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@design_RG @mngrif @arteteco Seems I'm going to reluctantly have to vote to silence neckbeard, pl, and FSE.
Giving safe harbor to individuals who evade bans and complete inaction regarding resolving it is too big a risk to the safety of our users. If they can no longer block users they wish to block they have no protection against harassment. Since this individual threatened to murder someone it is particularly concerning.
As was seen I reached out to the admin of all three instances and after a long talk none were willing to take action to ban or contain the user in any way.
For these reasons I reluctantly need to vote for a silence.
Any votes from the rest of you or discussion left?
Well no, that doesn't fall under free speech by definition or by law.
@freemo @quaylessed @arteteco @design_RG @mngrif
You're correct and the better word is censorship
Yea I think it is valid to call blocking someone, even when justified, censoring them.
Despite your very articulate point I'm pretty sure you use a spam filter on your email. That too is censorship.
@freemo @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
Fairly OT, but I don't really understand why server silencing can't be opted-out by the user AFAIK. (As opposed to, say, server suspension, which I sort of get why users can't opt-out of.) (Aside from no one implementing the feature, I guess.)
@freemo
>this individual threatened to murder someone
Lemme guess: Jojo.
I'm inclined to lean towards "lol y cant dey jus mute 'em? xD" though with lusers as persistent as Jojo... I suppose you could call me a fence-sitter on this. Instance blocks leave a foul taste in my mouth regardless. And such lusers could easily hop on to any other instance, toss their DM'd threat when they suspect their target is active, and logout while snickering knowing their nasty message hit the mark even if they'll be b& within minutes.
Keep in mind im not proposing an instance block, only a silence and only until the instances change their policy to prevent block evasion.
@freemo That's reasonable.
@design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
@freemo @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
I'd like to register my support for letting the affected user deal with this himself using the "Hide everything from example.com" feature.
The following is on QOTO's about page.
What won't get you banned:
Anything that can be solved by a personal block
Why not apply the same standard to silencing instances as to banning users?
I agree, but since the offending user is using ban evasion they are no longer able to... see our section on federation policy.
The offending user has now used at least 7 different accounts on different servers to avoids band included the three mentioned, all of which refused to address the problematic account.
@freemo @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
Why does that change the argument? Suppose @user@example.com is a ban-evading alt of an account I blocked, and the admin of example.com refuses to do anything about it. It's not clear to me what is accomplished by you silencing their instance that isn't accomplished by me hiding everything from the instance. On the flip side there's a clear benefit to the latter in that QOTO users with no complaint against example.com are still free to interact as they wish.
@freemo @khird @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
Thinking about it, I'm a bit curious: considering that the offending user is already using multiple accounts to evade bans, even if the admins of said instances banned the accounts, wouldn't it be the same whack-a-mole as bans by individual users?
(I have to admit I'm not that well-versed in online communities, I guess.)
@casualwp to an extent, yes.but if the admins play wackamol thats easier than 10 thousand users all playing wackkamol at once
@freemo @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
I'd be more supportive of an instance silence if we had the feature proposed here. That would make silencing an instance merely an overrideable default, and I have no problem with the mods trying to set up sane defaults to ensure new users have a generally decent experience off the bat.
I entierly agree, if users could override a silence and effectively unsilence an instance that would be a very valuable feature i would support. In fact that would solve a lot of other problems too now that i think about it (would totally make the isolate gab movement pointless for example).
@freemo
Sorry, I have troubles following such threads on mastodon, could we open a discourse topic?
Regarding this "user unsilencing", it's I think a great feature and has been discussed already. I don't think there is a will to implement such feature, even though I don't think it would go against the mastodon philosophy
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3890
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/7220
And is been touched here:
@freemo
If you already reached some conclusion feel free to not include me, I was late and as we've always done who's present takes the decisions, otherwise it would slow us down a lot.
Maybe just open a topic on discourse linking the discussion on mastodon, for transparency?
I was traveling and getting setup in my USA home, so I put this topic on hold. No actual decision was made.
Now that I'm situated I want to come back to this as well as hear your input. I'd rather avoid silencing... perhaps an interim option is to create a "suggested block list" that we offer to users and encourage them to block those instances, of their own choice, and detail the reasons, leave it up to them.
Then maybe I can implement a feature where the suggested blocklist is automatically applied to users accounts by default but they can select to opt out as they wish.
The problem has continued, and has gotten worse, so I dont think the instances that have done nothing in response should just be ignored. Thankfully most of the instances contacted were all quick to resolve the issue on their end.
I can start a discourse topic to discuss.
I will update everyone effected as a decision is reached, but for now letting those involved know that no silence has been enacted yet.
@khird @design_RG @mngrif @casualwp @hrisskar @snow @AtlasFreeman @p @nepfag @redneonglow @Lumeinshin @march @jack @sjw @FBI @mewmew @nosleep @jasonl8446
> I dont think the instances that have done nothing in response should just be ignored.
