dansupBlocking someone should remove their replies from your posts, this is the type of safety features we need in the Fediverse!
Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸
Frank Heijkamp@dansup That is indeed what you expect. I have never tested it, as in, had no need to block anyone yet. Yes you would think a block should remove all replies made by that person to your posts.
DNKrupinski 🧡🏴☠️@alterelefant @dansup This is not possible. Their post will not be shown in your timeline anymore but you can't delete messages somebody else has written on his/her instance.
@dnkrupinski @alterelefant You can Reject it, which should unlink it from the parent post, this does need support from software, I am working on this in Pixelfed and Loops!
@dansup
You would indeed expect the post and reply to get unlinked. One can not remove a post made by someone else, that is clear. However you do expect the relationship between a post and a reply of a blocked person to go away.
@dnkrupinski
You would indeed expect the post and reply to get unlinked. One can not remove a post made by someone else, that is clear. However you do expect the relationship between a post and a reply of a blocked person to go away.
@dnkrupinski
@dnkrupinski
Will those replies to your posts still be visible for others who view your posts?
* your post *
* reply by blocked person "
@alterelefant @dnkrupinski I think it should be removed as a reply, but still visible from the permalink
@dansup
A permalink is always final, the reply will still exist, just the reference to the original post should be removed.
I am not quite sure how to enforce such a thing in a federated system? A bad actor instance could still choose to ignore the unlink request and show the cached post in relationship with the reply. In some extreme cases they might even make changes to the software on their end. Such bad actor instances are typically run by ultra right wing oriented people.
@dnkrupinski
George B@alterelefant @dansup @dnkrupinski
Yes but a bad actor can also just edit their post to include a link to or screenshot of the original one.
Nothing will be a perfect solution but increasing friction that needs to be overcome to harass someone will reduce harassment since not everyone is equally dedicated to being a pain in the ass.
@gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup
If you are a bad actor you can just install a "shadow" account on a different instance with a similar instance name.
Then you can just post text "in the name of" the user who has blocked you.
There are always thins you can do as a bad actor in a system without central coordination ("decentral").
I don't understand which proposal could add an extra layer of "defence" here?
@dnkrupinski @alterelefant @dansup
Unlinking the reply when someone is blocked/reply controls which apply retroactively would mean that if the blocked user has followers who tend to pile on with additional harassment, they need to take a couple of extra steps to find where to post.
Although I'm mostly just against the "but a custom instance can override it" type of argument in general since that just boils down to "we should do nothing instead of helping a little bit"
@gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup
The best way to handle this is:
* block account
* delete your post and repost it as a new post
* all references to the old post have gone
Kelson@dnkrupinski @gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup IMO you shouldn't have to delete and rewrite your post in order to accomplish this.
@dnkrupinski
There is no defense possible against instances that consistently show bad behavior. To defederate an instance is the ultimate measure.
@gbargoud @dansup
There is no defense possible against instances that consistently show bad behavior. To defederate an instance is the ultimate measure.
@gbargoud @dansup
This is where moderation comes into play:
Moderators a able to block a single user for all users of his/her instance or a whole instance for all users.
🔗 https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#server-wide-moderation
🔶Mark Nicoll 3.5%🏴🇬🇧🇪🇺🇺🇳@alterelefant @dansup @dnkrupinski
How would this work in respect to a multiperson conversation? Just because one person decided to block another, it doesnt mean everybody will want the blocked person removed from the thread.
Everyone should get to choose who they keep or stop interacting with,
otherwise you could have people randomly joining conversations and then blockng someone just to cause chaos.
How would this work in respect to a multiperson conversation? Just because one person decided to block another, it doesnt mean everybody will want the blocked person removed from the thread.
Everyone should get to choose who they keep or stop interacting with,
otherwise you could have people randomly joining conversations and then blockng someone just to cause chaos.
@duckwhistle
I think there should probably be a clear difference between an individual user blocking another user and an instance moderator or administrator blocking a user of another instance.
@dansup @dnkrupinski
I think there should probably be a clear difference between an individual user blocking another user and an instance moderator or administrator blocking a user of another instance.
@dansup @dnkrupinski
Yes, they will.
If you don't delete your posts and the blocked person don't delete his/her replies to your post, all posts will be visible to others.
