#fedimeta

Y'all... make it make sense why some admins see us getting abused and think "Oh, I'm going to protest their abuse by isolating them further!"

There's basically the "big server" problem on the fediverse, where a super large open registration server has so many people on it you don't want to block it and lose all those people... but it inherently is less effectively moderated. Or even on smaller instances there's so many cases of "this wouldn't be acceptable on my instance, but isn't bad enough to defederate a whole instance over".

It's manageable, but has limitations that get worse as the network grows. It's even one of the concerns people have with bridges and corporate platforms adding support (ie. bluesky and threads respectively).

But there's an idea in Bluesky I kinda like that feels like it could be tweaked and imported over here. Which is subscribable moderation.

I'm not proposing just subscribing to all sorts of block lists from strangers, but a way of having shared moderation that people can team up on.

Basic idea I had was an open source platform (so others can run it for both redundancy and cutting down on smaller censorship disputes). On that platform, someone can create and become the admin of a moderation group. Then they can invite other people to that group as moderators (or in the case of private groups, members).

Then basically have auditable moderation lists made by the groups (showing which moderator took which action and when... especially good for undoing things if problems arise, but also for checking the list before you import an update), then server admins and users can follow a list and subscribe/import it.

Was even thinking this could be improved with things like public reporting, where reporting it to the server would send the report to all lists that haven't already blocked them (servers could even share this between eachother easily enough). Additionally admins could piggyback their list off of others (basically lists that are less restrictive than yours, so you might pull from "We only block Nazis" because you know anyone they're blocking isn't going to be in question).

Bright spot is that they probably can't imitate the server, as far as I understand it AP has keys for the servers to prevent that (which is also part of why you can't readily swap platforms, want to run something different you need to use a different domain).

Still, it has me thinking about maybe some secondary registry to track instance information. Maybe make these sort of events less disruptive.

This is entirely off the cuff idea, so think of this as spaghetti at the wall:

I was just imagining a signed file on servers that gave extended, non-platform specific, meta for the server, kinda like robots.txt.

I was just thinking information like: * My IP is static, so if the IP changes without an updated signed file, then it's not safe (or it's dynamic, so don't worry if it changes) * Remember my nameservers and do the same if the nameservers change * Here's a moderator email for reporting posts (because the system mastodon has for sending reports to other servers is non-standard and not universal... I have to find moderator emails on about pages when I need to report something...) * Maybe some tags if someone wants to make non-platform specific server directories * Some flags like robots for nicer more compliant services, like bridges allowed/denied

And then maybe a dns middle-man service to toss on your server that checks these things periodically. So if something happens like with gup.pe there's a notice to admins and maybe it doesn't get cut off immediately, maybe letting admins give some final notices in more permanent situations.

A reminder: if you're part of the "Block Bluesky/Threads By Default" crowd, you're just handing over victory.

Enshittifying the fediverse because you're afraid of big corpos and think everyone who isn't already here can just die in the hellhole fire of the other networks, "How DARE People Suggest We Build Fire Exits!".

So yeah, screw that self absorbed bullshit.

People are leaving the fediverse for Bluesky, why? Because people over here demand purity to random ideals, because people over here think it's unreasonable that someone might want to connect with friends and loved ones who made a different choice of network.

This is part of a much bigger problem... pissed that I'm surrounded all my life by people who think holier than though infighting and rejecting anyone who isn't pure enough in their ideals, instead of y'know actually pushing for changes that protect people.

I'm staring down the barrel of a gun in my life as my country falls apart to fascism and I'm in the top two of most hated and most at risk minorities... but at least y'all kept people on Bluesky from realizing the fediverse even exists...

This was set off by another person, yet again, complaining about bridgy-fed and thinking Snarfed is some untrustworthy asshole because he was following the actual norms and standards of the fediverse because the Twitter expats thought Mastodon was some bastion of personal control and ownership....

For context, opt-out (via just blocking the bridge) has been the norm since pretty much the beginning of federation... which the people complaining about the nature of the bridge don't realize how old federation and the community is.

For context (of the ones I'm aware of): * The first federated protocol was introduced in 1980 * The first federated chat protocol was introduced in 1999 * The first federated social networking platforms that I know of started coming out about 2010. The platform I'm on (Friendica) came out that year. * the second major federated chat protocol was introduced in 2014 and quickly bridges were built between it and the first (all only opt-out via blocking) * Mastodon wasn't released until 2016, originally on the ostatus network (Friendica supported and still supports ostatus) * Snarfed starts working on bridgy-fed around 2018 * Activitypub came out in 2018, mastodon and friendica both transitioned to Activitypub as their central protocol with Mastodon eventually dropping ostatus. * Bridges were established between Activitypub and previous social networks, all opt-out bridges (and again via blocking) * 2022 Elon Musk buys Twitter and do to good PR Mastodon becomes the instance platform of choice for most of them to the point that most of them think Mastodon is the network * 2023, Snarfed has been writing bridgy fed for 7 years now, about as long as the activitypub network has existed, long predating Bluesky (because that's not the only bridge in the project), and all of a sudden people specifically overwhelmingly on Mastodon or younger projects think it's a deep offense to build something under the same social standards that have been the norm for decades. Even then long before the bluesky portion of the bridge was fully functional they relented and switched to an approach that drastically hampered has caused countless bugs and technical difficulties just because a minority of people decided to dogpile him... and of course he's judged because other people essentially crashed a party he'd been at peacefully for years and decided to scream that he was being inappropriate when everyone who was hear already supported it...