Someone asked, "Who gets to decide what gets moderated on the Fediverse? And who decides what's seen or unseen?"
You do!
If you don't like someone, block them!
If you don't like an instance, block it!
If you don't like your instance, leave it!
If no instance is to your liking, start your own!
If you don't like other instances, de-federate them!
If you don't like federation itself, turn it off!
Ultimately, the Fediverse gives you the freedom of association—exercise it as you see fit.
On another note, I'm noticing a lot of trolls coming here recently—and they're not happy about being moderated.
I have no doubt some may try methods to skirt moderation.
But I also suspect most will give up and leave.
When trolls find out that I'm generally pro-moderation, they give me a big lecture about free speech and bubbles and silos—and how we should listen to "everyone".
When they go on about this, my natural conclusion is, "Okay, they're not talking about a hypothetical—they *know* they're going to be moderated eventually but are trying to postpone the inevitable."
Trolls, themselves, don't tend to believe in listening to everyone.
They're certainly not looking for debate.
To them, a discussion is not even about uncovering a truth or—more unsubtlely—being right or wrong.
It's about winning or losing.
From a troll's perspective, all interactions are a game with a desired outcome: winning.
In order to deal effectively with trolls, you can't even let them play their game.
As someone else pointed out, trolls might not be strategic in their interactions.
They want to inflict pain and hurt—and will do whatever action enables their pursuit.
This is why I call this a "game".
It may not be a literal game like Monopoly but the effect is the same: a zero sum outcome for which they hope you will lose.
But just because a troll may lack foresight, doesn't mean you have to.
It's worth asking, "When this person talks to me, what's their goal?"
Might as well talk about the most motivated troll I came across on the Fediverse.
First bad interaction, I blocked him.
He came back on another instance.
I blocked that.
Then he said, "I can keep doing this, I have hundreds of accounts."
"Fine," I replied—so I looked up every variation of his username on all instances I could find and blocked them. There were indeed hundreds.
He came back, and seriously requested, "Can you stop doing that? It's costing me a fortune in server costs!"
🤣
That's a funny story. Sounds like you put in a lot of work, though.
Can you tell more about the process you used to find the different variations on his username and how you conducted this search on many different instances?
What is this process going to look like as the fediverse continues to grow and the number of instances multiplies?
But how much work would you need to expend if 20 or 200 trolls expended half as much effort as that one?
My question is about how well this approach will scale.
Thanks.
I suspect that's where we'll all be headed eventually---a world where federation is an earned privilege and not the default. I'm really glad that there is at least some social infrastructure for server administrators to communicate about issues and to start to build a trust network.
And I think it's very important that the fediverse community actively pursues these kinds of conversations *now*.
@dynamic
> a world where federation is an earned privilege and not the default
...is a useful approach for those who want a bounded social network. Some people always do this. Those who want to blast out social media to the widest possible audience will continue to federate openly and block as necessary. As @atomicpoet says, these are among the many options fedi tech gives us for using our freedom of association.
I disagree. In the world I see coming, people who want to blast out social media to the widest possible audience are not going to be able to reach the widest possible audience are going to need to build homes on servers unless they adhere to behavior norms that will earn themselves a place on other servers' white-lists.
This is my prediction for where we are headed, regardless of whether it is how I want things to be.
@dynamic I guess we'll see. But I've been observing these dynamics play out in the 'verse for more than 10 years, over multiple waves of immigrants from DataFarm platforms. So far open federation has remained the norm, with only a minority of servers going for a more cloistered approach. Imagine how much less useful email would be if the standard approach to federation between email servers was opt-in. I think the same is true in the 'verse.
@atomicpoet
> Email's not very useful at all nowadays.
That's not my experience. There's a perception that the clustering of most email usage on a handful of corporate email servers prevents independent email servers being viable. But I still use RiseUp.net and Disroot.org for email and correspond with people on corporate services with no issues. Email remains one of the few ways to message a stranger without creating an account on a DataFarm.
@strypey @dynamic So really, the problem with email is that even if you think you're doing everything right, if someone else does something wrong, you're f*cked.
The only way Google and Microsoft give a damn about you is if you're big enough and important enough for them to sit up and listen to you.
Start up a single-user email server? Not feasible nowadays.
@atomicpoet @strypey @dynamic I've had this problem as well, when a server hosted in the same datacentre as mine got spamjacked. We were all on a /26 subnet and several RBLs just chucked us all in the same bin.
Blunt instruments.
@phil_stevens @strypey @dynamic It's got to the point where I try to avoid email whenever I can.
On the two open instances that I run, I don't allow registrations through email (yet).
I simply find the whole thing incredibly infuriating.
Alas, too much about Internet identity is tied to email 😠
@strypey @atomicpoet @dynamic I've been running my own mailserver for decades. It's more of a pain than it used to be (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc) but nothing beats being able to spin up new virtual domains when I want them.
And logs. I can see everything that goes on.
Chris Trottier
dynamic
Strypey
Phil Stevens 