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.
@gamehawk I'm aware that qoto adopts a fairly extreme federate-with-everyone policy. The rules *within* qoto are much less tolerant of abuse, and it hasn't been a problem within the instance.
The contrast between the two pages you link to is striking. If I were trans, Black, Jewish, etc. and saw this, I would not feel safe joining qoto, knowing that I'd have to see these attacks and defend myself after seeing them.
I originally joined qoto because it was a STEM instance. I haven't left yet (mostly out of laziness), but the momentum to do so is certainly building.
The fact that this organized campaign of harassment is not an issue on other servers suggests that it's not, as I feared, a case of each message coming from a new server, which would be very hard to stop.
🇳🇱
Also keep in mind our policy of letting users decide what to see was specifically done at the insistance of our LGBTQ+ community years ago (and something they repeat every time it comes up).
Users didnt want their hands tied and forced to see what some admin told them they could see, the reason was safety. We have a LGBTQ community here who uses the open-federation policy as a means to monitor violent or racist;/sexist accounts across the fediverse. We are the only server that protects them and are inclusive locally (as you pointed out) that doesnt curtail their freedom to choose for themselves what they can or cant see. So we are the only place they really can go.
So every time we talk about defederating and changing our policy their voices are heard and we ultimately decide not to for their safety.
In short I wont put actual LGBTQ and minorities at risk simply because some white people with white guilt are offended that they can see bad people on the internet. Block the bad servers, import the block list, problem solved.. but unless you are a minority I will differ to our actual minorities here when it comes to what makes them feel safe.
For the record I have reiterated this many times in the past.
@freemo @peterdrake It is, of course, well-known that the only way to "monitor" bad actors is to allow them to dominate your fedline. 🤪
Why not try being a bit more productive and instead of talking abouut something you werent a part of **asking** why the alternatives were ruled out.
Of course when our LGBTQ+ community raised objections to us changing our open-federation policy we had discussed in length all the alternatives and they were ruled out since all of them put the safety of our LGBTQ+ members at risk or was not as effective.
For example you can manually visit their pages. This however is very time consuming and doesnt give you access to follower content.
We discussed opening an account on those servers. That would expose them to a lot of danger as their credentials and IP would be exposed to the server.
We discussed using a VPN, that had the problem that should they forget even once to connect to the VPN or disconnect it while a window is still open their credential get exp[osed.
Yes we discussed all the alternatives, all of them put the lives of the LGBTQ+ at risk in some way.
@freemo I could think of quite a few alternatives but given that you interact with and boost posts from some of those sites, I'm not going to pretend you actually have a real LGBTQ+ community that thinks that a large instance should have hate stuff on its federated timeline.
The LGBTQ+ community here is quite well known, it was a big thing int he earl days of the fedit when they started moving to our server. The debate where they insisted on open-federation is also completely on record at our discourse.
I may have accidentally responded to a bad actor without being aware of it, yes... Do you realize how rediculous you sound to accuse me of being a bad person because I responded to someone I didnt know was a bad actor once.
Now your just grasping at straws to excuse the fact that you literally are demanding we disregard the lives and safety of our LGBTQ+ community, shameful!
Also my timeline quite clearly shows a pattern of me showing support for the LGBTQ+ community.
@freemo Such drama!
And nah, it was more than once.
@gamehawk Did I respond in any way that condoned racist or prejudice behavior? What are you even on about... way to be so vague as to be useless.
My vast majority of responses to people who are acting in a bad way is to attack their behavior. So the best you have is that I dont spend a half hour reviewing everyones timeline to see if they are a bad person before I respond.
It is amazing that you dont see how rediculous you sound right now with the whole "you responded to people who were bad people in the past". LOL, try harder if your going to actually make sense.
@gamehawk since responding to bad actors now is a good reason to suspend someone and call them a bad actor I guess that means you are now just as guilty as me for responding to me.
By your own standards you should be suspended and kicked from your own server!
Ya know, or maybe it doesnt make you a bad person just because you reply to someone (assuming you arent condoning anything bad they say or do)
But yea, god forbid you apply your own standard to yourself huh?
Wow, you really didnt even read the conversation did you. I never said anything about research or being unable to remove it from the timeline... I explained to you why, specifically, it would put the lives of our LGBTQ at risk to defederate.. you claimed there were some nebulous alternative options you could propose but wouldnt... yet now your talking about some "research" or me claiming its too hard to remove or something.. I NEVER SAID THAT!
At least listen to what people say before you accusing them of unfounded nonsense. It says alot you were accusing me of shit before we even spoke.. A LOT.
I will reiterate what i said more clearly, please do try to read and respond in good faith or dont waste my time.
1) you claim **I** am a bad person. You also claim one reason you know I am a bad person is because I responded to bad people before. You are responding to me right now. Ergo you are a bad person and on the exact same level as me.
