Yes, at calckey.social, we blocked mastodonapp.uk. This was not an arbitrary decision.
We received multiple reports of transphobia from mastodonapp.uk, with no action being taken from their mods. For the safety of our users, many who are transgender, we had to initiate defederation.
This was not a choice we made lightly, but our community’s safety comes first.
@purpletwiglet@atomicpoet@fediversenews We haven't had any such reports from calckey.social within the last few days so I'm not sure why this is happening. Likewise I haven't had anything from the server owner over there to flag the issue so we are at a bit of a loss as to what the real reasoning is here.
(1/2)
I can assure you when we either see this content ourselves or it is reported through the built in reporting system (or a server owner dms one of us) the content is removed and I think in almost (if not every) case the user is suspended.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews maybe I'm alone on this, but I think this defederation drama thing is the top single flaw of the fediverse.
In order to have a moderation issue, you have to be either a small server gathering 100% idiots/spammer/annnoyed kids as their mission, or a huge general server with tens of thousands of users.
In that last case, many innocent people on the offending server will never figure it out.
End users should be aware that messages they find on their federated timeline are not moderated in the way local post are, and if it's the extreme case, they can block the instance by themselves.
maybe I'm alone on this, but I think this defederation drama thing is the top single flaw of the fediverse.
To me, it's its strenght.
I think the fediverse grows up on 2 different lanes: the infrastructure (devs working on AP and software) and the awareness of the people using it. You can't build a perfect system that will make users "grow up" (by that I mean dramatically improve the awareness of people on how social media works), they have to grow up themselves and this happens discussing these kind of things and trying to find solutions.
A significantly less moderated federated timeline is not the only drawback to removing defederation. What's a far bigger deal is that defederation also affects who can respond to your posts. And if an admin is allowing (or encouraging) their people to harass others, it is reasonable to cut off that admin's server.
We should not rely on minorities having to block harm on their own. Requiring them to block all harm by themselves means relying on them being constantly exposed to harm. As a community we should be trying to reduce that as much as possible.
There are enough "extreme cases" that if defederation was not in place I would pack up my bags and leave ActivityPub forever.
Is defederation a great solution? Not always. Are there problems with overuse? Yes. Would the Fediverse be worse without it? 100%
hello @codesmith
trying to speak in general and to abstract from the specific case.
let me try to expand some personal thoughts
i think that we have to distinguish if we are defederating a bunch of 50 script kiddies or a server with 70000 users, aimed at generic discussions.
The bigger the server, most sure we should be.
I'm expecting that such a big server, moderated by people in their free time from jobs/family will take some time (days?) to cope with moderating incidents coming from outside.
And statistically the possibility of finding 50 rotten apples among 70k is high.
But that also mean that minority groups for sure are also there, on the same server, and they suddenly get cutted from the possibility to find people willing to speak with them.
Eventually they could end up thinking that fediverse is boring and mainstream and quit it.
We are all losing then.
All because some stupid person share the same instance and moderation is so slow.
70000 users is a town, how many people you don't know and you never encounter in your town ?
I'm not saying you have to block harassers
one by one.
If you feel overwhelmed, the mastodon server i used to frequent before doing my own personal instance, gave all users the possibility to personally block a whole instance.
Also moderators/admin have more fine tune tuning, like hiding certain users from timeline if you don't already follow them, that sort of things
Yeah, i think so.
It's extremely unlikely someone end up subscribing to a small instance without realizing if it's dominated by shitty ideas, if not else, because they proudly state those on their TOS and it will be prominent in their local timeline.
With big, typically mastodon named, instances, right now, it can happen that everything happen without you even realizing
@codesmith@luca@atomicpoet@fediversenews responding specifically to point #2, I cannot see a way to provide high-quality moderation for minorities without having a significant number of them as mods. They can understand their own groups best. Unfortunately it does mean they must be exposed to the very worst things that you mention. For this reason only the most resilient of them should be asked to perform this task and they should be held in a very high regard for undertaking it.
Moderation itself is very difficult but it’s the only way to enforce community standards.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews A future quarantine type option would be interesting. Haven’t thought of the exact parameters but thinking of some kind of double secret probation.
Basically, you are mostly cut off until you get your house in order, but if you do you’ll get let back in. Stopping things like DMs, boosts etc so you can only see anyone you directly follow. Plus a built in content warning with a quarantine sticker.
Depending on the situation redemption should be an option, I think.
