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2024-07-30 00:10:38

inthehands@hachyderm.io

Just to state the obvious:

Any moderation system like Mastodon’s that regularly lets through the kind of sewage that @KimCrayton1 has been highlighting is a moderation system that is failing.

Failing.

Full stop. https://dair-community.social/@KimCrayton1/112872020308883967

2024-07-30 00:12:37

Stu

tehstu@hachyderm.io

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 just posted about this myself, about someone else getting threats for having the temerity to criticize the platform.

Beyond unacceptable. The people at the helm have all the wrong priorities.

2024-07-30 00:12:38

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

Spare me the lectures about moving instances, the philosophical underpinnings of federation, “just ignore it,” “I don’t see it,” or whatever excuse you’re halfway through typing.

There’s an old engineering saying: all it’s gotta do is work.

It doesn’t work.

2024-07-30 00:22:12

Prepare for Deallocation

deallocated@mas.to

@inthehands It doesn't, but what would?

2024-07-30 00:25:05

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

The account in that screenshot appears to be on a self-hosted instance. That is one of the recurring sources of moderation troubles: some new actor can create a pop-up harassment node. Since there’s no instance-level moderation, every •other• instance has to block the account •individually•, which takes time.

(Of course, self-hosted instances are also more vulnerable to attacks of various kinds, and are paying for traffic out of pocket if there’s a DDoS, so…real tradeoff for the trolls there.)

2024-07-30 00:30:58

Stu

tehstu@hachyderm.io

@inthehands I think I read Pleroma (for example) is easier to stand up to make throwaway harassment comments. This is all so very broken.

2024-07-30 00:32:14

Jackie (aka Queen Antifa) ?:debian_logo::linux:

burnoutqueen@tech.lgbt

@inthehands allowlists are the answer

2024-07-30 00:35:03

Eric Beckman

ERBeckman@historians.social

@inthehands thank you
I assume that some of this coordinated and automated, which makes the "what idiots!" response of many White folks even more worthless.

2024-07-30 00:42:40

Michael Dekker

dekk@hachyderm.io

@inthehands If the core design of Fedi is, anyone can host a server: Then any moderation framework based on [trust by default] rather than [distrust by default] will never be able to stop the flood of abuse coming from bad actors, trolls, bigots, and others with anti-social agendas. To get federated, a server should have a federated sponsor. When a bad server gets sponsored, the sponsoring server loses its ability to be a sponsor, etc.

2024-07-30 00:51:33

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

Several replies either asking what the solution is, or proposing one.

Some important context for the posts upthread: We are still at the point where many people are denying that there even •is• a problem with moderation on Mastodon.

The immediate next step here is simply to say, loud and clear, “This is unacceptable.” Let’s not skip that step. It matters.

2024-07-30 00:54:37

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

Beyond that…

…to those proposing solutions: Thanks, keep brainstorming, seek the thoughts of others. There are people who’ve already been thinking about this for a while.

…to those replying in a “How do I help?” spirit: Awesome, please mind the previous post upthread.

…to those inching toward “Don’t complain if you don’t have a solution:” The first step of finding solutions is identifying problems. Denying problems is a way of preventing solutions. Piss off and thx for coming to my TED talk.

2024-07-30 01:01:42

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

My own quick brainstorm for faster, better moderation:

- Reply controls already, like yesterday

- Default to allowlisting for new/unknown instances instead of denylisting

- Federated moderation: option to publish & subscribe to moderation decisions of other trusted instances. Instance owner could (1) fully subscribe to one (e.g. “mirror all of hachyderm’s moderation”) or (2) automatically apply decisions to own instance that multiple other instances made, past some consensus threshold

2024-07-30 02:24:26

Paul Cantrell

inthehands@hachyderm.io

[Minor note on last idea, since it got boosted: the system would to need either distinguish originating from federated mod decisions, or employ some other mechanism to prevent graph cycles and thus feedback loops where a since mod decision achieves an arbitrarily high level of trust by circulating. Solvable. Just not a completely obvious idea; needs a little thought.]

