I am gathering a list of people who want to be involved in the discussion around the formation of a "United Federation of Instances" which is an attempt to combat the fracturing of the fediverse and the general spreading of misinformation WRT moderation decisions.

If anyone is interested in being a part of it let me know in the replies. I will add you to the list, share the draft proposal, and we can start discussions. I have several people already interested.

@freemo why not just publish the draft first and have the discussion in the open? I would think you could generate more interest that way.

Have you reached out to other instance admin about this?

I feel like this could result in some negative unintended consequences. De-federation, and the social threat of de-federation is the main tool to apply pressure to instance admins that are not sufficiently moderating their community.
This seems it would make that process harder.

@ejg The intent is to do just this.. I just want a good starting point to kick off the discussion.. So im starting with a private discussion, going to refine the draft there, then im going to open it to everyone to contribute.

Yes I am working in private to get some admins and even users on board. I dont want to go public till we have a decent number of supporters just to help counter any backlash people might throw at us.

To your comment about making it harder... sort of.. an instance can always leave the UFI for starters, second, that process SHOULD be harder, at least in terms of collecting evidence and having some due process. The beauty is having curated evidence means even servers outside of the UFI can, if they wish, use us as a source of fact-checking..

@ejg Would you like to see a copy of the current draft in private?

@freemo I would be more interested in have the discussion in the open.

@freemo this seems to mostly add a layer of bureaucracy to the process of de-federation.

Those that are not in the UFI could be seen as bad actors.

This would penalize those that choose not to join the UFI, or that get expelled because they chose to de-federate from an instance, after a judgement went the other way, because they felt it was necessary to protect their community.

@ejg The intent is to make sure that those not in the UFI are **not** seen as bad actors.. I explicitly left out any concept of assuming non-UFI members were bad actors. The idea is that if you arent in the UFI people in the UFI can judge on an inndividual basis how they want to handle you

And yes it adds a layer of beurocracy, but the intent of that layer is to ensure blocking is done in an informed and evidence based manner

@freemo

> I explicitly left out any concept of assuming non-UFI members were bad actors

Some form of explicit menten that non-UFI members are not assumed to be bad actors might be good to include.

Follow

@ejg I changed the last paragraph to this, better?

The solution, therefore, is to ensure due process, enable discussion and to do so in a transparent fashion visible to all parties and with all sides having a chance to present evidence. While good-actor instance shall remain unified and federated amongst each other, any instances that have not shown to be good-actors by joining the United federation of Instances (UFI) are not under any special protections, they should be allowed to be moderated by instances however an instance sees fit. However non-UFI members should not be assumed to be bad actors either simply because they are not members of the UFI.

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@ejg

Ignore that last version, here is a better one I think:

The solution, therefore, is to ensure due process, enable discussion and to do so in a transparent fashion visible to all parties and with all sides having a chance to present evidence. While good-actor instances shall remain unified and federated amongst each other, any instances that have not shown to be good-actors by joining the United federation of Instances (UFI) are not under any special protections, they should be allowed to be moderated by instances however an instance sees fit. However non-UFI members should not be assumed to be bad actors either, simply not being a member of the UFI should not imply a certain prejudice on its own.

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