both introduce a new platform name and get new users to sign up, particularly if the objective is to "reduce friction" in the sign up process.
Also, the software is called Mastodon. It seems like there is no avoiding using the name when getting people to sign up for the service.
It would be good to understand more about this trademark restriction and why you think it would be a problem. Would you anticipate Eugen opposing some sort of open instance group providing an alternative portal, and demand that it not use the name Mastodon?
@mastodonmigration I don't think trademark law would stop us from labeling Mastodon servers as "Mastodon". Trademarks don't stop you from using the word, they stop you from trying to confuse people as to what the name refers to.
There was an incident last year where someone set up a server with the domain name mastodon.tech running Pleroma. Eugen posted a warning to them reminding them of his trademark ownership, saying they cannot run Pleroma on a mastodon domain name.
(Not to be confused with the mastodon.technology server, which was legitimate and was closing down gracefully. The pleroma server was presumably trying to capitalise on this closedown.)
@FediThing There's a reason why "it must have been pleroma" is a joke about nazis on the fediverse... Plenty of other instances use Mastodon or versions of it in their name so I'd suspect there was a specific issue. Anyway, I see now we're not going to get anywhere so go in peace and enjoy whatever experience you create for yourself on the fedi, I don't think we're going to get to a constructive place.
I hope you are right, but this is not something we should expect people to go to court over.
It would be much safer to avoid it being an issue at all.
We know what he claims on the trademark page, and we know he has a lot more legal resources than the rest of us on here. For example, he got an apology out of Truth Social via his lawyers. (That wasn't over trademarks, but it still shows he has serious lawers.)
For example... "You may not use the Mastodon word mark, or any similar mark, in your domain name, unless you have written permission from Mastodon gGmbH."
Also, we don't know who he will sell the trademark to. He could sell it to anyone. Developers sometimes get bored and leave, especially if someone dangles money under their nose.
Anything he accepts, he can take back at will unless you make him sign some kind of contract. He is maintaining full rights to the word. The word isn't part of the FOSS licence that the software has.
These are valid concerns for sure, but it seems like you can not avoid calling Mastodon, Mastodon. That's the name of the software. If you want people to sign up for a Mastodon instance you are going to need to be clear to them what they are signing up for.
Before assuming opposition to an open instance sign up portal it seems wise to float the concept and find out.
@FediThing All these bad faith accusations towards Eugen are pretty toxic. Non-profits register trademarks, he's not just "some developer," he's done a lot of work on making the fediverse relevant and what it is today (as have many other people) and was serious and dedicated enough to the concept to build Mastodon the software and the org. He's not Dorsey starting BS with a rival software that's not W3C standard.
These aren't bad faith accusations, these are sincerely felt worries.
Yes Eugen is a fantastic developer, yes he's maybe done more work than anyone else on the Fedi. But he didn't build this place alone.
There are thousands of servers out there run by admins and other volunteers who don't get interviewed on CNN, but their work is really important.
By telling everyone to sign up on his own server mastodon.social, he is sidelining the diverse grassroots communities that this place is supposed to be all about.
@FediThing I'd actually point to the people who write the software, which isn't only Eugen and Mastodon isn't the only fediverse software that's built on or to interact with activitypub. But obviously the whole point of the fediverse is that it's a collective effort, by everyone, including people who don't run servers, build software or moderate. If I was writing an article the admins are not who I'd want to talk to!
@FediThing Um, no, most good servers (even small ones) have admin that's not involved in moderation and have moderation teams. It removes the admin's ego from the equation and allows them to focus on admin work. Admin/moderators as the one true god run the risk of being petty tyrants with no guardrails. Good servers discuss these issues and have moderation teams.
@Lucinda
> most good servers (even small ones) have admin that's not involved in moderation and have moderation teams
You've qualified it with "most" but this is still a huge generalisation. It presumes a server large enough for more than 2 people to volunteer to manage stuff, and there's plenty of good fedizens running instances smaller than that. For a start, there's all the cool weirdos running single-user instances.
@FediThing It's really not Eugen's fault the media wants heroes and can't grasp what the fediverse is. Also, other people have been interviewed (including at least one of the authors of activitypub). Eugen isn't forcing people to sign up to m.s, he's making it easier by giving an obvious choice because people here DEMANDED he do it. He was literally responding to demands from people on Mastodon, including some admins.
@FediThing Why would he choose some rando's instance? This is just weird that people are obsessed with this. It's so impractical! He's using m.s as an entry point because he can use it to improve the software/eat the dogfood, it's his reputation on the line and people demanded that he do something to make it easier for newbies.
I don't see any point in this conversation if you have such disdain for the thousands of people who have given their time and money and sanity to try to make this place work.
@FediThing Dude, I've been around and engaged with the fediverse since it was just an idea. I care and am engaging with you because I care and I feel like you're poisoning the well and looking for conflict over collaboration. I get it that you feel a sense of ownership but maybe try to think more collaboratively and less like it's a war with Eugen. It's coming across as pretty toxic not caring. @mastodonmigration@rysiek@boud@lightone@hrefna@tchambers@strypey
"I feel like you're poisoning the well and looking for conflict over collaboration."
😠
It is Eugen who owns the biggest server, the trademark, the main app, the onboarding, the API etc etc etc.
And now that I raise concerns about this being dangerous, you're accusing ME of having a sense of ownership?
I have spent every day of the last three years trying to build this place up, and I'm still doing it today. My aim is to get the Fediverse as spread out and diversely owned as possible.
If you think I've done a crap job, that's fine, it's a matter of opinion. But don't you dare accuse me of trying to poison any wells or wanting ownership.
Guys, this is getting completely unnecessarily heated. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but throwing accusations around is not helping anyone.
I think this hellthread has ran its course and would strongly suggest everyone takes a deep breath, steps back for a couple of days, and calmly considers if they might have gone a bit overboard in the discussion at a point. I know I might have.
If memory serves, CoSocial [dot]Ca itself is a new server, the kind we should be praising people for joining - to spread decentralization - not dissing them for having joined it.
I'm doing nothing more than (after having lurked in that thread for hours) pointing out that one individual who has made extended arguments from one viewpoint doesn't seem to have eaten their own dog food for very long
Which, I believe, was one phrasing they actually used
It has nothing to do with the size or the longevity of the server instance itself
Although I would argue that instance age and size does impart a certain history to its members
@FinchHaven that's really shitty behaviour right there. People move instances, new instances open, and even if that were not the case, going for what effectively is a "ha ha n00b" ad-hominem is just not something I want in my fedi-environment.
@FediThing@Lucinda@mastodonmigration@rysiek@boud@lightone@hrefna@tchambers@strypey This is missing the point in a big way. If it "just said" mass.to instead, two things would happen. First, a bunch of people would say "well why didn't they pick mastodon.online? What about mastodon.cloud? Why aren't they pretty enough?" And second, people who sign up would hold the mastodon foundation responsible for things mass.to do and vice versa. Find me one instance that wants to be in that position.
@FediThing@Lucinda Longest track records of what? Most reliable according to which standards? Where are they published? How many instances is too many? What's the right level of visibility to inform the user during onboarding who to contact or how to export data in the case of any dispute?
Choosing their own instance answers all of these questions.
@objectinspace they could have started a smaller instance then. Or three, and round-robin them.
In the end answers to all of these questions end up being arbitrary to some extent. So they might as well select 2-3 of the most stable, long-term available instances they do not control, and add them to the mix.
You seem to be saying that because people are used to using centralised networks, we must centralise decentralised networks so that they conform to people's expectations.
Why do this? Just for growth?
What kind of growth is that, if it destroys the entire reason for the network existing?
There is zero point in Mastodon and the Fediverse if they centralise. They are a collossal waste of time if they lead to a situation where one server dominates.
@willy2x
> He would have to take responsibility for it
Who convinced you of this and how? Web browser devs don't have to take responsibility for every webserver. Similarly, people who design browsers for other decentralized networks - like matrix or the fediverse - don't have to take responsibility for every server you can access through them.