From the Mastodon docs:
"Blocking hides a user from your view:
* If you were following the user you unfollow them
* You won’t see the user in your home feed
* You won’t see other people boosting the user
* You won’t see other people mentioning the user
* You won’t see the user in public timelines
* You won’t see notifications from that user
Additionally, on the blocked user’s side:
* The user is forced to unfollow you
* The user cannot follow you
* The user won’t see other people’s boosts of you
* The user won’t see you in public timelines
* If you and the blocked user are on the same server, the blocked user will not be able to view your posts on your profile while logged in."
Sean Tilley@dnkrupinski @alterelefant @dansup it might be possible to at least purge the local copy, and prevent it from getting federated along with every other reply from the source.
Sure, anyone subscribed to the blocked person will still see the response and probably distribute it along, but it might be nice to have a way to block it at the top level.
@deadsuperhero @dansup @alterelefant
Don't understand how this can be done for _foreign messages_ which are not blocked on the same instance?
If i block someone on hannover.town, than all others on hannover.town should not be able to see the messages of the blocked account?
This is a blocked account on a instance. This can only be done by moderaters / owners of the instance. This needs a violation of the rules of the instance or an unpropriate behavior of the blocked account. Otherwise it would be censorship.
Max Lee@alterelefant @dansup No, this is no expected, a block has always only prevented you from reading what people write on all platforms, only bans remove their posts (or direct moderator action to remove posts).
A user should not be able to do such destructive actions to the global conversation on platforms run by other people, only on platforms were thet have such permissions (and with that some legal association with the platform operator) themselves.
Aaron@the_moep
I think you are ignoring the sense of space Mastodon gives for replies. It gives a sense that they are a part of a discussion within a digital space defined by the original post. The original poster should have some say over their sense of safety in the digital space of their own posts, and replies by blocked individuals should be disassociated from the post and not part of that digital space anymore. That's not destructive. It's not taking over another account or instance, it's taking control over your own account and the digital space Mastodon creates around it.
@alterelefant @FWAaron @dansup
Imo that's basically the same though? If you remove the context of the reply then it's basically just a worthless post?
Or would the idea be to not show the reply under a pest but still show what post a reply was on when viewing the reply? (similar to quote tweets) Because that feels like it could be a valid compromise (which would still allow for censorship but not fully break the conversation) although that would go against the (imo scuffed) permission approach quote tweets went.
(Also it still doesn't feel right to me to be able to just fully ban any opinion you don't like under jour posts for everyone in the whole Fediverse. E.g. when Hetzner tried to silence ciritique of transphobia under their posts it was still visible on other instances, with the proposet blocking approach this would've basically be invisible so this still feels like an action the moderators of each instance should take, not individual users for everyone)
@FWAaron @alterelefant @dansup
I don't agree with the "sense of space" for replies when it comes to moderation actions tbh. For me that's something which is up to moderators of your instance (and the instances you federate with), if those do not act in your best interest then you should find the ones that do...
Also you already have something to say about your personal safety: You can mute/block people if you don't want to see them/give them the opportunity to easily link to your content, but if you don't want them to interact/see your content at all then the only solution is unfortunately to not post it publically at all. (Which is what people are already doing, both in posts and replies as well as instance-local timelines)
This is because any public post can be abused by malicious actors (either by linking to it or screenshotting it), this proposed addition to the block feature is not going to stop such abuse nor is it going to significantly slow it down.
troi@dansup I’m unsure how far this should go. I’m a free speech absolutist but I also respect the right to ignore, which blocking achieves.
A sticky problem. If I was designing something in this space I’d probably leave replies visible on the TL but flag them conspicuously as being from a blocked account.
Messy. I don’t like my idea either.
Смерть Окупантам@dansup I get the intention, but with that implementation, fedi becomes a propaganda platform where everyone can post any shit and just delete anyone calling it out as such.
I rather live with unwanted comments under my posts.
I rather live with unwanted comments under my posts.
Raptor 
@Schafstelze @dansup indeed, this is insanely dangerous, all someone has to do to spread misinformation or even flat out libel without contest if you could remove replies is block anyone who disagrees with them. You have the right to choose what you see, but that shouldn't extend to choosing what other people see.
normy foxyoreos@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup what happens when someone replies to a post with libel, and you can't remove the reply?