2) I pointed out we have open federation specifically because it ensures our LGBTQ+ community is safe and their lives protected as a result. I explained why, I also explained several alternatives discussed and why they were rejected as alternatives and would put our LGBTQ community in danger... you claim there are alternatives that dont, but conviently refused to say what they are (probably beause you realize we discussed them and had similar reasons)... Therefore we **intentionally** have open federation, yes it would be easy to filter out, but we dont because the lives of our LGBTQ are more important, full stop. If you have a better alternative then im all ears, but right now you are just noise.
@freemo 1) There are levels of bad.
2) Silencing hate off your federated timeline isn't gonna put anyone's life in danger, ya big goof.
2 LGBTQ+ lives were saved here at QOTO so far due to our policy, people I know by name... Your claim is already shown to be incorrect... perhaps you didnt listen to why.. We have a coalition og LGBTQ+ on this server that use it to monito bad actors and warn people when their lives are at risk. This has so far saved 2 people, and yes banning that would mean they would have no where to go since we are the only inclusive instance iwth open-federation.
@freemo Wait, serious question: are you on too old of a version to have silencing?
@gamehawk No we arent on an old version, we are a fork with our own feature set and versioning.
We have silencing.
@gamehawk As for #2, yes there are levels of bad... but the only thing so far you accused me of is talking to bad people, which is what you are doing.
So if I am a bad person for doing that, youa re the exact same **level** of bad as me as you are now doing the same thing you accused me of.
@freemo Luckily, I don't use your oversimplification to decide which sites to suspend.
@gamehawk Which oversimplification do you mean, the fact that our top priority is saving the lives of LGBTQ+ people? Yea I guess that is "oversimplification", but im ok with that... 2 lives were saved, 2 LGBTQ people who would be dead if it werent for our policy... yea im perfectly ok with that.
@freemo That's not the thread I was replying to. But if we're going to cross them, then fine: please explain to me how silencing hate from your fedline would have resulted in two deaths, because I can't imagine how it would.
Its straight forward. We have a group of about 50 users here who are part of a group of LGBTQ+ activists who use the tools we have here to follow anonymously (subscribe, different than follow) and in some cases follow bad and violent actors as well as hashtags and local timelines (trough our feature to let you follow local timelines of remote servers). When they see one threatebn or dox someone int he LGBTQ+ community they immediately reach out to that person and warn them and get the police involved if needed. This group have so far saved 2 LGBTQ+ people's lives, perhaps more I am unaware of.
In one of those cases they found about the thread through following hashtags and not a direct follow of the account. Sometimes they catch these people int he federated timeline too. If we had silenced then they would have not seen these posts and therefore been unable to alert the people promptly. Since their lives were threatened it very likely would have resulted in them dead if we had silenced those servers.
@freemo So you're willing to patch things to allow anonymous follows but not to create a fedline-only silence so you're not perpetuating hate?
That's an interesting policy decision.
We already have a solution we are working on that will allow us to silence and suspend hate while allowing individual users to bypass it as an opt-out.. will be in the next release I hope.
That said I dont know what you mean by fedline-only silence. Whatever that is maybe I just never thought of it. What is that?
@freemo It's a thing that mainline masto has been asking for a lot, and it's just what it sounds like: the ability to silence an instance where it *only* keeps it off the fedline. Because there are a lot of things out there like arthaus bots that are perfectly fine *except* that they're so noisy they can overwhelm the federated on a small or even medium site.
"Force-unlisted" is another way to look at it.
@freemo (to be clear, I still can't imagine wanting to leave raw sewage on newbie-oriented hashtags like #/newhere for a site of a few thousand, but you do you.)
all our new users are offered a block list they can import, for now until we develop the feature I mentioned is a very workable solution. The only people on our server who see it are ones who never bothered to do that quick step.
But until me or someone develops it I have to make the decision that maximizes the safety of our LGBTQ+ community. So far every alternative you mentioned would have prevented many of the positive outcomes I know of.
@freemo Looks like you should make it clearer to new users where the block list is located.
@gamehawk Right now we message new users when they first post and share it with them, in addition tot he pinned post. That said I do agree it should also be put ont he about page as suggested by pete.
@freemo Putting it in as a "rule" might be useful too, so it pops up as an option if they choose that route while making a report.
@gamehawk Very good advice, thanks I like it. I will do that too.
@gamehawk Sounds like an interesting feature. But as I said in some cases they catch these threats off the federated feed itself. So that feature wouldnt really help as it would silence many of those threads there.
I think the only good solution is an opt-out shared instance list, which as I said we are working on... but its not an easy feature to develop with the limited time I have (and have been willing to pay someone to help but it wouldnt be much)
Happy to help. Its all about giving people the tools they need to ensure they can curate their feed in a way they enjoy their time here on the internet and are safe/stress free.
@freemo Contrary to your imaginings, I don't interact with any of the sites for which I'd suspend the sites of other admins.
Anyway, you know I run a server, you know I know how Mastodon works, I have no idea why you're trying to convince me it wouldn't take five or ten minutes to get the hate sites off your fedline without impairing the "important research" your alleged people have to do. You just don't *want* to.