Rather than talk in the abstract about whether consensus blocklists are good or bad, let's consider a specific example.
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Rather than talk in the abstract about whether consensus blocklists are good or bad, let's consider a specific example.
Let's suppose Georgia Tech wants to join the Fediverse. They want to start an instance at social.gatech.edu. ️
Georgia Tech has a student body of about 47K students. This includes the largest number of women engineering students in the US, and one of the largest Black engineering student bodies on Earth.
How does GT protect their students without consensus block lists?
1/N
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: on last edited by
Like most universities, Georgia Tech is under budget constraints. They have a limited number of student volunteers that they can use to help with moderation. Most of the full-time academic computing resources will go just to technical administration of the instance.
My question isn't cynical or rhetorical. Good answers will go into recommendations.
I'm not saying that consensus block lists are the only way. But I'm genuinely curious about what solutions others would have for this problem.
2/N
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: on last edited by
I should be clear that no official from Georgia Tech has asked me this question! A few of their alumni that are curious about Mastodon, don't speak for the university in any official capacity.
3/N
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Sam Whitedreplied to mekka okereke :verified: on last edited by
@mekkaokereke what's the good word? I'd totally join an Alumni instance!
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Evan Prodromoureplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke connect them to me. I am currently a student at Georgia Tech. I'd love to see this happen!
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Bill Seitzreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke Maybe having students on that instance is a bad idea. Not unlike professors posting their writing at university servers/accounts which disappear when they move to another college....
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Bill Seitz last edited by
That is a valid opinion.
But suppose they do decide to have their students on an instance that they host, (just like they do decide to have a site where professors can post their writing).
How would you protect those students and faculty without a consensus block list?
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Bill Seitzreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke (by "Fediverse" are we talking about Mastodon or something else?)
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@mekkaokereke I wonder whether @darius's Hometown server could be set up in a way that lets you run 47 or 200 instances on shared infrastructure? Every department, club, frat/sorority could have their own instance (if they wanted), and CentralServices runs the infrastructure but each group has to moderate its own instance?
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@billseitz @mekkaokereke hometown is just a lightly modified mastodon so: not specifically, no. But! Takahe is a project designed specifically with this architecture in mind
Welcome | Takahē
Takahē is an ActivityPub server designed for efficient use on small- to medium-size installations, and which allows you to host multiple domains on the same infrastructure. It’s currently in an beta state, meaning most things work and it can talk to most of the Fediverse, but there’s still some polish and features left to add. The flagship instance can be found at takahe.social, and if you’re interested, you can also learn more in our documentation, browse the code on our GitHub repository, come and chat to us on Discord, or read some of Andrew’s blogs about building it.
(jointakahe.org)
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Brat O'Maticreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke I'm a big fan of consensus blocklists. I wrote a small social networking app back in 2012, and all participants could interact with everyone else in whatever channel they were in.
Then I added a feature to allow people to “like" each other, and if the like was mutual, you could DM each other.
Then I added “Block Party”, which meant that if the majority of people you'd liked (mutual or not) had blocked someone, that person would be auto-blocked for you.
Worked great!