Shared Fediblocks are a plague. Get added to one by somebody that personally dislikes you and every instance that uses the block will unknowingly block you.
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Don't worry, highly popular instances won't get on the block list and small instances don't matter enough for it to be a problem. Power always favours the powerful.
The issue is there's no oversight here, or at the very least, no oversight that we can trust to be impartial.
When parties form a federation, it's usually with a signed agreement, to maintain the integrity of the federation and keep it together. Shared standards, rules, ideals, regulations, etc. All I'm seeing here are parties trying to carve out a sub-federation, and with no neutral oversight, it's just going to become a "people like me" circle.
And I guarantee at some point people are going to start thinking "Hey, if this instance isn't subscribing to the shared blocklist, that must mean they want those other instances around, and therefore they deserve to be added to the list"
Then just like that, the fediverse has a defacto authority. Instead of one sepz, we have a council of them from the largest instances.
And I guarantee at some point people are going to start thinking “Hey, if this instance isn’t subscribing to the shared blocklist, that must mean they want those other instances around, and therefore they deserve to be added to the list”
Already is happening on the Mastodon/Pleroma side of the Fediverse. Instances getting de-federated because they dared allowed their users to see posts from "bad" instances
Lol, sometimes I feel like the 'fediverse' (hate that name BTW) is filled with the worst people.
Lemmy is built as a single instance with federation capabilities as an after thought. The biggest clue to this and the reason why it will always re-centralize is that communities are server bound. There is no fediverse wide community and they is by design. Read this closed issue
This is a terrible idea that steers lemmy into being an echo chamber. Let admins use their own judgement.
But isn't that what this program does? It allows you to choose an instance with admins that you trust. And those who want to review every single one manually can still do that. I'd love this tool. The ones setting up these servers aren't stupid. They can use their judgement and use this tool if they want!
And those who want to review every single one manually can still do that.
But will they? This tool promotes blindly trusting another instance block list without due diligence from the admin.
Don't know. That's up to them. The problem is not the tool but the unreflected trust in blocklists. The Internet is huge, if Lemmy takes off so will the number of instances. The amount of decisions needed to get a legal instance working in many countries will be insurmountable. I'd rather piggyback on someone I do trust as a rough basis. It won't be perfectly tuned with my informed decision but the alternative is me not setting the server up. The list of defederation can be reviewed. If you're careful about the template its not blind trust. Much in the same way as using FOSS software without understanding all components isn't blind trust if you're careful about the source and verify downloads. It's not perfect but the alternative is not using the software at all.
Why not set up your own instance?
Thank you. I recently set up my own instance and realized the need for tools that can assist in managing.
This sounds a bit like how to bring the shared blocklists from Twitter to Lemmy. Those were a disaster on Twitter, and I don't expect it'll end any better here either...
Please don't use tools like this. Manually curate instances you feel the need to defederate with. The Fediverse was built on a model not unlike that of email. You wouldn't just randomly block whole email providers willy-nilly, so you shouldn't do so here on the Fediverse either.
As a sysadmin that's a terrible analogy:
- Shared email Blocklists are the norm, not the exception
- As a professional IT admin I would absolutely blackhole any vile hives of scum and villainy rather than dealing with their BS. If someone is going to do that for me I'll use the tool.
Also a sysadmin.
Shared email Blocklists are the norm, not the exception
Shared blocklists in IT are managed by industry professionals for the purpose of safety from malicious activity and there are vetted processes for being removed from days lists. False positives happen, but you aren't hung out to dry if you get hit, you just go through the process and clear your name.
Most of this "Fediblock" nonsense is several orders of magnitude less reliable, and filled with toxic people pursing personal grudges. There's no process to clear your name, and I've personally watched multiple admins and their entire communities be publicly mocked and told they "don't owe you anything" for merely asking why they were blocked, let alone how to remedy the situation.
These are not remotely equivalent and anybody who trusts them is a fool. The Fediverse has a serious problem with vile, bitter people who would not be out of place running an HOA. If we are going to emulate the blocklists common in IT, we need professionals in charge of it, not nosy busybodies.
we need professionals in charge of it, not nosy busybodies.
Great, you form the not-for-profit company to manage this and get the buy-in from a critical mass of servers. Gold luck finding and vetting staff
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Admins can and do use email server block lists, though, so maybe that's a great example.
I suppose you're right--for now. But at some point Lemmy etc will grow large enough to make manual blocking infeasible. Just how much effort does it take to start a new instance even today?
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I'm going to found a user community for it! I'm kind of cooky, so I'll name it "the church of LDS". Surely nothing litigious will happen.
Jokes aside, great work :)
Obviously opinions are divided on shared blocklists, but we're at the beginning of the road and only time will tell how this impacts the fediverse. Email had to introduce blocklists as well, so it's not surprising this also exists.
Email blocklists are based on spam and malware.
I've never heard of an email operator refusing to send or deliver SMTP messages to/from a certain provider because too many of its users support the wrong political party.
I haven't heard of users or instances getting banned/blocked for supporting the wrong political party either unless racism, brigading, CP, and death threats are core tenets of said party, which leads me to believe you may be referring to the Republican party in the US?
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And here all I can think is “latter-day saints”
I see where this can be useful, but is this list categorized or at least indicate why a certain instance was added?
It's different blocking an instance for simply repeated toxic behavior vs political leanings. Sometimes an instance can have both.
Letting new admins know and select categories/tags to block or let through could be an improvement, if it isn't there already:
- NSFW (sometimes people want a SFW site, like browsing at work)
- NSFL (porn might be okay but not everyone have fond memories of ogrish.com and likes)
- Illegal in X jurisdiction (e.g. CSAM)
- Far right or far left
- Repeated instances of troll / spam bot accounts
- Abandoned by admin
There is no way to specify reasonings for defederation in lemmy right now :(
Disgusting. Let's defederate with everyone whose ideology my echo chamber disagrees with111!
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