this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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The problem with these lists is that people sneak things on to them.
I’m an admin on (and owner of) lemmy.ninja. We have clear anti-harassment rules, up front, in bold, front page. We have zero bots (checked daily). We have users that are LGBTQIA+. I have zero tolerance for bigotry.
Yet our site is on the lists provided.
Apparently it doesn’t matter (the lists don’t work) because all of my cross posts (from my boomer shooter community) are available on beehaw.org in their gaming section.
So these lists can be used as weapons, if they work. When thy don’t work they are just an indictment without evidence.
you're wrong, your site is allowed by all the lists I mentioned.
These lists are not weapons, they are provided by the instances themselves. They are not false or artificial. They are current, and they display exactly what is real in the configuration of the servers.
The issue is if these lists end up being blindly copied based on trust, and instances that don't deserve to be banned end up being banned by dozens of instances just because they're copying lists.
Something similar happened with Twitter banlists. A lot of the accounts were trolls and fascists and whatnot, but oftentimes someone with progressive views who is just a little controversial ends up on a banlist and banned by half of Twitter because one guy decided to stick him on a widely used banlist.
So these lists are both block AND allow lists? Or are they just allow lists?
There are 3 categories in settings on your server, as far as I know: Linked, Allowed and Blocked. I don't know the difference between Linked and Allowed, but yes, these links contain multiple lists on the same page. The format is the following: https://domain.tld/instances, you will normally find from 1 to 3 lists there, (the Linked, Allowed and Blocked lists). Linked is normal, Blocked is defederated. Idk what Allowed is but I think it is also federated so 🤷
Linked are servers that your server knows about (that have communicated with it)
Allowed, or the allow-list, if present means that the server can only federate with servers in the allow list. This is the most restrictive setting possible.
Block, or disallow-list, means that these servers may not federate with yours. This is where servers go generally when they are "defederated".
Damn I think beehaw is there? I think they have an allow list.
Thank you for the clarification. The problem I have is:
Note that dbzer0 on the federation-checker.vercel.app shows we are being blocked. fba.ryona.agency shows that too, and apparently we are edgelords,don’t moderate, and have done something wrong with free speech…
So something somewhere is broken…
The problem with dbzer0 is the same we had talked about before (edit: I talked with someone else from lemmy.ninja about this topic, your instance was blocked before). It's old news. It's from when you had a bot problem. Ryona has a cache and doesn't clear it too often.
The problem with toot.foundation has nothing to do with that, though. I have no idea why they would block you. You can find the up to date list of blocked instances on a mastodon by going to the https://instance.tld/about. For example, for toot.foundation, which does block lemmy.ninja, here is the updated blocklist at the bottom, you have to click Moderated servers: https://toot.foundation/about
Okay. Thank you or your time. I’m just trying to identify if I have a user that is harassing people or something.
It is no problem, I like to help.
Well, your screen name seems appropriate ;) Thank you.
lmao ppl went crazy with the downvotes on this thread and i'm not sure why hahahah, just reading they even downvoted my "no problem" message. crazy.
I downvoted the post with this in it because they are used as weapons. Take it from a fedi veteran. I remember niu.moe and how people spread lies about technowix with literally zero provocation.
Yeah idk that drama. Tbh I'm just pissed about the defederation situation and am looking for places that aren't as isolated. I googled trying to find drama about technowix and didn't find it.
You wouldn't, niu.moe has been down for a while, but they're the admin of raru.re now
While you did clarify for MrEUser. I will say that they could be weaponized if they are just taken by instances without understanding why they were blocked by the originating instance (especially if it is a larger one). It is obviously up to the instance creators to research things. So I am not saying that it is the same as Reddit outright banning links to sites.
But I think it is fair to consider that since many of the sites that are blocked are either linking possibly illegal or openly bigoted content. That plenty of others will think that all the blocked instances are doing those things. All because the more mainstream a site becomes with "normies", they just see it as black and white (like they do with lots of real world things). While the actual case is that the ones that aren't doing those things might just be blocked due to more nuanced reasons. Maybe it is simply differences in politics or maybe even just the creator trying to only federate with instances of the same language in order to make sure everyone can read the posts/comments.
That doesn't mean that instances being able to block other instances is automatically bad or anything. It is very helpful to be able to openly see which instances are and aren't allowed. Which is at least surface level transparent for users and potential users. And can be used for creators of instances that might have been blocked to reach out and work things out if it was blocked. Which is something that (to my knowledge) all the major social media sites do not offer and tend to hide. Preferring shadowbans and only openly admitting it if it is super problematic (like bigots or openly illegal stuff).
I can somehow agree with a few things you say, but overall I think the premise is wrong. The fact is not that most blocks or even half the blocks are due to having illegal or bad content. I also don't know any defederation based on language or any such matter (especially since languages seen is already solved by your profile selection of language). Most blocks are automated, especially for instances that have trouble handling bot sign-ups, or those that have moderation issues. I think that the assumptions that one can make are indeed dangerous but they're not based in reality, but in imaginary facts about what defederation means. Obviously, since we're growing very fast, I agree that newcomers and less technically minded people may believe this is the case and use blocklists to justify random assumptions. But in the end, they would be entirely wrong, and wrong assumptions can be made about practically anything, so I wouldn't put much value or thought into the possible wraponizationability of instance defederation lists.
That sucks to be you. Enjoy being seen as a right-wing extremist no matter your personal or professional actions.
P.S. asking for evidence is racist and enables harassment (they genuinely believe this)