malena / bikes not bombs (@seachanger@alaskan.social)
Föderation EN Mi 04.09.2024 22:34:17
🙋🏼♀️
I see 2 key places to improve Mastodon re: safety + one process suggestion
1) ability to turn off replies from accts user does not follow
2) mods can easily select from user-curated blocklists in server settings, with a default blocklist maintained by Mastodon itself already “checked”
3) paid safety advisor(s) who help users and mods make these kind of recommendations without having to go through complex/tech processes
@Gargron https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113080979375593074
Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 00:11:27
@seachanger 1 and 2 are on our roadmap but they’re fairly difficult things to solve in a decentralized environment and we only recently got a 2nd full time developer on the project. There are a lot of things people want us to prioritize but we are slowly working our way towards them. As for 3, we don’t have any concrete plans in this area, but there are organizations that may be a better fit for that kind of work such as IFTAS.
Luke (@Shivaekul@infosec.exchange)
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 00:37:38
@Gargron @seachanger I won't profess to be as much of an activityPub expert as you, but would it be possible to amend 7.1.2 Forwarding from Inbox in such a way as to allow you to control which replies are forwarded, and maybe add a signature? Then you would have a way of knowing which replies were "authorized" by the poster, and clients could chose to filter only "authorized" replies using a clientside setting. Could potentially also be used to moderate replies, via a revocation.
Wouldn't prevent the posting, but it would allow you to control the visibility a lot more, which I think is what most of the people asking for these tools are hoping for. You could see the unfiltered replies if you want to, but I think people would prefer not to by default.
Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 00:41:35
@Shivaekul @seachanger The problem is that as far as Mastodon and most other contemporary ActivityPub implementations are concerned, the parent post is barely involved in what counts as a reply. Replies are not distributed by the parent post, and the replies collection on it is not considered normative. Replies are distributed exactly the same as standalone posts, and the attachment to the parent post is considered simply metadata. Reworking this architecturally is where the complexity lies.
Luke (@Shivaekul@infosec.exchange)
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 01:02:16
@Gargron @seachanger Ah, so on the backend, replies are treated more as quoteboosts, your reply is sent out referencing the parent post, but is not distributed by it? Can understand how that came about, but am glad you are taking efforts to rework the architecture, since people do mostly feel like replies should belong to a post, and being able to moderate what shows up under your name and posts would make people feel a lot more in control over their presence here. Would it be any easier to rename current replies Quote Boosts, and then make the replies collection and server in charge of "replies"? I know there are several other issues to work through, especially accounting for various ways malicious actors could try to overwhelm the OP's server, but was just a thought.
Anyways, glad to hear it is in progress/on the roadmap, thank you! :)
Jeremy Bornstein (@jeremy@jeremy.org)
Föderation EN Mo 09.09.2024 06:00:25
@Gargron@mastodon.social I'm definitely a newbie on the implementation side here but it seems totally reasonable (and backward-compatible) to have the parent maintain a collection of approved replies. If absent or out of date, nbd -- but if present, clients could have some useful options. If I were designing this I'd also allow for a community mechanism (defined by owning actor and/or their server) for approving replies in addition to simple approval by the author.
malena / bikes not bombs (@seachanger@alaskan.social)
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 03:10:42
@Gargron thanks for chiming in on this stuff.
what do you say to folks who feel like they want to help fund or work on speeding up the implementation of (admittedly complex) safety features, but that there is no place for them within mastodon itself? is there any room for change when it comes to including people who want to help as developers, organizers or advisors?
Föderation EN Fr 06.09.2024 00:49:04
@Gargron As a short term stopgap to limiting replies, how about merging this PR so we can at least remove abusive replies by blocking the replier? It looks like it's ready to go!
Emelia 👸🏻 (@thisismissem@hachyderm.io)
Föderation EN Fr 06.09.2024 15:16:02
@Gargron @seachanger yeah, IFTAS has a whole community dedicated to providing moderators and admins resources: https://connect.iftas.org
We've forums, and an entire library of information, as much as we try to get the word out, we can't necessarily reach people who download software and install it since we're not necessarily known to them at that point.
We've also tools like FediCheck and IFTAS CCS (coming soon): https://about.iftas.org/activities/moderation-as-a-service/
Nik (@nikclayton@mastodon.social)
Föderation EN Fr 06.09.2024 23:22:01
@seachanger you might be interested in how some of that can be implemented client-side: https://pachli.app/pachli/2024/08/02/harassment-controls.html
malena / bikes not bombs (@seachanger@alaskan.social)
Föderation EN Fr 06.09.2024 23:26:46
@nikclayton interesting! I hadn't thought much about attacking safety from the app end. woudl this mean tho that folks viewing your account activity from mastodon desktop would still see the harassment, you just wouldn't see it in the app?