2024-07-30 02:32:32

Zack Cerza

zack@hachyderm.io

@inthehands I also feel like users ought to be able to block entire domains. Heck, I can't even find a way to _report_ a domain via the Mastodon UI

2024-07-30 02:47:15

Keith Ivey

kcivey@mastodon.social

@inthehands Wouldn't defaulting to allowlisting kill small instances? Maybe it's necessary, but it seems like a bigger change than the other proposals (though easier to implement).

2024-07-30 05:15:45

draNgNon

draNgNon@hachyderm.io

@inthehands many people on Mastodon, when I first joined, were hostile to quote-posts becuase of the potential to trigger pile-ons.

but I've seen over & over again underrepresented persons getting harrassed... nigh invisibly to everyone else. then, there's some weird exchange from reply-guys "well I didn't see it" that sounds achingly similar to "works on my machine".

I wonder if actually having quote-posts would help. Certainly seeing @timnitGebru post some screenshots was eye-opening for me.

2024-07-30 11:34:50

@inthehands 1 & 3 seem like good ideas to me. I'm would worry aboit 2: do you have an idea how allowlisting would work with small instances, like mine for example? It's a single user instance and i set it up last month. How would i be able to federate with other servers if they all rejected my instance by default?

2024-07-30 17:23:57

Emelia 👸🏻

thisismissem@hachyderm.io

@inthehands I'm working on some of the parts required for "federated moderation" at the moment, through my NLNet-funded FIRES project.

2024-07-30 18:35:39

Noah Kennedy

noah@mastodon.despise.computer

@inthehands i like this approach - i feel pretty strongly that small instances are something we need to support with any moderation improvements, and this strikes a good balance between letting them coexist and keeping abusive ones out

2024-07-30 18:43:35

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Paul Cantrell So you've asked for solutions. Hope you don't want Mastodon-only solutions.

- Reply controls already, like yesterday

How about being able to give general permission to reply to your posts?

How about being able to disable replies to any one of your posts?

How about being able to allow specific followers to reply to your posts?

How about being able to separately allow people to send you posts and to send you DMs?

Science-fiction? Wishful thinking? No, reality. Right now.

Available in the Fediverse (just not Mastodon and not via ActivityPub) for over a decade. Not just yesterday. Since 2012. Invented by @Mike Macgirvin ?️, creator of three federated protocols as well as several Fediverse server apps including but not limited to Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) and inventor of nomadic identity and the most advanced permissions systems in the Fediverse.

Available on Hubzilla since its inception in 2015.

Available in the streams repository (which he is working on now) since its inception in 2021.

AFAIK, ActivityPub implementation being worked on right now. This means that any ActivityPub project can introduce (streams)' powerful permission settings. These permissions would be understood all over the Fediverse, even between different projects. And they'll go well beyond the above.

Inb4 "The Mastodon devs will be quicker if they whip up something proprietary": No, they won't. Mike is blazing fast, and he has a head-start.

Once he's done, and I hope it's this year, the Mastodon devs must be pressured into implementing it. Even though they didn't invent it.

A Mastodon-exclusive, non-standard, proprietary solution (like quote-toot opt-in) can and will be ignored by the majority of the Fediverse projects because the majority of the Fediverse projects won't implement it, especially if the Mastodon devs can't be bothered to document it for others to implement. Wouldn't be the first time that other Fediverse devs have to reverse-engineer a Mastodon feature.

- Default to allowlisting for new/unknown instances instead of denylisting

Good idea only if the Fediverse was only Mastodon.

Very bad for new or small and obscure projects that won't have a chance to get a foothold in the Fediverse if just about all of Mastodon blocks them by default.

(Okay peeps, now go block me for suggesting something not-Mastodon-exclusive.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety

2024-07-30 04:59:57

Amgine

amgine@mstdn.ca

@inthehands

This is clearly a problem, and unacceptable to me.

