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@baraa1998 what is wealth, my friend, but an opportunity for generosity?

journeyman.cc/blog/posts-outpu…

plus there’s the inherit problem of being an open protocol allowing anyone to harass. Every now and then a Nazi will pick up one of my posts, boost it, and then I’m just inundated with Nazis that I have to clean up from a variety of instances they prop up to do these sorts of things after their old ones get more widely blocked.

The fact that there can be no subscribed to, dynamic blocklist is a safety issue in of itself, and an impediment towards wider adaption.

My take is: If a thing works to connect the hyper-marginalised in a good way, then it'll also work for me, the privilieged white male hetero GenX German. Except that my experience is going to be a lot more interesting and insightful by having folks NOT like me around.

So why would I ever be against that?

Give us everything that will help black, trans, neurodivergent and everyone else to feel welcome and safe!

There seem to be at least two opposing views on what ‚safety‘ should mean in the fediverse that I’ve seen.
1) being able to control who can see and comment on one’s posts
2) being able see and point out posts that attack one

These two seem to collide.

How do you see this?

This is an honest question - no trolling.

From the technical point of view - what features could enhance safety? What can be added or is there and need to be made more user-friendly so people can feel safer?

Is the problem the federation? The lack of control or knowledge to block users / servers / hashtags? That anyone can be online on multiple servers? That mods do not do their moderating tasks?

I read several toots saying "Mastodon isn't safe for us", but I haven't heard yet of what features need to improve. And I'd really like to know!

I have been here a long time, long before the mass exodus from Twitter and the big boom of new users on the fediverse. There has been an echoing refrain from the beginning which is that the fediverse doesn’t work for black people.

It triggers so much…I don’t know…everything. Guilt, shame, anger, whatever. It’s a rainbow of emotions every time someone posts something about it.

But then that’s it.

Bit of shame and anger and on to the next thing.

“Boost Black voices, I did my part.”

I see so few people who seem to genuinely want to do the work to understand what that *means* when someone says that the fediverse doesn’t work for them and it’s maddening. It feels like a very real reflection of reality most of the time though. Not at all in a good way.

@mike @rapscalorie @me

There is more than just a *possibility* that shared blocklist will be weaponized. It's as close to a certainty as we can get. And the weaponization of blocklists are paradoxically most often targeted at marginalized people. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Because of this, some very smart people oppose shared blocklists. The people that oppose blocklists are not irrational or selfish or uniformed. I just happen to disagree with them.

Because there are more choices than:
a) No blocklists
b) Blocklists that people agree to without thought

BlueSky has shared Blocklists. I've been the target of weaponized blocklists over there. Happens. One example: Inauthentic accounts pretending to be trans, got me added to a transphobes list. I was on that list for a few months. Then a real trans person with moderation experience saw what was going on, and got me off of the list. ♥️👍🏿

I've also been added to blocklists by good faith people that were confused. A Ukrainian person didn't understand that I have a bunch of Ukrainian relatives, and thought that I was disparaging Ukrainian drone units by saying that most of the casualties caused by Ukraine were by artillery. They are. I got added to an "Americans that don't care about Ukraine" or some such list. I think I'm still there. Similar happened when I said that my Haitian friends should be granted asylum from war the same as my Ukrainian friends.

I still support shared blocklists, because the benefit outweighs the harms, and many of the risks can be mitigated. And right now, it is way too hard and too expensive in terms of time, for a small Fediverse instance to be well moderated.

A bunch of government accounts joined BlueSky, and many users just subscribed to blocklists that included them. They're now the most blocked accounts on BlueSky. 🤷🏿‍♂️

clearsky.app

Click blocked > Top blocked

ClearSky

ClearSky - Bringing information closer to you

^clearsky.app

I've spent time at r/Mastodon and r/Fediverse on reddit.

My general observation is that the Fediverse, like Linux, demands that you learn how to use it.

That little extra effort is a bridge too far for most people.

So I think the Fediverse is self-filtering... for now.

It's an odd paradox that, if it gets more user-friendly, the enshittification levels will increase because more knee biters will show up.

@mike @rapscalorie @me this has been percolating in my head for a while , we need something better than a person who knows you luckily being a moderator ..

got to be a better idea than this but it seems like we could use a blocklist judiciary ??

what happens with shared blocklists when the data is contradictory and the moderators curating those lists disagree ?

mind you i think the concerns i have are not immediately important , so maybe not even worth thinking about ..

@fleeky @mike @rapscalorie @me

No, your questions are immediately important and spot on! 👍🏿

Creating a blocklist process is not as interesting or difficult or as important as defining the appeals process, or the mechanism whereby something can get off the blocklist.

@mike @fleeky @rapscalorie @me

Slashdot-style distributed content moderation / Karma might also be applied to blocklist arbitration:

‘Slash(dot) and Burn: Distributed Moderation in a Large Online Conversation Space’

Cliff Lampe, Paul Resnick
School of Information University of Michigan
(2004 preprint of a ACM CHI 2004 paper)

#fediverse #blocklist #moderation
presnick.people.si.umich.edu/p…