@atomicpoet No you ain't. Disinformation and hate is just as big a cancer in the Fediverse as it is everywhere else. The world will be the better for having been rid of it.
@constantine@atomicpoet@fediversenews What you call a flaw I call necessary a feature. Much of what you suggest perhaps sounds good but will be used to coordinate harassment by malicious instances. Block notifications provide a signal to harassment campaigns that it is time to change tactics. That is a reality of this whole network that you speak of. Admins have no responsibility to users of other instances and it’s asking too much of them. It’s already a very hard job and the only users they should be concerned about is their own.
I particularly take issue with your distinction of major instances. It does not matter how large an instance is. The rules should be the same for all.
There exists implicit trust between users and moderators. If that trust is broken the users have to duty to move to another instance. That is how the incentives remain aligned. De-federation is how admins of different servers protect their communities.
@constantine@fediversenews I guess the harassment campaigns I’ve been on the receiving end don’t matter to you. That’s fine but please don’t claim to speak for most people as you are but one.
There are multitudes of groups that make up the fediverse. I don’t see things as binary that you seem to.
One group wants to beat the Big Social and free the Internet from corporate control. Hence these people care about mass adoption and the network’s health as a whole.
In my experience many of those who speak like this feel entitled to as wide an audience as the corporate networks offered. The result is ensuring only the right people have access to the network at large. The right people being those who precisely share their values. This may create a large network, but it will not create a resilient one. You have not once mentioned any moderation strategies aside from hand-waving away the need for them in detail. Yes we have the tools but it takes extraordinary and on-going effort to use those tools effectively. Exponentially so as the user count grows. Asking this of volunteers is simply too much to expect.
The second group […] they don’t want mass adoption, and they don’t care about crumbling of the network. They only wish to preserve their own tiny cozy walled garden.
I’d say you have grossly mischaracterized this group. It is their prerogative to isolate if they choose. I run several instances that I isolate. One is just for my family to keep in touch. We share photos of the children on there. I absolutely do not want the internet at large to have access to that cozy walled garden. None of that negatively affects mass adoption. In fact, it broadens it. Those users are using ActivityPub to this day and they are gaining experience in a very safe place to do so.
The network should be a ‘patchwork’ as you put it. Therein it finds resilience and utility for the communities it serves. This is not a problem. Insisting that everyone participates in one network as some kind of hive-mind growth hack only serves the short term. It will quickly burn out the moderators that we need to protect the communities we build.
private places are great. the problem is servers that appear to prospective users like they want to be part of a #fediverse diverse as the #openweb, but act more like private spaces. that's the confusion we should all want to avoid. maybe we need new terms. I want lots of smaller servers focused on moderating harassment, not bad info or opinions. only block servers that want to harbor assholes, not weirdos. reading public timelines will always be sketchy.
@wjmaggos@constantine@fediversenews As I see it, the important aspect to focus on here as a user is the relationship to your admins and moderators. As a user you must implicitly trust them to do the right thing. Moderators must work tirelessly to maintain that trust or else risk losing their users. This is the contract we all agree to. This is how we build a strong community together.
Fediverse is the only place I’m aware of that offers users the recourse to move their account if that contract is broken.
@constantine@fediversenews Moderators must first and foremost care deeply for the community they are protecting.
Financial compensation could work for some instances but getting well compensated is neither necessary nor sufficient for quality. Means-testing users in order to compensate paid moderators strikes me as problematic as well. Perhaps local community advertisement could be sufficient, ala “Little League” sponsorship. I am not an adtech person though.
I tend to go broader instead of deeper. Share the load so that volunteering is within reach of anyone who can spare a bit of time and effort. The community should be its own reward. Call me an idealist.
@constantine@skotchygut
About #2, you can see the servers that your server blocks from your server's About page: https://sfba.social/about
(unless your server hide's this information. I cannot see it because i'm not on your server but maybe you can?)
I agree with 4 and 5. Hopefully we'll get there in the future! :)
If this is a sample of the crap Fediverse News is going to pump into my Home timeline, Fediverse News is gonna get unfollowed and Muted and Blocked in about two heartbeats
Don't need it; don't want it; don't care if the poster is being "ironic"
He's already Muted and Blocked and his instance breastmilk.club is my first Blocked domain
@ArtBear@atomicpoet@fediversenews A Posted list of blocked & watched instances would be useful to those joining, and for those who wish to check their instance's own list & status. The list would reflect what most instances are choosing to do in the way of moderation.
