Damon KIncredibly, Twitter has now made it impossible for public safety bulletins to be posted automatically by weather services, tsunami warnings, the MTA etc. This is consistent with Musk’s particular lack of interest in public service. But it also highlights the general problem of building networks on private property - precisely why we need Mastodon and other open source apps to take their proper place at the center of our online communities
JMaverickJacks1@dada_drummer I do worry though: What will happen when a bunch of Muskovites decide to start extremist Mastodon servers to flood social media here with lies and nonsense? The reason that authoritarians bought Twitter was not just so they could “control the platform,” but also so they could spread propaganda to folks who didn’t want it. So, does Mastodon’s decentralized leadership have a strategy to protect users from a centralized attack by hate-mongers and baloney artists?
Earthworm 🐌@JMaverickJacks1 @dada_drummer
Your lovely mods have your back.
Of course, there could be some kind of attacks, but the process is quite straightforward.
Example:
* instance X gets flooded with bot accounts
* they "attack" writing/spamming nasty stuff
* you read it, you report it (and block the account, if you like)
* your mods receive the report. When they also receive several other reports of bot accounts on instance X, they consider just blocking the entire instance.
* meanwhile, the mods of instance X also receive the reports and start weeding. Possibly they limit new accounts on their instance.
* some time later, the bot crisis is resolved and bridges are rebuilt.
And the herd of Mastodons grazed calmly while tooting their thoughts.
-> This is one of the arguments why the system of federation works much better with many smaller instances. The huge size of mastodon.social has some advantages (larger audience), but is also a liability 
Legion@earthworm @JMaverickJacks1 @dada_drummer What I hear them asking is what to do when bad actors set up their own server. In that case, reports to that server's moderator will presumably have no effect.
Seems to me that most ethical moderators would block the entire instance so that over time the only people using it are the people on it. That limits its reach somewhat, but not entirely.
GunChleocIf the origin server is bad, you report only to your own server and leave a note. Server moderators can announce the bad apple via the fediblock hashtag so more server admins will notice the problem.
If you're interested in some history: https://conf.tube/w/d8c8ed69-79f0-4987-bafe-84c01f38f966
Decentralized Social Networks vs. The Trolls
@gunchleoc @minervakoenig @earthworm @dada_drummer But how do I know whether I’m reporting bad actors to my own admin or to the admin of a server that has been intentionally designed to spread propaganda? I only see a “report” option, with no choice regarding to whom I report.
The report always goes to your own server. There is an option at the end to forward it to the origin server too. At least that's what it looks like in the web UI.
Clarissa
@gunchleoc @JMaverickJacks1 @earthworm @dada_drummer
OK, but I'm saying that reporting to the origin server, presuming that it was set up to be intentionally fuckery-spreading, is kind of pointless