What is meant be "wasn't working" is specifically people found the "pick a server" on-boarding process confusing and instead of joining just threw up their hands and left. This is well document in dozens of articles on Mastodon.
One of the things that happens when we (reasonably technical folks) become familiar with the Fediverse and distributed systems is we fail to see just how overwhelming this is for average users.
But replacing it with a system where everyone signs up on one server is not the answer on a decentralised network.
As I mentioned in another thread (https://tech.lgbt/@FediThing/110349930342025093) this is the equivalent of asking a vegetarian restaurant to serve meat in order to accomodate meat-eaters. It's missing the point of the place existing.
@mastodonmigration
> This is well document in dozens of articles on Mastodon
Is this what we do now? Design-by-committee of huffy tech press hacks? People who half the time don't talk to us to check basic facts? Who have been forecasting our doom in their articles since 2017 or before? See many of the articles from "edited" publications linked here:
@strypey we don't, but ignoring feedback is not productive.
I would ask you to please relent on this thread, it has ran its course and got way too heated. This is not helpful. There are ways to do what Gargron tries to do in a better, more decentralized way, and we should focus on that. If you think fedi is perfect and needs no improvement, well then we disagree and we should go our separate ways.
@hrefna
> How many left when they found out their friends were on a server being blocked in a petty admin squabble? How many never migrated after their server shut down?
Good questions. Do you any data on this? How was it collected and sorted?
@hrefna
> It's also true that in UX design as you increase options you increase the likelihood of someone throwing up their hands and leaving
Maybe that means the fediverse is not for them? Or just not what they're looking for right now? Growth is the highest value for corporations, tumours, viral outbreaks, and house fires. But it's not the highest value for @FediThing, or for me. Making big things grow bigger is not how we work.
@hrefna
You're clearly very passionate about this, which is great.
But you seem to assume that every failure to turn a toe poked into the water into an active user is a failure on our part. That anything is worth changing to up our conversion rate. This is sales thinking, not community-building. I'm not saying this is unacceptable, it's just not what I value.
There are many ways we could improve accessibility and UX for the good of the whole fediverse. Overgrowth of m.s is not one of them.
It seems there might be a misunderstanding about the concept of decentralization initially.
The most significant difference between decentralized and centralized systems is that the former doesn't rely on a central server to store user data and personal information; control is in the user's hands. Essentially, you can think of your device as your own server, inaccessible to anyone else. Some decentralized networks or apps, like Damus and WireMin, don't even collect user data when creating an account. These apps offer a great opportunity to experience the decentralized network.
You mentioned, "There are servers on here which have been around for years without incident." I'm not sure if you're referring to all Web 2.0 social media platforms never experiencing any incidents or specifically to Calckey, so I'll respond to both interpretations.
Within the Web 2.0 social media realm, Facebook could serve as an example. They collect a significant amount of user data and utilize it for commercial profit. Data leaks are commonplace in the Web 2.0 network.
As for Calckey or Mastodon, I enjoy using them both. They are fantastic platforms for #freedomofexpression. While federated platforms like it generally offer better privacy than centralized ones, user data could still be at risk if an instance's server is compromised. This could potentially expose user data to unauthorized parties. As we are seeing them every news. Literally happens every single day.
(There is another potential risk🤔If a server accumulates a large number of registered or active users, the server's owner has the ability to sell the entire server. Unless you have complete trust in this owner, there's no way to prevent such an event. Furthermore, the owner has the option to sell user data, which includes email addresses gathered during registration.)
Overall, it's all about understanding the trade-offs. Decentralized networks might not be perfect, but they sure do give us more control over our data, and censorship-resistant and that's a step in the right direction.
@Sheesh
OMG! 🤣 That's the funniest shit I've ever seen. Fedi-splaining to some of the most prolific Fedi-splainers in the 'verse (myself included 😆). Either you're a subversive genius, or you didn't read upthread for context and accidentally threw out comedy gold. I don't know which would be funnier 🙃
@tchambers It's also a good way to fine tune things so they're more robust for larger servers (which the fediverse will inevitably have, diversity in all the things is not bad) and to figure out security weaknesses and so on.
I'm also assuming Eugen is really fucking busy between marriage, dealing with fediversians and expanding the org. Like let's remember everyone is just a human, including Eugen.
@tchambers@Lucinda@FediThing@mastodonmigration@rysiek@boud@lightone@hrefna@strypey This graph seems way off (at least for what you claim it for). It's based on total toot count, not by i.e. an account's first toot, there is a bot listed (Gnutiez) that is said to post more than people using Ice Cubes do, and there's no timeframe given, so we can't see if this is all time collected posts, from the beginning of their survey, or over the past three months.
@tchambers@Lucinda@FediThing@mastodonmigration@rysiek@boud@lightone@hrefna@strypey I could only find one missing part in the article: the timeframe is Feb 3 to Feb 12. The chart is captioned "Web, Ivory, and Moa are popular ways of tooting," which reflects that the chart enumerates total toots during the timeframe of collection; not how many people used each method, nor how many people i.e. made introduction posts by each method.
HI Blake: yep, agree, getting unique individuals not just apps used in social posts in aggregate would have been better...
...but this is the best data I've seen on app usage share to date, and it's over a large sample of posts, and over a good sample time of a week using well federated data.
@Lucinda
> It's also a good way to fine tune things so they're more robust for larger servers
If we get more large servers, it's certain they will run on on something other than Mastodon. Unless its rusting, decade-old Ruby on Rails chassis is completely rebuilt using a more scalable architecture. How will Eugen do that kind of refactor while trying to govern 1/10 of all fedizens well?
@Lucinda
> It's really not Eugen's fault the media wants heroes and can't grasp what the fediverse is
That's a strawman. Nobody in this thread is criticising his media profile. We are criticising his technical and organizational decisions. The tech press are not responsible for those, he is.
He has every right to make decisions in his project. We have every right to disagree with them, and to explain why.
@Lucinda
> He's not Dorsey starting BS with a rival software that's not W3C standard
Well he has consistently refused to implement the client>server part of the ActivityPub spec, forcing app devs to support the Mastodon API as a de facto standard. He did move to AP server>server and turned off OStatus support before all the other fedi projects had finished their AP support.
@Lucinda these are just two examples of his habit of pretending the rest of the fediverse community doesn't matter. So we were all a bit twitchy even before this recent 'all roads lead to m.s' decision.
@FediThing does overstate their case with mind-reading at times, and I agree that bad faith accusations aren't helpful. But that includes shutting down factual observations and informed criticism as "bad faith accusations".
@ramsey On the web UI if you click on the dots in the right corner of your own post in the thread/conversation it should give you the option to mute the conversation. (It has to be your own post.) @FediThing@boud@lightone@rysiek@hrefna@tchambers@strypey
You let social media apps send notifications to your devices? Why would you do that to yourself?
No judgement, but the first thing I do when I start using a new UI is turn off all notifications, then selectively turn on only the ones I really need or want.
@boud
> My guess is that Fediverse.party people don't want to state criteria that sound good but are not checked in reality
Fed.party volunteer here. The whole project seems to be in a bit of a hibernation state. I've only just started getting back into doing stuff after a 2 year hiatus. There's certainly no capacity to do anything we're not already doing, without a fresh influx of volunteers.
@rysiek@boud Michał, I completely agree with you that such a (brand-neutral) landing page for the Fediverse (or better yet, Open Social Web :) ) would be extremely useful. I'd be very interested in helping with this. What do you think is a good venue to continue this discussion? Shall we open a thread on SocialHub?
@boud fediverse party is a great resource and i've shared the themed servers list with quite a few people looking to check out mastodon ... some found it helpful but other feedback I've gotten is
do these servers all have good moderation?
which of these are diverse (as opposed to almost-all-white or overwhelmingly male)?
"wow that's a long list I gave up after the first dozen".
@jdp23@boud@rysiek I think one of the other things that makes addressing this difficult is that the instances also need to be stable for the longterm. Funnelling people into instances where they are harassed more than on mastodon.social or they have to move isn't an improvement.