It also occurs to me this particular example could be automated. That is, it should be quite possible to build a client which can spoof being an activitypub platform instance long enough to send a response.

In which case it isn't a moderation issue. And even more unacceptable.

2024-07-30 02:17:11

Karen E. Lund 💙💛

Karen5Lund@mastodon.social

@inthehands It is self-hosted and there's already a fediblock request (which I boosted).

I blocked both the account and the instance, but couldn't find the offensive post to report.

2024-07-30 02:28:31

Rachel Rawlings

LinuxAndYarn@mastodon.social

@inthehands The whois data is of course redacted, but the domain name was just created on Wednesday and it's a pleroma site hosted on a Crunchbits VPS.

2024-07-30 00:24:20

Pyperkub

pyperkub@mastodon.social

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 The Caek is s a lie? ;)

2024-07-30 00:26:03

mybarkingdogs

mybarkingdogs@freeradical.zone

@inthehands @KimCrayton1

Comment-boosting so people seeing my timeline aren't assaulted by the racist filth in this albeit necessary screencap

Mastodon's moderation tools MUST immediately improve to do something about this.

2024-07-30 00:36:42

SweetAI Belle :sweetunsure:

SweetAIBelle@equestria.social

@inthehands @KimCrayton1
One thing that actually stands out there is which mastodon server they are on. Namely, it looks like a personal server that likely only has them on it.

Typically, servers will block other servers that are problematic, but when it's a personal one, it's likely not to be on the block list. At least, until they start making trouble...

2024-07-30 01:23:24

tasket

tasket@mas.to

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 @Mastodon Open federation is failing.

But aside from that, fedi is so anti-automation that it can't even identify this as a targeted slur and shunt it aside for manual moderation. Mastodon et al should have a way to delegate a SpamAssassin type of role to provide some auto-moderation (having every instance auto-moderate every post would not work).

And... the degree to which this is successful should determine how open the sign-up process is.

2024-07-30 01:50:10

Mike Sims

peltast@mstdn.ca

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 I mean, moderation is not new in 2024 and there's plenty of knowledge about how to fix this.

- New instances should have all comments/DMs needing approval

- Fediblock should actually concentrate on 100% clear abuse like this, and semi-automate it, and not handle any marginal cases. What makes this clear is the combination of new instance, one user instance, and clear abuse. But to make this work you can't be advocating that large instances be autoblocked for trivia.

2024-07-30 02:37:58

Nils Skirnir

nilsskirnir@kolektiva.social

@inthehands @KimCrayton1
All looks like AI bots with stock images. @ariadne also highlighted this issue.

2024-07-30 06:14:47

fulanigirl

fulanigirl@mstdn.social

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 Not sure why you chose to repost hateful language Kim was experiencing. This is her story to tell and the that of the BIPOC community. Also, perhaps you should catch up with Dair-communities posts so you can understand what is happening. And by the way...read some of the comments about automatically assuming Dair failed. Your own instance is not free from racism...so there's that too.

2024-07-30 07:35:38

Luka R.

rubinjoni@mastodon.social

@inthehands @KimCrayton1 I notice some weird behavior of the "stock" Mastodon app, while being on mastodon.social: I don't see / can't access the original post from @KimCrayton1 . Once I click on the link, it opens in the browser. I wasn't able to see it before @inthehands posted it. If this is a Garagon/mastodon.social thing, it's an extreme failure of moderation - I'm gaslit into not seeing racism, and thus not believing people who object to it.

2024-07-30 08:27:15

Jigme Datse

jigmedatse@social.jigmedatse.com

@inthehands Is it the moderation system? What about the system is leading to this "issue" in your opinion? Sometimes... I see some really heavy moderation needed on my instance... But once it's dealt with, it quickly dies down.

Interestingly, I think I may have had interactions with this person... And if so... I *think* the history is long... And terrible.