If you flag and block an account on an obviously trollish/freespeechy/shitty instance, do NOT tick the box to forward the flag to the remote instance.
This one, encountered today and yesterday, seems to have a bot that snitches you. #fediblock (not sure if the hashtag is still used)
A new Mastodon server, hosted in Russia, pravda.me, which appears to glorify Elon Musk by showing one of his Tweets that says both that a publication named Pravda is equivalent to a publication that provides truth, and speaks against the the media, and which suddenly grew by 11K accounts overnight, which is not at all suspicious, is activated.
Admins. What are your thoughts? Will you Block? Limit? or Let it be?
A racist troll is making new accounts to harass Indigenous accounts. They're also doing bad faith reports on the people they're attacking. And they sent me an abusive email yesterday.
Some of us suspect these are more sock puppets of a person with a large account that was recently called out for anti-Indigenous racism (similar photo, same tone, trolling the same people).
Report and Block:
@/AliceAngel@mas.to
@/AliceGutierrez@mastodon.world
And keep an eye out for more of their sock puppets.
#FediBlock#FediAdmin If you value your marginalized community members, go ahead and block both these domains, decayable.ink and geofront.rocks. Warning the troll comments in the screenshot are upsetting. (they commented on my mutual aid request.)
Seeing Eugen's statement on Meta which is missing some important things, so I thought I'd write my own commentary, using the same headings. Preface: I'm in favor of #fediblock and I'm happy that my server plans to block Threads preemptively. Eugen's statement is here:
This section is correct: Meta can right now scrape public info from Mastodon, just like anyone can. What changes with Threads is that Meta will gain access to DMs sent to any Threads user. An important point that will come up throughout my response here is that there won't be very visible markers of who is on Threads vs. elsewhere, and doing a lot of mental tracking of that is difficult. I don't know which server most of the people I interact with are on ay every moment, and I don't care that much. It's visible in profiles and in full usernames, but it often gets cut off in phone UIs or is in a dim font that backgrounds it (for good reason). However, I view Threads as a slight degradation of privacy because of three fact that they'll likely end up getting access to a bunch of DMs. Maybe those are DMs that wouldn't have existed if Threads didn't exist, of course.
Important note at this point: unscrupulous servers probably already exist, but without corporate brand power behind them, they likely have few users. Also, Meta is evidently an actively malicious actor in this space. Their long track record shows time and time again that as a corporation they are interested in harvesting and profiting from user data in all the worst ways possible. Their angle in creating Threads is somewhere between "harvest data to bundle and sell," "sell ads," and "destroy a potentisl competitor even if we have to burn several billion dollars in the process," (I don't claim to know where exactly in this continuum they are). Note thay this can be true even if many Meta engineers are good, nice people who think that they're working towards an open web or that Meta actually has good goals this time. A system's purpose is a property of the system, not of the people who constitute it.
Will Meta be able to show me ads?
This section is largely correct: implementing ActivityPub won't let Meta serve you ads directly. Of course, it will bring a buch of fake social engineering accounts into the mix that probably wouldn't be created or succeed on Mastodon without Meta providing them with a large algorithm-driven and poorly-moderated space to accumulate the followers necessary to look legit. So it will let Meta indirectly sow disinformation.
Note at this point: you may be thinking: I just won't personally follow any Threads users, and this stuff won't affect me. Congratulations, the simplest way to do that is exactly what #Fediblock is: block the instance.
Will a large platform like Meta joining Mastodon overwhelm smaller servers?
This section is the worst section of the original post. It completely neglects the fact that Threads users (a user base predicted to be much larger than the current userbase of the entire Fediverse) will do a lot of following of existing accounts, and this will in fact put a lot of load on smaller servers whose users are popular. Threads will not be well-moderated (see: Facebook's whole history) so this will also add a firehose of abuse and harassment that already-overworked instance mods will have to deal with. Of course, they can always simply defederate... which is what #Fediblock is about! If defederation becomes necessary for smaller instances, the sooner it happens the better, since if you wait to defederate, you'll end up breaking relationships your users are setting up with the more reasonable Threads users. Letting those connections happen only to break them is worse than preventing them, since users who want to interact with Threads can simply create an alt there in the first place.
Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol?
This section is disastrously short sighted, and the split happening now between #fediblock and non-#fediblock instances shows the damage possible before the product is even launched. I'm actually fine with the fact that we're about to have "the fediverse" and "the Threadiverse" as two separate entities; I don't expect those on the Threadiverse side to maintain their distinct cultures very long in the face of Threads federation, and instead I expect they'll become a dwindling sideshow to Threads, which will start to dictate features and such. Meanwhile, the fediverse will carry on, smaller than before, among instances that did block Threads soon enough.
Based on its App Store listing, it collects a lot of data. How does this affect me?
As mentioned above, Meta only gains a bit more direct info from this move. However, they will almost certainly have a shadow profile for every non-Threads account thay Threads accounts interact with and build as much of a profile add they can from the information in roar interactions. Defederation is the best way to limit those interactions.
When Threads adds federation, will I be able to communicate with people there?
As mentioned above, this is true, and it's a problem.
Will Meta enforce content moderation policies on other servers?
At first, no, and it cannot do this directly. But over time, it will so this indirectly by threatening defederation if other servers that are federating don't comply with its policies. If you defederate first, thirds isn't a threat at all. But if you "wait and see" your users will get tangled up with Threads users and your choices will become "incredibly painful defederation" vs. "comply."