I forgot about https://fedi.garden, sorry! And it looks like you're doing the work of checking these individual instances for reliability and moderation. I proposed including fedi.garden as a curated list on fediverse.party:
@boud@FediThing@hildabast@jdp23@rysiek Mastodon server.ca is curated in so far as I visit each instance and make sure they're up, running and operated by Canadians. Other than that what's my criteria? I make no guarantees about moderation. That's up to the admin to convey and the user to determine. I've proposed moderation style declaration categories and we do so on our about page at TheCanadian.Social.
@boud
Fediverse.party volunteer here. Thanks for the hat tip :)
But I agree with @rysiek. The project was started the last time a big influx of newbies started mistaking Mastodon for The Network (TM), but its founder didn't set out to be the universal entry portal for the fediverse, and I doubt they'd want to be that. We just do our little bit, hosting and linking to educational resources for the community.
>, reliable, safe, and usable entry point to the Fediverse
... independent of John Mastodon and his company. There are a whole bunch of resources like fediverse.party and @FediThing's projects, stats sites like the-federation.info, instance choosers like instances.social, @PaulaToThePeople's sites like joinfediverse.wiki etc. If a bunch of us worked together on a portal...
@tchambers
> rally the thousands of mid-range and smaller servers to grow
This is important too. Those of us doing projects like fediverse.party and FediTips (@FediThing), and setting up hosting companies (me), are already doing everything we can. But doing this and reigning in m.s are not mutually exclusive. It's hard to sell a social media UX with persistent spam and abuse from overgrown, under-moderated servers.
@FediThing
While I think that is absolutely a problem in the short-term, I'm hopeful that the 'cool factor' of being on the biggest instance will quickly erode away as people find instances that more properly represent them.
The ones that stay will either be entrenched and wouldn't leave anyway - or are temporary residents who aren't likely to maintain a presence.
As a community, I think it's important to focus our efforts on the group that will migrate away from m.s.
As a non-admin, it really looks like there is some 'in-fighting' on what it means to be an admin on Mastodon now. I think if that is settled out a bit and we can find a path forward - lanes will begin to emerge for people to drift into more naturally.
Well, to be fair, both could be happening that lots of folks joining via mastdoon.social - some are migrating away, but it would be expected that the new users would be faster than the movers. Takes a while to even basically learn the ropes.
But I and many friends started there and moved on, or started their own servers from that as a starting point. So it can happen, you just have to organize for it.
@FediThing
Well, I'm not trying to argue but no - that isn't how that works.
If 30 people join m.s and 29 transfer off - it's positive growth overall even though only 1 person stayed and they had a 99% attrition rate.
But regardless, I think the core issue that users don't know/care what server hosts them. They want to meet up with their friends, work with people, collaborate on jokes and make memes and use this environment as a pure consumer.
They don't even think about these kinds of questions and they don't care to try. They are the user and we tailor the systems to their experience. When we're good - they reward us with numbers. When we struggle, they leave for the new hotness.
We need to design the experience around making it easy and comfortable to get users onboarded and settled out into their spaces.
If they join m.s and transfer to another server, it should not affect that percentage because the growth on m.s would be balanced by growth on another server.
If that number goes up, it implies that people are joining m.s without joining another server.
" I think the core issue that users don't know/care what server hosts them."
They will care if this place turns to shit. This place will turn to shit if a majority of people end up on one server.
Infrastructure is like that. 99.999% of people in the rich world never ever think about water treatment plants, but they would definitely care if their tap water starts giving them cholera.
"Most people don't know or care about party policies -> let's cancel elections and just have one party in charge
Does that make sense?"
That's not what's being advocated, is it?
What Alex is advocating is letting people come here and get comfortable enough and get enough information to make an informed decision on which instance they want to be on.
"This is the kind of awful growth-at-all-costs philosophy that is destroying the planet and society."
We are not talking 'growth at all costs'. Mastodon may be growing but it's 99% at the expense of other Social Media. It's about bringing people into an environment where honestly I see a metric ton of activity trying to stop the destruction.
"and get comfortable enough and get enough information to make an informed decision on which instance they want to be on."
...but why does that mean they have to join m.s?
Why not have them join another server with a proven track record?
You talk about "here" as though that means m.s by default, and that isn't true at all. There is nothing about m.s that makes it the best place for new people.
-Most new people don't care what server they are on
-Most new people are now (for the first time) being driven to m.s without even being asked to think about it
-M.s is by far the largest instance and a wave similar in size to the last one could make it a majority of the Fedi
Once a majority of people are on a single server, and they don't care what server they're on, and they don't want to be inconvenienced by federated features, they will have zero incentive to leave.
The makers of Mastodon own m.s and they might decide to prioritise server-internal features rather than federated features, because these are much easier to code and most people are on one server anyway.
The pressures on development will favour centralisation very very strongly, and we'll end up exactly where we started with Twitter.
At the same time, the Masto devs will get offers to be bought out.
@mentallyalex
> Fighting Eugene is silly. He holds all the cards
Not yet. We all agree effective action needs to be taken before it gets to that point. This is a dry run for a scenario where an actual adversary like CloudFlare or Meta rolls out AP support and climbs past 10% of total users.
> he has no incentive to work with you
If admins of a large share of the network nailed some 95 theses to his door (or even 3-5), then he might realize he does.
"They are the user and we tailor the system to their experience."
I think from your other remarks, your position is more nuanced than in this statement. On its own, the statement does not align with the reasons why people build the fediverse. We have nothing to sell. Volume is not an end in itself.
Why not: "We are the members and we want to make our network productive for ourselves and welcoming to new members."
@aswath
You're joining a massive thread that's been churning out huge numbers of posts, and getting a bit heated here and there. It's probably better if you read the whole thread so you can reply in context, and avoid getting snapped at by people frustrated with the discussion retreading ground we've already covered.
Or... do yourself a favour and leave us to stew in our own juices? ; )
The logic is do something that solves the problem of dustribiting users more widely rather than doing something that doesn’t….and Fedi blocking doesn’t do that - and threats to do so unless policy X changes is just self defeating in other ways.
But growing the mid level and small servers distributes users around, actually solving the issue …and growing the Fediverse, rather than Balkanizing it.
Do you see this causing technical problems that would be fixed by reducing the number of servers? Because I predict the opposite, that the number of servers is about to massively increase, as more people discover tools like PeerTube, FunkWhale, the WordPress plugin etc.
@lewiscowles1986
> really worries me that this is some sociology point of view, which in practical engineering land doesn't hold up
That's a valid worry, but the best way to see what works in practice is to observe. There are more than 20,000 servers in the fediverse. With the exceptions of a few mute/ blocks by some servers against some others, they can all interact. Whenever one or more people follow or @mention someone on server A from server B, they do.
@lewiscowles1986
So far it all seems to function fine. Despite the fact that Mastodon is an absurdly inefficient pile of Ruby-on-Rails that eats server resources like an carbo-loading athlete. If more servers switch to more efficient fediverse server packages, I don't see any problem with unlimited N of servers.
@lewiscowles1986
> Do any servers, get regular updates between a number above 9999 instances?
Hmm, good question. Not sure how you'd get data about that, but I imagine m.s does.
> My concern, as well as moderation is that just increasing updates to a server could crash it or bring it to a halt
This is getting to the event horizon of my knowledge, but I think the shared inbox is supposed to mitigate that. Here's something @aral wrote about this a few months back:
@tchambers
> Anyone is free to defederate anyone, but everyone can ask "to what end?"
If you reread the preceding posts, you'll see that the goal of my proposal is to avoid mass defederation of m.s. while getting John Mastodon to listen to the rest of the fediverse community and cooperate as a peer, and not in the House of Lords sense. Honestly, what hasn't already been tried?
There are far better ways than threatening defederation. Organizing a fund to support the mastodon nonprofit build a round robin sign up that shares sign ups across multiple servers from the official app is one.
