If this "privacy setting" for #quoteposts is implemented with it enabled by default, the result will be disastrous. :reisensweat: Since there is no other way to enforce this setting other than #defederation, we are going to see Mastodon servers strong-arming those software developers who are "non-compliant" by threatening a #fediblock. :reisensweat: Developers of the -key and -oma families will suddenly have to scramble to make their implementation of #quotetweets compatible with Mastodon's "privacy-friendly" implementation. :satsuki_sadge: This way of "extending" the fediverse is not acceptable, and everyone who has opposed #Facebook joining the fediverse due to #EmbraceExtendExtinguish should also oppose this issue which just eventually leads to the same result.
In a test environment (with a separate VM spun up on a private non routed VLAN on a simulated network) I tested removing the umpteen-gajillion servers from the do-not-federate list (moderation/federation) using multiple methods.
Using SQL to remove all records where a particular server name was listed caused mastodon to refuse to start - at all. I ended up deleting that VM. (this VM never touched the internet - it lived in a simulated network (a VLAN dedicated to experimentation) which had no access to the real world)
My attempt at writing a script to automate the removal via API flopped. Either 401 errors or corrupted requests which did something, but I couldn't tell you what... but the copied instance decided it didn't want to play nice - even after my letting it sit for an hour to let the database catch up.. Web access to the instance was iffy, at best.
I'm at a loss. I need to find an easy way to clear out this 25-page list of servers which I should have never added in the first place without mangling my instance.
Thanks, @alarig for running this fantastic #mastodon#instance. I couldn't find if you've posted anything about the topic, forgive me if you have, just curious to know whether you've made up your mind on hostux.social's stance regarding #threads#federation#defederation
This whole anti- #Threads, #defederation thing is getting out-of-hand. The attached image is a post by the admin of Floss.social and it honestly blew my mind.
I run my own personal Mastodon instance so I can choose with what instances I defederate from, don't have to worry about getting banned for sharing content in non-English languages (namely Finnish), can customize it to my liking (add any sort of emojis) and of course have the freedom to post content on a wide range of topics rather being on an instance that encourages one specific dogma, ideology, viewpoint, or topic.
For (Buddies of Budgie, I chose the Floss.social instance after moving from Fosstodon since there was a restriction at the time on supported / allowed languages (strictly English) and problematic moderation. Instances were being blocked rather trivially and while it isn't clear that Floss.social is going to be blocking Threads, the language of the owner / admin is rather concerning.
It's concerning because it equates being excited for prospect of another alternative to X / Twitter and wanting to promote ActivityPub, not to mention sharing your thoughts, ideas, organization, etc. with a wider audience -- with the notion that one is being paid or otherwise financially incentivized to support Threads or ActivityPub.
For Buddies of Budgie, it gets all its donations (a generous 68 USD per month with many one-off contributions as well) from the community, in the public, via our OpenCollective. Not companies, not some masterminds at some secret underground cabal lead by Zzuck and Mosseri. Just other people that like open source and in our case, a desktop environment for Linux.
Folks from all walks of life and all sorts of viewpoints can use our software. They have a legal right under its license. I nor anyone else have to agree with those viewpoints for them to use the software. We aren't getting money for supporting anything but our own software and our own values.
Of course, I have personal views on how we should treat each other, what is / isn't acceptable, and moderation is applied in my community to make sure it is free of hate, repressive or other harmful language, etc.
From a leadership perspective, it is in my best interest to ensure the work that the organization and its members are doing is shared with the wider world. We're proud of that work.
So what's up with the shaming from folks about being excited about Threads? We get to reach more people, it's a fantastic opportunity! Folks need to stop asserting that others have a lack of values for simply wanting to connect with others.
This week's Threads news has stirred up some old Mastodontroversies, so let me dust off this old chestnut:
“You can always move to a new instance" is a half-truth and a cop-out.
The technical bar is low but nonzero, the failure rate is nonzero, and NOT EVERYTHING MOVES WITH YOU.
People who reply to real issue with advice to “just move to a new instance" are either ignorant or disingenuous. There are real tradeoffs and sacrifices.
abbiamo defederato threads.net perchè conosciamo bene la strategia che stanno usando, ora sono carini e coccolosi, poi prenderanno mastodon e lo allargheranno aggiungendoci feature e un sacco di cose non necessarie e poi una volta che avranno il controllo dello strumento lo distruggeranno spegnendolo del tutto
non ci fidiamo dei colossi
e quindi meglio chiudere subito
Default instance blocks should largely replace defederation
Since what content users might want to see is quite unlikely to match which servers the admins tolerate, choosing instance on the Fediverse can be quite complicated, which is inconvenient and off-putting for new users.
