How (racist/sexist/whatever) harassment on Mastodon works:
1. Harasser replies to their target's post, with the reply set to "followers only", saying the most vile stuff you can imagine.
2. All the harasser's followers join in on the harassment, posting more vile stuff.
3. Nobody but the target and the harassment crew can see the vile stuff that was said.
4. Target is traumatized. Nobody else can see why.
5. Everybody says "I don't see it so it's not happening."
I really wish there was a more sophisticated way to share moderation examples. Eg. individuals and servers could "trust" each other and then automatically share lists of reported domains and users *including* the offending posts and comments about context.
Right now the software offers to let your report a user to their home server and this is almost always a terrible idea since their whole server is probably terrible and it just makes more slur filled posts show up.
@futurebird @dave I think there's a website for this? My admin/wife was double checking some site the last time we were getting waves of harassment. (I'll have to ask in the morning, it's 2 am here right now)
Tbh, every time it feels like the same exact people.
I think there's less than ten dorks from 4chan/KF actually actively harassing people on fedi at any given moment, it just feels like there's more because they server hop and run a lot of sock-puppets
"Tbh, every time it feels like the same exact people."
LOL yes. There are like three guys who show up whenever I say anything about racism and start up with me, they get new servers and new usernames from time to time, but they just seem like the same people who I think search for words like "racism" then attack anyone who seems like they aren't white. It's really boring. I would see them less often if we had more thoughtful tools I think.
It's so annoying!
And like, it's such a relic of the unmoderated internet. I haven't had to deal with some jackass calling me names and sending me gore for being queer and watching My Little Pony on ~the corporate web~ for like a decade now.
Thankfully, my admin team (literally my wife) has been good about defederating from problem instances, and she's quick to react to my reports (because I whine at her from across the room)
Dave Alvarado
myrmepropagandist
✨pencilears✨