On July 4th Gab is coming on to the Fediverse by switching over to Mastodon on their servers.

This means that you can shut the door on them today by preemptively have them fully suspended from your instances. So your users do not have risk getting harassed by any of their users, and they from the start be blocked off from major portions of the Fediverse.

Thank you for your consideration and 

@maloki Is there a specific instance or server I can block? I'm running Friendica, not Mastodon.
@FASA_Andrew_1879 I believe it's 2 servers. Gab.com is the main one, and it's possibly another one which I can't remember right now :D
@maloki what’s the instance url to block? .com and .ai ? or is there a different one
@gingerrroot Those two are the ones we know of right now
@maloki and update: i also saw someone saying they have an .io but i haven’t checked that yet
@gingerrroot .io doesn't resolve for me, I think maybe they said it because I said ai or io
@maloki Is there a list of instances?
@sara It's atleast gab.com and then maybe another gab.ai or io? something like that. I don't remember.
@maloki @sara Deleted my earlier message to say I just came across this list: https://efdn.club/@norikawa/102300879956456736
@sara @maloki They don’t exist yet. Be on the lookout for further posting when it actually happens.
@riking They have publicly announced that they are making gab.com into an instance it's probably not going to be another domain, and if it is we still have 2 weeks to find out. . @sara

@maloki unless Eugen has a big change of heart recently, suspending instances doesn’t keep them from seeing you or getting your data.

It doesn’t stop them from responding to, boosting, or faving your toots. It just makes it so you don’t see any of it.

@SelfsameSynonym Well, it's a step one. And Florence does have a chance to add features on here. If people submit the PRs we'll accept them especially in regards to this.

@maloki suspending their instances is definitely something to do.

Are privacy tools like domain blocking not already in the backlog?

@SelfsameSynonym I'm not sure what you mean.

You can read the issues in the repo of you want more details right this moment.

I'm in bed, and about to fall asleep, because medicine.
I'll get back to you tomorrow.

@SelfsameSynonym @maloki and it would work the same in any other federated system without authentication basically
@charlag @maloki I’m sorry, I was yawning. What irrelevant excuse were you making for Eugen’s terrible design?
@SelfsameSynonym @maloki it's not an excuse. It's just what is public is public for everyone. Another possibility is share with specific groups. Tell me how I'm wrong please.
@charlag You're not wrong, and I don't think we should engage with infighting, we are on the same side here.
Let's focus on what we can do, and see where that'll lead us
@SelfsameSynonym

@charlag @maloki If I block you, you can’t see my public toots. That’s not how it works at the instance level. Here’s how that works:
-Admin A on server A sees that Nazis set up server B.
-Admin A suspends server B
-Server A deletes all data from B in its database, doesn’t write new data
-Server B still connects directly to server A, delivers A’s data directly to Nazis on B
-Nazis on B can @ and interact with statuses on A

I’m fucking sick of “you can’t do anything about it because it’s P U B L I C and F E D E R A T E D” when it would be trivially easy for instance suspension to reduce the access a suspended instance has by simply rejecting direct requests from the suspended instance.

If it worked that way and enough instances suspended the Nazi instance, they’d be actually cut off from the greater fediverse the same way herd immunity keeps a disease from infecting people who aren’t vaccinated.

Instead, the Nazis can directly connect to the instances that have suspended them and see and interact with the users. Those users won’t see that Nazis are stalking and organizing against them because their instances won’t deliver the notifications (most of the time).

It’s a trash design that doesn’t provide any safety at all and I have no confidence that anyone with the ability and resources to fix it is the slightest bit interested in doing so.

@SelfsameSynonym you're not wrong about this, and I'm trying to start some constructive conversations about this over with Florence.

@charlag

@SelfsameSynonym @maloki well, I understand how it works, thanks. Would it be better if Nazi instance saw that they're blocked and fetched statuses some other way?
Maybe it could be harder for, I can't tell for sure but it complicates a lot of things, kills relaying of statuses and you can still open that instance and read everything?

@charlag From all anti-abuse reports and stuff I've read, making it harder for them is actually _beneficial_ to countering a lot of the shit they do.

Out of sight out of mind kinda deal.
@SelfsameSynonym

@charlag From all anti-abuse reports and stuff I've read, making it harder for them is actually _beneficial_ to countering a lot of the shit they do.

Out of sight out of mind kinda deal.
@SelfsameSynonym

@maloki
@chr please take note. I wouldn't like to federate with fascists.
@maloki Du you already know something about their federating domains?Do I need to block only gab.com or also some subdomains or gab.ai or something else?

@nipos they are switching the platform on gab.com to Mastodon, they made a public announcement to this affect.

.ai should also be preemptively blocked

@maloki Thank you,blocked on my instance muensterland.social ✅

@maloki Gab has three known domains, specifically:

* Gab.com
* Gab.io
* Gab.ai

As shown in our list of restricted instances.

Happy to help ^,==,^

https://gekkofyre.io/restricted-mastodon-instances/

@phobos_dthorga I knew about ai, but I didn't remember if it was io or ai. :D

Is it io too?

@maloki According to other posts from admins across the Fediverse, yes :)

Have a look at the post below, for example.

https://notbird.site/@grufwub/102302992131853641

@maloki yes! All instances that are concerned about gab should do this, that way safe spaces can stay safe.

No need to block them in the clients then, eh?

@Matter Hahaha, yeah, exactly. Also, apps are free to serve which customers they want, their target audience etc ;)

@maloki I've had more abusive remarks coming from people calling for the blocking of right-wing extremist instances than from right-wing people. I by no means identify or agree with their stances yet I get a lot of abuse from the "opposing team."

Why do you suspect these instances will be a problem?

@nvsr @maloki are you really asking why fascist voices are a problem ?
@lbaclin @maloki I'm more asking why only one specific group is targeted instead of blocking everyone that shows extremist ideas. It works both ways. For example, I got this reaction from someone yesterday and I'm quite sure I don't deserve such a reaction. Yet they felt the need to respond in such a toxic manner. I'https://elekk.xyz/@magicalmilly/102299946227939149
@nvsr Well its simple. You dont have some reasonable group fighting against a few extremists. In america at least it is mostly a few extremist groups all waring with each other. So extremism is fine as long as it is the sort of extremism they support.
@maloki I don't easily block instances, but this case is clear, thanks for notifying! Firstly, obviously a bad case of fascism, secondly they also seem to be a data kraken.
@maloki
Who is Gab? I'll mention our admin @PoliticaConC
@maperal @PoliticaConC

Es una red social donde prima el "free speech" y está llena de nazis y alt-rights. Se están pasando a mastodon y quieren federar con las demás instancias.
@skrlet13
Ahhh, gracias por decirnos Skrlet. No tenía idea 😱. Pues hay que estar atentos.
@PoliticaConC
@skrlet13 @maperal @PoliticaConC Gracias a todos por compartir esta noticia. Lo bueno del fediverso y Mastodon es que se regula solo 😉. ¡Amo esta comunidad! 😍
@Maya @PoliticaConC @maperal

no todas las comunidades del fediverso son así, hay que agradecer lo que tenemos aquí ^^
@skrlet13 @maperal @PoliticaConC Me imagino. Pues pensando en la libertad que da la Federación, hubiera pensado que otras redes sociales operaban más o menos igual en términos de la regulación social 😉. Pero efectivamente, cada quien su dinámica. Recuerdo grandes diferencias entre Facebook y Twitter. En ambos casos, salí corriendo por su toxicidad en común 😂.
@maloki
What are their domains?