> robin sign up that shares sign ups across multiple servers
The tech for this already exists. It was removed from the app. It could just be restored.
> Organizing a fund
Your solution to the best-funded entity in the 'verse purposely over-growing their instance through their control of a major port of entry is to give them money? 😳
@strypey I found your thoughts on point one unpersuasaive.
Point two: I think is not accurate. The app never showed only one featured sign up at a time that cycled in a round robin to a few well chosen others to distribute users around.
Point three: yes, I am. Fund the change you want to see rather than threaten to try to force it. And “best funded entity” in Fediverse is grading on a huge curve, everything in Fediverse - including Mastodon nonprofit - is resource constrained.
@tchambers
> I found your thoughts on point one unpersuasaive
You don't think it would help to redirect the rancour away from piecemeal defederation and towards opening dialogue with Eugen? Why not?
> I think is not accurate
OK, fair. But assigning a db of instances (like the one at joinmastodon.social) a number, and coding a random number generator, isn't costly R&D. A couple of volunteers could pair program it in an afternoon.
@rysiek@strypey@tchambers@FediThing Between his number of members and his de facto status of “main instance”, I’m not sure he gives a shit being defederated by what he probably sees as anecdotical instances, but it’s worth a try.
You and I have very different definitions of unmoderated. They have done good jobs at managing spam attacks denial of service attacks and moderating content that violates their terms of use.
A far better use of time & energy for admins concerned about centralization (and I am one of them) is to reach out to your own followers on your servers asking THEM to reach out to folks to migrate.
And giving your users the tools to invite new users to join your servers.
@rysiek@campuscodi it seems unsurprising that a system whose abuse prevention is closely modelled on email turns out to have many of the same flaws as email.
I want to be clear I am not advocating de-federating from mastodon.social today. I used de-federation as an example to underline the problem related to the size of m.s.
And as many people have noted in replies to this thread, there are many other tools at admins'/mods' disposal, like silencing an instance.
Defederation is a nuclear option and should only ever be used as an absolutely last-resort.
@rysiek But on the other hand, defederating mastodon.social would be both deeply ironic and absolutely hilarious for about the first 6 hours, followed by 18 weeks of being a bit cruel and unnecessary, before finally becoming funny again. Alas, moderators must be more philosophical in their outlook, so the joke must remain unpractical.
@rysiek You seem to have (unintentionally) created quite the moral panic in some corners of the fedi! There's stuff to discuss about how the fedi is being shaped and is shaping itself, but some of the vitriol and panic feels like Twitter main character drama to me! I get it that admins feel a sense of ownership over their instances but maybe we also need to talk about working in non-hierarchical structures, power sharing, ownership vs sharing/belonging to a collective, etc. @mastodonmigration
@rysiek To be clear, I do understand that admin and moderating takes work, no matter the size of an instance. This, of course, is also why not everyone needs to our should be running their own instance, it can require a lot of different skills that one person rarely embodies (which is fine if it's just for oneself, once one's running a general instance it gets more complicated). @mastodonmigration
@rysiek Clearly some people were looking to rage/frustration dump. (Something I find a bit alarming in the context them being admins/moderators! But they're people too so I can understand the frustrations.)
The thing I keep returning to is how we devalue the social skills needed for good moderation because we don't value and recognize emotional labor and far too many people think it's about being a cop and binary good/bad type stuff rather nurturing understanding. @mastodonmigration
> Clearly some people were looking to rage/frustration dump.
Sure, but that's the effect of years of work by Gargron in the form of ignoring the concerns of admins/moderators of broader fedi. If people are not heard, they will find other ways to express themselves. @mastodonmigration
@rysiek Sure but the people I see being the most outraged and angry don't even understand the basic structures or history of the fediverse, they're kinda newbies (nothing wrong with being new but some of the anger is being fueled by ignorance and misunderstandings). I also think people tend to underestimate how much work running even a tiny instance is! @mastodonmigration
@rysiek The fedi may be reaching the point where there needs to be some sort of cooperative governance. While I have concerns about how onboarding is being done, I'm more interested in finding creative solutions. We maybe need to think of the fedi like a social laboratory more than in the very territorial/proprietary ways that keep playing out here (because we're socialized to compete not cooperate). @mastodonmigration
> The fedi may be reaching the point where there needs to be some sort of cooperative governance.
I had been of the opinion we need this kind of a thing for a very long time now. It's difficult, though, if there is one outsized player on fedi that just keeps doing things his way.
> because we're socialized to compete not cooperate
@rysiek I mean, I hate that I've become someone suggesting there needs to be a "board" or some kind of bureaucracy but here we are... Even anarchists need to organize and create structure, they just need to be ones that share power rather than consolidating it. (I'm sure other people have more experience in this than me! Mine is limited to being pushed into being president of my community garden non-profit and playing in bands.) @mastodonmigration
@Lucinda@rysiek@mastodonmigration Great point. I think there's a larger societal issue, larger than the fediverse, about what our own narrative regarding others is. For many there seems to be a capitalist assumption that "user" = "consumer" / "customer" with all of the formal & informal rights and expectations that go with it.
I prefer smaller instances & groups generally as they often tend away from that, but federation protocols don't necessarily encourage the same thought process.
@scribe Those larger social issues are one reason I see the fedi as a people and democracy lab.
I prefer more smaller servers too but I can see why larger ones appeal to some people and I do think there's a place for them, they just require a lot more work and financing. I also prefer to see bands in small clubs but arena shows have their own appeal.
@Lucinda@rysiek@mastodonmigration Aye, exactly, and I love the "lab" idea - we have to remember that change comes gradually, and we need to set out paths to get from A to B (or C or D, etc). Detaching from Twitter is an easy, obvious step technically, but detaching from "Twitterlikes" on the whole is not a technical issue, but a social one.
@Lucinda@rysiek@mastodonmigration It feels like a way to go, but I can vaguely imagine a protocol layer for social trust on top of basic interoperability. Email-style source verification and ratings, based on sender, receiver, but also sending instance and receiving instance. Meta webs of trust.
@scribe The fun thing about the fediverse is there's always someone working on something that could change it (for better and/or worse). Some of the conflict we see here is tension around change and desires for things to stay the same (and a lot of those preferences are really about one's personality and openness/need for newness or need for order/sameness).
@rysiek True, I was constrained by word count! But we need to embrace the spirit of change to be able to guide it, just refusing change for the sake of sameness is pretty destructive even if it feels protective in the moment, it's a delaying tactic. Being reactionary leads to amassing power but it also leads to stagnation and death. (See White supremacy!) So not "disruption" but "construction" (it doesn't have to move fast). @scribe@mastodonmigration
@Lucinda@rysiek@mastodonmigration Every commercial social-media company has discovered that moderation scales linearly with number of users, not logarithmically like other site-maintenance issues. (A site with 200K users is 100x as hard to moderate as a site with 2K users.)
Meta, Twitter, etc. are incapable of moderating their own sites, despite throwing a lot of software, AI, and human effort at the problem. It's possible that there's simply no way for large instances to be well moderated.
@david_megginson Yes but the fediverse isn't a walled garden primarily concerned with scraping data and selling advertising. Different priorities, structures and concerns are at play here for a number of reasons and I don't necessarily think comparisons are always useful or map onto each other quite as neatly as people think they do. @rysiek@mastodonmigration
@rysiek@mastodonmigration not high enough, imho. their instance size is a problem, and they should, as authors of both the server software and the "official" app, block registrations and redirect users to other instances at least until they implement complete (incl. posts) account migration.
@rysiek@mastodonmigration also kinda worth noting when discussing spam & poor moderation that Mastodon's filtering tools are trash compared to Pleroma/Akkoma MRFs, and that this is reflective of Gargron's priorities
My first toot in this thread was a bit too hyperbolic. I stand by what I said, but how I said it could have been a bit better. I put it behind a CW now.