I said I was gonna warn him, I warned him, I said that this was policy around here: no one gets banned without ample warning. It is a little disingenous to say that anyone "did nothing". I do not think the guy has bothered you from here since then.
Doing anything about the actions of the user in question carried out on other instances would not only contradict our other policies, it would also have absolutely no effect, because a ban on this instance does not automatically ban him from other instances. He can still just sign up on the other instances and spam. Unless he's using FSE to plan that, I don't presume to exceed my jurisdiction. Like any clever fedi user, he knows how to find https://qoto.org/api/v1/instance/peers and since it's a one-man operation, no actual coordination is needed.
The guy's on Tor, I'm not blocking Tor exit nodes and I'm not shutting down registrations.
These policies were very carefully considered and discussed at length. They will not change on a whim, especially not over a personal dispute where he's yelling "GET LAID, INCEL" and you're yelling "I HAVE AN AR-15, MICROPENIS".
So I appreciate the heads-up, but as I said before, I'd prefer not to participate in any further deliberations; just let me know when a decision is reached. I don't think we made any progress during the last round of deliberations (although I'm glad they are not a DM this time; I do not like to do this sort of thing in secret, FSE is run openly), but the end result was you were willing to try none of the proposed solutions and I'm not going to change the policy, so I don't see any possibility of this round of deliberations being productive.
At this point, my only remaining proposal is that everyone
take it easy 
, and anyone that wants to propose something else should go ahead and untag me.cybertaco.gif
Yes thanks for your feedback. For the time beeing there is no silence or suspend in place. I will let you know if that changes. You were tagged just to update you on that regard. I am trying to consider alternatives to a silence/suspend.
You wont be tagged in general discussion. This was to let you know that no action was taken, which you requested to be informed about the status.
@AtlasFreeman @FBI @Lumeinshin @jack @jasonl8446 @march @mewmew @nosleep @redneonglow @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
I dont think we should take orders from random strangers.
dont-bully.jpg
No one has given you any orders.
@p @AtlasFreeman @FBI @jack @jasonl8446 @Lumeinshin @march @mewmew @nosleep @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
Well that's what you come off as.
What did I order you to do exactly?
@p @AtlasFreeman @FBI @jack @jasonl8446 @Lumeinshin @march @mewmew @nosleep @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
You're telling random people how to run their instances and threatening to block them if they don't listen to you.
I for one am a fan of Demon's hellthreads and don't consider them spam.
At no point did i tell you how to run your instance. Nor is the existance of hell threads even the topic being discussed.
We are trying to discuss how to handle a user who has made death threads and engaged in block evasion. The administrator of the instances that were involved have been tagged in that discussion, nothing more.
As i states we are looking for solutions that woukd avoid a silence, i did not dictate what those solutions are. In fact one such solution being discussed woukd be features we add to qoto code base to solve the issue without suspending your instance.
@p @AtlasFreeman @FBI @jack @jasonl8446 @Lumeinshin @march @mewmew @nosleep @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
Well you know my opinion about this now but ultimately it's @sjw's decision.
Sorry, red retagged you and I didnt notice.
@AtlasFreeman @FBI @Lumeinshin @jack @jasonl8446 @march @mewmew @nosleep @redneonglow @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
If that were true I wouldnt have worked so hard to find an alternative solution to silencing you, which as i said we havent done, and are going to resolve this through other technological means (user controlled block lists they can opt out of). A s a way to let our servers federate but still protect our users.
At no point did I tell anyone what they had to do. One of your users were making death threats and opening multiple accounts to avoid mutes. This was about to lead to a silence at the time (which thankfully im working on other solutions for).
Silencing you was not a threat or a punishment, only a protection against such behaviors. nothing more. If you wanted to address those behaviors it is up to you. Luckily we are working on beter technological solutions instead.
For that to make any sense I would have had to dictate a specific course of action to you, which I didnt.
@AtlasFreeman @FBI @jack @jasonl8446 @Lumeinshin @march @mewmew @nosleep @redneonglow @sjw @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
Let's stop worrying about spammers, trolls, death threats, and instance blocking and post cute pictures of #Chocola instead.
2z36hv45t2e21.png
I think after discussions we found a solution here anyway that is technological in nature and would prevent us from needing to silence.
@AtlasFreeman @FBI @jack @jasonl8446 @Lumeinshin @march @mewmew @nosleep @sjw @nepfag @arteteco @casualwp @design_RG @hrisskar @khird @mngrif @snow
@freemo ActivityPub blocks just aren't designed in a way that's functional, it's not something you'll ever solve by blocking.
But if you do, at least do a silence over proper defederation. There's especially no practical reason to outright block when a silence solves the problem just as well 100% of the time while giving more choice to the user. @design_RG @mngrif @arteteco
@shampoobottle agreed a silence makes more sense than a block. At this point we are considering code changes to QOTO that will address the problem rather than needing to silence.
