So would seem that recently Sunbeamcity.com has stated that their administrative position is to support and protect doxxing when they deem it appropriate.

This puts people at real danger especially considering the poor reputation the person doing the doxxing has (a laundry list of false accusations with no evidence).

The question I want to ask, should the QOTO policy be updated t include a clause where we defederate from any instance that supports doxxing?

Vote if you'd like but ultimately the comments will decide where I stand on the issue.

@freemo You'll have to defederate from me if so 😭

If people make their info public, they don't get to cry that it isn't private, that's how I see it.

@Coomer @freemo

What's the cost? What is sunbeamcity.com's content worth to your users? That's the first thing I'd consider, how infrastructure level changes affect my users.

What's the payout? Breaking federation doesn't seem to solve the issue of "malicious users exist" presented, so it would be a poor response in my opinion, even if the cost is low.

If it's just a matter of curating what shows up in TWKN you could 'quiet' the instance with MRFs (presuming you're using Pleroma) without breaking federation which might be a preferable option.

@worm

We are a fork off mastodon, so more similar to mastodon.

I do agree silencing might be better. The key here are two fold 1) let the server know their administrative policies, when explicitly harmful, have consequences 2) limit the amount of information malicious actors have access to.

#1 makes me hesitant and is why we general dont defederate, it should be a users choice. But #2 is appealing to me.

@Coomer

@freemo

2. As in "not let the evil haxor know the precious toots of qoto"? Then you should also close up public access to local/federated timelines, making qoto "registered user only", and then maybe also block all instances that don't block the evil haxor, for good measure... sounds good?
Unless you mean something like preventing malicious actors on qoto(or instance federating with qoto) from having access to information publicized on the evil instance? I don't think that's effective either, the information will remain public even if all other instances block it, and the doxer can always post it anywhere else they wish. If anything, silencing/blocking them will be most effective at preventing users in qoto from knowing that they might have been doxed (or that someone embarrassed themselves by failing at it).

@worm @Coomer

Follow

@namark

No They could still access our toots by just going straight to the server. It isnt to prevent them access. It to ensure our name and posts dont cross their path during the normal day-to-day activity. Out of sight, out of mind.

You have to step back and understand, this person is causing **real world** harm to others, inciting potentially physical violence, as well as other forms of attack.

If we dont do something in response to that, then whats left.

I do agree with your last point, it might hurt us as much as them.

One option, I could modify the server so when we block a server we can still see their content but they cant see ours.

@worm @Coomer

@freemo

Sure it is bad. If you think it is illegal in a specific case and really want to help maybe you should take legal action. If not then the least you can do is to let people see the crime, so that maybe someone does, or at least there is some form of backlash. Just blocking seems like a "lets forget about it, and hope it never happens to us" kind of deal.

A "they can't see us, we can see them" block sounds interesting, but not sure it's worth it. Better spend time on raising awareness of privacy on internet in general, or contributing to projects that work on that.
I think these kind of problems are beyond what mastodon instance admins should be trying to solve in their federation policies. After all most doxers will not be publicly announcing their intentions along with several failed attempts, from any account/identity that is worth a dime to them. This particular situation is more like a misguided person seeking all the wrong kind of attention. If you want to be extra careful and block them, that's fine I think, but not sure it's worth writing up a vague policy that might create the wrong impression or cause dilemmas in future.

@worm @Coomer

@namark

Thats a very fair point... I cant argue with that. Me being able to observe them does help me know they are doing it.

Legal action does make a lot of sense honestly.

@worm @Coomer

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