@mekkaokereke

On the subject of improving Mastodon. This may be an opportunity to rekindle developer attention on the 'Followers Only' dogpiling harassment vector. Felt like some progress on the issue was made back in November, but don't know where it stands now.

cc: @stefan

@mastodonmigration

I wonder if @scottjenson might be interested in connecting with
@mekkaokereke, that is, if he'd like to share some thoughts.

(Unless you two already spoke, in which case, please disregard!)

@mastodonmigration But yes, that particular issue, I have not heard/seen any updates either.

@scottjenson @mekkaokereke

@stefan @mastodonmigration
Yes, @mekkaokereke and I spoke about to how best present Quote Posts and his advice had a direct impact on what we shipped. We're about to reach out for another round of discussions with a wide range of people (but I don't think we've contacted Mekka just yet)

It's so tempting to take the engineering approach and think "this feature will do it!" when we likely need to back up and talk about bigger issues such as culture and moderation.

@scottjenson @stefan @mekkaokereke

It is great to see this conversation take off. You did a fabulous job with quote posts and it would be wonderful if this issue could get the same kind of careful attention. Completely agree that a proper requirements driven approach is warranted. Thank you.

@scottjenson
@mekkaokereke
@stefan

Great. Just to be really clear. What seems to be the issue is a type of hidden dogpiling or 'brigading.'

A tight group folks who's purpose is to harass someone follow each other, 'the brigade'.

One of them composes a harassing post specifically targeting someone who they @ mention, and post it using "Followers Only" reply controls.

The rest of the 'brigade' piles on.

The post is only seen by the targeted person(s) and the harassers.

@scottjenson @mastodonmigration @stefan followers-only posts require the *victim* to report the attack. Depending on the volume and ferocity of the harassment, the victim may not be in a position to do this (either due to harassment across several channels, or unawareness of reporting and moderation options).

As an example, I piled into this thread to help out with an example, but I wouldn't have seen it to help out if it were "followers only".

I can see the positive value in being able to restrict a discussion, but it seems like "all my friends plus one more" might be a dangerous model.

Take all this with a grain of salt, as I haven't actually been subject to this kind of abuse, and am privileged in a bunch of ways which probably shield me from having to consider the worst of it.

@evana @mastodonmigration @stefan This is very helpful thank you. The workaround suggested is to have new filter that blocks all followers only posts that also include you. For this to be effective, it would need to default to being ON, which might rub many the wrong way. Defaulting to OFF means victims need to find and turn this on (which seems unlikely)

I'm trying to brainstorm other solutions that offer more protection (but I'm coming up short) Are there any others?

@evana @mastodonmigration @stefan One additional thought. If we default this filter to on and it DOES fire, this could be a moderator visible event?

The other solution is just to somehow flag any followers-only posts that @ include you in a way that makes reporting it a one-click event for the victim.

@scottjenson Not sure if I understand the question myself. Do you mean whether someone posting a followers-only + 1 post would automatically flag that post for moderation?

That's a tricky one. Now that I think about it, I might've actually received replies to my posts that were followers-only+1 (me). No abuse, just regular replies, I suppose the person wanted a bit more privacy?

@evana @mastodonmigration

@stefan @evana @mastodonmigration Exactly, that's why I asked the second question: make it a simple one-click for the target to report it.

The filter (if it defaults to off) isn't good enough. Most people just won't know how to turn it on.

@scottjenson

I know we're very early into the conversation, and I'm sure more ideas will come up, but so far everything is just telling me that followers-only+1 posts should not be possible and rejected as "+1 is not a follower".

The workarounds are getting confusing.

@evana @mastodonmigration