Do you block that person, making it so you no longer can tell that they're libeling you under your own posts? That is also a really bad solution.
Do you report them? If so, why can you not also report the top level libel if they disable replies?
Also, is this widely happening on any of the social networks that allow for this already?
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I'm on furaffinity and I can remove replies. The platform is not flooded with libel.
I'm on Bluesky and can detatch replies. I'm not seeing huge upticks of libel.
I don't know of any platforms where mass libel has been the result of reply curation. It's just not a problem in practice because there are many different mechanisms to deal with this.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup we had the same concerns pop up around post editing, and in practice it's just.. not really a big deal, it's not the giant abuse vector people are worried about.
The concerns are theoretical but the problems today with the existing behavior (including unblockable harassment, misinformation, and a degrading of public conversation) are real.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup there are also a lot of different ways this could be implemented. "FetchAllReplies" just got merged a little while ago. That goes to the original thread's server and asks for a list of replies.
We don't need to force any other server to do anything to say, "well, fetchAllReplies shouldn't return replies from users who are blocked by the post author."
That doesn't require sharing the blocklist, and we'd all agree a server has the right to choose what it returns.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup it wouldn't be a complete solution, but it would be much, much better than what we have now, and would not require forcing the server of the blocked reply to do anything differently.
And there are a lot of small things we could do like that.
I'm seeing a lot of concern about dictating how people talk but like.. if someone goes to the server I'm hosted on and clicks on my thread directly.. why am I being forced to provide backlinks to other replies?
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I don't think that free speech means "anyone who wants to have access to me as a platform should be able to say things to every single person who follows me, without any of our consent".
That's dictating my speech.
If someone is following someone else and wants to see their reply.. sure we can talk about that, maybe they should still be able to see it. But there's a lot of grey here and it feels like the current system is forcing me to platform other people.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup that's not what the post is about though, any admin is free to block an account and that prevents that user's posts from federating to your server, that already happens, you can already do that. The post was about ActivityPub federating a user block to unlink and delete posts on the thread, which requires the blocklist to be shared to work (as it has to federate the block) and modifies the thread on servers that are not yours.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I think the conflict here is that people are very literally looking at server owners as being the only ones that should have agency here, and in reality even though I'm on a hosted server, I still think I should have some agency over my own threads. I don't have to ask my server host to remove comments from my blog, for example.
I don't think this would require making a blocklist public except under specific implementations.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup keep in mind, we do this already.
Quote posts. Quote posts already allow detatching. It's not perfect but works pretty well. It also allows locking quotes.
We could have the exact same system but for detaching replies from threads.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup and that system works well enough even though it doesn't force every server to participate and can't guarantee perfect functionality.
What's neat about quote posts is I don't even need to block in order to detatch.
Which lines up a lot better with how I use reply deletion on every other site, most of the time it's not for bannable offenses.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup the only way to federate it to other servers would be via publicly posting the ban, even if your full list isn't visible any server you've federated to would effectively have it, so it would be easy to scrape. I fully disagree, you don't own the fediverse, you don't own the thread you only started it, you can split and block further replies but you cannot kill a conversation down the chain from the one you started, it doesn't even need to necessarily involve you.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup how do quote detatchments work then?
They have all of the same constraints as the system I'm proposing, and they work on the fediverse today, and have not ruined discussions on Mastodon.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup quote detachments are a VERY different mechanism, they're not related to a ban and you're not deleting or blocking the quote the other user posted, so no federation of a block would need to happen, you're essentially just denying that account to keep loading your post when requested from permanant link. (and note unlinking doesn't work on the servers that use the unofficial quote post feature, they just ignore it)
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I would be happy with the same mechanism as quote posts. I don't need it to be managed via blocks, and I don't need the post full on deleted from the other server. I also don't need perfect enforcement.
If you click on a reply, it loads a hard link to the post it's replying to, no?
And if you run FetchAllReplies, that asks my server for a list of replies, no?
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup heck, it's an *improvement* if it's not managed specifically through blocklists, 90% of the moderation I do on my art galleries does not result in a block.
