Taylor LorenzCan anyone who understands how this platform works better than me explain why we can’t have crucial harassment tools like restricting replies to mutuals only, or mass blocking? Also any reason we can’t get link previews on here? Just curious if these are things that can ever be implemented 🙏🏻
TJ@taylorlorenz defer to others on the link previews (which should work on some interfaces) but if you're getting abuse from a certain instance, your instance admins should be able to ban that instance entirely.
Marko Vodanović@TJ @taylorlorenz
New here as well, so there's questions... Ok, mods can block entire instances, great. But can't abusers simply spin up their own private instances and repeatedly abuse people? Or is it not that simple to do?
New here as well, so there's questions... Ok, mods can block entire instances, great. But can't abusers simply spin up their own private instances and repeatedly abuse people? Or is it not that simple to do?
Ms. Penny Oaken@vodamark @TJ @taylorlorenz a few years back there was a group that was spinning up distinct *domain names* and pointing them at the same server in an effort to evade a block; I never caught the back half of that incident so I don’t know how exactly they’d mitigate it, but it would likely generally parallel user ban evasion cold wars.
@PennyOaken @vodamark @taylorlorenz I think the bottom line here is that Mastodon, unlike Twitter, is a community-based enterprise, and unlike some Twitter Safety deus ex machina, we rely on each other, and our instances, to manage spam and trolls - perhaps some holes in the short term, but in the long term far more effective. Yes?
@TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz Yes. Twitter’s “Only People Mentioned Can Reply”/“Only Followers Can Reply” was:
1: developed to mitigate noise/spam/dog piling/harassment/protests without dedicating policy (& human labour for actioning) to AUP violations;
2: needed a central technological access control system to enforce it.
If it were written into the specification … it might not be honored by some instances, but that could be a defederation condition.
huxley(fur) / Laelia 🔜 Furcationland DeadDog@PennyOaken @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz "mute this thread" could be done on the receiving side right now
@huxley @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz my instance and/or client definitely has “Mute this conversation”.
One of the use cases for restricting replies is to counter & prevent misinformation from piggybacking on a conversation or announcement with a wide distribution / reach, so in such a case “Mute this …” would be insufficient.