People are having opinions in replies, and some of these opinions are expressed in quite an un-excellent way. That's not helpful. 👀
The size of mastodon.social is a problem, though. 👈
As the responses in this thread show, it is a source of real tensions between Gargron and a lot of fedi admins. Pretending this is not the case is folly.
I can think of at least one admin that will be pissing themselves laughing at the thought of Eugen getting defederated: th3j3st3r
(for those that don't know, Eugen defederated counter.social a few years ago because c.s. blocked IPs from countries that had known troll farms. Eugen called jester racist and defederated them.)
@simon@rysiek This is a good time to remind people that @Gargron is simply lead for a popular #fediverse client and owner of a couple of large instances; he has no special authority for the fediverse as a whole.
@rysiek@simon True, but that can change fast. Marc Andreessen's decisions once had an outsized influence on all of the web, when Netscape was the only real browser option.
@rysiek@simon The first step is to discourage the media from talking about "Mastodon" and get them talking about the fediverse. People once did think that Netscape was the web and ignorant investors poured money into it, leading to the dot.com bubble of the late 90s and the dot.bomb crash around 2000.
@philippmichelreichold yes, but that's the last line of defense. The more time people need to spend moderating bad actors themselves, the less time they have to enjoy the social interactions on fedi, and the higher the likelihood they will leave for some better-moderated social network.
@rysiek As for 1: nah, they are on top of that. From reporting the spam to the account being suspended in 16 minutes.
I wouldn't be able to get those times. Social is on top of their moderation queue, no matter what the size of it is.
@rysiek By refusing to curb the growth of his own instance, Eugen is laying the foundations for its eventual irrelevance by legitimising the scaling story of Big Tech. It might be the biggest instance today but tomorrow that’ll be an instance run by a Big Tech entity with millions/billions in the bank. And there won’t be a moral argument to be made about staying small because one was never made to begin with. Mastodon.social will have played and lost the wrong game.
@aral@rysiek Well, ranting aside, we'll see how moderation goes and how the fediverse will scale when Meta joins it with their Barcelona app (Instagram) in a couple of months.
@rysiek Also, the real problem with mastodon.social’s size is the power differential. They end up de facto moderating the fediverse.
Let me explain: if mastodon.social were to block my instance of one, they’d be making the decision that thousands of people who want to hear from me can’t. If I block mastodon.social, I make it impossible for me to hear from hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve effectively blocked myself. That’s a huge power differential. That’s the problem.
@rysiek But, again, mastodon.social – run by a German not-for-profit – doesn’t win the scale game. Silicon Valley wins the scale game. Every time. They created the scale game. They rule the scale game. They ARE the scale game.
Want to win against Silicon Valley? Don’t play the (vertical) scale game. Change the rules. Embrace horizontal scale. Make number of instances, not instance size your metric of success…
But that’s a longer game and it doesn’t have, nor need, CEOs.
It is funny.. I thouhgt the CW text referred to fedi + meta. The big tech scale test may come in June as I understand from https://calckey.social/notes/9eyg1uzy28
@rysiek IMO the idea of a Fediverse made up of only small instances fundamentally does not scale, from a social perspective. Especially with a broader, less techy audience where people are less likely to have a friend or a friend-of-a-friend running a server. And I want the Fediverse to be for everyone. Having one big server is bad and avoidable, but having N big servers is hard to avoid, and they’ll keep getting bigger. If big servers break moderation then we
need better moderation tools.
@rysiek You didn’t, I guess. But for one, you quoted approvingly:
> We also don’t believe that flagship instances with thousands and thousands of users are very good for the Fediverse
mastodon.social is of course well past ‘thousands and thousands’…
And second, regarding https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/110368191423413182 item 2, it seems to me that as the network grows, more and more servers will reach “critical mass” of being too big to ban.
@rysiek (Admittedly, some of the “size and clout” factor probably has to do with mastodon dot social’s size relative to the size of the network, not its absolute size, but… absolute size seems important. It determines how many ‘good’ users would be excluded by defederation.)
@comex@rysiek We need to go back to the time that ISPs were more than a "I take your money, here is your IP address" and provided email services, local mirrors, user homepages, game servers etc etc etc.
@comex@rysiek I'm not so sure "N big servers" is so bad. If at a minimum it helps keeps servers (and software and protocol) in check and makes it possible for the (significantly smaller) long tail to federate.
While not ideal, it more or less works having three browser vendors.
@rysiek While the issues surrounding mastodon.social being that big and open-reg make sense, this seems as good a place as any to ask: Is there a good resource for which non-Mastodon things are part of fedi, and why John Q, Ordinaryuser would care about them? Or are folks generally okay with those things being relegated to niche tech geeks who know what they're for, and JQO just picks a different Masto instance?
@pkreissel spam is a moderation issue and as such has everything to do with instance size.
If I am a spammer, I know that if I set up an account on huge, popular instance, it will be easier for me to spam a lot of people fast. I also know that admins of other instances will have a tough nut to crack with the question: defederate or not?
If I go with a smaller instance, the admin might notice me sooner, and if not, other instances defederate sooner.
@rysiek@pkreissel This is exactly why a spam attack from a 10k MAU sized server would be so much worse. Those instances dont have 24/7 mod support, so its easy to hit the attack when mods are not available. And other admins will indeed choose defederate way quicker instead of mute, which will irreversibly sever all follow connections.
Im really not sure why you're so excited about the possibility of earlier/easier defederation.
@rysiek@pkreissel like, to make this very practical and concrete: mstdn.social has 1 admin and 2 mods, all publicly known, and all very easy to find out which overlapping timezones they operate in. It also has open signups, so you can execute the exact same crypto spam attack as is happening now.
Having other admins go like 'oh this is a smaller server, so we can defederate, its fine', would suck pretty bad.
I think there is a lot of criticism to be had that there is not better tooling to deal with spam (see Matt Blaze about DM's for example). I just dont see how criticizing m.s. would actually solve the spam issue as it would just move to the next biggest open signup server.
@rysiek@laurenshof you cannot solve spam attacks unless you do some sort of control at the entrance. That’s the only way to stop it. Instance size has nothing to do with it. That Mastodon.Social was targeted first is probably due to it being well known.
@pkreissel@laurenshof the size matters as well. If I am a spammer, why would I attack a tiny instance that is likely not well connected and would be quickly silenced/defederated from if admins fail to act fast, if I can attack a huge instance that is extremely well connected and much more unlikely to be defederated from or silenced by admins of other instaces?..
@rysiek@pkreissel I'm confused with what you mean by a tiny instance not being well connected. As soon if you have an instance that follows 1 person on each of the top 10 instances you are extremely well connected, especially from the perspective of a spammer.
It also ignores game theory: if the perspective is that instances should be defederated pretty quickly if they dont respond within an hour, it becomes very unattractive to sign up for a smaller instances that is less likely to have perfect 24/7 mod coverage. Instead people opt for the servers with the largest mod team, which is often the largest servers.
Also, to reiterate: I dont want to excuse/apologize for Eugen here. I just think that the critique is misdirected by talking about m.s. size (which has certainly its own issues), when instead I think there should be more criticism that better mod tools for DM spam have not been build yet.
@rysiek@pkreissel think so too. Like, I'm legitimately worried about the spam attacks, but reading during the last spam attack that someone accidentally blocked instead of muted m.s. also freaked me out. Building decentralized shit is just really hard :(
@rysiek kinda the opposite. This makes us easy to block the instance and fix the problem. If the same spam bots attacked across many instances at once it woulf be much harder to manage since we woukd have to silence many instances as they pop up.
@freemo I strongly disagree. If you're an admin, go ask your people with accounts on your instance how they feel about the biggest instance on fedi — where they are bound to have a lot of contacts, follows, etc from — getting defederated from. And see what happens.
