Has anyone seen this organized anti-trans campaign? I've been seeing a bunch of posts with:
- An anime girl avatar
- A short, violently anti-trans message
- A huge list of unrelated hashtags (which is why I'm seeing them)
- A video
I block the instances as I see them, but that doesn't help much as each seems to come from a new instance.
What defense does Mastodon have against such an attack? The only tactic I can think of is pre-screening instances before federating with them, which would be a problem for all small instances.
@peterdrake Compare: https://mastodon.social/tags/newhere and https://qoto.org/tags/newhere
Some sites have solved the problem. Yours has simply chosen to push that work onto you.
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Well we provide a blocklist you can import.. So yes we do let our users decide what they want to see rather than forcing it on them.. yes id say that counts as "push that work onto you", but considering importing the block list takes a few seconds I would say trading the freedom to decide for yourself for a few seconds worth of effort is more than worth it.
Also we are working on a technological solution whereby the qoto admins can start "suspending" servers and individual users can opt-out and override it and see it anyway. Once that tech is complete we will be the first server that not only provides a moderated federated feed but allows our users the freedom of choice to opt out of it.
Now more to your point.. you say you are being harassed... why have you not reported it so we can act? The **one** reason we will suspend a server is because someone from another server circumvents user bans (including hoping servers).. If you (or any of our users) had reported it we could have acted.
Why do you think the problem will solve itself when this is literally the first time you or anyone has mentioned an issue? I can say I know I personally havent gotten a single incident of harassment in months (largely because I block the few bad servers)....
So can you be more specific about the issues, problematic servers, and what resolution you want to see?
"we provide a blocklist you can import"
Where do you provide it? I don't see it on the qoto "about" page.
"Also we are working on a technological solution whereby the qoto admins can start "suspending" servers and individual users can opt-out and override it and see it anyway."
Intriguing! This sounds like the best of both worlds: individual users don't have the burden of importing (and regularly updating) a list of bad-faith servers, but if they really want to peek at one, qoto won't stop them. (I'm sure someone will complain about even being suspended, but that's another issue.)
"you say you are being harassed... why have you not reported it so we can act?"
To be clear, I don't claim that *I* am being harassed here. What I'm seeing looks like a deliberate campaign of harassment against several marginalized communities.
I didn't report it because (a) I thought reporting it to the source servers would be pointless because they're absolutely full of this stuff and clearly don't care, (b) I thought reporting it to qoto would be pointless because they're not harassing a specific individual who has asked them to stop, and (c) it feels like whack-a-mole, as these toots are not all coming from the same account or even the same server.
I'm not complaining about the qoto leadership not being omniscient. I'm just expressing the concern that not protecting users from this attack vector makes qoto an unsafe place for marginalized people.
> Where do you provide it? I don't see it on the qoto "about" page.
It is a pinned post on my page, we also send it as a message to most new users. I linked you to it.
> Intriguing! This sounds like the best of both worlds: individual users don't have the burden of importing (and regularly updating) a list of bad-faith servers, but if they really want to peek at one, qoto won't stop them. (I'm sure someone will complain about even being suspended, but that's another issue.)
Agreed it does solve your legitimate issue of needing to update your own block list. It lets you keep a clean feed with no effort.
> To be clear, I don't claim that *I* am being harassed here. What I'm seeing looks like a deliberate campaign of harassment against several marginalized communities.
Are you talking about racist posts that happen to be out int he fediverse somewhere? Or are we talking about harassment, where posts are sent as direct messages to them? There will always be bad people on the internet, luckily you dont see that nonsense if you arent looking for it. If someone is being harassed by someone actively pushing cruel messages at them then that is far more concerning from a moderation perspective, especially if its an organized attack. If that is happening I'd want to address it.
> I didn't report it because (a) I thought reporting it to the source servers would be pointless because they're absolutely full of this stuff and clearly don't care, (b) I thought reporting it to qoto would be pointless because they're not harassing a specific individual who has asked them to stop, and (c) it feels like whack-a-mole, as these toots are not all coming from the same account or even the same server.
Well you may be right.. it depends. Like I said if they are hopping servers to circumvent bans then QOTO would act on it.. If they are just racist comments that exist somewhere that may be a bit more problematic to address.
> I'm not complaining about the qoto leadership not being omniscient. I'm just expressing the concern that not protecting users from this attack vector makes qoto an unsafe place for marginalized people.
Why dont we leave that for the maginalized people to decide? As I said it is at their request, and for their safety, we have an open policy in the first place.
"Are you talking about racist posts that happen to be out int he fediverse somewhere? Or are we talking about harassment, where posts are sent as direct messages to them? There will always be bad people on the internet, luckily you dont see that nonsense if you arent looking for it. If someone is being harassed by someone actively pushing cruel messages at them then that is far more concerning from a moderation perspective, especially if its an organized attack. If that is happening I’d want to address it."
As mentioned previously in the thread, I'm talking about the stuff that's flooding, e.g.:
It's not DMs, but it's very clearly "an organized attack" that's "actively pushing cruel messages at" people by hijacking hashtags.
"Why dont we leave that for the maginalized people to decide? As I said it is at their request, and for their safety, we have an open policy in the first place."
I see the value in letting people speak/act/decide for themselves, but I also see the value in not making the victims do all the emotional labor. It's complicated.
> I see the value in letting people speak/act/decide for themselves, but I also see the value in not making the victims do all the emotional labor. It’s complicated.
No you misunderstood what I said. I am not saying "let them block for themselves and thus decide"... What I am saying is the minorities on QOTO have explicitly faught for the right to decide for themselves what they want to see or not, they insisted on this for their own safety.
What I am asking you is why are you, as a non minority, telling them what is safe for them when in fact they have explicitly stated that your vision of a "safe space" puts their lives at risk and that the current open-federation policy is what they requested for their own safety? Why do you think as a non-minority you can tell them that their idea of a safe space is wrong?
Can I make a suggestion?
I think part of the problem is the way hashtag search results are returned. If you search for a hashtag, it gives the federated feed for that hashtag, which may contain a lot bad stuff and can be abused.
It would be handy to have a slider control widget to control the presentation for all feeds and searches. And it would be nice to have an extra category of feed, "Moderated Fedi".
So, a vertical slider control like this:
| - My Toots
| - Home
| - Local
| - Moderated Fedi
| - Wild West
By adjusting the slider, users control how wide of a net they cast while they are using the instance; browsing, searching, DMs, everything. The category "Moderated Fedi" could be UFol or any other list of "approved" instances the admin wants to make it. This would also make the search feature more useful and users would never accidentally be fed raw stuff from the Wild West (unmoderated fedi) if they don't want that.
Of course users and admins could maintain their own block/mute lists to layer on top of that.
Does this make sense?
