Clarification
You do not have to worry about your mastodon.social (m.s) account being defederated.
There is a well meaning, but misleading post currently promoted that suggests you should move your m.s account because:
1) "Instance admins are considering defederating them"
2) "Their admin is making spam accounts easier to create."
Very few, if any, instances are considering blocking m.s, and the recent spam attacks are worthy of sober discussion, not hyperbole. [more]
So what is going on? Recently mastodon.social (m.s) has been the target of crypto spam attacks. Attackers have joined m.s and started to post many irrelevant crypto related posts. Moderators on m.s have tracked down these bad actors and isolated them, but some sneak through while the moderation effort tracks them down. It has been dealt with pretty swiftly.
Also happening recently, Eugen Rochko @Gargron, the developer of Mastodon changed the sign up process, ostensibly to make it simpler, such that people now are funneled onto mastodon.social (m.s) unless they select a different instance. This has been the source of some concern that m.s will be oversubscribed and be vulnerable to hacker attacks, as well as performance issues. Some regard the concentration at m.s as anti-Fediverse in principle.
@Gargron People point to the issue of "too big to defederate" as a reason that large instances like m.s are a bad thing. The logic goes that if bad actors are left unchecked then other instances can not simple defederate m.s because that would block too many other accounts. It is certainly true that it is not really possible to defederate a very large instance so large instances have a big responsibility to police themselves.
@Gargron Smaller instances always have the threat of defederation as motivation for doing a good job of moderating their users, but bad actors piling on a smaller instance happens too as we have seen in numerous attacks. Simply defederating that instance without any means of re-federation would disenfranchise all those users, so that's another issue that needs our attention.
@Gargron So the question remains: Should you move to a smaller instance? The answer is you are free to do whatever you want. Some people like smaller instances because of the greater sense of community or common interest. Some people like big instances because of the broader perspective they may afford. It's up to you.
If you are on mastodon.social and want a more intimate experience, open an account on a smaller server and give it a try. It's your social network.
thanks. it's not easy, ever, but it's worth it, too.
@TFFPrisoner @mastodonmigration @Gargron @stux @stux ?!!???
Doesn't ring any bells to me...
@TFFPrisoner @kkarhan @mastodonmigration @Gargron @stux @stux Yes, a pretty ban-happy/arbitrary instance; I'd avoid it if you value stability for building up a lot of followers or something.
Seth Abramson makes the point that Mastodon, generally, is sketchy for this purpose: I'd say probably get your own instance if this is your goal.
Otherwise, who cares? Use it if you like, if you get banned just go somewhere else.
I guess one problem with banning is the people who blocked you suddenly don't have you blocked, so they'll have to re-block you if they run into you again. Other than that, no biggie, right?
I think instances blocking instances is likely going to be a bigger problem going forward than banning individuals.
@ech @TFFPrisoner @mastodonmigration @Gargron well, if you don't like the rules of an instance, do #SelfHosting.
Jist be aware that instances and users can still block one anytime for any reason.
Just like #eMail.
Also I'd like to see some sources since that completely goes against the experience I have with @stux @stux ...
@mastodonmigration
Thanks for this. I recently saw a toot claiming that my server - mastodonapp.uk - is being defederated for tolerating transphobia. I haven't seen any, but I don't want to be tooting into the void.
How can I verify or disprove this allegation? I saw no boosts or replies to the toot. Thx
@taoish That was a misunderstanding between mastodonapp and calckey.social specifically. They defederated for a day or two but were back in communion six days ago.
After talking with @[email protected] , it seems that the reports of transphobia were back from an old post/posts which never federated the delete action properly, leading to a false sense of a lack of admin/moderation action. They're committed to moderating against transphobia, so we are re-federating with mastodonapp.uk! My sincerest apologies for jumping to conclusions over something which clearly required more investigation and outreach.
@clacke Thank you very much. So I can stay on mastadonapp.uk without worrying about being defederated?
I haven't seen a single transphobic post but given UK culture these days (Ricky Gervais as much as JK Rowling) I can't say I would be shocked if there was a problem.
@Gargron
Sfba reduced communication with mastodon.social for a while
https://sfba.social/@announcements/110368103560944346
Hello everyone! We’ve seen a large number of spam direct posts from mastodon.social. We have temporarily limited federation with them. Apologies for the inconvenience, we plan to reassess/reenable full federation tomorrow if the issue is resolved.
@kevindalley @Gargron Full statement:
Hello everyone! We’ve seen a large number of spam direct posts from mastodon.social. We have temporarily limited federation with them.
