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.
lord pthenq1@PennyOaken @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz
Mastodon is good like it is. If you don't like to be questioned, answered, etc, please close your accounts or block everybody.
Mastodon has the tools so you don't have to depend if a dictator to tell what to say, what to think, etc.
There were versions of mastodon that did that. They were defederated.
If mastodon does not provide the features you like, it is better to migrate to another networks.
@PennyOaken @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz
Mastodon has far more moderators than the birdsite.
3 o 4 moderators average by instance, times 3000. Besides everyone have powerful moderation tools.
Everybody can block an user or entire instances and they are just gone.
@pthenq1 @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz There are a few use cases where it makes sense for someone to make publicly readable posts which have comments turned off. Example: the leader of a political party or country makes an announcement. Terrorists use the replies to deliver a bomb threat. The bomb threat causes a panic, leading to humans being injured or dying in a crush. Countering & preventing terrorist amplification is legitimate.
@pthenq1 @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz
Everything open will be exploited for fun, politics, and profit;
In an active crisis there is no real-time knowledge, only real-time information.
Mastodon should be about knowledge. As more people join, its exploitability for (mis)information scales exponentially, and infrastructure which addresses that should be planned for.
Thanks for coming to my ModX Talk
@PennyOaken @TJ @vodamark @taylorlorenz
Perhaps. There're tools to avoid that already in place. We were being attacked for all kind of trolls. They could not yet solve mastodon.
We will see. Even in your scenario it can be easily muted.