I'm beginning to wonder if the only solution to hate speech and harassment on the Fediverse might be allowlist-only instances.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Jay on last edited by
@jsit
Except new servers are the ones that are going to want to use a list like that, while older servers are more likely to have these built up block lists, as well as connections to servers that aren't on the Whitelist, and to have the experience and connections within the staff to be able to quickly identify and block instances.That may be a good thing, because it means that you can whitelist a bunch of servers that aren't going to ever use the white list, but once again, this runs into the problem of new servers not being able to connect with each other, and it would be a nightmare if any of those new servers became reliant on the Whitelist in the long-term.
All this being said, maybe you should actually put this list together: it might be easier to talk about how it might be used if we had a prototype to look at.
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Jayreplied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: on last edited by
@Raccoon I think new instances actually would be more likely to use a pre-made blocklist like Oliphant than go allowlist-only.
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Jayreplied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: on last edited by
> maybe you should actually put this list together
An easy place to start would be the instances that have signed the "Mastodon covenant": https://joinmastodon.org/servers
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@jsit I'm very much Not A Lawyer but this looks like a useful reference for instance admins: https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html
and as regards the list maintainers, I'd expect them to be a target of lawsuits claiming restrictions on free speech from owners of excluded servers. I can't speak to whether such lawsuits would have merit, but even their existence would be expensive. -
@parsingphase Not A Lawyer Either, but I would be *very* surprised if "free speech" lawsuits would have any merit whatsoever. I won't let your server talk to my server? So what?
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mybarkingdogsreplied to Jack William Bell on last edited by
@jackwilliambell @jsit BTW, people using "whitelist" and "blacklist" in this discussion - you yourselves are perpetuating racism - the proper terms are "allow list" and "block list/disallow list"
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Jack William Bellreplied to mybarkingdogs on last edited by
I'm sorry if that bothered you. But the term 'blacklist' has nothing to do with race, except perhaps in the minds of those who are looking for racial meaning. It dates to before 1639 in England.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_term
And the term 'whitelist' is simply an inversion of 'blacklist'.
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mybarkingdogsreplied to Jack William Bell on last edited by
@jackwilliambell why are you so invested in defending this language when you could just use inclusive language? It says a lot about you
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Does anybody *know of* any "successful" existing allowlist-only instances?
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I recall reading about a coach in a religious private school sports league wanting to set up a network of Mastodon instances federating only with the schools and churches in its sports league.
Players, students and parents, etc. could have accounts.
Each school would run its own instance and federate only with the other schools and other approved instances.
I'm not sure whatever came of that, though.
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A fatal flaw in this idea: If an instance (limited.example) is in LIMITED_FEDERATION_MODE (i.e. is "allowlist-only”), then not only do posts from other instances (external.example) not reach limited.example, but posts on limited.example cannot be *read* by users on external.example.
I think it might be good if there were two levels of this setting: read-only, and no-read-write.
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I’m curious to hear input from @evan @thisismissem @Gargron on this idea.
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@jsit this idea has been floated a fair bit; limited federation mode has its, um, limitations. I'm aware of a few people who've attempted to switch across, but it basically means knowing ahead of time all potential servers that may want to interact with your server — that's a much larger list than the denylists that we currently have.
There's also some great writing by @jdp23 on "approval based" federation models.
e.g., https://privacy.thenexus.today/steps-towards-a-safer-fediverse/
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And @oliphant has some very interesting thinking at https://oliphant.social/@oliphant/112887351805362426
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, thanks for pointing this out!
@mybarkingdogs @jackwilliambell -
@thisismissem Thank you!!
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@oliphant @jdp23 It looks like the Outpost idea you outline doesn’t allow people outside of the outpost to follow people inside of the outpost. What would you think about allowing for that? I imagine some people might want to have a broad reach, but not hear from everybody who tries to mention them.