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.
@aebrockwell @peterdrake That hashtag is supposed to call attention to problematic Mastodon instances and individuals, so instance admins can assess whether to defederate the instances in question. It's very easy to set up a new Mastodon instance, and bigots and fascists do it all the time, so constant attention is required.
@foolishowl @peterdrake Ah - apologies for possible mis-use of the hashtag there. I'm perfectly happy with the system of choosing what instances to block for myself rather than asking admins to do it.
@aebrockwell @peterdrake I'm convinced now the biggest problem with the Fediverse is that hardly anyone is thinking about democratic governance of instances. We're just arguing about good and bad admins like we were arguing about good and bad kings.
🇳🇱
Actually I already started an initiative that is exactly that, democratic governance of federation between instances.. Its called UFoI:
@freemo @foolishowl @aebrockwell Any timeline for launching the UFoI?
I finished coding up the first component (the claims server, which is the core reporting piece).. So development is half done. the other half to be done is the voting framework.
We provide a csv file of fediblock that one can import to block this servers rather quickly. See here if you'd like to use it.
But yes if your getting harassed, report it or we can act.
@freemo @aebrockwell Ah, I see, it's a pinned toot on your profile. Reasonably public, but the about page would be an even better place.
There is a maintenance issue: won't people have to do this on a regular basis?
@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.
One other quick but important content for you... If you want the expiernce of mastodon.social (or any other) in terms of blocking instances, its trivial... Go to their about page, export their block list as a csv (there are extensions that let you do that in one click), then import it as your personal block list.. in just a few seconds of effort your federated feed will be as clean as the other instance.
So really no excuse to have an admin do it for you when its so simple to do it yourself in seconds.
On that we agree, right now we are doing the best we can with limited technological solutions.. As you said there is a lot of room for improvement, but its a big time investment too.
I am actively looking to find developers who are willing to get paid to write open-source code (code that will be offered back up to vanilla mastodon).
@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?
@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.
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.
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.
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?
I'm not trying to override any marginalized community; of course, I will defer to them about their rights and safety.
That said, the minorities on qoto are not a representative sample of a general community which is, of course, not monolithic. But that's why the Fediverse has many servers, right?
The safety of the LGBTQ+ community on other servers are not effected by our federation policy, so why does that matter? The policy effects our users and no one else, so the opinion of our LGBTQ community is the only one that matters when it comes to deciding our policy, wouldnt you agree?
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?
@peterdrake Yes, I'm seeing that stuff as well. I figure they'll get bored in a couple of days, so I won't bother trying to block everyone.
@peterdrake Maybe we could use hashcash for new federations?
@peterdrake I have noticed it as well, starting yesterday (or perhaps a little earlier). Many of them are coming from sites listed in the #fediblock list. For the first time since joining the fediverse, I have resorted to domain blocking, and that seems quite effective.