My stance: defederate preemptively with extreme prejudice.
so, @/DarkShy@bronyfurry.com fediblocks us for the reason they should be fediblocked themself
this instance is anti-Ulrainian and they support russian invasion of Ukraine, the rule 7 on their instance is "don't be Ukrainian" (pic 1)
the admin has displayed their hatred towards Ukraine multiple times, there are screenshots, the English translation is put into alt text. they also have Z, the main symbol of russian aggression, in their username
they previously defederated an Ukrainian instance on their Mastodon server because it was Ukrainian
the reason of fediblocking us was because @sarahquartz and I showed up in their replies after all the fascist and anti-Ukrainian sentiments they've posted today, basically because we supported Ukraine here
"Actual attacks on the human dignity of another person (such as harassment, threats of violence, racism, intimidation, physical appearance, beliefs, etc.) are not tolerated. This does NOT include expressing long-held religious beliefs outside of the context of any specific individual.
Unjustly accusing another person of racism, bigotry, Nazism, and the like is an attack on their dignity and is unacceptable."
Since we're all going to be breaking their server rules by "falsely" (in their opinion) calling them bigoted fucking Nazis, might as well defederate now. Second link is to the admin's post about how Chik-Fil-A stopped hating LGBTQIA people as much so Christians should "rethink their support."
Both flexghost and Enoch have been reported by many people, and have already been blocked by some anti-racist Instances. mastodon.social and universeodon are not well-moderated Instances, so it's up to users to block these two users.
It is vital that Mastodon admins and users make it a priority to take a firm stand against the anti-Indigenous behaviour in this place. I'm seeing an increase in racism, paternalism, gaslighting, and race-based micro-aggression targeted at Indigenous people.
I know too many Indigenous people have left Mastodon as the anti-Indigenous behaviour is not properly being addressed here. And when antiracist Instances, such as the one I'm a mod for, do take action, it is common for non-Indigenous people to rally around the offender - not Indigenous people who were impacted by their racism.
If you stay silent, if you do not disassociate with racists, then you are saying you're fine with anti-Indigenous hate and racism.
Today's attack proved that the Fediverse is unfortunate pretty vulnerable even to just a skid (or maybe OP who warned the skid).
The cause of the attack includes:
insufficient moderation on some servers allowing mass account creation.
no good methods to filter out even just a keyword for an entire instance.
Even though most of us survived the first wave, we have to prepare for the second and future ones:
Servers should enable the equivalent feature in their software that enables moderators to check if an account is ok first before letting them post anything.
Mastodon, Misskey and major software should implement a regex filter that ignores posts from any instances.
New spam bot wave with multiple accounts - search for hashtag x4 to find them all. Some of them also include auth links to mastodon instances, looks like a phishing attempt or something.
Being an instance admin/mod is a position of responsibility and accountability. You owe (yes, owe) the people on your instance the assurance that your actions as a leader will be level-headed, fair, and free of personal grievances in your dealings with other instances—because your behavior with users outside of your instance gives great insight into your potential behavior inside of your instance as well.
I am begging everyone using the /#fediblock hashtag to keep it clear of personal vendettas and diatribes. It's your choice how to manage your community, but misusing fediblock, a tool for keeping Masto users and communities safe, for lashing out and revenge, flies in the face of a worthy goal and a powerful tool for good.
The fediblock account is stopping operation because mastodon.art retaliated against their parent instance with silencing because of a credible #fediblock report deduplication by @fediblock for .art , until the admin behind the fediblock account steps down from their own instance? And that admin is actually quitting the fediverse? WHAT?!
Mastodon has some wild drama I'll tell you... I'm glad I'm a #threadiverse addict instead.
All three servers have been thoroughly investigated. In all three cases, they continue to be vectors for spam attacks. No action on spam reports has been taken by moderators, admins have proven to be absentee, and registrations continue to be open.
This is some bullshit. If you implement this #fediblock list you are no different from the overlord in centralised platforms people are running away from.
"Nevertheless, I hope it becomes increasingly clear why the line, for some of us, isn’t about “non-commercial” or “non-algorithmic,” but about Meta’s specific record of bloody horrors, and their absolute unwillingness to enact genuinely effective measures to prevent future political manipulation and individual suffering and loss on a global scale."
Since #Facebook/#Meta is apparently going to start testing #Fediverse/#Mastodon integration for their #P92/#Barcelona/#Threads “platform” soon, let's do another round of reminders of what this entails and why their instance and IPs should be blocked now with extreme prejudice.
So, apparently I'm on a #Fediblock list because "33% of trusted sources recommend a block". Except .art is DEFINITELY NOT a trusted source and is the only "trusted source" blocklist on which my instance appears.
After the discovery of a racist account yesterday, @PSiReN went through other accounts on the instance and discovered the instance is a cesspit of racism, including constant use of the N word, and accusations that minorities are criminals.
Therefore Syzito.xyz is defederating from its first instance, @mugicha.club.
What is normal etiquette in these circumstances, should we ping their admin? #Mastodon#Admin#Fediblock
For the benefit of the #mastodon#admin and community, here are the instances we had to defederate from following the pile on by racists following the defederation of mugicha.club.
Note for others, if you want us to re-federate with a server, polite discourse without bigotry would be your best bet.
Syzito.xyz is a zero tolerance to bigotry space. Your free speech does not include harm to others here.