Whatever the issue is, blocking on major instances should first and foremost be the individual user‘s right and not imposed arbitrarily by admins, unless it is relating to illegal content. You’re perfectly right to deal with this in a different way, but then your instance is not the main stream alternative for many users that its claiming to be.
Whatever the issue is, blocking on major instances should first and foremost be the individual user‘s right and not imposed arbitrarily by admins, unless it is relating to illegal content. You’re perfectly right to deal with this in a different way, but then your instance is not the main stream alternative for many users that it‘s claiming to be.
"Still blocked by many servers": not many, one. The main servers that blocked at the time have all re-federated. TMK, calckey.social is the only server that didn't.
The failure lies with the one non-Mastodon server that stopped its (then) 200 members from reconnecting to the 70,000 members of a major Mastodon instance, unlike all other servers.
Note: mastodonapp.uk publishes its list of blocked servers, calckey.social does not.
Well I cancelled my monthly donation to mastodonapp.uk
I assumed I might have made some awful social faux pas around November/December and loads of people I was being friendly with either disappeared or maybe blocked me. Awful meme-age or poor taste in music, or cooking related or something.
Turns out loads of servers blocked my server without there being any solid communication of that to users here.
I would hope that it was somehow standard practice for admins of instances which block entire instances, to somehow notify or at least toot out to users on the "To-Be-Blocked" instance that not only are they getting blocked, but the reason(s) for it.
Especially now, with a huge influx of users from the Bird Site who are unfamiliar with the protocols & structure here, that would seem a necessity.
DM to each affected user when an instance blocks their instance. With some sort of spam/abuse protection via end of day collating to prevent large numbers of individual DMs.
@ArtBear@skotchygut@atomicpoet@voron@SrRochardBunson It’s coming to Mastodon. See item MAS-63 on the roadmap. Not sure about CalcKey.
I don’t know if users get warned when migrating or importing follower lists that blocks might prevent follows. Not every instance makes their blocklist public on their About page, so there may not be an easy way to find out before you move.
@skotchygut@ArtBear@atomicpoet@SrRochardBunson@fediversenews If you are responding to my comment, it’s simply to point out that there are less problems when expectations match experience. Many tech journalists are clueless and make mastodon/ the fediverse seem impossible, which is inaccurate. On the other end of the spectrum you have people (usually tech types) who tell people that it’s easy/simple also inaccurate and leads to frustration for non tech casual users.
@voron@ArtBear@atomicpoet@SrRochardBunson@fediversenews I see what you are saying. I am hopeful the existence of AP with it's federation-first approach will, in time, allow the norms to shift more around these difficult problems. Then the expectations can be better managed. Call me a dreamer.
@skotchygut@ArtBear@atomicpoet@SrRochardBunson@fediversenews I foresee this happening as well, there is a lot of energy and interest from a lot of smart talented people both new and legacy folks. 😊
@skotchygut@voron@ArtBear@SrRochardBunson@atomicpoet@fediversenews So I just logged into my home instance hachyderm.io via web browser (usually I’m on via Mona). At the top I see there is an administrative notice. I click on it and I get the following - straight-forward and clear.
One of the reasons I’m on hachyderm - they run the instance like it’s a real business with performance standards.
Actually, the owner/admin account was very open and explicit on their dealings with the initial block. They answered all queries, publicly, and they explained how they had changed their moderation policy. True, they made no public announcememt, sadly few servers do that. But all queries were answered publicly. I followed the admin account and was fully in the picture. I was very upset at the time but re-assured by the transparent response.
We get zero notification a server blocks us, we have no way to work out who does / does not block us and as I've said in other messages on here before we have had issues with moderation misunderstandings back in Nov of last year, and are still suffering from that due to abandoned projects being used that still list us as a site recommended to block.
The tools / info is currently frowned apon in the Mastodon communities anyway as it is a gateway to abuse.
I'm also not sure what they've seen and they haven't engaged with any of our mod team nor have they reported anything since at least Feb as I've gone back through every report.
I'm hoping this is a mis understanding or they're looking at something older because we only have 3 members of our team and I know none of us have seen such a report.
Absolutely, we don't want folks to block us and we especially don't want it if it's something we haven't had the ability to fix. I've re checked reports and have seen nothing from Calckey domain so either something is broken with their ability to send us reports or the report was simply never shared with us for us to do anything.
As soon as we know the report info we will investigate and resolve the concerns.
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