Apologies for the inconvenience, we plan to reassess/reenable full federation tomorrow if the issue is resolved.
https://sfba.social/@announcements/110368103560944346
...
We are using “limited” federation. This setting means that we only receive and process events for people who are followed by our users...
Hello everyone! We’ve seen a large number of spam direct posts from mastodon.social. We have temporarily limited federation with them. Apologies for the inconvenience, we plan to reassess/reenable full federation tomorrow if the issue is resolved.
@mastodonmigration
I disagree. Moderation of a huge instance is a different game than moderation on a small instance. And the users/mods ratio on m.s is bad.
/cc @jwildeboer
@mastodonmigration @Gargron did I read that correctly? If an instance defederates another it *can't* re-federate with it in the future?
Hopefully it's my reading comprehension failure
@pixelpusher220 @Gargron No that is certainly not the case. However, in practice, once your instance gets on a ban list it may be difficult to get it removed from the list.
What is being said is that moderation in a federated environment is not simple and that there are multiple aspects which need to be successfully coordinated to keep our communities safe from both outside attack and unwanted isolation of normal users.
ok, whew :) Perhaps there's no 'built in' process for it but it's possible. Yes would be more difficult as it's likely a direct convo between admins to figure it out.
What might be useful is the 'mute for 1/3/7 days' type option we have for individual account interactions instead a complete block. Or maybe even a 'only allow people you directly follow' type thing to let the other instance get the issue under control before more dire measures.
@mastodonmigration thanks for this thread. One note though, could we do away with the h-word? Plenty of instance admins are hackers, so using this term as a way of referring to cybercriminals or malicious actors is painting with a broad brush.
Other terms exist — "cyber attacks" for example would work well here.
@mastodonmigration actually it's more #spamming of #DM's and yes I myself got one...
And whilst kolektiva.social did temporarily defederate mastodon.social until they fix the #Spamming, I think this is reasonable as approach...
https://kolektiva.social/@shrugdealer/110370170067546617
#FreeSpeech doesn't mean #ConsequenceFreeSpeech - same goes for #tech.
If one's #spamming or hacking too much they get #NameThem [ https://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/ ] & #BlockThemReportThem [ https://www.spamhaus.org/drop/ ] free of charge...
Thank you to the friendly folks that told me that the instance has blocked mastodon.social until their spam bot situation is under control. I've been avoiding a lot today and didn't see that. Appreciate it!
My instance popped a limit on m.s over the weekend due to the spam as well. Must've been effective as I didn't get any personally. It's a useful tool to blunt the spread of spam across the Fediverse.
It's been removed now things are back to normal.
@mastodonmigration depends...
In the end it's up to every server & instance admin to make a decisin.
Personally I'd recommend people who can to do #SelfHosting.
Also based off #TooBigToBlock issues with #eMail - #Spamming, I think we need to avoid creating the #Fediverse 
- equivalents of #GMail 
, #YahooMail 
& #Outlook.com where said hosters get away with ignoring #abuse #reports...
Sometimes a precendent must be set and "Fix your spamming or GTFO" is reasonable.
@mastodonmigration and yes, some instances like kolektiva.social did in fact block mastodon.social until they fix their #Spam issues...
Thank you to the friendly folks that told me that the instance has blocked mastodon.social until their spam bot situation is under control. I've been avoiding a lot today and didn't see that. Appreciate it!
@kkarhan There seem to be a small number of instances that temporarily partially defederated mastodon.social (m.s) WHILE the crypto attacks were underway and being addressed. Rather than use this fact to scare m.s users that they face some sort of permanent isolation, it might be better to be clear about what is actually happening. This, by David Carroll @profcarroll is a much more sober and helpful post (https://federate.social/@profcarroll/110368100537767122).
One emergent downside of being on mastodon.social is that you’ll get a temporary defed by a subset of the fedi while a #cryptospam op is going down
@mastodonmigration @profcarroll
1. I'm not scaring anyone.
2. I see the problem that the is centralizing in a single instance like mastodon.social 
as a real issue.
3. Just like #Spamhaus's denylistings, such community self-defense actions are dynamic and not 100% permanent...
4. It's good to see #spamming being not just frowned upon, but actually acted upon.
@kkarhan @profcarroll Not saying you are trying to scare anyone, but the subject post certainly is.
And certainly centralization in a big instance, or concentration in a few large instances, is a community issue. We should definitely have discussions about this. But conflating big instances with cryto spam hacker problems is inaccurate and misleading and does a disservice to the larger issues of the desirability of decentralization for a whole myriad of reasons.
@mastodonmigration @profcarroll
Case in point: As I expect this to set a precedent,#abuse handling - regard liss #spam or lack of #moderation, will get fine-tuned over time.