@rysiek the solution for spam is a silence not a suspend, so thry can still folllow and interact with whoever they want with none of the spam, and easy since yiu only need tk silence a single instance
@codesmith@rysiek i think Pixelfed pledged to close registrations for their flagship instance at 10k users, but i can't find a source for that. i think this is an acceptable upper limit, because if the 90-9-1 rule applies, there'd be 9000 lurkers, 900 people occasionally active, and 100 people frequently active. that's manageable for a team of several mods
J'ai une question idiote pour @admin ! Est-ce qu'on pourrait imaginer une évolution du code de Mastodon, qui exclurait du contenu fédéré les comptes créés récemment sur les instances difficiles à modérer comme mastodon.social?
@Anonymous_user I would find a reasonably large-ish server that's been around for a while and has a strong moderation policies. There are many places where you can get that kind of info for a bunch of servers.
@Anonymous_user probably fine, but ask around. I am not an expert on all possible instances that are out there. As on the Fediverse hashtag and someone will have opinions.
@rysiek I agree. I don't think bigger is better in the fediverse — resilience, safety, and kindness requires thousands of well-moderated small and medium instances, not from a handful of big ones.
I know that the moderation team on mastodon.social is doing their best, but the problem might just be too big for them.
@rysiek The new “embrace, extend, extinguish” is “embrace, grow, control”. Google embraced the web, help extend and expand it and placed it self in a position where it controls the standards and protocols that actually matter. I wonder if what we are seeing here is something similar?
@jnbrgr there are very good reasons to criticize the single-point-of-failure and the growing risk mastodon.social has become to the rest of the fediverse.
I have seen this happen before, with a precursor to today's version of fedi, and it set us back years. Check the rest of the thread, there's a link to a blogpost explaining why m.s size is in fact a problem and a risk.
@jnbrgr other projects need to improve and they do, just look at Calckey.
But if the public mind "Mastodon = Fediverse", if most people join the flagship Mastodon instance, and Mastodon-the-software really goes out of its way to hide the fact that other software types exist, saying that it's only down to other projects improving is simply disingenuous.
@rysiek@kinyutaka #Mastodons current moves are an example of why this thread is here, we need ideas for a culture of “responsible” BRANDING in the Fediverse, if we are not a #openweb culture then why are we here doing this work, few people get paid, almost all of us our working on this for cultural beliefs, this is a shared culture, cats :wink:
> I don't wanna go into the was-it-right discussion for the default instance, but always complaining about a reasonable decision at the end kills the platform.
I disagree that was a reasonable decision, and I have historical example of why an instance that is the home of >10% of all active accounts is dangerous to the whole network.
@rysiek I've been here since 2018 and I personally see a lot less spam now than I did in the beginning. I see zero spam now due to a lot of blocking and filtering. I can't remember the last time I saw crypto spam. And, FWIW, I never see hate speech or illegality here. I haven't had to report a post in years. That's just my two cents, actual worth will vary.
@rysiek It's a shame that in Eugen's attempt to grow Mastodon, he's creating the very vulnerabilities that siloed social media has.
That and subjecting the rest of us to those risks. This is hedging into the role of dictator. "I am going to change your online experience but I won't bother asking you first. Because I own this instance and don't really care about the collateral effects..."
@the_Effekt It's a bit hyperbolic to position Eugen as a dictator. He's trying to solve a problem a lot of higher profile users here were citing as as an urgent problem that he needed to fix because no easy onboarding was turning people off. As reporters continually mislabeled the fediverse Mastodon, Mastodon was going to to be a target.
He's also just a guy doing a thing, even if he got "lucky" in the open social sweepstakes by being at the right place at the right moment. @rysiek
@Lucinda@the_Effekt I've been defending him exactly this way for 5 years and honestly I am quite tired by now.
I don't see nor paint him as a dictator. But m.s has an outsized influence on fedi, Mastodon-the-software has an outsized influence on fedi, and Gargron controls both. He makes certain decisions — like making m.s the default — ignoring people saying this is a bad idea. So gets to deal with consequnces of these decisions. As they affect everyone else on fedi.
@rysiek Oh, that comment was directed at the person who was saying the dictator thing, not you. I haven't been in this sector of the fediverse for long (despite being around for the birth of the fediverse) but I can understand your frustration and share some of it. @the_Effekt
> Doge ai-meme-shitcoin airdrop scam
> on mastodon
It sounds like an intentionally built combination of things considered the most annoying and unwanted here, it's likely not a scam but direct suspend/mute bait
@toxtethogrady no. No it is not, and while I see and talk about problems with Mastodon monoculture on fedi, comparing Gargron to Musk is disingenuous, unfair, and flat-out wrong
Last year a bunch of people (including me) were followed by spam accounts from a very small server.
Ugly detail: These were Ukrainian servers, the admins at that time had no power and internet connection. The spammer misused that situation ...
Reducing (not preventing!) that sort of problem only could be done by a multi headed 24/7 mod team or by switching off instant sign up (which was the solution of the Ukrainian admins, IIRC, after they had internet access again).
You can't completely prevent spam in an open environment.
@unixwitch I am aware of that incident. And yes, switching off open registration if one's instance cannot handle moderation is a perfectly valid way to deal with this.
@rysiek Right now, with all the talk going on in this thread, it is making me afraid I may soon be forced to switch Mastodon Instances over some #cryptospam that was going on, and I have been on mastodon.social for around a year. Even though I could move the list of who I'm following along with my small mute and block lists over to another instance, I currently have over $1,400+ posts that aren't able to move.
@rysiek Automated blocks, like every other method of thwarting spam, leave a window where spam gets through. The "time is limited" part might signal to an algorithm that something is up. Human eyes would see it but 24/7 eyes on every post is unlikely & probably unwanted.
An algo that flagged it, and a section for Potential Spam would leave it up to the user, and provide a way for attention to be drawn to it. Might get more reports and thus get into automated blocks for all servers sooner.
@rysiek
Instantly defederating from an instance because of a spam attack isn't a solution either. Give people time to react. If they fail to react within a reasonable time or the attack is too big, then yea. Defederate. But defederation should be one of the last resorts. Nobody wants to create instances if they constantly have to be scared to be defederated whenever someone whines about them not reacting in 500ms if a bad message appears.
@furbyonsteroids no it is not. I used it to show that actions admins can take (like defederation or silencing) have huge drawbacks if the instance involved is gigantic.
Only if the reason of defederation does not actually warrant a defederation. If mastodon.social suddenly promoted nazi content or whatever there would be no doubt that it needs to be defederated no matter how big it is. (Look at pawoo.net, which has apparently over 800.000 members). Defederation (esp. collectively via fediblock etc) is a nuclear option that shouldn't be used for petty reasons. It has huge implications for those instances.. basically death.
@rysiek@pearlbear do you have an idea beyond closed registrations for detecting & handling spam? Because these attacks are constantly evolving, and a lot of people are working hard to fight back the attacks & fix federations to propagate suspensions quicker too — defederating can't be the answer because then the attacks will just move to other instances.
@thisismissem let's start with closed registrations on the biggest instance out there, which happened to be the source of three major spam attacks over the last 10 days.
I'd like to see a fedi where the biggest instance is no larger than 5% of the active accounts; m.s currently is at ~13%. That's simply dangerous.
Defederation is not the solution, but it is sometimes necessary with badly moderated instances.
@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear It's not dangerous: While there are a lot of accounts in number, there are very few in influence. Most community members are elsewhere. Raw numbers is far from a useful measure, especially when a lot of them are bots.
@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear We are so far from having a monoculture problem it isn't even funny. There's two healthy forks of Mastodon, and multiple entirely different breeds of software such as Misskey, Pleroma, and their related forks. And literally dozens of clients.
People taking alarmist positions about mastodon.social are being hostile for the sake of hostility.
@ocdtrekkie if you want to say that I am "being hostile for the sake of hostility", just go on and say it, don't hide behind "people taking alarmist positions".
You are entitled to see what I say this way. I am allowed to draw analogies with a very similar network that had a very similar active accounts distribution, and then got almost killed by the flagship instance removing itself from the equation.
We don't have to agree, and at this point I don't think we will.
@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear If mastodon.social went away (very unlikely), pretty much the entirety of the community would be wholly unaffected.
