I'm beginning to wonder if the only solution to hate speech and harassment on the Fediverse might be allowlist-only instances.

Jay

Furthermore, these "trusted" instances could all relay with each other, vastly increasing the reach of posts on those instances within that group of instances.

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@jsit @ben
I'm not saying this couldn't work for some servers, this might be a solution for curating the timeline better if everyone who isn't on it is effectively limited, or maybe for locking down servers during times of harassment or like right now when a bunch of neo-nazis have apparently made a bunch of new servers.

It might also be useful for just small servers that are starting out and want to have a limited view of the network, though I would note that the problem of it not having the other small servers cuts them off from being able to chat with the people on those smaller servers, including the staff.

I'm not going to say that making a list of good actor instances is a bad idea, I think we could use it for something at the very least, I just don't think that most servers would really benefit from a bunch of people using a whitelist.

Jay

@Raccoon

> That instance age would be a complete no-go, because it means you have to set up a server and then have to wait just to ask for access to whoever uses the whitelist, then go through the approval process.

Worth it to me if people stop getting assaulted with hate speech on Fedi. Not all or even most instances will opt to use this allowlist-only moderation, but people on those instances will feel a lot safer.

Jay

@Raccoon As for harassment toward the moderators of this whitelist and the instance admins who use it -- yeah, I have no solution for that.

Jay

@Raccoon

> new servers can't really show up and quickly proliferate under a whitelist system

This is by design!

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@jsit
For reference, I've been harassed a couple times for suggesting servers to block, but I am harassed far more often for given reasons why servers should not be blocked. And I understand why people do that, because it's an assumption of bad faith when I give counterpoints or ask questions but that assumption of bad faith is not going to be good for whoever maintains this thing.

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@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.

Jay

@Raccoon I think new instances actually would be more likely to use a pre-made blocklist like Oliphant than go allowlist-only.

Jay

@Raccoon

> 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

Parsingphase

@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.

Jay

@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?

mybarkingdogs

@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"

Jack William Bell

@mybarkingdogs @jsit

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'.

mybarkingdogs

@jackwilliambell why are you so invested in defending this language when you could just use inclusive language? It says a lot about you

Jay

Does anybody *know of* any "successful" existing allowlist-only instances?

#MastoAdmin #FediblockMeta

Paul Chambers

@jsit

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.

Jay

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.

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #FediblockMeta

Jay

I’m curious to hear input from @evan @thisismissem @Gargron on this idea.

Emelia 👸🏻

@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/

Jon

And @oliphant has some very interesting thinking at https://oliphant.social/@oliphant/112887351805362426

@thisismissem @jsit