I think the overall outcome is good and if admins are scared that their lack of care will have defederation as consequence, then maybe that's a necessary price to pay.
Just like I'd certainly face consequences if I were to leave a machine unmaintained online for ages.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Case in point: As I expect this to set a precedent,#abuse handling - regard liss #spam or lack of #moderation, will get fine-tuned over time. I think the overall outcome is good and if admins are scared that their lack of care will have defederation as consequence, then maybe that's a necessary price to pay. Just like I'd certainly face consequences if I were to leave a machine unmaintained online for ages.
@kkarhan @profcarroll Here the point is phased:
"One emergent downside of being on mastodon.social is that you’ll get a temporary defed by a subset of the fedi while a #cryptospam op is going down"
OK, that's helpful. That's something that people can use to help make a real decision. It's a far cry from permanent isolation.
The same temporary measures might be applied to other instances should they be targets of attack.
Seems like this is the system working.
@mastodonmigration while I understand your point, I don’t think it is kosher to just say “to be to block” It feels like gmail and outlook of having giants. I don’t fully think it’s a bad thing, but it can breed complacency and letting the big instances bully smaller instances with might the “to big to be blocked”
That said, many instances might not defederate a bunch of us do silence your instance. Moderation issues as well as the just massive noise from an instance so large.
@mastodonmigration
Actually if mastodon.social don't publish an action plan to either fix the spam issue or reduce their size to something manageable or something else ... Well
If they believe we are going to clean their doo doo forever, they are misunderstanding a couple of things.
We are in a wait and see mood now. I am sure they are working on something to fix it
@daniel As discussed above, the issue here is not whether some instances temporarily blocked mastodon.social while the attack was going on. The implication was that people on mastodon.social were at risk for being "defederated" and that they should change instances to avoid this. This was a misleading because peoples accounts on mastodon.social are not at risk of being isolated.
1/
@daniel If what had been presented is that instances under attack may be temporarily defederate, and that mastodon.social has recently experienced hacker attacks, which resulted in a few instances blocking them for a short period of time while the attack was being addressed that would not have been as frightening.
In fact, that would be a good description of the system working as intended. Isolating the area under attack while the problem was addressed.
2/
@daniel The implication is that mastodon.social is particularly vulnerable to such attacks because it is big, and it is too big to be successfully moderated. This simply does not make sense. Any instance with open admissions can easily be subject to such attacks and while it is certainly difficult to moderate larger instances it is just a matter of allocating sufficient resources. In this case the attack was dealt with pretty swiftly, so it is not a good example of a breakdown.
3/
@daniel Any instance, big, medium or small that is targeted in this manner will need to do the same thing. It will need to address the attack and while it is doing so, it may be defederated. Hopefully, that defederation will only be temporary as was the case with the latest mastodon.social incident. One could say that smaller instances have the risk that if they don't respond quickly enough it could trigger more permanent isolations. These are all issues we should be discussing.
4/
@daniel What attacks like this are intended to do is to exploit our weaknesses and create dissention. Rather that use this attack that was basically thwarted to initiate a blame game, we should be taking lessons from it on how better to manage the next assault, Because the bad actors are not done with us, not by a long shot. We got this, but we have to work together.
5/
I don't think people are realising the danger the Fediverse is in. The only thing stopping corporations and VCs taking over this place is that the Fediverse is spread out on many different servers, which makes it very difficult to purchase. If most of the Fediverse ends up on mastodon.social, which is now a strong possibility, there will be nothing to stop most of it being sold to Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever. The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more likely a buyout is to happen. (1/4)
It's not a scare tactic.
Blocking mastodon.social is now seriously on the cards for many admins, even ones who would never have done it before.
The reason the Fediverse exists is to be decentralised. M.s is way too large now, and getting even larger due to the official app's terrible new onboarding.
If people want this place to be decentralised, they need to move off mastodon.social. If they don't care, then they can expect more fediblocks as m.s grows.
No.
Mstdn.social is a totally different server owned by totally different people. It has no connection whatsoever to mastodon.social.
Corey
Mastodon Migration
luckysitsinback
Kevin Karhan 
Julian ♪🌻🥥🌴♫
Erik Haugen
John Sóos 🍉
Mark Saltveit
clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛
Kevin Dalley
💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱
Jan Wildeboer 😷
Claudius (legacy account)
Pusher Of Pixels (old account)
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Kevin Leecaster
BarbaraKB in Michigan
Ada
Mackaj
Evelyn fra denne andre øya
HACK13
lord pthenq1
Daniel
FediTips has moved!
user8e8f87e
Tim Stanton