Christ almighty is there a ton of porn and lunacy on this instance's federated timeline. This may have been a mistake.
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@evaristus Federated timelines are usually improved by you muting the whole instance. There are only a gew instances that show porn so its easy to block it all in one go.
But generally we dont silence instances at the server level unless they engage in harassment.
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@freemo @evaristus Well this is interesting. I thought admins usually block instances that break their rules...and IIRC porn isn't welcome here...
Sort of. Most instances will have different rules for what they allow federation with vs what they allow locally.
We do not have a no-nudity rule, strictly speaking, but we do require it to be CW'ed
Our rules are elaborated on in our about page. But we federate with every instance that protects a users right to disengage (a rather strict definition of harassment). Locally we are more strict though.
I see no reason we should be dictating who our users want to follow or interact with though from other servers.
> I see no reason we should be dictating who our users want to follow or interact with though from other servers
But we just discovered a reason here, right? Plenty of people didn't even know how to mute domains until this thread. So there's a technical onus to having people decide on their own which domains to mute.
By activate moderation of fediverse connections, you're relieving the onus on users to deal with objectional content on their own, each time they see it.
Thats pretty much the age old argument of security vs liberty... But worse yet, it isnt really security as just laziness. Less work for the user at the sacrifice of liberty (preventing them from hearing objectionable material if they wish to).
It comes down to, are you willing to have someone dictate to you what is or is not objectionable just to save a few minutes of work?
But that's what moderation is. Are you suggesting this instance is unmoderated?
I am suggestion the instance is minimally moderated in only the most essential ways.
That means for federation purposes we garuntee ones right to disengage.
For the local instance we guarantee people will interact with each other reasonably respectfully.
Obviously the level of moderation we hold for our local users is somewhat stricter than what we impose on entire instances.
Of course everything is open for discussion. If you think this is a bad policy I suggest you open a topic in the moderation section of ur discourse instance and myself, other moderators, and users would be happy to discuss it and consider changing our current policy.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins Wouldn't presume to tell you how to moderate things. If you think you've struck a good balance, then that's great!
I just wanted to give you an impression on the ground, as a new user joining the instance. When I see a federated timeline filled with disinformation and lolicon, my first thought isn't, "wow, this instance must have a minimal moderation policy", it's "wow, no one is looking at what the timeline is showing our users, and new users are getting shown lolicon and disinformation."
I'm just happy to have reasonable discussions Online!
Tagging other mods (And nominated mods): @design_RG @arteteco @mngrif @Surasanji
@freemo
Thank you for the tag, the notification brought me back.
I am glad Evaristus posted the original message yesterday -- specially since it allowed a discussion and clarifications that involved users not only from Qoto, but from other instances as well.
I posted information that I discovered myself, and I think allows any user to control their exposure to unwanted instances and content.
I plan to create more permanent Forum posts in our Discourse forum -- there it can have a permanente URL, I can use enhanced text formatting like Bold, italics, and refer to it when needed.
Information posted simply in the mastodon feeds will quickly disappear, otherwise.
I am VERY grateful for our instance here having Full Text Search, which I use frequently to dig up my own posts to refer to new users.
Regarding the editorial choice of blocking content from porn or other instances :
I think the Laissez Faire (let it be in free translation) attitude is a good one. Followed by action and re-evaluation in case of any problems or complaints.
It's like a large news agent in the Federated feed. I do object to some I see flying by, or even what is shown right at the front door on some Pleroma instances.
But I have the choice to stay away from these, and reduce Clutter, porn, even possible hate speech by blocking whole instances that I, as a user, decide are not at all productive for me.
I see this as a combination of light moderation and helping the users learn about the content control power they do have; and are free to use at their discretion.
Sorry for the long post, friends.