For this reason, and simply that the Fediverse is stronger united, I believe defederation should ideally be reserved for illegal content and extreme cases. If Fediverse platforms would allow instances to simply block the rest for users by default, the user experience would be the same, unless they decide otherwise.
instead of posting about #defederation, I think it would be pretty poggers instead to post about friend instances! I'll start by saying that tacobelllabs.net is a friend instance of XANTRONIX Social :3
It's fascinating to watch #fediverse and Mastodon admins in particular speed-running the basic rules of politics and trade relations in near real time.
Who'd have thought that social sciences would be useful to social media? 🤔 (Yes, this relates to #fediblock and #defederation )
Can anyone recommend any good primers in #politics and #trade relations? 👇
Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.
I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.
First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).
Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:
The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.
There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.
There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.
Blocklists are a huge responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.
Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS. Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance* 😢
I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:
Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of every of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.
But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.
sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s
Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict last year. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.
When thinking about #moderation, federation, and #defederation, it's important to center why we are engaging in these activities in the first place: to make decisions about interpersonal boundaries and accountability.
Accountability is a practice of honoring connection and repairing harm through active listening and mutual acknowledgement of context and power.
With nazi services that is clear. You can draw the line directly. Same with CSAM-heavy services.
If a service is spamming yours and causing an interruption the same thing applies.
But you are operating in the service of your users who are presumably mostly if not entirely adults. So how does this "protect your users" in a way that, say, limiting would not?
One thing that was really great on #masto and then #pixelfed was the ability to use the browser.
As we're seeing new social media contenders(threads) illustrate, companies want you to use the app, not a browser. Far more data is available to them to exploit.
As we move forward with #defederation#FOSS#adfree and #privacy I'd like to remind developers that they don't need to compete with "apps." We should be sharing the message about their faults.
social.coop, the Mastodon instance that I'm mostly on, is a coop, so users like me get to vote.
An important vote just closed, about whether to federate with Meta's Threads or not.
I don't quite agree with the outcome, but it is something I can live with as a compromise, and I VASTLY PREFER this messy, argumentative, and lengthy (yes!) process of member democracy over any unilateral action by any instance administrator or overlord, even if they are quite benevolent.
Although I am strongly in favor of #defederation from #Facebook / #ThreadsDotNet / Meta, I feel less confident about what kinds of claims we can make about safety and harassment. My friend @harris has made some interesting points about #inclusion and the fact that if we could federate with Meta without problems, we'd be able elevate the voices of a lot more minorities than we do now.
#Defederation is all the rage and the #UnitedKingdom has been a pioneer since 2016. While you all are busy defederating from #Threads, the #UK already plans to defederate from most messaging infrastructure. #OnlineSafetyBill
In retrospect, I shouldn't have bothered writing an article regarding #defederation, the #fedipact and the #fediverse because this brilliant gem (back from the 'Endless September' Usenet days) says everything I want to say and then some. Everything old is new again, the same tribalism and existential fears remain. We are creatures of short memories and strong, deeply-felt fears.
Scicomm.xyz has a statement on their preemptive defederation policy that is well worth the read.
"[Facebook/Meta has] such a long and well-observed history of Doing The Wrong Thing in practically every other space that they have been involved with, that we can readily expect them to join the Fediverse with less than pure intentions and knowing that it will not be long before they screw something up."
@Mikal Scicomm.xyz has a statement on their preemptive defederation policy that is well worth the read.
"There are already many large companies and for-profit enterprises operating on the Fediverse but few have the size, resources, and track record to pose a destabilising threat to the system as Meta."
This is the 3rd or 4th example I’ve seen in two weeks of server admins using the nuclear option of #defederation for the behavior of one or two users. One of the examples was a fight between the two admins.
This is going to kill the #Fediverse if we keep doing this. You are breaking the user experience for every person on either server who interacts with someone on the other server. Even if you decide to change your mind, those users experiences are still broken. You don’t regain your followers if they refederate.
Normal users are not going to follow the meta narrative of why two server admins aren’t friends anymore. They’ll think the #fediverse is broken and leave. If this keeps up its going to be impossible to recommend any other server outside of mastodon.social.