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]
@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.
The whole point of this place is to spread the network out:
https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/
If the growth of m.s is a threat to this, then that growth needs to be stopped.
Ideally, the owners of m.s would stop taking signups, or at least remove it from the official app. But they're doing exactly the opposite, they're telling everyone to sign up on m.s.
M.s are destroying the driving force of the Fediverse by doing this, m.s need to stop.
@feditips honest question from a non-techie who came here when Twitter was first purchased but not from Twitter: Would it be feasible for new sign ups to be offered the option to be automatically put on a random instance to start? Of course the instances on that list would choose to opt in to it and new users could choose to DIY if they desired. But from my perspective as a still newbie, what instance I ended up on mattered very little as a casual user with no specific focus. I think most people are like me.
I get that the wealth of servers protects the system as a whole from takeover etc and that's great. But asking new users to care what instance they are on and evaluate them from the get go is a big hurdle. It's hard to grok why the choice even matters when one first signs up. So sign new users up to a random one by default to spread everyone around, but give them the option to choose too. Could that work?
Yes, a random server from a trusted pool with good track records is exactly what people are suggesting should happen.
@feditips @mastodonmigration @daniel
Why a block? Why not limit or silence if one wants to take action? At least until there are moderator tools to help avoid these attacks?
Blocking sounds extreme to me.
Blocking might cause a large exit from the Fediverse if people feel they are being made pawns in some sort of internal uprising.
I'd be pissed if suddenly I lost all my connections to people I communicate with on mastodon.social. I'd think, "who the hell are these people to decide that I can't talk to my friends any longer or follow people who I like to follow."
I'd leave permanently. I would never trust another server Admin. I'd never come back.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
@Jerry @mastodonmigration @daniel
"I'd be pissed if suddenly I lost all my connections to people I communicate with on mastodon.social. "
It's not going to be painless, but it will be a lot easier than if m.s becomes a majority of the Fediverse.
If that happens, the Fedi itself could be bought and sold on the whim of the owner of m.s (which at the moment is Eugen but who knows who it will be in the future).
It's like global warming: the longer you wait, the harder it is to take action.
@guiltmanager @feditips @Jerry @mastodonmigration
its a shame theres no way to be able to put in your servers address into a search engine and see all the fediverse instances that have blocked you.There's a website that does this actually. And yes, it used to harass people which is why I'm not going to share the address.
Mastodon Migration
Daniel
FediTips has moved!
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