I referred to a group of people because it is not unique to you, but I am mostly tired of it. Again, it's not even remotely close to being a real problem.
@rysiek@ocdtrekkie@pearlbear I'm almost certain that m.s ain't going anywhere anytime soon, and there's definitely no plans to drop activitypub (because that'd be very silly)
But still, even if m.s disappeared overnight, that still leaves >85% of the fediverse intact, which certainly shouldn't be a death knell.
@thisismissem I was so certain identi.ca was not going anywhere that I quit :birdsite: cold turkey about 7mo before identi.ca got pump-io'd.
> But still, even if m.s disappeared overnight, that still leaves >85% of the fediverse intact
How many of these 85% of accounts have important contacts on m.s? Identipocalypse also left ~90% of the network intact, and yet most people who remember this remember it as a calamity for the network.
@thisismissem the question was about major contacts. That's one of them.
Are you guys trying to make me iterate through all ~220k+ active accounts on m.s to show that there are reasons to worry? Because that does not strike me as a useful way to talk about this.
@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear I am sure there would be some impact, but I just don't think there would be much. A few folks would migrate somewhere else ahead of time, and carry their followers with them automatically. A lot of bot accounts would get deleted. Not too much else.
@ocdtrekkie cool, thank you for sharing your appraisal of the situation. I acknowledge that you disagree with my appraisal of the situation. And that you will not agree with my conclusions. 🤷♀️
@rysiek@ocdtrekkie@pearlbear I think that's saying a lot more about the community that existed on identi.ca than anything else.
I'm fairly sure majority of my following is on my instance, i.e., local, not that I've done an analysis or anything.
I think we under estimate how federated the network really is. The current user counts from Mastodon include accounts that have been migrated, which means, for instance, that I count as an m.s user when I'm actually on Hachyderm.io
@thisismissem are you talking about monthly active accounts? Because that's what I've been talking about all this time. And the current MAU count on m.s is ~220k.
So again I would like to see numbers on how many accounts get migrated daily compared to new signups.
That said, I agree fedi is much, much more resilient than "OStatus-verse" ever was. My point is: I intend to keep it that way.
My concern is primarily new(er)users who sign on to m.s just because it's the default, or just because it was easiest (I started at m.s.) As it gets bigger and more difficult to handle, these users are the ones who are going to get caught in the middle, and may end up leaving the #fediverse because of it.
@rysiek@pearlbear@thisismissem They have to start somewhere. I think the goal should be to get as many active folks who start at m.s to move off as possible. But I suspect you'd find most of the large numbers you are worried about aren't really committed to being on the fediverse to begin with.
What does that even mean "committed to being on the fediverse to begin with"? For most people, you don't get committed to being on the fediverse until you have experience with it. And your experience with it will determine your level of commitment. Most people don't join the fediverse knowing, or being committed to the philosophy of it.
@pearlbear@rysiek@thisismissem I think there's a huge amount of people just checking out briefly who churn through the m.s number. I browse our local a lot and it's almost entirely garbage. If you're afraid of the blast radius of m.s going away, stop over here and spend some time on our local timeline.
@ocdtrekkie if the churn is so high, maybe that's another reason not to put new people by default on an instance that, as you say yourself, has "garbage" local timeline? 🤔
@rysiek@pearlbear@thisismissem For a large instance or Twitter analogue, the local timeline just isn't a good way to browse. Imagine a feed of every post on Twitter. I think folks benefit from eventually moving somewhere with a tighter community though, yes.
@ocdtrekkie you are making a very good argument for not making m.s the default instance for new people. It's a different argument to the one I've been making, but it's still a good one.
@pearlbear Yes and I also worry that trolls will target Black and queer people specifically. The crypto spam is just annoying, like all spam, but after the very specific targeting of high profile activist Black women who moved to Mastodon from Twtr (leaving their new address on Twtr) after the November exodus, I worry that will be repeated. @rysiek@thisismissem@ocdtrekkie
@Lucinda basically, Mastodon-the-company is making promises all around, to others on fedi and to new people joining fedi being funneled onto m.s, that m.s will always be moderated amazingly well.
And I don't think they will be able to keep these promises. Which, due to the "Mastodon-is-fedi" thing, will reflect very poorly on all of fedi.
@rysiek@Lucinda@pearlbear@thisismissem There will definitely be other servers that are there, but I think a key part of moderation is having a team with wide coverage, not just "issues will get fixed when admin wakes up next".
@rysiek@Lucinda@pearlbear@thisismissem It's less about the volume but the response time. Though I am excited about the possibility of something like IFTAS helping smaller servers moderate above their scale.
@rysiek@Lucinda@pearlbear@thisismissem@ocdtrekkie trolls are constantly targeting folk on here; but they more often use their own smaller instances, behind the scenes instance admins are constantly defederating those. To be fair many medium-size/larger instance admins /do/ stomp on troll accounts quite quickly as they don't want to risk being defederated
@vfrmedia Yes but we're talking about the specific risks of mastodon.social as a very larger instance which has been made into the flagship for the fediverse by the media and now making mastodon.social the default. (He was responding to loud requests to make onboarding easier so people don't get turned off by choosing an instance.)
I've already seen trolls on mastodon.social get yeeted within a few minutes (before I've even had time to report them!), so they aren't so bad in this respect, but it does mean Eugen has no choice but to allocate sufficient resources and authority to the moderators (the network is also being closely watched by various EU and German government agencies, and some forms of trolling are outright illegal in Europe)
@Lucinda@vfrmedia@rysiek@pearlbear@ocdtrekkie mastodon.social being the default instance in the official Mastodon apps definitely isn't the reason spammers are targeting it. These things are unrelated.
other large instances have also been targeted by spammers and trolls, but have been slightly quicker to respond, more open about what they are doing to combat the problems, or even suspending open registrations and going to invite only..
@thisismissem I hope you're right on both counts. I would like to see specific stats of how many people migrate away from m.s daily, compared to how many daily new accounts get created though.
@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear I wonder why Mastodon gGmbH doesn't even consider closing sign-ups on mastodon.social or even doing manual approvals even for a few days until this gets all sorted out and at least some automated solutions are in place.
What do they have to loose? Is there money involved?
This would show a sincere effort on their side and everybody would be supportive.
But I get it, doing so would be an admission that there is an issue with the size of mastodon.social, attracting all the spam bots like a UV insect killer lamp.
They did manual approvals a few waves back, but only for a few days and apparently without taking any further precautions, and without any public apology or announced plans.
@louis@rysiek@pearlbear that'd be because suspended accounts aren't immediately federated to announce that status to recently interacted with instances: that's changing soon, Claire did up a PR for this that'll hopefully be merged & shipped soon, which will mean as soon as m.s suspends, all other instances recently contacted by that account will receive the suspension notice too.
@thisismissem@rysiek@pearlbear Don't you see the friction mastodon.social are causing to the whole Fediverse by the inaction of Mastodon gGmbH? It has much bigger implications than a few users who need to wait for a manual approval for a few hours. Mastodon.social is pissing off a huge number of Fediverse users and admins right now and the number gets bigger with every wave.
"Causing friction" sounds like a corporate representative-speak from Facebook or Twitter.
Also, I don't believe that closing sign-ups won't prevent these spam waves for most of these accounts were created recently.
@louis@rysiek@pearlbear the spam would just move to the next instance that's well connected, or they'd change the attacks to use multiple instances all at once; keeping the spammers targeting m.s is a good thing for the entire fediverse as we build out better tools to fight spam across the entire fediverse.
@thisismissem@rysiek@pearlbear If what you describe would be true they would have already done that. I think you are engaging in conjecture.
There are currently 12,137 known active Mastodon servers and mastodon.social is the only one with regular spam issues. For us in fact it is the only one since we started operating and now it is a daily issue.
@louis if m.s is such a problem for your userbase, which has a relative niche interest area compared to the general public, I'm wondering why you've opted to not defederate it?
@thisismissem THEIR FOLLOWERS HERE: 2,577
OUR FOLLOWERS THERE: 1,556
And we have only 420+ MAU.