I am fine with it being on a post by post basis and using the same proactive consent model as a quote post, even though that's not fully 100% reliable everywhere. It would still help a ton.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup the way I see it, I'm not asking for a single feature that is not already actively deployed on the fediverse, I just want to be able to use those features on the hard link between replies and their parent threads and between parent threads and their replies.
The same way I already can with quote links.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup heck, I would even welcome just a setting that allows people/critters following me to opt in to only seeing replies I approve.
I use reply moderation as a community safety tool under fetish artwork to make sure critters following me have proper content warnings for extreme kinks.
Mastodon has no mechanism to help with this.
We are so far behind the curve on moderation. There are things we could do to get at least part of the way towards a working system.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup like we're taking about this under a thread about pixelfed, an art gallery platform.
It is not optional for NSFW artists to be able to curate replies under fetish art, a gallery site that doesn't have that is not a serious gallery site.
I can't think of a single example of a good gallery site that doesn't let me remove comments that go outside of my content warnings.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup through the context of the server you're replying FROM though, not the original server the first post came from. Once the messages federate the chain exists on other servers, not just your own, people can still see replies other than yours even if they were to block your entire server.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup so how do quote posts get around that, because those links also get federated?
Like, I am genuinely not understanding what you mean by this.
Also, quote *permissions* federate. You can see my reply on a server that has federated from another server.. and on average, non-participating platforms aside, you will need to get my permission to quote, and I can revoke that permission and turn off quote posts, and it will federate properly.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup federation does not destroy the original link or prevent cooperating platforms from making requests to other servers to fetch permissions. Every single post will have a "copy original link" button, that link exists, every server federating knows how to send a request to the original server.
That's how FetchAllReplies works.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup At the *very* very least, it is no technical problem for fetchAllReplies to not return replies that I've removed. My server already knows my blocklist, I'm not sharing any new information with it if it decides to filter out those replies.
And even *just* that behavior would make this better. At the very least if someone goes to the server I live on in a web browser and opens up my thread.. that can filter replies, I could have a "remove reply button" for that.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup that is not something that would be technically impossible to do - it wouldn't be perfect, but it would help.
@raptor85 @foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup You don't have to be able to kill the whole conversation further down, but you should at least be able to stop your post from pointing to the next one down the line.
@kelson @raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup Exactly. A lot of Mastodon/ActivityPub controls are like this. They're a little fuzzy, there are edge cases, but they mostly work. Just severing a link is fine.
@raptor85 @foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup Right, you don't own the whole Fediverse. That also means you don't own the post you're replying to, and you shouldn't be able to dictate whether it continues to provide your post a platform.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup That's like saying no one should be able to delete spam or harassment comments (or worse) from their blog posts, because someone, somewhere, might post BS and delete the comments that call them out on it.
@kelson @Schafstelze @dansup there's a world of difference between an admin deleting spam and someone selectively blocking post replies on other people's feeds on different servers via federation. If you own your server do what you want with it, it's your data, your feed. But it should not be put in the protocol to have a block federate to other servers and remove posts, we don't need a twitter 2.0 where large accounts can control what is or isn't seen.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup So it's not my data if someone else is the admin? All those people on WordPress.com or Blogspot or wherever who don't want spam on their posts are just out of luck because someone else runs the server?
@kelson @Schafstelze @dansup well, yes, exactly, it's not your data if it's not on your server, especially if it's posts from someone other than you that just happen to be in the reply chain.
If you want to fully own your data and have people on your server not see the replies of people you block you can do that locally on your server. (that will not however block the posts on OTHER servers people follow you from, as you do not own those.)
@kelson @Schafstelze @dansup well, you edited while i was replying, i'm not going to bother updating my other post though, but you're comparing apples to a nissan sentra. If you want a curated feed YOU CAN DO THAT NOW, people just have to view from your feed, you can't control theirs. That's what you're looking at with an activitypub linked wordpress site, you're looking at the owners curated feed
@dansup I kinda disagree here. I get the intention but personal blocks should only apply to your account, not others. (This also would effectively make block lists public which Bluesky has shown us to be a major cause for concern)
What you describe should only apply to accounts banned on the instance the OP is on (so they can't see posts and should not be able to reply to them (although this does not solve simply screenshoting/linking but at least prevents direct harassment))