It would severely disadvantage our users if we cut ties with m.s. Also, I see defederation only as a last resort to protect users from illegal content.
I know that "if you don't like it, just defederate" is the slogan we hear from Gargron and his team all the time while concurrently he works actively on growing m.s. so fast that it makes it impossible to do so [for every other serious instance].
Our data shows that less than 3% of all mastodon.social accounts actually move to another instance. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
This obsession of fast growth undermines the principles of decentralization and fairness in free online communities. It also highlights the importance of implementing tools and strategies that promote equity and prevent instances from exerting excessive control over the network.
All the arguments I heard from Mastodon gGmbH and their followers ("reduce friction for new users", "they want just the default", "just defederate if you don't like us", "other instances should just be isolated") are contrary to the nature of the Fediverse and a slap in the face of every Fediverse contributor.
However I think it would be best to conclude this conversation until the person in charge, @Gargron makes a statement himself about his view and plans.
@thisismissem
> closing signups wouldn't prevent these spam waves
Manually approving new accounts would mitigate the spam coming from m.s, the first I've ever seen in almost a decade in the 'verse.
> it would add friction to people new to the fediverse
This is a feature, not a bug. As well as limiting access to spammers and other pests, it also pushes us towards slow, organic growth from the edges. Preferable to rapid, tumor-like growth of a few giant servers.
@louis@rysiek@thisismissem@pearlbear They did (manual approvals) several time before. But how is this solving anything? This is a problematic situation. What kind of automated solution would you see here? 😉 Ability to register account after connecting a credit card? 😅
@to3k As one of "those smaller instances" (quote from Gargron) I pretty much review every user sign-up. It takes me only a few seconds because we do not get thousands of registrations per day, unlike mastodon.social.
The key is: distribution of users over many instances. Spread the moderation load and stay happy.
This was the initial vision of ActivityPub and Mastodon.
@louis ah yes about that I would totally agree. Decentralisation is a good thing here, promoting mastodon.social as “main” instance is inevitable and that’s the biggest problem, because with that many signups it is impossible to manage to moderate properly. On the other hand blocking registrations may cause the situation in which people will resign from joining Mastodon and somewhere else.
@rysiek It's certainly true that large instances like mastodon.social can't really practically be defederated, so it falls on the shoulders of these instance admins to do a cracking job of moderation. It is also true that bad actors will try to exploit "too big to defederate" by launching attacks. So, we are going to get some bad stuff coming through before it can be squashed. If it is not squashed quickly, then we need to make noise, but it seems this was handled swiftly.
@rysiek Playing devil's advocate, and potentially addressing another community issue, what if the coordinated attack is against a mid-sized instance and the instance is overwhelmed and not able to respond quickly? The instance then gets listed on some block list and is defederated. Is this an equitable solution? Now the users of the mid-size instance are all disenfranchised. Does this provide attackers with another way to disrupt the smooth operations of the Fediverse?
@rysiek We need to recognize that as we grow there will be bad actors out there probing our weaknesses and trying to break our systems of moderation. Like all complex systems, we have vulnerabilities at all levels and the means of addressing these are with vigilance and active counter measures. Technology alone can help, but it is not enough.
@rysiek What we need is cooperation and a rich arsenal of response to attacks. Certainly mastodon.social as the Gothem here has a key role to play, but just saying the problems are because it is a big city, and the solution is to have no big cities, is too simplistic and ignores that you need effective measures for enforcement of community standards throughout the social fabric.
@rysiek The thing about Mastodon that gives us a fighting chance at this is that we generally are civic minded and care about our communities big and small. When an invader shows up bend on wrecking havoc, we pull together and deal with them. It is fine to then assess what happened, what went wrong, and how to do better in the future. But casting aspersions and attributing bad faith motives to one another is not the right path. Dividing the community is how the attacker wins.
@rysiek Bubbling out to a more macro view, we can take great pride in the fact that we are by and large a strong community that cares about respect for each other, and that we have the culture, structure and tools that give us a fighting chance of maintaining these social norms. This is what is really unique about Mastodon and the Fediverse, and it has its roots in our genesis. Bottom line, it's a nice place and we intend to keep it that way. We got this!
@mastodonmigration@rysiek ... on a tanget here: once de-federated, if they clean up their problem, will inertia keep them de-federated many places? I believe so. The sharing of block-lists should be accompanied by re-federation-lists
@rysiek Counterpoint: Choosing instances is one of the main pain points that cause migrating users to abandon Mastodon, and it’s one of the hostile parts of migrating to Mastodon.
People should be encouraged to join a big instance by default so they can get onboarded quickly. They can always move their account to another instance once they get familiar with the system.
Moderation is an issue that mastodon dot social needs to grapple with. Luckily, they are a business and can raise funds/donations/volunteers for moderation.
> People should be encouraged to join a big instance by default so they can get onboarded quickly.
Yes, but they are encouraged to join the big instance. We can have a better onboarding process without creating a single point of failure in the network.
We tried having instance directories broken down by region/interest/affinity, and it just confused people.
Joining a massive server is actually a very good thing for newcomers, because Fediverse search sucks for finding anything outside one’s server. A huge pool of users on a server makes it more likely that people will find someone interesting to follow.
The only other alternative I can think of that doesn’t degrade the onboarding experience is to designate a known group of good servers as “primary instances” that have sufficient size, and also agree to a code of moderation and conduct. The app can then onboard people randomly to one of the instances in the group. This is likely even more complex and bureaucratically/politically difficult to maintain than making sure the one big server has enough moderators.
@rysiek Or you know, the Fediverse can get off its high horse and make search actually functional. I understand that some people don’t want to be found, but even when you want to be found it’s way too hard for people to find you.
@drahardja and this is also happening, slowly. There are quite a few attempts at making a search thing that respects people's preferences and asks for consent.
@drahardja have a dozen large-ish instances selected randomly as "default" each time a person needs that while signing up, instead of a single gigantic one.
Ideally, some of the instances would not be run by Mastodon-the-company.
That way the load and the responsibility spreads. New people still end up on large-ish, vibrant instances. But neither of them becomes the single-point-of-failure, too-big-to-defederate problem for the rest of fedi.
@rysiek That’s fine. But until the list of acceptable large instances is established, onboarding to mastodon dot social is a perfectly fine flow for today in my view.
But the problem of defederation remains. Say there are a dozen large instances that hold 80% of the Fedi population. Will your server actually be able to defederate from any of them? When a major instance is made of 75% regular people and 25% Nazis, but account for 7% of the total Fedi population, you can’t defederate from them unless the other 11 major instances also do so—your instance would stand to lose way more than the major instance when you defederate, because your instance receives a lot of non-problematic traffic from the major instance. Your threat of defederation will have zero consequence to the major instance.
The threat of defederation only works among peers who need each other equally for survival. We need better tools to deal with bad actors on very large instances.
> That’s fine. But until the list of acceptable large instances is established, onboarding to mastodon dot social is a perfectly fine flow for today in my view.
Based on the size of m.s, I disagree.
> We need better tools to deal with bad actors on very large instances.
@toxomat yes, I added a toot at the end of my thread that makes it clear I am not advocating for de-federation of m.s, and that de-federation is a nuclear option of absolute last resort.
@rysiek if you look at their status page, they seem to be aware and are taking action. It does take time to respond to something like this wherever someone strikes from.
@rmflight this is the third time in a few weeks this "hit them", and saying it "hit them" makes it seem like it was unexpected and surprising.
It was not. It was completely predictable, based on the size of m.s and the fact that it is being actively promoted as the "default" Mastodon instance.
Check the very link you sent. May 4th, May 12th, and today.
@rmflight the bottom line is: mastodon.social is too big for it's own sake, and too big not to be a risk for the rest of fedi.
Other instances already started silencing it or outright defederating from it, because of the amount of work these spam waves bring to every other instance admin out there.
This is a good moment to find a new, smaller instance, and move. The more instances defederate from m.s the harder a move will become.
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